So far we only know bits and pieces about the strange and isolated life of Robert Lewis Dear, the alleged shooter who murdered three people and injured many others after holing up in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic yesterday afternoon.
We know that he had numerous run-ins with the law and with his neighbors, that he was accused in the past of domestic violence, that he lived in a small shack in the woods.
While Dear didn’t leave behind a manifesto, the fact that he targeted Planned Parenthood seems to be a rather large clue as to his motivations. Indeed, the mayor of Colorado Springs told reporters that they could make “inferences” about Dear’s motivations “from where [the shootings] took place.” Meanwhile, NBC is reporting that Dear talked about abortion after he was arrested, making reference to “baby parts,” according to NBC’s law enforcement sources.
Apparently embarrassed by the actions of yet another white male terrorist, some right-wingers are trumpeting a bizarre claim: that Dear is a trans woman.
The claim seems to have originated with the blog Gateway Pundit, which posted voter registration information for Dear that labeled the alleged shooter as “female.”
To Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, this isn’t just an innocent mistake on the part of some government clerk; it’s proof that Dear “Identifies as [a] Woman.”
Naturally, others picked up on the bizarre claim. Rich Hoffman, who blogs as Overmanwarrior, treated this “news” as a giant “gotcha.”
Guess what, Obama, MSNBC, CNN, Hillary Clinton and all the rest of the knuckle dragging losers of progressive politics? They thought they finally had a white middle-aged Republican man who committed a terrorist act—so that they could propose more gun control.
Never mind that most of America’s terrorists are in fact white men.
Sadly for them, the shooter—Robert Lewis Dear—the lunatic who shot up a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic on November 27th 2015 appears to be a cross-gender loving pervert who shared much more with Obama’s LBGT community than the NRA loving American traditionalists.
Never mind that the only political activism anyone says they’ve seen Dear ever engaging in was handing out anti-Obama leaflets.
According to early reports from The Gateway Pundit shown below indicate Robert Lewis Dear identified as a woman, not as the man that he is. Bet you won’t hear that on the news networks.
Probably because it’s not true.
Dear sounds like a cast member of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That would explain his appearance.
Apparently Hoffman has never actually seen Rocky Horror.
Hoffman continued on — and on:
This is just further proof that liberals make most of the problems in our society. They feed anger toward Planned Parenthood with immoral justifications then they create a loose society full of perverts, peeping Toms, and losers who are men who think they are women and women who want to be men. USA Today almost had an orgasm when they saw the pictures of the suspect, but quickly put on the brakes once the stories of this idiot became clear. They reported that the motive was unclear so the hard reporting will probably die now that Robert Lewis Dear has turned out to be a Bruce Jenner clone—a woman in a man’s body. Perhaps Dear was jealous that real woman were able to get abortions for casual sex while he was not able to commit such a vile crime—so he went on a shooting spree. That conclusion is just as valid as Obama’s early comments regarding the push to use gun control as a way to keep more idiots like this loser free to peek in our windows all in the name of a more “progressive” society of morally loose punks and general depraved nut cases. Gun control laws obviously didn’t work with this confused person. Robert Lewis Dear was a Obama kind of guy—a bewildered mess who didn’t know what he was.
Naturally, Hoffman isn’t the only one crying “gotcha.” On Twitter, right-wingers are spreading the “news” of Dear’s imaginary status as a trans woman; they sound positively giddy.
https://twitter.com/AuroraStargazer/status/670676592809545729
Democrat. Trans. BOOM!https://t.co/nVZkgqUwu4
— MelDoyle (@meldoyle9) November 28, 2015
https://twitter.com/ThomasWictor/status/670535763575087104
Official records show shooter identified as a female! A trans-terrorist?… https://t.co/yRs0AuKLnq
— Family Policy WV (@FamilyPolicyWV) November 28, 2015
https://twitter.com/GotharReichart/status/670722140723945472
https://twitter.com/US395/status/670651383301951488
https://twitter.com/Gregory__Adams/status/670640296963743744
Naturally, some couldn’t keep themselves from indulging in transphobic jokes:
The runner up for Caitlyn's Trans-ESPY award did not take the snub well. #PlannedParenthood https://t.co/E3kJPc3a47
— HaleStorm (@RealTJHale) November 28, 2015
@THEREBELTV According to his voter reg Robert Lewis Dear identifies as woman.
"She ain't perfect she's my brother"— Jones (@Sanerfpta) November 28, 2015
A man who thinks he's a she⏩ RT @exposeliberals: Who is Robert Lewis Dear? https://t.co/HoAz921RN0 #tcot #tlot #tgdn https://t.co/UNIXDNY2FL
— Patty 🌻🇺🇸🌵 (@littlebytesnews) November 28, 2015
#trans #PPShooter MO: Identifies as #FEMALE,So,HeWantedAbortion &PP WouldNot GiveHimOne? #LGBT #celebrities #TMZ https://t.co/SMP1YR828z
— sara hall (@sarahal15586515) November 28, 2015
Do any of these people actually believe that Dear is a trans woman, or are they deliberately spreading disinformation to amuse themselves and muddy the real issues?
