Dear Kaley,

Frankly, I want to dominate this discussion. I want to sit everyone down and say, "Look. I don't wish to spend my one more minute of my life participating in cyberspace's newest version of 'Rock the Vote': deciding whether or not transgendered women shoul d be permitted entry into all-female spaces online. I think they should. " Frustrated with this question, I'd like to ask a new one: "Why do we care about this at all? What is at stake in this particular debate about sexuality and cyberspace?" Then, I'd everyone to agree that I am correct, announce I am brilliant and progressive, and love me.

Unfortunately, life doesn't work this way online, or off it. My friend Deb Margolin likes to say, "If you beat a dead horse long enough, it moves. " I wonder if the same thing applies to this endless, exhausting debate. I am over it, but this is probably more an indication of my impatience than anything else. For someone who considers herself a feminist, I seem to have one hell of a time listening to other women discuss things for long. You, on the other hand, have been listening patiently to every yahoo with an opinion on this matter -- and strangely, many people do have an opinion, myself included. I wonder why I am panicked that as a "boring biological female," people will care less about my opinions than yours. Is your admission into a woman -only space not my story too? I'm not sure anymore. Before I went online, I would have been hard-pressed to understand why identity politics would matter to members of a commercial bulletin board system. To be honest, I would have thought to myself, "The se people are freaks; why don't they go join another board? Can't they just 'switch the channel'? It's not like they have to live online or anything. " Then I joined ECHO.

To an outsider, ECHO looks like most commercial BBSs, structured into conferences based along affinity lines: there are conferences about things like movies, politics, cooking, queer issues, and pets. However, I think it is impossible to understand ECHO w ithout assessing the feminist aims of the board's president, our friend Stacy Horn. You and I know the romantic version of this story: unsatisfied with what she saw as a lack of women's input on the San Francisco-based WELL, Stacy decided to recruit femal e Conference Hosts, system administrators, and office managers, and begin ECHO -- a commercial service with many affinities, but with women-oriented identity. What most outsiders don't know is that many women on ECHO stay members because of Stacy's identity politics. 1

I didn't join ECHO because it was woman-identified, I joined because people on another board told me about the place, and because the first month was free. But ECHO's feminist politics is certainly one reason why I stayed, and why I now consider the place my online "home. " I believe that there are historically good and sound reasons for wanting women's space on the Net in general, and ECHO in particular. 2 Anyone who doesn't think so should read ECHO's FEEDBACK conference, where the poor Host asks over and over again, "I'd like some women's comments on such and such." Invariably, within 20 minutes (all posts on ECHO are time-stamped) five or six self-identified males will feel compelled to add something.

Why? What makes certain men unbelievably anxious to fill the silence that sometimes occurs when women are asked to speak out in public forums? Male Answer Syndrome doesn't quite get at the problem. Perhaps these men are participating in a ritual of online turf-marking, or maybe they just assume speaking for women is their Manifest Destiny in digital territory. As writers like Harry Cleaver point out, there is a reason the word "space" still hangs in the phrase "cyberspace." 3 An yone who has studied the expansion of spam-mailing on the Net can attest to the fact that bandwidth and influence are equivalent in the minds of many.

When I am feeling grandiose, I see the drama of transgendered women on ECHO as a type of postcolonial problem, set in a decidedly postmodern venue. I believe the first decolonizing gesture in ECHO's history was the establishment of the women-only conferen ce, WIT. Please don't misunderstand: most women on ECHO didn't seek out WIT because we were afraid of men -- there are plenty of other public and private conferences where we converse, debate and socialize with men. However, at the time it was conceived, WIT was unique on ECHO in that it encouraged women to identify and make community with one another, free from the online presence of men.

Given the reasons behind the genesis of WIT, you can see how admitting transgendered women might pose a dilemma for some of its conference members. The truth is, because many transgendered women pass as men prior to their transition, some "biological wom en" have a hard time not thinking that transgendered women are in reality men exercising their "right to be female" as some new incarnation of male privilege. These women suggest that it is simply naive to promote the admission of transgendered women to WIT as an easily absorbed second wave of immigration within ECHO. They point out that WIT was begun as a "linguistic space of our own," and doubt that the language of transgendered women can make a neat enough fit within the community.

I believe that online, sexual difference boils down to language. What else is there? It's not like we are all dropping our panties and doing genital checks. At one level, a transgendered woman online is reminiscent of the "intellectual in exile " positio n that Edward Said talks about: she is the writing body with a privileged (although always thorny) past and an ambivalent present. Like the African novelist who writes in French about Africa, a transgendered woman speaks a borrowed language of sorts, and is often rejected by the very marginalized community with whom she wishes to speak.

As writers like Frantz Fanon have made so clear, a subjugated people can always raise an army, but once their language is absorbed, their ways of doing things forgotten, the fact that they gain "independence" later is always a Pyhrric victory, as hybrid ity becomes the order of the day. Of course, the counter-argument is that the colonized never had a pure culture to begin with. In the postcolonial condition, a three-part process occurs: first the subject is encouraged to forget her mixed origins; then, she finds scapegoats within her culture, and comes to believe that although "they" are impure, she is not. Finally, should she be conquered by some other culture, she can maintain the belief that hers is the one pure original subjectivity, waiting only t o be released from colonial bondage. Read in this light, women who want to cast transgendered folks as conquerors are ignoring the fact that conquest cuts both ways, and always has. Historically, lots of different types of offline bodies have been absorbe d, and then had their differences erased, in order to create the sexological category, "woman. " However, one difference between a woman and a transgendered woman is that the transgendered woman is not permitted to participate in this lie of Pure Womenho od.

After more than two years of debate, you are the first transgendered woman to be admitted to WIT. 4 I am embarrassed to admit this (it makes me feel like a talk show host), but part of me is dying to know: now that you have been admitted, what do you think of it, and of us? I realize this is a silly question for me: I am not sure I consider myself part of the "us" that makes up WIT. Still, I feel very much the naive anthropologist here, talking to the native informant about "first cont act" : usually, in European anthropology, the first question the explorers ask after they "discover" bushmen is, "So, how do you feel meeting a European?" Still, I cannot resist this urge to see myself reflected back in your observations.

Dear Terri,

First contact? Well, I have had plenty of contact with women as a woman in mixed and female-only spaces, both online and off. It's possible that this experience is more novel for you than it is for me. If I'm the aborigine, and you're the European, my ans wer would be "Oh look. More Europeans. I wonder how these Europeans are different from the other Europeans I've met. " If you want to hear "first contact' "stories, you should ask the women in WIT what their first contact with a transwoman was like. Ask the ones who didn't want me there. I'd like to read that. Wait -- did I just make up a word here, "transwoman ?" Have you seen this anywhere else? I wonder if I like it. It sounds a little space-agey. "Buck Rodgers and His Army of Transwomen! "Still, its substantially shorter than" transgendered women." I think I'll keep it for now.

Your curiosity is interesting to me, because it demonstrates how difficult it is to change gender in a place like ECHO. The truth is, after changing my gender in real life, I have experienced virtually no resistance. People have been tremendously acceptin g. At first, I felt like people on ECHO were offering me the same kind of acceptance, but somehow, it has been more difficult online. In real life, my looks and manner are different, but on ECHO, my words look the same as always. I suppose I could have be en more dramatic about the whole thing -- I could have chosen to more consciously "feminize" my writing, by adding exclamation points or something -- maybe it would have been easier for people on ECHO to recognize and process the change. Or I could have c hanged my handle to something demure or provocative. But that's not me. I had no interest in creating some new "cyber-personality." I just wanted to be myself. I wanted for it all to be no big deal.

