That NYT Article that Everyone Keeps Talking About

So, there has been much hubbub in the last 24 hours about the NYTimes article [not linked because of that whole pesky TimesSelect thing] about transmen, that was in the Sunday Style section [because queerness is the new black], and how the lesbian and queer communities respond to their existence, both in intimate relationships and as a political issue. There has been hubbub in the blogosphere and there has been SO much hubbub on the "partners of transmen listserv" that I'm on.

My thoughts on the issue are as follows, first the things that were good about the article:

• That guy is hot. Shane -- the lawyer -- he's a hottie. Sure the pictures fetishize him a lot, but who could resist?
  
• It is good that these articles exist -- it isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does get people thinking and I'm glad that they talked about the fact that the Census doesn't try to count transfolk, because people need to realize the ways that these statistical gaps affect people (but this is a side-point).
• Feministe has a very good write-up on this. Take a look, she says many things that I would say if I had time.

Here are my problems with it, from my citadel of privileged knowledge that I come across by loving and staking my life on a wonderful person who isn't a woman or a man and on a bi-weekly basis sticks hirself with a needle and shoots a powerful hormone into hir body.

• They conflate. I'm anti-conflation. Issue #1: the challenges faced by lesbians who are partnered with transmen before they transition and have to reconcile themselves with the transition or leave the relationship. Issue #2: the bizarre nationalistic concerns that lesbians have that their category is "emptying out"* and the ways in which they allow that to tear a community apart [see Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and, oh right, any other place they get their panties in a knot]. Nationalism and balkanization don't work -- particularly when they are this petty and allow organizations to cut people off from the communities that nurture them and allow them to feel empowered enough to transition
• Issue#1 = Issue #2? -- Um, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can be a lesbian who is not transphobic and still not be able to be with someone through a transition. I know that they didn't exactly, explicitly say these were the same -- but something about the rhetoric of it all got under my skin.
  
• 'Young women who call themselves "gender queer"' -- um, TP is genderqueer, and not a woman, many of the genderqueers I know are men, some are women, some are neither -- Please use terms with some subtlety and idea of what you are saying.
• Also, once and for all, sex IS NOT gender IS NOT sexual orientation!

Ok. I'm done.
*I think that Halberstam may have been taken out of context here, but I think that the phrase encapsulates many of the concerns.

[I apologize if this is snarky and off the cuff, all snarkiness is directed toward the NY Times Style section of the Sunday paper. No actual lesbians were harmed in the writing of this post]