I suspect that it is largely the latter. Either way, it is not a shining moment for them.
H/T — Thanks to yutolia, who tipped me off to this development in the comments here.
AnAndrejaPejicBlog, done, and thanks.
Lisa, thanks for posting that piece as well.
“Sometimes people get called TERFs when they’re not TERFS but that doesn’t mean that the term itself is a problem any more than the fact that some non-racists get called racist means that we shouldn’t use the term racist.”
I really disagree, David. I think that “TERF” being used too loosely and pitched at (potentially) anyone who’s at all transphobic, transmisogynistic or trans-exclusionary is akin to calling someone a “Neo nazi” when they display everyday racism: it suggests that this very dangerous everyday bigotry comes about only as a result of consciously choosing to subscribe to a specific, essentialist ideology. It becomes far too easy for people to dismiss the criticism because we know we haven’t subscribed.
And I would argue that if someone calls you a “racist” when you’ve displayed racism, they’re right.
LG, but what you’re talking about is misuse of the term. TERF is still an accurate description of a subset of radical feminists whose transphobia is a central part of their ideology.
I’m sorry, I thought you were defending such misuse of the term, as well.
Gender essentialist probably gets to the heart of it, because while some people who are gender essentialist try to be trans-inclusive, they can only manage it by not actually thinking gender essentialism all the way through. Gender essentialism is intrinsically trans-exclusionary. It also has other, extremely serious, problems, any one of which would be a good enough reason to 86 the entire concept.
A TERF is a TERF, no matter what they say. It’s not a slur, it’s an acronym that describes their ideology, and claiming otherwise is a distraction tactic to try and label the TERFs as the victim and the accuser as a bully. TERFs don’t need protection from trans people, trans people need protection from TERFs.
Also you might not consider yourself a TERF yourself, but if you are indeed a radical feminist who say transphobic things, it should be no surprise when trans people feel it’s fitting to label you as such. If you don’t want to be called a TERF, don’t act like one or defend those who do or say stuff like “it’s a slur, you are the bully here”
“Planned Parenthood singles out Republicans for ‘hateful rhetoric’ that incited Colorado attack”
http://www.dailykos.com/
Claiming that TERF is a slur is a way to shut down discussion, and I’m quite sure that’s intentional.
“BVH: I know you didn’t intend it that way, but the “cut off their dicks” meme is both factually incorrect ”
Yes, I know…THAT’S WHY ITS LUDICROUS. FFS.
It was really that unclear from my comment that
a. this is a bullshit position based on either ignorance or a deliberate mis-characterization
b. I am aware this is a bullshit position
c. therefore IMHO these people are being dishonest/disingenuous
???
Really? And your take away is that I really think that” the cut off the dicks” thing is factual?
REALLY?
This is what made me stop commenting for a while. This blog is great, and I know people have their hearts in the right place. But the knee-jerk, false positives friendly fire is tiring.
I have much less misunderstandings at AVClub, where, ironically the crowd is much more supportive and educated about women’s capabilities than many vocal people in the comments here.
For instance, there was a notable time I bit my tongue and said nothing while the otherwise awesome people here made uneducated and out right ignorant remarks about women supposedly being just naturally weaker than men. Not that they tend to be weaker because of a lot of factors(crappy physical education, crappy diet, bad exercise programs, concerns about getting too “big”, cultural aversion, not starting training until much later in life and missing the prime adolescent years), but that, a la “bio truth”, that’s the way it is.
I find this 100X more insulting than all the ablism issues,as it’s in the comments of a woman positive, pro feminist blog, for god’s sake. I’m an amateur powerlifter, but even before that I was as strong as many men my size and weight. I am an average person, 5 and half feet and 170 pounds and I’m not fat. But I didn’t start that way. No strong person does. NO ONE. You build it slowly over the years; if one is active in adolescence it might appear to be magic, but it isn’t. Without training hard, I’m about 125-130lbs. Even then I could do 20 pushups and 10 pull-ups. That women are just doomed to be weaker bullshit was old when I first heard it at 5 years old, it was old in high school, And it’s really fucking old decades later when everyone is supposed to be more educated and informed.
But no one here was offended by it. Okay–go team! /s
I kept my mouth shut because it wasn’t really the topic of the blog post and whatever, I’m just another voice on the Internets. But the irony was ironic.
But I get rebuked for something I didn’t even say or mean. And that’s not counting the false positive friendly fire in the past over the abilism issue.
One is left with the impression there is literally nothing one can do right, and that is not healthy. I know that is not what you meant, but that’s the effect.
