In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Bruce Jenner has confirmed to the world what many already suspected, that “for all intents and purposes, I am a woman.”
The strangest reaction to this news that I have seen thus far comes from the reliably strange and terrible Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield, who seems to think that Jenner is transitioning out of jealousy of the attention the world pays to Kim Kardashian and her sisters.
Here’s Bloomfield:
Jenner lives in a house filled with crazy, beautiful and incredibly wealthy women who use their looks to generate enormous amounts of income. Surely, it must be clear to him and everyone who watches these fame whores that the power to use tits and ass and turn it into cash resides with women. … Bruce is now set to join the powerful women of his clan as one of their own, and good for him.
Where to even start? At 65 years old. I’m pretty sure that Jenner isn’t looking to use “tits and ass and turn it into cash.”
Bloomfield points out some of the amazing benefits she’s convinced herself Jenner will gain as a woman:
Now that he’s a woman, or soon will be one, the media goes mad to offer him the kindness they deny to men. You can bet the feminist media in particular will trip over themselves to provide Bruce the woman with all the support they routinely refuse to offer men. Bruce now no longer needs to be taught not to rape, because he has magically lost the ability to rape, amirite? Bruce will now be the automatic victim of domestic violence (assuming it’s a man who hits him and not one of those psycho women he lives with). Bruce is now under no obligation to provide evidence for any accusations of sexual assault he cares to make.
Wow. I guess life as a trans woman is one big domestic-abusing, false-accusing party. Who knew?
Bruce is joining the privileged caste …
As a society, we simply don’t give a fuck about men’s pain. …
Bruce Jenner has solved his problem and closed the empathy gap in a way very few other men can. He became a woman. For the vast majority of men, that isn’t an option, nor should it have to be.
If you need me, I’ll just be here banging my head quietly on my desk.
NOTE: I had used the “he” pronoun in this post because I had read articles saying that was Jenner’s preferred pronoun for now, but it seems that was just for the interview. I’ve reworked the post to remove it.
4th troll,
As long as we live in a capitalist society, money will always be placed above the well being of people of any gender.
Yet, in the other thread you were going on about how feminists shouldn’t criticize games but should instead let the market dictate the content of games.
So which is it? Do you want a society centered around compassion or money? Or is it, as I suspect, the third, hypocritical and selfish option? You want to be privileged and you want sympathy for yourself and people who look and think like you but you don’t want the same courtesies extended to anyone else? If the market dictates that games be male dominant (setting aside that you haven’t proven it does), than the market is inherently correct. If the market dictates that energy companies skimp on safety for coal miners to benefit the bottom line, suddenly the market is bad and society doesn’t care about men.
@Pelagic, just a heads up – terms like ‘crazy’ don’t sit well here due to its obvious ableism and out of respect to the lived experience of many commenters on this blog.
The 4th survivor
“And you really think it would be different if women were in charge? You think they would be more moral? Please. They would be no different.”
Spindrift
“Feminists argue in favor of gender equality, not for matriarchy. Stop assuming everyone’s one of the straw feminists from your imagination. Nobody here wants 1 gender to rule over any other gender.”
What? I thought that was our goal! Use our butts and boobs to conquer the world and build scented Effie candle factories!
“Society” certainly does care about men’s suffering. Moreso than women’s suffering for sure.
It’s MRA’s that don’t care about men’s pain. They love whining about the tiny bits of privilege that men have lost over the last few decades, but they never cared let alone did anything about real problems that men face because of their gender.
@fruitloopsie
I am strangely okay with that kind of world domination.
@Misha
I have been accused of being thoughtless, it’s not unknown for me. I apologise.
http://memecrunch.com/meme/56OM/jack-sparrow-dafuq/image.jpg?w=500&c=1
I’m astounded.
A) For such a shitty writer JB has an amazing imagination.
B) The media is kind to trans women? Does JB purposefully confuse making shit up with reality or is she genuinely that befuddled?
http://t.qkme.me/3pcnb1.jpg
I think her compulsive lying has become such an issue that she now believes her own lies instantaneously.
the 4th survivor,
Christ, you’re an asshole.
Even if women and feminists were an extreme minority in gaming, and even if all men who game do not prefer games that women and feminists want to play, women and feminists are still allowed to criticize games they don’t like and make or ask for games they do like.
It’s a terrible idea to only make things the majority would like. I mean, according to this non-scientific survey, blue is humanity’s favorite color. Should literally everything that has a color be blue because blue is most likely to be a person’s favorite?
4th,
When you say that liberals don’t care about “men’s pain” you mean “white, straight, cis, men’s pain” or more accurately, “My pain” or even more accurately “Pay more attention to mmmeeeeeeeee! I’m the most important! Me! Me! Me!”
You know you aren’t on about Islamaphobia, LGBTQ rights, racism, etc because you don’t give a fuck about marginalized and oppressed classes of men.
Guess who does?
Transwomen are far from privileged. They face crap from people on a daily basis for being trans. JB lives with her head so far up her ass.
