By: gudbuytjane

You're both welcome. I find it is an interesting contrast to the passing of Mary Daly, another famous feminist with connections to <I>The Transsexual Empire</I>, in both the response of trans women and the often extremely defensive pushback by cissexual feminists. With Daly the pervasive sense I got was anger, anger that the cis feminist community had erased us yet again by either being ignorant of our history and the damage done to trans women by Daly, or by equivocating it away. With Adrienne Rich it has felt more about the sadness that our essential inequality in queer, women's, and feminist communities still exists. I see growth in that where I felt a distinct and angry backlash by cis women at trans women for challenging of Daly's legacy, I saw much more acceptance and compassion towards the position of trans women by cis women this time. It is a sad acceptance, realizing someone you admired had some despicable ideas and sad some horrible things, and not easy to do, so to see so many not resort to "I know, but..." This may just be a function of the people and communities I take part in now, but I am hopeful it was part of a much wider phenomenon. Still, I was sad to see <a HREF="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/03/28/rest-well-adrienne-rich/" rel="nofollow">Feministe</A>'s post on Adrienne Rich had no reference to her connection to Raymond's book. I have written for Feministe, and so have other trans women, so I would hope they will take a wider perspective next time someone with a complex history of transmisogyny passes.