Does that sound blasé? Of course, I'd be lying if I said it was not a big deal to me. It surely was, but for other reasons than the "first contact" ones. This episode has been highly charged, politically, but I am not much of an activist. Our frien d, Dana Friedman -- she is an activist! Bold. Fearless. Me? I am a coward. I felt in over my head from the beginning of this episode. There were countless times when I felt sorry I ever brought it up. Intimate parts of my life were up for public discussio n and debate, and that was making me crazy. So when I finally was allowed into an all-female space, I was certainly not saying "ho hum," I was saying "Oh God, what have I gotten myself into? This will teach me to shoot off at the mouth."

I had already heard quite a lot about WIT, before I became a member. Most of my women friends on ECHO were, like you, not big participants in that conference. They told me stories of getting frustrated with the place and huffing [leaving] repeatedly. Thes e women asked me why I wanted to join a conference that drives them nuts. But for me, my application wasn't just about WIT. It was about respect, acceptance and dignity. It was also about closets, ignorance and misconceptions. Transwomen are not freaks. W e are not mentally ill. And most of all, we are not men. The idea that I should live off-line as other women live -- be accepted by colleagues, friends, family, strangers on the street, babies in strollers, garage mechanics, neighborhood dogs and the mail man -- and yet not be permitted to share my thoughts and feelings about my life in an online all-female space, with women who have had the good (and sometimes bad) fortune to be born and reared as such -- this seems absurd to me. I had no idea if I would like WIT, or fit in, or what. I just knew it was wrong for WIT to exclude people like me, pro forma.

The first thing I did after joining WIT was read the item that contained the Big Debate from response number 1. It took about an hour. When I got to then end, I just sat and cried for about 20 minutes. I couldn't stop, and I couldn't figure out why. I was n't offended by anyone. Sure, I was angered by a couple of people, but not hurt, really. But there I sat, sobbing. I think I completely underestimated the emotional impact this whole protracted (seven months long) episode had on me, and it all burst forth in liquid form. It makes me well up again just thinking about it. All these women were hashing out the wrenching identity issues that I had dealt with over many sessions with my shrinks. They were debating thoughts that had been raging in my head for yea rs, and I wasn't part of it! All this discussion regarding admitting transwomen had happened months prior to my entry into WIT, and I couldn't participate. It was a total out-of-body experience.

As for WIT, I am still figuring the place out, and how (or whether) I fit in there. I feel self-conscious. For now, I am posting about non-gender stuff, partly to prove that I am not some abstraction or sub-human, but that I have real daily needs and issu es just like everyone else. Sounds like a recipe for stiff, dull, artificial writing, right? I don't want to fall into the trap of being "nicey-nice" since I hate that, but I don't feel loose yet. Ask me again in a few days. Right now, I feel kind of like Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player. It took several seasons until he felt free to speak his mind without being automatically dismissed as the uppity colored player. I feel like I am obliged to be the easy-to-digest trans sexual, the peacemaker, the non-threatening tranny-next-door.

Dear Kaley,

I hope I never have to stumble across more than 200 pages (I printed it out) of posts debating my right to exist as a woman. And you didn't even get to read the debate in its entirety: a few people in WIT who posted about you erased their posts bef ore your arrival -- and were given a week's notice to do so. Considering this, I am sure I screwed up that first contact analogy I made earlier. The truth is, you were the one who traveled to us -- that would make you the conqueror, in standard ant hropological terms. Yet we (by we, I mean WIT) were the ones who were controlling the dialogue about you, and from behind a closed border. Because you were making the application to our forum, we could speak freely about you, without your knowledge . The truth is, as regards WIT, we had more power than you. I remember that there were women really offended that you had explained (in LAMBDA, the Queer issues conference of ECHO) your application to WIT was a political gesture. Many of these women were the same ones who originally supported you. The feeling seemed to be that if you wanted to come and "be one of the girls," then fine. But if you were an activist, that was a problem. I would be misrepresenting the situation to say that most of the women i n WIT felt this way -- to my knowledge they did not. Still, it was a position held by some, and it left me to shake my head in wonder. Did people really think lunch at a Woolworth's counter was what civil rights activists wanted?

My friend Jennifer gets really nervous when I start cooking colonial issues, gender crossings and race relations into a big stew of theory like this. I understood her anxiety as soon as I read your Jackie Robinson comment. I can see why you would identify with him, but to my mind, you aren't Jackie Robinson. Robinson was a black male seeking entrance to white male majority offline space. You are a white, educated, (former) male, who is now seeking acceptance as a (white?) woman online. The balance of powe r seems completely different. However, what your analogy does point out is how difficult it is to identify, and then disidentify, from subject positions in the context of community.

Here is a clear cut example: WIT has a policy of confidentiality. Originally, there were good reasons for this: women have long been ridiculed and dismissed in their life struggles, and while the hosts of WIT could establish a certain "safe space" within the boundaries of the conference, outside of the conference all bets were off. Given what I have just said, it would make sense to suggest that confidentiality in WIT functions to protect the privacy of a minority from the scrutiny and ridicule of a major ity. However, when I think about your story, I am forced to reconsider this, and ask, who is the minority body in this situation? Is it really mine? WIT spent months discussing you, but if you had offered opinions about WIT prior to your admittance, it wo uld have been with no real knowledge of the place. Further, if I decided to talk to you about what was going on in WIT, that would have been considered a breach of confidentiality on my part. When I decided not to discuss with you conversations being had about you in WIT, was I protecting the confidences of other marginalized women on ECHO, or was I working to keep myself in power, and you excluded? Perhaps it was both.

I also wonder if what we are doing now doesn't constitute some breach of confidentiality: we plan on publishing these letters, and there will be people who will read this who will never be admitted into WIT. Which is more important, bearing academic witne ss to an online event, or protecting the confidences of others in a private cyberspace forum? Today I choose the former, but not without trepidation.

You came to ECHO self-identifying (on the surface, at least) as a biological, white male. I remember the first time you sent me mail asking permission to discuss first cross-dressing, and then transgender issues in LAMBDA, the public conference of which I was a Host. When you approached me, I remember being both surprised and frankly, pleased. In real life, you seemed a tall, handsome, self-assured straight guy. On ECHO, you were articulate, well-educated, funny, and well-liked. I couldn't think of a bett er poster girl for the transgender movement. I still believe your likeability has been the single most significant factor in advancing the cause of transgendered people on ECHO: you even started an item in LAMBDA called "Changing Your Gender -- I Did it, So Can You!" Still, I wonder how much of that freedom to be who you are has its roots in the fact that you originally passed for a successful white male.

As I mentioned earlier, transwomen are perceived by many in WIT as having power that may or may not be theirs to begin with. But transwomen aren't alone in this dynamic. For instance, if you look in the Index in LAMBDA , you'll see that by far, the most a ctive items are the transgender ones and the bisexuality ones. There have been long discussions in LAMBDA about whether bisexuals are qualified to speak to queer issues. Some of the objections raised are ones I cannot deny. No one has taken a swing at me for sitting on a subway car with my girlfriend.

Now, I identify as bisexual, but I cannot tell you how many people have told me that because I sleep with men, I am straight. End of story. For me, however, that wasn't the end of the story. Everyone in LAMBDA knows that in addition to sleeping with biolo gical men and women, I have also had a long-term relationship with a mid-operative transgendered man (or female-to-male transsexual, which is what he used to call himself.) The truth is, neither of us fit the parameters of "complete queer abjection"—in so me ways we suffered, in some ways we simply did not: when I was involved with my lover, we were perceived as a straight couple. What should we have done about this? Worn a sign announcing our queer status? In some ways, he was committed to passing as a ma n, and was successful at it. What was I passing as? This is something I still wonder. It seems to me that there are times when each of us passes, willfully or not, as something we don't consider ourselves to "be."

