When confronted with the simple fact that men hold the overwhelming majority of positions of power in the world – in government, business, culture, and pretty much everything else – MRAs like to pretend that the actual gender of those in power makes no difference because, well, the men in power are probably a bunch of manginas doing the dirty work of the women who really run the world. Or something like that.
Indeed, some MRAs have even managed to convince themselves that the very basic historical and sociological fact that men in power, by and large, tend to represent men’s interests more than women’s interests is some sort of locical fallacy – something that they’ve labeled “The Frontman Fallacy.”
Now A Voice for Men contributor and YouTube videoblogger TyphonBlue has done these guys one better in terms of sheer antifeminist loopiness. In the comments on one of the Warren Farrell protest videos I recently wrote about, she argues that men in power don’t really push male interests because … they probably don’t even think of themselves as men.
Here she is, writing under her other nom-de-net Genderratic:
I don’t even know what to say to this. I mean, WHAT?!
PROTIP: You’re not going to convince anyone you’re a great ally of trans* people if you refer to them as “it.”
Ugh, why am I not surprised? I didn’t have time to filter through all her drivel, and it’s just as well…if I had see THAT, my keyboard would be fried from all the stomach acids.
Also, fuck Ferguson and everything about it. That is all.
The prosecutor is taking some mockery online over his rather bizarre press conference where he indicted everyone except Wilson.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/st-louis-prosecutor-mcculloch-roasted-online-for-indicting-everybody-but-darren-wilson/
Bina – she didn’t spout that particular bit of hatred here, if that’s what you meant about not seeing it; I brought it up just in case anyone unfamiliar with her was, well, naive enough to see this thread and do the “nasty people picking on poor trans woman!” kneejerk reaction.
I wish I was surprised about Ferguson. Fucking hell. And this little boy, for chrissakes, in Cleveland? Just… fucking hell.
That’s what I figured, after a re-read. And nope, I can’t say I was fooled for a minute. Trolls will use any edge they can. I used to be trolled by hateful supporters of the Israeli military on my blog, and one of them tried a “cross-gender person” schtick with me, too. I wasn’t fooled. IPs don’t lie.
Another ‘not surprised about the indictment’ person here. I would hate humanity, but there are sparks of progress every once and a while, so I keep hoping.
One of the things I find hardest to understand about virulent racists is the way their racism shuts off the natural adult response that most of us have to the idea of a child being attacked.
I just posted an open thread to discuss Ferguson.
@cassandrakitty, to me that’s the clearest indication of just how fucked up they are. Even children are Other to them.
thanks, David.
Valerie Keefe is an actual trans woman, not a dude pretending to be one for trolling purposes, just FYI.
On tangent with the loong troll party of last night, I really hate the term ‘preferred pronouns’. Like, this is my preference, but I also have secondary choices in case that’s a problem? Is that a thing that happens?
Pepper: And what pronouns would prefer this evening?
Salt: I’d like she, please.
Pepper: I’m sorry, we’re all out of ‘she’, do you have a second choice?
Salt: Could I have ‘zie’, then?
Pepper: Let me check. Nope, we just used the last one.
Salt: Well, what do you actually have left?
Pepper: *checks list* Well, we have ‘sie’, one ‘they’, and lots of ‘mango’. Nobody seems to like mango.
Yeah, Bina, what cassandrakitty said above: VK is a trans woman, and a loathesome misogynist, not some MRA pretending. There’s more overlap than you’d (general you) believe between extreme gender activists and MRAs, until you’ve seen their shit for yourself. The frothing misogyny isn’t all they have in common: a total FAIL at biology is another.
I quite like “preferred pronouns”, because the obvious-to-me alternative is “correct pronouns”, and it’s much easier to police that. Preferred takes us out of the realm where anyone else gets to have an opinion, and into the realm of personal sovereignty. If I say I prefer “he”, then you can talk til the cows come home about whether I deserve “he” or have earned “he” or ought to like “he” or am perpetuating binary oppression by using “he”, but none of that will change the fact that I prefer “he”. If you choose not to use my preferred pronouns, it forces you to be honest that you think you are entitled to select the correct pronouns for me – maybe we can have a conversation about why you think that, but you won’t be able to hide your refusal to honour my preference behind a philosophical disagreement. You’ll have to openly override my decision.
It’s a bit like dietary preferences: in my world, a dietary preference is to be respected. I don’t need to know whether you’re vegetarian because of animal rights or enviromentalism or Buddhism or digestive comfort. I just don’t need to know why your dietary preference is not to eat meat. I only have to honour that preference.
unrelatedly, I went and read quite a lot of Keefe’s writing elseweb, and now I feel dysphoric and crappy.
duckbunny – hugs, if they’re welcome.
I just like ‘these are my pronouns’. Cuz it’s NOT up for debate.
Sorry if I added to the dysphoria. Dysphoria sucks.
Seconding the hugs. Reading Keefe’s stuff is enough to put anyone in a bad mood. I can’t even imagine how much more worse it would be for someone who’s actually trans, but I can imagine having the same sort of “why do I have to be part of the same demographic as these assholes?” reaction I’m having the the people cheerleading Wilson.
If you factor in Valerie’s belief that she is so much better at being a woman than we are, it makes perfect sense that she’s an MRA. Part of their ideology is that women get everything easier than men, but they are also terrible. If you take that line of thinking to it’s logical conclusion, becoming a woman makes perfect sense. It’s all the other MRAs who stay men who are the hypercritical.
Puddleglum: yeah, I can see that aspect. “My pronoun IS” has a definite appeal.
Keefe’s worldview is… yeah. She speculates on people presenting as cis men being secretly trans women based on having in-her-eyes feminine features, but trans men are “dudebros”. It’s like trans women are the only real women, but trans men are fake men.
And then she started going on about how transitioning before the end of puberty is important for women but not really for men because for us “time isn’t skeleton”. The width of my pelvis would like to disagree, as would the calcification of my long bones.
And then I got dysphoric, because apparently all the way in which my body is irreversibly feminised just aren’t important. Trans men have it easy. Nobody’s heard of us, but we have it easy.
There seems to be a strong vein of hatred for trans men in the specific form of trans woman activism that Keefe represents, and I find it deeply troubling. It’s showing up in more and more spaces too, I’ve even seen people drop comments suggesting that they subscribe to that worldview here.
Or maybe contempt would be a better word? I don’t know quite how to put it, there’s just a very strong sense of “you don’t matter” coming across in reference to trans men.
After reading few pages of her tumblr, I don’t think that in her word-view anybody who’s not her or thinking just like her, matter at all.
Keefe et al seem to hate trans men, because they’re not real men, and cis women, because we’re not real women (yes you read that correctly). They manage to ignore cis men entirely (funny that) and hold trans women up as the only humans Doin It Right. Yet they’re also of the variety who sneer at people with dysphoria, because apparently the only right and true way of being trans is to be male and declare yourself female, without even necessarily doing anything about transitioning. It really is like men trying to erase or subsume everything about being female.
Catherine – that probably sums her up.
I’d love to see her get into an argument with Fidelbogen. Such purple word-salad ragefroth would be entertaining, if largely incomprehensible.
I looked up some of VK’s online presence. Oh, my, but she should get a refund from Dale Carnegie. There are all SORTS of folks who just don’t like her. Oddly, both people I’d like and those I’d cross the street to avoid are in that category.
If she does write a piece about how cruelly we treated her, would someone link to it, please? I could do with a good laugh.