I reject totally the characterization of a transwoman as a mutilated man. First, that formulation presumes that men born into that sex assignment are not mutilated. Second, it once again sets up the feminist as the prosecutor of trans people. If there is any mutilation going on in this scene, it is being done by the feminist police force who rejects the lived embodiment of transwomen. That very accusation is a form of "mutilation" as is all transphobic discourse such as these.

Not all bodies are born in male or female. There is a continuum of bodies and it seems to me that trying to persuade medical and psychiatrist establishments to deal with the intersex involves critique of the binary gender system. Similarly there continues to be extreme, sometimes very extreme violence against transgender people.

I want to say that the way in which we understand gender actually changes the way we live gender.

I certainly don't mean to suggest that all investigative journalism prior to 9/11 in the US was praiseworthy. But there were more examples to which one could point, and there were at last some activist photographers who understood that getting information into the public sphere in spite of military censorship was a right and obligation within democracy. That strain in war journalism did nearly vanish during that time.

If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?

All of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions - or norms - that help to form us.

Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way in which feminism is known in the media.