Jennifer mentioned that her new writing group, while nominally comprised of women, doesn't call itself a "women's group." Nevertheless, they are committed to wrestling with the connections between writing, speaking, gender and power. I wonder if this easi er to accomplish offline than on it, because Jennifer's group sees one another face-to-face once a week and identify, visually at least, as "all women." Does passing as a woman offline make the identifying statement "women's group" redundant? Obviously no t, but why not? On the other hand, some women in WIT were disturbed that you sometimes go through offline life "being perceived as a man." I wondered what they meant by that, and why it troubled them so. Doesn't everyone in Jennifer's writing group get on the subway perceived as a woman, even if they don't identify as such? Don't butch women get mistaken for men all the time?

I am sometimes mistaken for a male in real life (I have a "boy haircut"). It has never bothered me. But I just found myself mulling over how I would feel if someone mistook me for male, online. I think I would find it sexist, irritating, and not"empowerin g" in the least. Like you, I have struggled with how to be perceived as a woman on ECHO: I wonder how to write in such a way that I get my point across, yet make friends. I wonder how to seem a sexual being, but not a horny one. I try to learn to "agree t o disagree," with some level of dignity. I concentrate on not turning every intellectual struggle online into Debate Society, thereby replicating my first depressing year of grad school. Irritated in the extreme by Male Answer Syndrome online, I aspire in stead towards Female Question Syndrome. You know what? I often fail miserably.

I feel as though all women struggle to inscribe gender into writing. You have been through so much grief, just to be who you are, that it would upset me to think that you would ever "consciously feminize" your online writing, as you put it. For you to do something cutesy with your name online would be for you to stop being the woman who takes control. To me, cute language is a coy disavowal of the fact that the phallus is taken up through speech, not anatomy, and that women are certainly capable of phalli c power. You know, the Continental Feminists became very engrossed in a project called l'écriture femin'ne -- feminine writing. But in their parlance, the body does the writing, the writing doesn't "do" the body. Maybe online, though, writing does make the body.

Dear Terri,

I have to take a brief tangent on something you just wrote. It's purely selfish, so please indulge me. I don't want anyone to think that I often, or even "sometimes" (as you said) do the "guy thing." This caused a flurry of confusion in the Big Debate wit hin WIT. I hardly ever do it. Like, I might for Halloween, you know? However, I reserve the right to do it whenever I want, free from judgment just as I think all women should. If a woman wants to dress up as a man so she can save $1200 on a deal for a new car, I say "go for it!" I just want to make it very clear that I am completely committed to my gender expression. I do not take this lightly; I believe in gender and, honey, does it ever believe in me.

Now, back to the matter at hand. I can give you a very clear example of how writing makes the body: the Virtual City piece about my application to WIT by Maia Szalavitz, who actually supported my entry. I was utterly furious about that piece. Blind rage would not be an exaggeration. I happened upon a copy about six weeks after it hit the newsstands. I was about ten words into the piece when I realized the article used the pronoun "he" to describe me. It felt like someone had punched me in the stoma ch. I read the whole piece right there in the Tower Books, getting angrier with each repetition of the pronoun. I must have been red as a beet.

When I posted my feelings about the piece in LAMBDA, Maia professed that had she known it was this important to me, she would have fought for changes from her editor. According to Maia, this editor changed all pronouns about me to "he," for the sake of cl arity. Bigotry by expediency. It didn't matter. Even if she had used the feminine pronoun, the whole piece read to me as, "Here's another man being obnoxious. How do the women react?" Maia interviewed the women in WIT, who were given space in the article to relay their feelings. I felt like my feelings were discounted. The tacit assumption in the article was that I was doing something awful to the women of WIT, and nothing at all was happening to me. What angers me to no end is that "transpeople as devious agitators" is by far the most popular characterization we have in the media, and now I was lumped in with the rest of the stereotypical deviants. Did anyone see The Crying Game and think "My, I wonder what Dil must have felt like when she was 'outed' as trans? That's had to be traumatic for her." Of course not. Trickster freaks don't have depth of feelings, do we?

I am not trying to trick anyone. I wish I had a crystal-clear analogy for how I see gender. After upgrading my server to Linux 2.0 yesterday, a geek metaphor leaps to my mind. Please forgive me. Gender is kind of like the boot kernel of our human operatin g system. A boot kernel is the very first set of instructions a computer is given when it is turned on. The kernel, written by a person, tells the computer how to behave. I feel like my boot kernel was loaded at birth by a doctor, who, upon glancing at my genitalia, decided which way to configure me, based on my "hardware." Except my hardware didn't match my brain -- my CPU [central processing unit]. Excuse me, I need to re-boot.

If you tell a computer, "here's how to use your Adaptec 2940 SCSI adapter" and the computer looks and says "Wait! I have a BusLogic 946c! This is all wrong!" you get what is called "kernel panic." The system just freezes and sits there until you fix it. I guess I was in "gender panic" for about 30 years. Unlike computers, I was able to function, at least superficially, with the "boot gender" I was given. On the surface, I looked like another straight guy. I became adept at making people believe I was some thing I was not -- it was the path of least resistance.

I liked girls because I wanted to be one. I didn't like boys because I knew it was wrong. I was a coward for so long, never being true to myself, lying to people every single day of my life, leading people on, hurting the few who I became close to. It got worse after college. I fell in love with a woman who I was sure would be the "cure" for me. She was smart, beautiful, fun to be with, and bossy as all hell, but she was no cure. After four years, she was ready to marry and breed. I was ready to have a ge nder-meltdown. I still love her and hate myself for living a lie for so long. That is what I should be pilloried for -- not for being the uppity tranny, but for being the deceiving faux-straight man. And yet, no one has ever taken me to task for that.

When you say you marvel at the grief I am going through, I think, "Girlfriend, the grief is over." Honestly, I feel like I stole my life back. I am living on bonus time. Sure, I still go through bad stuff. Like a couple of months ago when I woke up and sa w that a patch of hair had fallen out of my head leaving a bald spot the size of a quarter. It's grown back (pure white), though, which is kind of great. I didn't get that from gender worries, I got it from trying to start a business on a shoestring. No, life for me in gender-land is pretty easy. I feel guilty about it. Off-line, I pass -- your average male-to-female transsexual doesn't. She is, well, not very attractive. (I feel like a heel for even saying that, but it's true.) The world is a tough place for tall, big-boned, women with bad skin and deep voices. I reserve my greatest respect for those transwomen who go through this "grief" in places like Alabama or Idaho. How do they do it? I am in awe.

Dear Kaley,

Your tolerance amazes me; I wish I had more of it. I have to admit, after years of graduate school, I'm not sure I believe people change their views about gender through education alone. Your excellent point about the "deviant trickster transsexual" notwi thstanding, I think there is too much information about transgendered women in the mainstream press. It's not as if the women in WIT didn't recount every Donahue episode they had ever seen on transsexuals in order to make their various point s about whether they felt you were a woman. I was surprised that although we talked about gender performativity in LAMBDA, it didn't come up at all in WIT. It's not as if Judith Butler isn't available for the reading pleasure of women outside the academy. But I am easily frustrated: for instance, as much as I enjoyed your "boot kernel" story of gender, the analogy still didn't quite hold for me.

Every time I hear someone answer "What's your gender?" with "I am a woman," it reminds me of people who answer the question, "What kind of computer do you have?" with the answer "Windows." Now, we both know Windows is nota computer; it's an operati ng system. Likewise, "woman" is not a configuration of biological hardware -- it is a set of operating commands coming from a number of sources (biology, culture, language) which in turn issue a series of effects. The performance artist Orlan (who has pla stic surgeries done on her body as performances) sometimes refers to herself as a "female to female transsexual." I know that sentiment. One reason I like the term "transwoman" is that it describes a process: the transition to woman. I believe all women a re in the process of transitioning, but only some are marked as such.