Now I must do the healthy thing and go back to just reading the blog and ignoring comments.
No hard feelings…Keep Calm and Carry On.
TERFs are now using the term “gender critical (GC)” to describe themselves, just FYI in case that info helps anyone de ide what terms to use when talking about them. (Yea I know its not a realistic term for “women who identify as feminists and most often also as lesbians who hate ans harass trans women”, but its not like MRAs do anything for men’s rights either, so we dont really need to go into a whole conversation about it given the circumstances. Its just a bit of info to ponder).
@kale, Question, why should we use the term they want, which hides their true ideology and make them seem much more harmless than they truly are, instead of using an acronym that perfectly encapsulates their core ideology, namely excluding and extermination trans people?
@nightmarelyre There’s a post on this page from a trans woman who was treated badly (she used the word ‘demonized,’ so quite badly, I’m guessing) for using TERF. Understandably, it’s an experience she doesn’t want to repeat.
&for the record, I did go and look at some TERFs timelines on twitter and they are indeed retweeting stuff about this killer being registered as a woman. Im sorry but I wanted to kmow and I think it is worth a mention here.
@nightmarelyre I mean Im not gonna, fuck TERFs…. >;D~
…but its not like they deserve that F for Feminist at the end there either. I dont think hurting women is feminist. Its not like they just hate trans people, they specifically hate trans women. Its misogyny, not feminism, that drives them, thats how I see it.
anyways, I would like to go look for, and talk about, ways to support the victims and oppose fortced pregnancies and shit rather than dwelling on stuff that makes me feel bad personally so Im gonna take a break from talking sbout you-know-who(s). I wish I had $ to donate to PP, or even just time, clinic escorts for example are rad.
zyrusticae
Thanks
Just to add my own piece of kindling onto the fire, here is a personal observation;
Back when I was just starting to really devour anything related to Feminism and didn’t even know what a “TERF” was, I stumbled across some blogs written by TERFs and read them thoroughly. I have to say, based on my experience then, and my experience since, I don’t think TERF’s problem is so much Transmisogyny as it is, “everyone who is not as CIS woman is privileged and disgusting and fuck you. Get your penis out of here I’m a rape victim and you’re triggering me!” I quickly fled those blogs, because TERFs really are terrible people.
Now, I’m not saying that TERFs are *never* Transmisogynistic, it just doesn’t seem to be a primary motivation. Compare this to what is motivating these conservative men; actual, undeniable transmisogyny. These men hate women, therefore Trans men and women suck as well. Undeniable transmisogyny.
In short; I have no idea why the hell we’re talking about TERFs in this instance instead of the terrible, horrible transmisogyny coming from CIS men. Unless some TERFS are directly making this claim, I don’t see them as being relevant. TERFS and Trans hating, conservative, CIS men are both terrible and hateful, but they’re not one and the same.
@mrex Sounds like transphobia and transmisogyny to me. Also http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminism
Kale — I think even autocorrect has learned that I use TERf for exactly that reason.
Policy of Madness — “Gender essentialism” = I’m with you on that one! And my personal view on gender? I’m done debating which box I go in, I’ll be a cat and just lay over ALL THE BOXES!! (I joke with cat analogies, but yeah, I’m opting out of that internal debate and sticking with “neither” followed by silly noises because it only took a decade for that lightbulb to click)
Tangentially, can I whine for a second? I found a sports bra I like, it was clearance, I ordered three… the courier the company (a large one you’d know) uses only works business days. So my pre-Black Friday order went absolutely fucking nowhere over the biggest shopping weekend of the year. That’s very off topic, but really? You deal in shipping retail orders and don’t work Black Friday? The mind, it boggles.
Also, I can deal with grumbling at customer service, the actual topic just makes me want to scream and there’s no “how can we help you?” number with a helpful person on the other end.
… so, how about them cats in boxes?
well we are talking about TERFs becauase a trans woman rightfully included them in a list of people who hate and terrorize trans people, and was immediately told by a bunch of people that she shouldnt be casually mentioning TERFs when she lists the people who torment trans women for… reasons.
Look, it has been suggested we move on and Im all for that, thinking about the people who bully me and bully my sisters even worse makes me feel terrible, but come on. It isnt the trans people here who turned this conversation about trans issues into a mess, not that we are all perfect but cis people you need to recognize that we walk roads you havent been down and just, idk, cut us some slack when we are being blamed for murder and thus having our safety threatened again. Please?
I would like it if we could move on here.
Can I also join you in opting to be a cat in a box?
So much simpler, it would be…
OK to change the subject – maybe we can say some trans pos things?
my young cousin came out to me as a dude at Thanksgiving. It was really nice to be able to tell a 12 year old “welcome out!” I didnt have that self awareness, courage, or support at his age and Im very happy for him and proud to have blazed the trail for him. 🙂