What Was Happening Before ‘Just Be Nice Feminism’? Part I: Early Rumblings, 1970 – 1971

Dr Em charts the history of the development of ‘just be nice’ feminism and the inclusion of trans-identified males in the women’s movement. Part 1.

Writing under the pseudonym Varda One, an essay was published in the feminist newspaper Everywoman in May 1970 entitled ‘SO YOU’D RATHER SWITCH THAN FIGHT?’ which presented feminist analysis of the discrimination women faced in a ‘readiness quiz’ for the transsexual.¹ Everywoman typically employed humour as political critique and this essay was no different. Although the author claimed that ‘the transsexual is too new a phenomenon to pass judgment on’ the title suggested otherwise.² The author asked

‘1. Are you prepared to be ignored whenever the discussion at a gathering turns to anything heavy such as ecopolitics, conglomerates, or Supreme Court vacancies?

2. Are you ready to give a serious speech on a topic in your professional field and then have the moderator compliment you by calling it charming?

3. If you plan to play housewife all day, have you thought of how stultifying confining yourself to the length of draperies and the cost of tomatoes might be? Are you psychologically ready to fall in love with your bathroom bowl?

4. Are you tough enough to spend all day mopping the floors, vacuuming the rugs, washing and ironing clothes, mowing the lawn, and washing the car and then answer “no” when someone asks you that night if you work?

5. If you plan to work outside the home, are you aware women get paid 30 to 80 % less than men, that most of them [do] shit work for shit wages?

 6. Are you prepared to do the same or better than men in your field and then see them promoted while you stay low-paid because “women don’t need the money”?

7. Are you ready to shop for dinner, cook it, serve it, and wash the dishes for your husband and yourself after you’ve both returned from equally demanding jobs?

 8. Do you have enough money to throw away on hose and pantyhose which rip before the first wearing is over and which are required attire in most jobs?

9. If you have flat feet (and if you don’t), have you practiced walking in flimsy shoes which offer no support? Have you tried walking your feet off while wearing those shoes looking for stores that sell comfortable footwear?

10. Will you be able to stand being called “one of the girls” when you’re 84?’

The Everywoman feminists recognised transsexualism as a romanticising and fettishing of women’s oppression. As Everywoman began writing about this male sexual kick, adverts began appearing in the sex pages of the Los Angeles Free Press directly linking men who get a sexual thrill from dressing in women’s clothes (transvestites) to men who get a sexual thrill from dressing in women’s clothes (heterosexual transsexuals). The call went out, ‘Join TAO Now Transvestite And Transsexual Action Organization Elitist-Exclusive-External 465-8765’.³ The language used in the 1970s often confused the two: males did not yet separate transvestite from transsexual in order to claim one was medical. Douglas revealed that ‘many transsexuals consider transvestism to be a necessary phase of transsexualism’.⁴ The sexual link was still there in the sources.

            From early on there were attempts to use both the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation movements as a shield to push for the legitimation of male sexual fetishes. False comparisons were drawn in an attempt to force team the liberation movements. For example it was argued by Laura McAlister in Come Out in 1970 that ‘the homosexual community and women’s liberation groups at long last have started demanding the rights and privileges the rest of America enjoys.. One oppressed group, however, has not yet launched anything resembling a demand for recognition and acceptance —the transvestites’.⁵ We see the link between transvestism and transsexualism again. McAlister claimed that ‘Transvestism, unfortunately, is a practice frequently misunderstood by nearly everyone, including gay people, and this misunderstanding has bred much intolerance… There are very few books that contain the knowledge and understanding of Dr. Harry Benjamin’s The Transexual Phenomenon’.⁶ It was literature on transsexualism which would explain transvestism. In the 1970s it was being argued that we all need to get educated about transvestites and transsexuals as they fit ‘the familiar profile of all oppressed minorities’.⁷ The proselytization had begun, McAlister records how ‘to better the situation in New York by providing some information on the practice of transvestism, a series of three discussions took place in October and November at the Christopher End Cafe. The West Side Discussion Group also featured an excellent program one evening in January on the topic of transexualism’.⁸ Still, theories of transsexual exceptionalism were emerging and McAlister detailed how ‘Transexuals are those who so completely feel as if they are members of the opposite sex that they remain unhappy until their genders are changed physically. To simply dress like the other sex is unsatisfying and frustrating for them. Transvestites, however, are those who receive a psychic and physical thrill from wearing the clothes of the opposite sex’.⁹ McAlister outlined that ‘the variations of attitudes within this group are quite numerous and complex. Many are heterosexually oriented and these are the ones who seem to receive the greatest thrill from the clothing itself; it is to these persons that the word “transvestite” is most appropriate’.^[10]10 This may be a small understanding of autogynephilia emerging. Regarding homosexual cross-dressers McAlister pointed out that ‘Their interest in cross dressing is a desire to complete a basically feminine attitude towards things and to be treated in a special manner by men’.¹¹ She cautioned regarding a sharp divide between transvestites and transsexuals that ‘it is essential to realize… that these categories are at best tentative, for there can be a lot of movement by an individual within this entire range’.¹² She explained that ‘many transvestites in the heterosexual group have found that they grew to be asexual or transexual as time went by. Many find themselves increasingly attracted to the idea of taking hormone injections to alter the secondary sexual characteristics’.¹³ Indeed, transvestites used to advertise for hormones in the sex adverts of the Berkeley Barb: ‘TRANSVESTITE DESIRES supply estrogen hormone tablets. Submit quantity – price Occupant, P.O. Box 92, Covina Cal. 91722’.¹⁴ The boundaries were certainly blurred.