Here is my computer analogy, which is just as incomplete as yours: as a transwoman, you Kaley Davis, strike me as a Macintosh Operating System -- functional, attractive, user-friendly, yet often denigrated as less than a "real" woman. On the other hand, I feel like Windows 95: I'm the "real thing" all right; I am also perpetually late, high maintenance, memory hogging, and foundationally redundant in some strange way. Windows was created to emulate a Macintosh interface. Truthfully, I feel as though I can barely emulate a model of femininity that flourishes better without me -- nonetheless, I'm the lucky one, the standard corporate packaged model female. I guess I'm not supposed to mention that I am also a bit of a lemon.

The other day, I saw an ad for Virginia Slims cigarettes. An airbrushed white model smoked and smiled, as the ad copy below announced, "It's a woman thing." What, in this context, was being marketed as a woman thing? Smoking? Buying your own cigarettes? B eing a white model? Now, substitute this phrase: "WIT's a woman thing." What does that mean, really? The truth is, I often enjoy women's spaces, and I often cannot say why. To say I enjoy a women's space "because I am a woman" seems to beg the question. I s WIT a "woman's thing" because it declares itself so? To whom is it declaring itself? Me? You? Men? This stuff is getting to me. I need to stop drinking so much coffee, or move to Seattle like you, where caffeine is a life-style choice.

Dear Terri,

Do you remember the little local BBS where we first met? That was my very first foray into virtual communities. I joined with the intention of finding a place where I could be female, since, at the time, I was unable to do so in real life. I think of my t ime on that board as a kind of adolescence. At first, I enjoyed the attention of the men, the flirting, the novelty of "cybersex," and learning firsthand the way men and women were treated differently. But I became bored with that quickly. What kept me th ere were the friendships I was developing with the other women there. This was new and wonderful to me! The camaraderie that women share as friends was an experience completely denied me during my own adolescence. I had always sought it, and finally found it!

Over time, I developed stronger bonds with the women there, but a tension began building in me. Some of the women wanted to meet me. I was invited to face-to-face, women-only gatherings -- they wanted the friendships to extend beyond the screen. But, I wa s certain these women would reject me if they knew the truth. It wasn't a game; there were real people with real feelings involved. Ultimately, the tension grew too much for me. I thought I would be able to gain freedom and relief from my life in cyberspa ce. Instead, I found that I was now living twolies instead of just one. I had to do something; I couldn't take it anymore. So, I vanished. No goodbyes, no explanations. I just vanished. Cowardly, huh? You bet.

Transwomen binge and purge in a special way. Most everyone I know has gone through several periods in their lives where they gathered up all their feminine clothes and accouterments, tossed them in the trash, and said to themselves "Thistime, it's over." It never is, of course. My experience with that small board prompted my final purge. I decided the next board I joined, I would be male. Obviously, the world insisted that I be male, and I was exhausted from pressing the argument.

The next board I joined was ECHO. So, there I was, fresh from a torturous gender experience. What do I do? I introduce myself as a straight man. Gender issues? Not me! Queer conference? No thanks! I think I'll go check out the Sports conference. Yeah. Rah , rah! I picked a very butch handle, and off I went. It was sort of the cyber-gender equivalent of the transwoman growing a beard as "a cure." I never could come remotely close to growing a beard in real life, but I was able to pull off the straight, regu lar guy thing online for awhile. Why not? I had years of practice. Sure, I was still living a lie in two places, but it was the same lie in both, and a familiar lie at that.

Dear Kaley,

I am thinking of naming this series of letters "Reconsidering Modem Butterfly." Unfortunately, that snappy phrase is not my coinage. It was, rather, a Village Voice headline for Alyssa Katz's article about gender swapping online. While I found the article entertaining and even provocative in places, I think my biggest problem with it was that it presented gender swapping primarily as an issue of choice, thus reinforcing an idea that you put on gender, like a change of clothing, and that gender does n't wear you. As I told Stacy Horn when she asked me about the article, I'm just not that interested in how a man masquerades as a woman online. I am more confused about how I masquerade as one.

At the time Katz's "Modem Butterfly" piece was published, I was spending time with our friend Dana, the transgendered woman you mentioned earlier. At the time, she was applying for entry to WIT, and was running into difficulty because of her status as a p re-operative transsexual. Stacy had ruled that Dana would be admitted to WIT after she had gender reassignment surgery, but not before. It upset me then, and still upsets me now, that anyone would be so cavalier as to say, "you must have surgery" to quali fy as a man or a woman. According to Stacy's logic, Dana's penis made her a non-woman, so if Dana got hers cut off, she could be admitted to WIT. For a series of complicated reasons, Dana left ECHO. That's when I began writing an essay about her in which I wondered aloud just what surgery was doing in a discourse about cyberspace, and why a penis was ruling a definition of women's space. (5)

Do you know the expression, "a fetish is a story masquerading as an object"? I would add -- the story is specific: it's a love story. I believe that the most significant difference between Modem Butterfly-style gender swapping and the story you jus t told is this: the former is about sex, and the latter seems, for lack of a better term, a request for love. The same goes for Dana's story: on ECHO, she went by the handle, Embraceable Ewe, which I always thought was a great name. I think of that old ps ychoanalytic slogan about love -- that it is an offering of what we don't have, with the hope of the same in return -- and I am trying to think through what that means in terms of Dana's request, "Please include me in this community of women."

Robert Stoller has a phrase, "If text becomes conscious, the fetish no longer in itself causes excitement, and is no longer a fetish." (155-156) After my piece about Dana was published, there followed two specific events: first there was a long discussion between LAMBDA members and Stacy Horn, in which she was urged to change her criteria for admitting transgendered people to gender-specific spaces online. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that Stacy's ability to listen to online members and reev aluate her policies is her singular strength as a businesswoman and community leader. After discussing the issue with LAMBDA, Stacy completely reversed her position on gender reassignment surgery as a criterion for admission to same-sex conferences.

The next thing that happened was that you applied for entry to WIT. Stacy's new ruling was in effect (i.e., she ruled that surgery was unnecessary), your item called Changing Your Gender was in full swing in LAMBDA, and you were very clear that your surgi cal status was not up for debate. In short (to borrow Stoller's phrase) "the text had become conscious," and the original fetish -- the penis -- was no longer viable. Then something surprising happened: where formerly "the penis" was the story-telling obj ect to be reckoned with in cyberspace, there now was a new guest fetish: the empty phrase "woman." Far fewer women objected to your application to WIT because you did or didn't have penis. Now they were objecting to you on the grounds that you "were not a woman." Whatever that might mean. Again, a gesture of what we don't have, with an expectation we'll see the same?

Dear Terri,

It scares me to think that I am now speaking for all transgendered women in WIT. I wish there were more out transpeople on ECHO. Often, I feel alone and stared at. I knowmy views are not representative of the whole trans "community." I have met may be 75 or 100 trans people in my life, and I marvel at the diversity. I'm not sure anyone's views could possibly be representative. Where do non-trans people get their information about us, anyhow? Movies? Semantics are tedious, but when will people ever a ppreciate the real differences between a gay drag queen, a transsexual, and a straight cross-dresser? Do people think we are all RuPaul?

The women of WIT weren't so naive, for sure. But, still, there were some sweeping statements made in WIT that seemed based on small sample sizes of direct experience with transpeople (like, one or zero). How could someone say, without professing knowing a ny transsexuals ever, that they don't care what is going on with my brain or my body, I'll always be a man? How can they say I am just playing a part and not feeling the same kind of anguish or fear they felt? My life experiences until now mean nothing? C onsider this: if I had exactly the same life experiences as I did, but had not been born with a penis -- if my parents had raised me as a boy -- wouldn't those very same people have rushed to my aid and comfort? Wouldn't they have condemned my pare nts for child abuse by raising me as a boy? Would they have said, "she can't come in here because she wasn't raised as a girl?"