“And you really think it would be different if women were in charge? You think they would be more moral? Please. They would be no different.”
Perhaps not. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about giving a voice and representation to all demographics, not picking which one we want to rule over the others. (Sorry spindrift, didn’t mean to steal your words but they were just so good!)
It’s a practiced ignorance.
@Suzy Q “(Sorry spindrift, didn’t mean to steal your words but they were just so good!)”
Awh, shucks! I’m flattered. Steal as many as you like 🙂
I just have to comment about “society not caring about men’s pain”. I brought my ball peen hammer to crack this apart because I can actually off the top of my head think of a few instances that society does care/has cared about. And of course by “men’s pain” I mean white-cis-het dudes because as far as society is concerned the rest should conform or disappear.
(1) How many whiny-ass “what about the menz” style articles and books have there been in recent years worrying about how our schools are not working for boys. So many articles say that girls are perfectly adapted to the way schools are run but not boys and this must change. (I don’t want to enter into any debate about what we are doing/should be doing – this is just to illustrate that this is an instance of people caring about men and boy’s suffering.
(2) How many media reports of rape cases hand-wring about the future of the boys who raped all the while assuming the girl deserved it because she’s just gotta be a slutty slut flaunting her sluttiness? That Steubenville case was one where several journalists fretted over those boys futures.
(3) I know MRA and conservatives don’t care for this but it is still an example of society caring for men’s pain. There is a movement afoot to make American football safer because so many men suffer concussions and other disabling injuries. The movement wants to improve equipment and have guys avoid doing tough tackles in practice and basically just be safer.
Yeah, it makes the sport less manly-manly-man for these guys, but guess what, this is still about caring about men’s suffering.
(4) Back in the ’00s when the US was getting into all those wars, there were several liberal celebs who took up the cause of getting them better gear: better helmets and Kevlar and junk like that. Again, MRA types probably think war is a lot like 300/Trojan war and Achilles running around bare-chested waving a sword and they think that having bullet-proof helmets and vests is for pussies, but people who are pushing this shit care about men’s pain.
By the way, who provided Achilles with his super-resistence? Why it was a woman, his mom, who wanted to keep him safe.
These are just ideas that came to me, but I agree with someone upthread who says “society caring about pain” is a squishy topic which can be filled with whatever you want and probably means caring about their boners. And just fuck that noise.
Something that’s puzzled me for a long time: much of the MRA rhetoric has a strong overtone of envy. They see women as a privileged class and they seem to envy those apparent privileges.
I myself am a trans woman currently in transition, and years and decades ago, when I was miles deep in denial and still trying to see myself as a man, I had the same envy and – had the internet been widely available then – I might well have expressed it in the same way.
It’s very disturbing to find these people saying the same sort of thing I thought 25, 30 years ago when I was really fked up.
What is it that I then, and they now, have in common??
(When I’ve posted here before, I’ve encountered a certain amount of suspicion that I might be a troll. It really isn’t necessary, I am 100% on board with the mammoth mission, and I even like cats)
A mostly-lurker here, with a quick question about pronouns. In this case, where there seems to be some confusion over Jenner’s pronouns, would it be appropriate to use they/them pronouns? I really hope I’m not inadvertently offending anyone with the question, I’m just curious.
Oh, and, I may just be an ignorant ciswoman, but I really don’t think this is how trans works.
I know there are several transpeople that post on this thread, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
Just like I’ve always “felt” like a woman – whatever concept I’m trying to get at by saying that – and I’ve never looked at the Fortune 500 list and thought “wow, look at all those dudes with their billions of dollars. I wish I had that, Imma get me a penis so I can be like them” I don’t think any dude looked at Anaconda and thought “Look at Minaj getting all that attention, I think I’ll take a bunch of hormones.”
A few minutes on the Googletron should suffice to show that there is quite a bit of research on why people are trans, and it turns out there are totally physiological explanations that have nothing to do with just wishing you were like someone else.
Scarlettathena – nicely put. People who display fulminating hatred towards trans* people seem to have grossly distorted ideas about who they’re hating and why.
Not that it would be any better if their ideas were more accurate; I don’t believe there’s ever a good reason for hating people who have done you no harm.
@Scarlettathena
“Imma get me a penis so I can be like them” might make for a good song though.
Come to think of it, Janet’s whole article is self-refuting. She never had anything bad to say about Jenner when he presented as a man, but as soon as he starts presenting as a woman, she trash-talks him.
4th:
You’re spot on. Women would indeed be no different because they’re people – just like men – with the same failings, and the same positive aspects. So why is there this disparity in numbers in positions of power? Which is the point feminism is trying to address (among other things).
@Spindrift
(Audio may be NSFW depending on your coworkers/boss.)
@ scarletathena
I can’t be the only person who thought your post was going in a totally different direction. 🙂
Oh, and if any of you do want to care about the pain of a straight white bloke; I caught myself on some brambles today running away from cows.
@ apeculiarpersonage
He’s said that until he totally transitions he’d prefer male pronouns.