 In McAlister’s piece we find greater honesty about sex reassignment surgery. She tells of how ‘when persons who have undergone the sex-change operation suddenly find they are very unhappy with the change and wish they had not done it’.¹⁵ The concept of ‘true trans’ is present as McAlister argues that ‘many true transexuals never have the operation, though, because of the expense and dangers involved’.¹⁶ It is interesting that a male with a penis is considered a true transsexual. McAlister pointed to the clothes as the defining characteristic when she stated ‘that all individuals involved in cross dressing undergo great changes in personality as well as appearances when in drag’.¹⁷ This is a sentiment repeated by trans widows describing their experiences of their husband’s fetish.

From as early as June 1970 transvestites and transsexuals have targeted college campuses and used gay liberation as a means to promote both their ideology and fetish to students. Angela Keyes Douglas recounted how ‘Four male transvestites and two transsexuals visited the Los Angeles City College campus on June 2 as part of a Gay Liberation Front-organized teach-in. The tvs and transsexuals are members of TAO and TSO (Transvestite and Transsexual Action and Social Organizations) which were recently formed in LA’.¹⁸ They were linked with and entered the campus under the guise of gay liberation, despite not being gay. Douglas made the admission that ‘many students were surprised to learn that many tvs are not gay, and this is one of the reasons TAO and TSO came into being’.¹⁹ ‘Tammy, Denise, Tracy, Maria, and Diane (and myself) spoke with hundreds of LACC students about transvestism and transsexualism for about three hours’ and potentially faced some feminist pushback as ‘several straight girls discussed male chauvinism with us’.²⁰

The feminist response to males claiming to be female was quick to develop. The radical feminist newspaper It Ain’t Me, Babe started by the Berkeley Women’s Liberation group in 1970 were clear that transsexualism was antithetical to feminism and female liberation. They saw in the story of Christine Jorgensen the argument that female oppression was natural and baulked that this was being communicated across America in cinemas. The reviewer, writing under a pseudonym ‘Peggy’, described the submissive and subservient roles which the women were allotted in the film. She was frustrated that ‘the public is going to walk out of “The Christine Jorgensen Story” believing that male and female behaviour is determined by glands, and consequently that female oppression is determined by nature’.²¹ Peggy related how ‘the issues of female oppression and sex roles which could have been explored in depth are obscured with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about innate masculinity and femininity and the importance of glands in determining behaviour’.²² She analysed how in the story of transsexualism ‘Sex roles are reduced to the level of biology. And if our behaviour is the product of what chemicals we have in our bodies, then there is not much we can do to change it’.²³ Transsexualism asserted biological determinism to women’s oppression, what was once argued as from god was now claimed to be from nature. Peggy corrected that ‘In fact, the female role is a political phenomenon, not a biological one’.²⁴ She outlined that ‘our Amerikan social structure is male supremacist – i.e. there is a dominance hierarchy (a political structure) with men on top and women at the bottom. Exchanges between individuals on various levels of the hierarchy are ordered by certain fixed sets of interactions known as roles’.²⁵ She was resolute that ‘Roles are a social disease, they are not produced by glands’.²⁶ A clear feminist analysis and opposition, which is similar to what feminists wrote yesterday, last week and the weeks before that, was already being articulated 43 years ago.