I am not so sure the site of the fetish has changed. Make all the variables equal except one. Case A: born with penis. Case B: born without penis. Subject A is a pariah, Subject B is the opposite. Can you imagine yourself as Subject A? Can you begin to ap preciate why some transsexuals will go to the lengths of, as some people say it, "mutilating their bodies" ?

Dear Kaley,

I am chewing on your example, but frankly, I am having a hard time digesting it. You are asking me to consider a "real woman" as equivalent to someone "born without a penis." You tell me what this hypothetical person doesn't have, but not what she does ha ve. Does this real women you are describing have a vagina? Is she hermaphroditic, neuter, does she have a "wavering chromosome count" (these were three specific outré cases that had been mentioned in the context of the WIT debate. ) When will we st op theorizing women as a lack? I say "we" because I fall in this trap all the time.

For instance, going back over the transcript of the WIT item, I can tell you exactly when people started having problems seeing you as "one of the girls": when you made it clear that your surgical status was not a point of discussion (i.e. your body was y our business); when you made a point in LAMBDA that you wanted entry to WIT as a political act; and when you were perceived by others as wanting to identify with men from time to time. In short, when you disallowed yourself to be identified with la ck. Now, here is the irony: these are precisely the things for which butch lesbian women get grief all the time, at least in straight women's communities -- summer camp, sororities, bridal parties, etc.

How do we make a definition of woman, and women-only space, that is not predicated on lack? It was our mutual friend Marian who turned the questions in WIT around for me, yanking me away from wondering whether you belonged in WIT, to questioning my own mo tivations for being there. 6 Marian feels passionately that the political project of all-women's spaces ought to be this and nothing more: a women's space should demonstrate that there is nothing anyone born female must do, be, or think in order to be a perfectly legitimate woman. Marian has two main concerns with letting transgendered women into WIT: first, she feels that the discussion about whether transgendered women are "women enough" is an essentialist debate with no end. The histo ry of homophobia within the Women's Movement has demonstrated the dangers of equating womanliness with pregnancy, kindness, childbearing, attractiveness, being perceived as female, or the like. Second, Marian argues that WIT undermines its political autho rity when it moves away from what she sees as the clear cut definition of its membership: those individuals who were born and raised as females. "Remember 'it takes a village to raise a child?'" she asks. "Well, whatever the village said, that's what I sa y."

Marian's second argument is intimately connected to the first: it is only by insisting on similar -- not identical -- historical realities (i.e., being raised as a female) that women can break from essentializing, fetishistic notions of Women that continu e to trap them. As she puts it, "A woman's conference I support. A feminine conference is 180 degrees from what I support about woman-only space."

A self-identified black lesbian legal scholar, Marian tried to show how WIT's struggle replicated something she had already experienced: the creation and disruption of black-only spaces. Originally, Marian argued, the only criterion for admission to black -only spaces was that one have a history of being raised black. She pointed to the admission of passing light-skinned blacks into black-only space, so as to do away with the essentialist notion of "Blacker than Thou." Marian then made an analogy between f emale-to-male transsexuals (she never says "transgendered men" ) and light-skinned blacks, arguing that each should be let into women-only and black-only spaces, respectively. Like light-skinned blacks, female-to-male transsexuals demonstrate for Marian t hat race and gender are not essential elements, but rather a "history thing." Marian argues that a female-to-male transsexual has been historically reared as female, and ought to therefore be admitted to WIT. Finally, Marian makes this claim: the greatest historical disruption of black-only space has occurred when well-meaning white people insist they identify with blacks, and request entry to black-only space. What the white disrupters can't understand, according to Marian, is that their claim "we're one of you" introduces an essentialism, a standard, where according to her, none had ever existed. In this way, she introduces another analogy: transgendered woman is to woman-only space as white is to black-only space.

However contestable her analogies may be, Marian demonstrates a few crucial things in her objections to your presence in WIT. First, she steadfastly refuses to be seduced by fetishistic, essentialist readings of Woman. Like you, Marian believes that we "d o" gender; she just as vehemently believes that gender "does" us. Second, she points out that although WIT is an exclusionary, power-filled space, this space exists not "out in cyberland," but within at least three historical frames: the history of ECHO, the Women's Movement, and the Civil Rights movement. I agree with Marian that a material, locatable history is crucial in the fight against essentializing notions of Women. What seems to fall out of Marian's analyses is that within each of those historica l frameworks lies a multiplicity of viewpoints and opinions. I am sure it goes without saying that other people experience the genesis and reformations of ECHO's women-only space differently than I. Similarly, Marian's reading of the disturbances within b lack-only spaces is also only her reading; other historical opinions on the topic abound.

Moreover, while Marian and other feminists may choose to see a female-to-male transsexual as a natural extension of the possibilities of the Women's Movement and wish to enthusiastically welcome them to WIT, I personally don't know many transgendered men (which is what my friends call themselves) would want access to a women-only space. This reminds me of a story I was reading about an Chinese girl who was raised in a bourgeois white neighborhood. She was complaining that people naturally assumed she knew how to make tea, and all the while she had the urge to scream, "I'm white! Why can't you understand that?"

I think the search for a community where we feel comfortable is never-ending, in some ways. I sure don't feel comfortable in WIT. I often wonder if it isn't generational as well -- it seems like the women in WIT are among the older people on the b oard. My mom used to tell me, "Community equals compromise." I've been thinking about that lately, the way compromise is linked, etymologically, to the idea of "co-promising." In a space like WIT, or even a "virtual community" like ECHO, precisely what ar e we promising one another?

Dear Terri,

I think Marian's analogies are very powerful, but I feel that she doesn't appreciate this is not a choice for me. I am not a "sympathetic male." I am a woman -- a transsexual woman, but a woman nonetheless. It's odd to me how that seems to so many as if I am coming from a position of power. I feel like I am at a tremendous disadvantage; I feel inferior to other women because of my transsexuality, not superior. I didn't choose to be trans. Nobody does.

After corresponding with fellow ECHO member, plain scarf, I have come to see that Marian's (and my own) analogies regarding racial understanding perhaps need to be expanded past the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. 7 Plain sca rf has suggests that historically, there have always been blacks -- separated either by a genealogy of non-slavery or by a tacit alliance with influential white power structures -- who have found it useful to perpetuate internal ethnic discrimination acco rding to skin color. Spike Lee's School Daze makes this point quite powerfully, I think.

This brings me to the issue of class: how does it affect 'Blacker than Thou' schemas, I wonder? Again, plain scarf notes that the fact is, many affluent blacks (who are coincidentally, lighter-skinned, via past discrimination schemes) did decide to aid the black-power movement, just as white trust-fund children became back-to-the-land hippies. When they used money from family stock portfolios, or donated a building, can Marian honestly say that their influence in the group wasn't significantly more powerful than one of the group's "soldiers" who had been traditionally drawn from the working/lower class? Were the greatest schisms truly caused by white identification within black-only groups, or did the splits come when people within the groups reali zed that some people had trap doors when the going got rough, and some simply did not? I also find it interesting that Marian argues for the admittance of transgendered men and against the admittance of transwomen. I guess she feels some hybrids are bette r than others. You know what I really wanted? I wanted them to come out and say, "WIT is for those born with vaginas. End of discussion." I would have been satisfied with that. Honestly. I would also have had no interest in such a conference. Nobody wante d to say that, though. Why not?

I joined WIT at a weird time. There were a couple of brush fires smoldering, unrelated to my presence, and one burst into flames the day I arrived. I was taken aback by some untempered mean-spiritedness displayed in them, but it settled down quickly, and nothing has erupted since. I think there is a collective feeling among the heavy posters of WIT that the caustic banter that you find elsewhere on ECHO is a "guy thing." As if women can't be crude and funny, or if they are, they are just imitating men. I guess I would also agree with your point above -- yeah, I am different than most of the women in WIT! I don't know if it's cause I'm trans or bisexual or 32 or from Seattle or that I wear a red and black bathrobe with black doggies on it or what. B ut I wonder, does everyone feel like me? Or do some people feel this is the place where their true kindred spirits hang out?

I'm not sure what we are co-promising in WIT, aside from keeping the conversation confidential. We promise to be civil to each other, but we are supposed to do that everywhere. We cannot promise to like everyone and everything that is posted there. Do you feel guilty about not feeling comfortable there? I am sort of feeling that way.

Dear Kaley,

I feel guiltier, and often more uncomfortable at Women & Performance Editorial Board meetings than I do in WIT. I have a hard time being in groups of women, and I know it's my problem, not theirs. I feel like a really lousy team player.

Do you know the plot of M. Butterfly, that popular Broadway play from a few years ago? Basically, it is a dramatization of a real life spy/sex scandal that took place between a French diplomat who fell in love with a Chinese actor for the Beijing O pera. The European tabloids were fascinated by this story, not just because the French diplomat was indicted for espionage, but also because he apparently was unaware that his Chinese lover was male during their entire relationship. When asked how he coul d not know this fact, the diplomat apparently answered that he had never seen his mistress completely nude, because, in his words, "Chinese women are modest." 8

David Henry Hwang, the playwright who adapted the story into M. Butterfly , used dialogue, music, and choreography to demonstrate the ways in which Western men orientalize Asians, and consequently feminize them. There is a line in the play where S ong Liling (the Chinese actor) is asked if he willfully deceived the Gallimard (the French Diplomat). He answers, "Men always believe what they want to hear." I guess this is the part of the play that interests me -- the way a man (or I would counter, any one calling themselves the "speaking subject") hears precisely that for which they listen, and believes precisely what they want to believe. We both know there have been transgendered women in WIT before you. A transgendered friend of ours gained entry to WIT before you didnot because she "fooled" anyone, but because she never raised the issue of her transgendered status, so no one thought to ask about it. In other words, in the case of the passing transgendered woman, the members of WIT saw what they needed to see. Are we encouraging a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on ECHO, I wonder?

Dear Terri,

I am certain that I could have gained entry into WIT just as my friend did, with no fuss. It would have required me to vanish again, and resurface with a different name and all, but I know I could have done it. I think if I had not had that painful experience with the other board, I probably would have done it that way. Not exactly positive reinforcement for being out of the closet, is it?

I think you have it nailed when you say that M. Butterfly is a wonderful illustration of how people see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. It is equally true online. The story of M. Butterfly doesn't strike me as so mysteriou s, but I did read it as a tragedy. Gallimard seemed like the archetypal "tranny chaser" to me. Even if he didn't consciously "know," he probably did subconsciously. I identified with Song Liling so much, and my own experiences dating men like that doubtle ss color my opinion of this. Everyone always wants to know, "How could she fool him?" I was more interested in how she felt about living a lie with him. While I can see how Song could pass for years, I have trouble understanding how she could do it for so long, without it completely eating her up inside.

Dear Kaley,

I think of Song Liling as a he dragging a she, and you believe the complete opposite. I suppose for me, this story is not explicitly about transgender issues, but rather transvestite homoerotic desire. This reminds me of our "first contact" dilemma, earli er. Who is conquering, who deceives whom in M. Butterfly? I agree with you that Gallimard is just as deceptive and (certainly self-deceiving) as Song Liling from the get go. Think of the way he treats Song, his "perfect woman" once he gets her -- t hat scene where he asks her, "Are you not my Butterfly?" Think of the part where he rejects the other woman he gets interested in for being not womanly enough (i.e., not connected to his clichéd notions of femininity.) Finally, think of the suicide scene, where Gallimard dresses himself in female Beijing opera drag and kills himself, finally playing the Oriental gender tragedy with which he fell in love.

As you so rightly point out, we never really hear Song Liling's story -- one monologue during the trial, but that's it, really. It's the European straight male narrative which is being critiqued in this play. No one tricks these men. As Song point s out, they see what they wish to see. It serves them. Yet, like your application to WIT, so much of M. Butterfly turns on the notion of the fetish -- the Beijing female drag, the "oriental" woman, etc. A foot fetishist looks at a toe and sees an e ntire erotic world. Gallimard looks at Song Liling and sees femininity in all its glory. Certain women in WIT look at you and see...what?

Dear Terri,

Wait -- I never said the play was a tragedy because of anything Gallimard did to Song! Song was deceiving Gallimard, to be sure. She was using him to save herself from the Communists, and protect her privileged position as an artist. It seemed lik e a tragedy to me, because if these two people had met in a different time and place, they could have lived happily ever after. I felt like they both loved each other, but maybe I should read the play instead of relying on my memory of the Hollywood-ized film version. Nobody was using the word transgender in 1986, when this play was published, so it makes no sense to me to argue that this isn't a trans-story.

I don't know why I am saying these things, even. Maybe its just my own dealing with defining myself as queer, but not gay or lesbian or bisexual. To my trans eyes, this was a tragic trans-story. To other eyes, it seems like two deceptive gay men, no? I do n't think they were victims of each other's actions. But I do think the circumstances (cold war, Cultural Revolution) made it pretty difficult to be true to themselves. Forgive me: I can count the number of good, strong trans characters on one hand, and I yearn to identify with the ones I do see.

Dear Kaley,

Honey, you don't need forgiveness; we all yearn to identify with one another's stories. Don't you think one of the reasons Marian wanted to welcome transmen into WIT was because to her mind, their story is hers? I think it is natural to search narrative f or our own ends, and I think that material circumstances make it difficult for anyone to be "true to themselves," without excluding the truth of someone else.

You feel guilty that after all this struggle, WIT may not be right for you. But how could you know if you'd like WIT before you got there? How could I? Liking WIT and being a woman are not synonymous; nobody believes that. I agree with Marian: I want a wo men's space that encourages women to try as many different versions of "woman" that exist. But I also want WIT to be a place that pushes its own boundaries, and respects that fact that all women are transitioning.

I think to be a woman is to try, and fail, and try again, but in postmodern culture, the failures of transwomen are highly documented, and the failures of other types of women are ignored (which reminds me of the postcolonial critique that in order to cre ate a "pure" culture, we must emphasize one type of difference, and cover up all others.) In a world that fails to extensively televise the travails of the domestic servant, the lesbian couple, the elderly female nursing-home resident, the sex worker, or the glass-ceiling corporate babe, it strikes me that the trials of transwomen are getting too much air-time, and too much attention is being paid to their failures.

You will probably wind up on Oprah to talk about "being you" and I won't. This really bothers me, because I want to be on Oprah. I am not joking. Part of my motivations for publishing these letters is to document our mutual success an d failures as women online, and off. I want to demonstrate to the world that the minute we finish thinking parts of "the woman question" through to their logical ends, they slip away from us. For better or worse, I felt uncomfortable doing this inside of WIT -- the pressure was too great to make a legislative decision. I guess I'd rather sit around hoping I'll make the talk show circuit as a hacker of gender code, than confess my confusions to in a group of women in WIT. No wonder my therapy bills are hig h.

Dear Terri,

I have to ask something that has been gnawing at me. How did you come to be so interested in all this? Most people aren't. Have you ever wanted to be a man? I don't just mean having the trappings of male privilege, which we all want, but to really bea man, even for a short period of time? Have you ever done male drag? Have you ever spent a few hours or a day in the world as a man?

Dear Kaley,

For all you know, I may well be transgendered myself. The closet has its charms.