As Varda One and Peggy had assessed, transsexualism and the sex roles it is based on was a male creation which used women as objects for fantasy fulfilment. The transsexual Pat Maxwell confirmed the recent feminist analysis and was honest about this in Come Out! magazine in October 1970. He declared that he believed regarding transsexualism ‘that men live out these desires by using women as their “dolls”.²⁷ That ‘men write the script, design the costumes, and direct the play. A female role is just as clearly a male creation as is a male role’.²⁸ Maxwell saw women as sexualised parts, he explained that ‘a straight man can freely pretend to be Charley Hard-On when he feels assertive, but when he feels receptive, he must project his own desires to have big boobs and a friendly cunt on his female companion’.²⁹ The transsexual didn’t project according to Maxwell but owned his desire for ‘big boobs’ and a ‘friendly cunt’ to be sexually receptive. Maxwell claimed that it was the sexual objectification of the female by transsexuals which would solve the culture wide sexual objectification of women. Rather than destroying the sex-roles he thought men should tinker with them and asserted that ‘when every man is able to cross the sex role boundary, then and only then will women cease to be sex objects’.³⁰ The narrative of ‘most oppressed’ was already there, Maxwell argued that ‘When a man becomes a woman, he feels the total weight of oppression that the male chauvinist dumps on us as women’ and complained that ‘perhaps the fact that little girls were able to dress in the costumes of the opposite sex and little boys were not indicates the extent of the pressures which have caused all this male uptightness’.³¹ Male entitlement was apparent. Not only were women to affirm that transsexuals had become women through dress and adopting the stereotypical role but ‘the Gay Liberation movement should affirm and not deny the transexual in us all’.^[32]32 The Gay Liberation movement had resisted campaigning for the rights of heterosexual males. In 1970 the narrative that transsexualism was socially constructed and based on sexist stereotypes was dominant in the gay and feminist consciousness.

Men who claimed to feel like women started to try to force team feminists early on. The same radical feminist newspaper It Ain’t Me, Babe, alleged to be the first underground paper of the women’s liberation movement, printed a letter in December, a few months after it had come into existence, that they had been sent by a transsexual trying to persuade them that ‘on the intellectual and emotional levels, I know myself to be a woman’.³³ It is an early example of an attempt to make feminists a mental health retreat and support crutch for males claiming to be women. He described how he knows a woman’s love, to which the feminists responded that a woman’s love is ‘something men in general are unfamiliar with, not having lived it’.³⁴ The transsexual claimed that a woman called Bev had ‘led me to realise flash on the idea that if I really were female, despite my body, then my life made no sense otherwise’.³⁵ Apart from the woo woo in this idea, one wonders why he thinks a group of women working towards women’s liberation from male violence, rape, sexual assault, employment discrimination, for example, cared. The transsexual then mansplained to the feminists that ‘This society does not value or recognise a woman’s human personality’ but he went on to assure them he was the most oppressed as society didn’t recognise a woman’s personality ‘especially when it is trapped in a man’s body’.³⁶ The feminists responded that ‘the feminist revolution is to accept the body and destroy society’.³⁷ The transsexual continued to tell the feminists that because he had met a woman for coffee he had ‘already had the chance to live as a woman and it further convinced [him] of [his] femininity’.³⁸ He then instructs the feminists that this woman ‘accepted him as a woman’, the implicit suggestion being that other women should too. The transsexual then details how he had sex with a lesbian, because that is what a feminist newspaper and their readers want to hear about, obviously. ‘Beth’ described how at the time of writing they were preparing for sex change surgery – so an intact male. As well as annotating the letter the Berkeley feminists printed their response.

They stated that they ‘decided to print this letter because it shows the seriousness of the problem. But we spoke to the young man first’.³⁹ One thing to note about the earlier responses is that a man was called a man, no pronoun Rohypnol.⁴⁰ The Berkeley feminists were clear that ‘to change man must experience being a woman. Must imitate women. In short stop being men. This is what this young man (Beth) wants to do, but he cops out by insisting it can be done only in a female body’.⁴¹ They argued that socially imposed sexist stereotypes needed to change. They went to the extent of talking to him in person and described how ‘he was still in the position of the male getting attention from women. Any kind being better than none. (Men must learn to cope for themselves and teach each other)’.⁴² That the transsexual enjoyed the attentions of feminists is almost a given, what could be more sexually satisfying to an AGP male than being seemingly accepted into feminist circles? The targeting of feminists and women in the Women’s Movement was also tactical. It is difficult to formulate a critique when one’s oppressor is sat next to you at the writing table.

In the same year the transsexual Angela Douglas claimed that ‘there have been and may be male transvestites and transsexuals active in Women’s Liberation, usually unknown to the other females’.⁴³ There are many reasons for deceiving women to enter the Women’s Liberation Movement according to Douglas: ‘some [transsexuals] seek to perfect their feminine role as much as possible; some are sexually attracted to aggressive females; others may be intelligence agents’.⁴⁴ But as Douglas made clear, none of these males who claimed to feel like females were there to work towards the goals of the Women’s Movement. Douglas reported that ‘when Women’s Lib became aware of this problem in California, they contacted the Gay Liberation Front for assistance’.⁴⁵ Notice that it was for help with a problem, this implies that, contrary to the narrative which has originated with trans identified males, that there wasn’t widespread acceptance of transsexuals amongst women and feminists. The Gay Liberation Front told the Women’s Movement that ‘Not much could really be done’, and left them without support.⁴⁶ Douglas, while claiming to be a woman trapped in a man’s body, then founded A Transvestite-transsexual Action Organization, called TAO. It’s amazing that they are women when they want our time and resources but transsexuals when they want their own organisations and to campaign to take our rights. TAO declared that ‘Partial and complete male to female transsexuals should be allowed to participate in Women’s Liberation without any discrimination’.⁴⁷ Once again males deciding what is and is not theirs, where they can and cannot go. Interestingly, Douglas was a transsexual when it suited him, a woman when he wanted access to women’s spaces and movements, and a gay male when he was being paid to review homosexual pornography. At the same time as demanding transsexual access to the Women’s Movement Douglas critiqued Pat Rocco’s Sex and the Single Gay for the Los Angeles Free Press. He sneered at  its ‘technical drawbacks’ and poor editing but ‘aside from these negative aspects, the film is good gay porno; subdued porno, actually, but you get to see much more than in most gay underground films’.⁴⁸ Douglas claimed to have ‘cried at the end of the segment on transsexualism. The film is composed of several vignettes, and the segment on transsexualism is by far the most beautiful and moving. There is little “acting” by Jimmie Michaels, the partial transsexual, and her upfrontness is the magic that makes it work’.⁴⁹ He was impressed with how ‘anal intercourse is graphically depicted several times and fellatio. Masturbation is also given a place in the film’.⁵⁰ While not evaluating gay porn, Douglas warned that ‘It would be best if the various feminist groups make clear policies concerning active participation by transvestites and transsexuals, as there will be many thousands more in a few years, and many will want to become active in Women’s Lib’.⁵¹ For sexual gratification or to practice their femininity as Douglas outlined earlier? 

The clash between feminists and transsexuals became so great that it caught the attention of the Los Angeles Free Press, a widely circulated alternative newspaper established in the 1960s. Also known as ‘The Freep’, it reported in December 1970 that ‘Some feminists accused male transvestites and male transsexuals of being “super-male chauvinists.”⁵² The Freep described how ‘more than one male transvestite or transsexual has come under fire from feminists for wearing makeup, dresses, high heels, bras, etc. and are often insulted and ridiculed’.⁵³ Feminists were fighting against the sexual objectification of women and were not accepting males who donned their oppression. Feminists refused to use preferred pronouns and preferred titles and it was reported that ‘many feminists, particularly female homosexuals, refuse to call male transsexuals or transvestites “miss” and delight in calling them “sir” and “mister.”.⁵⁴ Worse than this, according to the reporter, ‘Cartoons began to appear in the underground press in the fall of 1970 with an antitransvestic or transsexual theme. One such cartoon by the G[ay] L[iberation] F[ront] Los Angeles depicted Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon in feminine attire with breast cleavage. Another cartoon which appeared in several papers depicted a fat, ugly man with the caption, “Mayor Daley’s twin brother is a transvestite—and works in sleazy niteclubs under the name Women’s Wear Daley.”⁵⁵ The author chastised this as the same as using homosexuality to ridicule one’s opponents. Men will not tolerate being laughed at.