Dear Terri,

Ha! Point for you! I am kicking myself now. My trans-radar, while generally reliable, is not perfectly tuned.

Dear Kaley,

I cannot recall ever wanting to be a man. I have always been some variant of a tomboy, though. I recall spending 4 or 5 hours a day playing catch with my brothers. When I was little I wanted to be a poet and a baseball player. Which is pretty strange, con sidering I played softball and never wrote any poetry. I wrote a long and heart wrenching letter to Elton John when I was about 12. I cannot recall what it said. I had a poem called "I am Jealous of the Wind" (okay, I lied. I wrote one poem) that I sent t o Seventeen magazine when I was 13 (which is when girls read Seventeen .)

Dear Terri,

I think all transsexual women should be presented with a year of Seventeen back issues which they have to read cover to cover over a long weekend and then destroy. Crash course in female adolescence - then move on. It pains me to see 45 year olds doing things most fifteen year old girls have grown out of. Yes, I know. I am cruel.

Dear Kaley,

Earlier, you said you wished that someone would have said, "WIT is for people with vaginas." But I think we both know its not that simple. You want to be in WIT. I want to be on Oprah. Both places are postmodern versions of community at best, and b oth require that we be invited as guests. What should we make of this? I wonder if we are fetishizing the very act of communication itself -- like, we think if we just reach enough people, if we are just clear enoughÉthen what? There is an old saying that when women own the press, there will be freedom of the press, or some such. Now I don't much believe that, but there is something to owning the means of production when it comes to communication. Do you think this is what moved you to start [your own BBS], Drizzle?

Dear Terri,

I think there definitely is something to owning the means. But, I had no such lofty agenda; I started Drizzle simply because I thought it would be fun. I love screwing around with tech stuff, I love creating content, I love bringing people together, and I love vibrant discussion. I figured, if I can build it to the point that it is self-sustaining, then I will have really accomplished something tangible for perhaps the first time in my life.

I have consciously been opaque about my gender on Drizzle. I want it to be No Big Deal. I rarely talk about it or even allude to it. Does that make me closeted there? I wonder. Basically, I do not want people to sign up, or not sign up because I am trans. I don't want to be the transsexual ISP woman. I want to be "The chick who created this groovy space, and oh by the way, she's trans, but who cares, really?" Yeah.

Dear Kaley,

What a heart-rending goal: "to accomplish something tangible for perhaps the first time in my life." I feel the same way about finishing my Ph.D. Tangibility is a bitch. I am glad I wrote the Introduction to this book before we started these letters, beca use in many ways, these letters feel so ephemeral, and the Introduction feels so solid -- like I made a good widget or something. Why is it that answers feel like products, but questions do not?

Do you know the Joan Riviere essay called, "Womanliness as Masquerade"? My friend Jennifer suggested I read it when I mentioned you and I were going to start writing back and forth. "Terri," she said to me, "Kaley seems pretty clear about what her role i n this situation is. Are you clear on yours?" Of course I wasn't, so I read.

Among other things, Riviere suggests in this famous essay that there is a "certain type of intellectual woman" who takes on the pose of hyper-femininity (coquetishness, flirting, dramatic gestures) in order to prepare in advance for what she considers to be a retaliation. For what would she be retaliated against? According to Riviere, for the fact that she has taken a phallic position -- as the "intellectual woman" she is the Speaking Subject -- the job description that normally belongs to men. To put the balance back in the world, so to speak, this intellectual woman undermines her own authority by flirting, preening, and engaging in the kind of exhibitionist behavior that nearly screams, "don't mind me -- I'm just a woman."

I don't think I am over-stating the case when I say that when a woman logs onto a place like ECHO, she has already begun to assume a phallic position in cyberspace. First, ECHO is a woman-owned and dominated board. Second, on ECHO (as opposed to sa y, America Online) a woman is encouraged to feel strong enough to reply to an unwanted solicitation, "Uh, no, I don't want to hot chat you. And by the way, who the hell are you?" Finally, women on ECHO have exclusive women-only spaces from which we determine the legitimacy of the term "woman" itself. Given this phallic positioning, I wonder if many of us are unconsciously preparing for retaliation of one sort or another by masquerading femininity online. If going online in a culture like ECHO is itself a phallic gesture, how do we then prove our woman-status and make community? Is "proof" the term I should even be looking for? 9

I recently received a piece of e-mail from a friend of Jennifer's (Jennifer knows everyone) named Nancy Ring. The e-mail was a brilliant elaboration on Riviere's essay: in it, Nancy argues that Camille Paglia is an example par excellence of Riviere 's "anxious intellectual woman." Using the example of Paglia, Nancy suggests that the anxiety behind the masquerade of womanliness is both a defensive and an offensive gesture -- behind the coquette lies a fear of victimization, but also a deep-seated fee ling of rage. For Riviere, the phallic woman is both helpless and in power, threatened and threatening. "What covers over the gap between her fear and her rage," argues Ring, "is a fictive, pumped up sense of powerful uniqueness, or, as Riviere terms it, a 'fantasy of supremacy.'"

God, this is embarrassing. I'm like this! I rage against women's need for time to process information, and at the same time I play my own version of the online coquette: if you are the "easy to digest transsexual," I am the "easy to understand academic." I am obsessed with being clear, and easily understood; it has become a point of pride with me, online. I guess I don't want to end up alone, or lonely, writing screens of text to myself that no one cares about. It is impossible to convey to you just how m uch I do not wish to be identified with Camille Paglia. And yet, here I sit, agonizing over being dismissed as a "boring biological female," proclaiming my impatience with the women of WIT, announcing that people outside of universities who don't w ant to struggle through the tortured prose of Judith Butler are wasting my precious time on earth. Sounds like a fantasy of supremacy to me. Don't misunderstand me: it's not as though this revelation of mine is going to be be news to my friends. It's just that it is now 3 am, and I am sitting in front of my computer screen, dazed with the knowledge that I have logged thousands of hours online searching for information about myself that Joan Riviere figured out decades ago. Boy, do I need to get out more.

I wish women of all stripes could adopt the following rules: Rule Number One: I am not you, so I cannot pretend to know what goes on in your mind, your history, or your memories. Rule Number Two: You aren't me. I mean that. Just because my life story does n't seem to merit an autobiography, a state-sanctioned marriage, or an extended week on Oprah doesn't mean that my world is simple or easily explained. Rule Number Three: I am defensive, for reasons I don't yet understand. Therefore, I will forget rule Number Two throughout this conversation, and because it's easy, I will blame you for making me feel insignificant. Rule Number Four: to love me is to believe me. Rule Number Five: If you really loved me, you'd know not to believe me, online, or off it. Challenge me; you might just rearrange my universe. I'll try to do the same for you.

Dear Terri,

I want to meet your friend Jennifer. I wonder if she really exists?

When it comes to intellectual "phallic positions," I feel like I am in a lose/lose situation every time. If I am a "top," am I being an assertive female or am I tapping some stash of "male privilege" that other women cannot access? Conversely, am I allowe d to be more passive or caring or emotional or express any other so-called "feminine" traits online without feeling like I am buying into some cyber version of the Beauty Myth? This stuff causes me loads of anxiety offline, too. I usually feel like the ac t of opening my closet and deciding what to wear has political overtones to it. I suppose all feminist women feel that way to some extent, though.

I always loved how women on ECHO dared to take handles that weren't necessarily "feminine." Names like Coyote, TEXAS, Topper, Slobber, Camel, Twang, Molsk. I especially admire the way so many women seem to completely avoid that pose of hyper-femininity. W ould I be accused of kissing collective tukus (tukii?) if I said the women of ECHO, as a group, have been my one of most influential role models? It's true. Seeing how they interact with men and with each other is inspiring to me, and I think has helped m e avoid so many of the gender-role pitfalls that other transwomen fall into.

I love your rules. What could I possibly add to them? I am printing them out now and taping them to my scanner. And by the way, I want to see you on Oprah someday! I really do. I'd love to see you rearrange her universe.

Notes

The authors would like to thank the following people for their invaluable input during the writing of these letters: C.D. Thomas, Cathy Young, Mia Lipner, Sharon Keller, Alan Sondheim, Stacy Horn, Faith Florer and Morgan Noel. The omnipresent "my friend J ennifer" cited by Terri is Women & Performance Editorial Board member, Jennifer N. Fink.

1. On ECHO, conferences are generally structured one of three ways: public (all have access); private (a member must write to the Conference Host and request entry); and invitation-only (a Host must write to the member and invite the member to join.) The majority of conferences on ECHO are public. The private conferences are generally structured around sexuality and/or gender identification. The invitation-only conferences are few, and generally circulate around technical matters (for instance, the ECHO s ystems staff has a private conference) or specific social clubs. Currently, age and gender/sexuality forums dominate ECHO's private conference landscape, and at this time similar conferences do not exist with regard to race, class, national origin, or disability (although some have been proposed from time to time by concerned ECHO staff).

WIT (Women in Telecommunications) is ECHO's public women's conference. To join WIT, one must first be "voice verified" as female over the telephone by a member of the ECHO staff (although many women report that they were never voice-verified). Those membe rs of ECHO who do not identify as women, or those who cannot be voice verified as such, are generally directed to the MS. Conference (the open feminist conference run by the organizers of the magazine of the same name) or they wind up in LAMBDA (the open Queer Issues Conference.) Because both MS. and LAMBDA are open conferences, they receive a good amount of traffic from ECHO's "designated Others."

To understand the genesis of BITCH (ECHO's invitation-only women's conference) it is important to know that ECHO is a Manhattan-based online service with a frequent face-to-face social system (twice monthly meetings at bars, social events, etc.) Many wome n on ECHO believe that BITCH began as both a reaction to WIT's "overly nice" tone, and to provide a forum for those women who comprised "the Art Bar crowd ." Generally, ECHO members apply to WIT before they are drafted into the more exclusive, clubby atmo sphere of BITCH. For this reason, voice-verification is rarely done in BITCH--it is assumed that the woman in question has already "passed" into WIT before joining BITCH. Instead, an applicant to BITCH is submitted for BITCH membership approval; if there are three dissenting membership votes (for any reason), the applicant is denied entry, but may apply again at a later time.

There also exists an all-male counterpart to BITCH, an invitation-only conference called MOE ( Men on Echo.) To my knowledge, MOE's are not voice-verified. Finally, ECHO has recently allowed users to open (for a fee) personal vanity conferences called UPF 's. Recently, several UPFs (unlisted private forums)have been established as women-only spaces (none, to my knowledge, have been started as men-only spaces.) The UPF Conference Host may choose to structure her conference as she wishes, but only those re cognized as official ECHO Conference Hosts (i.e., the Hosts of WIT, BITCH, and MOE) have official information at their disposal to make voice verification calls (i.e. access to users' home phone numbers.)

Here is a chart for quick reference:

	PUBLIC	PRIVATE	INVITATION
WOMEN ONLY		WIT	BITCH
MEN ONLY		MOE
ALL GENDERS	LAMBDA	SEX
		MS.
	UPF's	UPF's	UPF's

2. See Anita Borg's essay, "Why Systers" for a classic argument regarding women-only space on the Net.

3. See Harry Cleaver's essay, "The 'Space' of Cyberspace" in this issue.

4. After several months of debate, the co-hosts of WIT remained split regarding the question of admitting transgendered women. They appealed for a judgment from Stacy Horn, ECHO's President. Here is her decision in full, as it appeared in WIT:

380:556) Stacy Horn 26-MAR-96 12:54

I am not the one to decide anyone's gender.

Transgendered women are welcome to join WIT and transgendered men are welcome to join MOE [Men on Echo] regardless of whether or not they have had any kind of operation or legal recognition if they have:

- Lived exclusively as women (for people who are asking for admittance into WIT) or men (for people who are asking to get into MOE) for at least a year.

- Have been a member of Echo for at least six months.

I know this is not entirely fair; we don't place restrictions like this on anyone else. It's about establishing trust. It's what we do on Echo. The year is to make sure the person is really committed to this. I can only speak in WIT's case, but this is re ally a big deal to us and we need to know that it's a big deal to you, too. Since we have only your word about the year, the six months are about getting to know you. Anyone could say, sure, I've been living as a woman for years.

This compromise allows us to be more inclusive, but will hopefully retain the level of safety and trust that exists there now. Transgendered people do not necessarily have the immediate trust that is accorded traditional women (with respect to gender), bu t perhaps we can change that. Let's see how it goes.

For the record, this is my decision and not Lynn and Faith's [co-hosts of WIT] or Edward's [host of MOE], and Echo management will be responsible for the admittance of transgendered people to WIT and MOE.

After several private conversations with Kaley Davis, Stacy Horn added one new feature to her ruling: transgendered individuals who are declared "legal" men or women by their state of residence (requirements for this vary from state to state, and are not always predicated on sex-reassignment surgery) may waive the "six month wait" feature required by ECHO for non-legal transsexuals. In short, "legal" transgendered men and women may immediately join gender-specific forums without passing any more tests to assess their "seriousness."

5. See my essay, "Of Women and Dogs," for a more detailed reading of Embraceable Ewe's story than I give here.

6.. Offline, Marian is Sharon Keller, a professor at of law at the University of Florida, Miami. She can be reached directly for comment at skeller@law.miami.edu.

7. My ECHO colleague plain scarf helped me formulate these rebuttals to Marian's position. In real life, plain scarf self-identifies as a freelance theatre scholar. Her parents, past Federal surveys for school lunch programs and college/employment accepta nce schema, have identified her as black and female, and she tends to go along with the assessment.

8. I have been highly influenced by Marjorie Garber's reading of this play. To find a far more detailed analysis than I make here, see Garber's chapter in Vested Interests, entitled, "Phantoms of the Opera: Actor, Diplomat, Transvestite, Spy."

9. In her chapter entitled, "Unmasking the Masquerade," feminist critic Emily Apter complicates the argument I try to make in these letters. Following Riviere's logic to its narrative ending, Apter suggests "one might conclude that fetishism is failed mas querade, for when the man dons the mask of womanliness it remains an unconvincing representation of femininity, whereas the opposite is true when women adopt a cover-up for masculine attributes-their travesty appears to be entirely believable." (93)

Works Cited

Apter, Emily. 1991. Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the-Century-France. New York: Cornell University Press.

Borg, Anita. 1993. "Why Systers" Computing Research News .Available online: http://cec.wustl.edu/~cs142/articles/GENDER_ISSUES/why_systers

Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge.

Hwang, Henry David. 1989. M. Butterfly.New York: New American Library.

Katz, Alyssa. 1994. "Modem Butterfly." Village Voice March 9 (get citation)

Ring, Nancy. 1995. "Women Intellectuals: Some Thoughts on Anxiety and Power." Unpublished speech from the "Women and Professionalism" panel at the Canadian Women's Studies Association, Montreal, Quebec, 6/2/95. Copies of this speech can be obtained via em ail by sending a request to women@echonyc.com.

Riviere, Joan. 1986. "Womanliness as Masquerade" In Formations of Fantasy, Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan, ed. London: Methuen.

Szalavitz, Maia. 1996. Virtual City.Summer Issue, pp. 11-12.

Senft, Theresa. 1996. "Of Women and Dogs" in STIM June issue. Available online: http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0696June/Sparky/womendogs.html

Stoller, Robert J. 1985 Observing the Erotic Imagination . New Haven: Yale University Press.