Nevertheless, there was an analysis in the Free Press of how transsexualism was a form of male supremacy.  The author described the transsexual Christine Jorgensen as a ‘Heterosexual transsexual supremacist: Christine Jorgensen, who was antihomosexual’ and described how ‘In the film “The Christine Jorgensen Story,” various types of sexism are readily apparent’.⁵⁶ The author assessed that ‘sexism is possibly the greatest single nonmedical causative factor of transsexualism in America’.⁵⁷ The author expanded that ‘in a society where effeminate behavior is automatically classified as deviant behavior with accompanying repression, many effeminate males, and to some extent, masculine females, develop into transsexuals to escape from the harshness of sexism, and a parallel can be drawn to blacks who attempt to change skin color, etc. to pass for white to escape from the harshness of racism’.⁵⁸ It was publicly discussed how transsexualism relied on sexism and sexist stereotypes. The author proposed that ‘sexist oppression will not end for many, many years and transsexualism will probably greatly increase’.⁵⁹ The author speculated on the future and warned that ‘the pool of medically indigent transsexuals in the preoperative phase is rapidly growing…. There exists a possibility of extremely militant (to the point of violence, etc.) groups of transvestites developing on a national scale within the very near future. Such a development merits close scrutiny’.⁶⁰ Male desires would be frustrated, the author cautioned that ‘even after 20 years of transsexualism, Christine Jorgensen is still not considered to be a woman—she is a “thing,” a “Sex change,” and is being used as a political weapon’.⁶¹ People on the left were starting to understand how transsexualism was a political ideology.

The sexual objectification of female bodies, sexist stereotypes and attire appears to have been consistently central to many transvestite/transsexual/transgender male’s identification of ‘being a woman’. Sally Douglas wrote in the New Trenns Magazine in 1971 that ‘this year seems to be the IN year for bosoms. Everywhere I go… I seem to bump into gals who seem to be getting hormones from somewhere… experimentation with various dosages in the hope they will be able to hit on the right combination to develop lovely breasts’.⁶² He stated that he found ‘in my own life that real breasts are a lot more fun to have than prosthetics ever were’.⁶³ Sally Douglas described how some of his friends had succumbed to ‘the never-never land of hormone therapy’ in order to try and grow their own breasts.⁶⁴ Women’s bodies became a fashion trend, as ‘last year… everyone was interested in prosthetics… but it would seem that the urge to realism is overpowering these days’.⁶⁵ The same sentiment was expressed by Cassie Brighter in 2020, who writes to highlight the experience of ‘transwomen’. Brighter exclaimed that ‘I have them now — my new boobs… I remember arguing (with a male, cisgender nurse!) about my need for breast augmentation. “Well, a lot of women have small breasts,” he told me. Ever get the feeling men should just… stop talking?’.⁶⁶ After detailing the surgery Brighter then digresses into relating how active their sex life is and how to seduce women.⁶⁷ To return to 1971, after spending page twelve explaining the ways a man might acquire breasts, Sally spends page thirteen telling of how to seduce girls and of how his ‘batting average has been fairly high’.⁶⁸ The similarities are uncanny. Brighter alleged that two hours after returning home from surgery he was making out with a woman on his bed. Sally Douglas made sure to inform the reader in 1971 that ‘I was still as horny as ever, even though my breasts were blooming’.⁶⁹ Angela Keyes Douglas also objectified breasts, he claimed that ‘There has been the joy of feeling ones breasts develop, of seeing your body transform in many ways, and the joy of breasts touching breasts’.⁷⁰ Keyes Douglas outlined another ‘joy’, ‘the joy of having trained killers-Marines riding on tanks-smile and wave at you, and hearing policemen-whistle at you’.⁷¹ This is strikingly reminiscent of Paris Lees comments in 2014 when Lees stated that ‘I love catcalls. I love car toots. I love random men smiling “Hello beautiful!” like my mere presence just made their day. I like being called “princess” and ignoring them as I giggle inside. I like being eye-fucked on the escalator and wondering if I’ve just made him spring a boner’.⁷² Similarly, the trans identified male Stephanie Hirst detailed how he has ‘had some wolf whistles’ and how ‘when it first happened and I was first wolf-whistled, it made me feel good because it confirmed I passed [as a woman]’.⁷³ All of these accounts eroticise the oppression of women by reframing sexual objectification as confirming and liberating. In transsexualism we are witnessing a very male sexuality: women are bits of bodies to please the men who can own their own and other men who can view them.

The recognition of transsexualism as a form of male supremacy and the objectification of the female was common, from the author of the Los Angeles Free Press article, to the young women of Berkeley to the radical, furious voices of those like Catherine Henry. Catherine Henry’s ‘Against Rape’ was published in the underground feminist magazine Woman’s World in April 1971 and she classed transsexualism and transvestism as a means of keeping women oppressed and as rape objects. She claimed that transsexuals and transvestites were ‘palming themselves off as the complement to women’s liberation when in fact these degenerates, female impersonators, and other debilitates are the most vicious enemies of women’.⁷⁴ She recognised that transsexuals, transvestites and drag, rather than challenging sexist stereotypes and sexual objectification of women, were solidifying them and claiming them to be natural and inborn. She stated that ‘Just as the revolutionary women are fighting their way out of debasing “feminity” and prostitution, the so-called “gays” are parading through the streets disguised as females wearing coiffured hair, make-up, with shaved legs and wearing falsies, prancing and primping. Is this not the total degradation of females and the reduction of “woman” to an object of rape fantasy?’.⁷⁵ Henry was radical and Henry did not mince her words. After detailing the attempted rape she was subjected to she launched into a furious attack and revolutionary manifesto against male supremacy and rape culture. Henry argued that ‘The white reactionary terror of the ruling class must be replaced with the red revolutionary terror of the proletarian women. Rapists and all others who appropriate women for the satisfaction of lust will be put up against the wall and shot. The only solution is execution, not castration’.⁷⁶ She saw transsexualism/transvestism as yet another means of raping women, of males using women for their own sexual gratification against women’s consent. She continued that ‘if rape does not demand the reward of death, what crime is great enough? We do not want to have to guard and maintain the parasitical existences of hordes of vengeful eunuchs who will only conspire to destroy women. We can already see the germ of this in the male homosexual-fascist (so-called “gay”) movement with its open transvestite and “transsexual” organizations. These are the masochist Brown Shirts paving the way for the sadist Black Shirts to come’.⁷⁷ She pinpointed transsexualism as a totalitarian ideology against women. Henry’s piece does contain extreme anger against gay males who she felt had betrayed the Women’s Movement and, as males, participated in the oppression of women. She saw them as ‘imperialists reacting to the revolutionary women’s movement’.⁷⁸ She argued that ‘Male Chauvinism is the bulwark of fascism, enslaving all females to the Super-Man by means of terror and torture’.⁷⁹ She argued that all males profited from patriarchy and exploited women and proposed a deathly, radical solution.

Around six months later in 1971 Angela Douglas attempted to use the Women’s Movement for self-gratification himself. In a letter published in the Berkeley Barb in November 1971, Douglas expressed how for him ‘as a transsexual’ he enjoyed the anti-war protest as ‘an act of self-affirmation’ because he could ‘carry a banner reading “women unite for peace” several miles with another sister’.⁸⁰ Douglas exhibited how the political protest was just another opportunity for sexual self-indulgence. Douglas lets slip that there was open public protest at the inclusion of males in a feminist demonstration. He detailed how ‘unfortunately, a few women challenged the right of the sister carrying the banner with me to participate in the women’s contingent, and queried her several times’.⁸¹ Douglas experienced feminist opposition which he reported as that incident ‘and a few hassles’.⁸² Douglas described himself as a lesbian despite having a penis. He claimed that he regretted if he ‘offended any sisters by [his] participation, but [he] felt, as an openly identified transsexual, that the discrimination directed against transsexual women – particularly those of us in the preoperative phase—must be confronted openly’.⁸³ That was the point for Douglas, not the anti-war message, not the feminist message – but his rights to women and their spaces had to be centred. One ‘just be nice’ woman had forced Douglas on her sisters and some were vocally unhappy about it. Plus ça change.