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.
Cool about your nephew!
Read the thread, got confused, want to declare myself cat, but I can still acknowledge the coolness that is a kid figuring themselves out.
“@mrex Sounds like transphobia and transmisogyny to me. Alsohttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminism”
Yeah, I know what a TERF is, thanks. I think there’s a big difference between pure transphobia (hatred of Trans people stemming from fear/hatred of Trans people) and transmisogyny (hatred of Trans people stemming from a larger hatred of women). I mean, hate is hate, it sucks just as much either way, but I do see the groups as being different.
But, I’m not going to argue with you. If you have any good educational links to prove me wrong, I’m all ears. Just email me or whatever.
Kale — d’aww, I didn’t have that self awareness until I was like, 27 or something? I mean, I did the whole “these parts are not right, yeah but neither are those” for years before a very lovely not-ex (it’s complicated) introduced me to the wonderful world of genderqueer, uh, genders. That sentence failed.
Contrapangloss — would you believe that Cali hasn’t gotten the idea of The Box yet? She don’t care, you pet her! She is seriously the sweetest thing ever, I can’t believe this is the same cat who’d scarf down as much food as possible before running off to hide and that it took MONTHS to let me pet her. I want to have words with whomever made her a fearful stray, and then let her knead them and drool in it (hey, we can’t all be perfect, some of us have really sharp nails and are missing some teeth)
Fuck, we’ve just last week taught her how toys work, and even then she’ll only play if she’s on a lap.
Oh goodness! I was sitting in the basement with her on my lap when Tilly made a break through a cracked door, made it to the T junction at the bottom of the stairs and just stared at Cali and I… the yelling about getting her back upstairs started, with me going “not yet, it’s fine, they’re just staring”, yeah well… Tilly shot off into the other room, followed by my brother, much hissing followed, she ran back upstairs, he walks out going “idfk”, follows her up, more hissing from her. The whole time Cali’s only reaction was to tilt her head to watch/listen to this fiasco. “There’s another cat having a hissing fit 15′ away? Eh, I’m in a lap.” That’s her in a nutshell.
Welp, can’t be emailed. Whatever. Can I be a cat, as well?
Don’t have much positive Trans news. Best I got is a young Trans man died in a car crash recently, and, as far as I saw, was treated with respect and compassion by the community and press. Which really should be basic respect, and not at all “positive”. The rest is terrible, terrible “men in women’s bathrooms are terrible”. I actually got told recently that if a father had a little girl, he should bring her in the men’s rooms past the urinals because if he went into the girl’s room he may be able to peek through the cracks on the stalls, or something.
The far-wrong-far-right looks at that guy’s beard and don’t see a guy? Instead of their lying eyes, they believe a check-box on a bureaucratic form? Did someone mention cognitive dissonance?
Ah, meant to put scare quotes around “men” there. In other words; “Having ‘Men’ in the women’s bathroom is terrible”. When I brought up a father with a little girl, just to side step the whole argument, that’s when they started ranting about taking little girls past open urinals is ok, but men in bathrooms with closed stalls is not ok, because cracks. Which makes absolutely zero sense.
That most definitely makes no sense. Less than no sense, since, thank you patriarchy, fathers caring for their daughters is generally “aw, it’s that sweet”. Little girls in the men’s room does not get the same reaction.
But, again, unisex bathrooms! I am strangely pleased that my aerials studio hasn’t labeled the ones at the new place (the old place was shared), now, logically, this is because a solid 75% of students would be using the one with the GIANT “W” in the old place, but still, it’s nice.
I like IKEA’s solution to the age old “at what age do I send them into the bathroom alone?” — the family bathroom with comfy chairs for nursing and general kid friendly decor. (Yes, I find their kid’s stuff adorable, but that’s besides the point!)
*isnt that sweet
I can type good, I swear.
Hoffman looks at Dear’s beard and doesn’t trust his lying eyes, instead he trusts a checkbox on a bureaucratic form. He also called Dear “a confused mess who doesn’t know what he was”. Projection?
I would also like to be a cat in a box, please.
http://i.imgur.com/pBLH9Yc.gif
That cat even has the sense to leave enough tail out to not get stuck!
paradoctor — can we not assume that you can judge gender by appearance? Please? Some of us either don’t want to “pass” as the “opposite” gender or can’t without surgery they don’t want, can’t afford, what have you.
I grant, even without the beard odds are that it was a clerical error, and trans women (and non-binary amab folk) tend to shave, but as a general rule? Please don’t judge gender based off secondary sexual characteristics, puberty wasn’t always kind.
kale:”TERFs are now using the term “gender critical (GC)” to describe themselves,”. yes some are, which is weird because they reinforce the gender binary, so I am not sure what is ‘critical’ about it.
Their position is you are born a woman or man and that’s it. Some (like Germaine Greer) are even horrible to intersex people too, because they either are not binary or are not ‘perfect’ women.
I did an analysis comparing Greer to the US right wing Christian Family Research Council and their opinions on gender were just the same. I’d get the same result for any of the doyens of the TERF world (Raymond, Jefferys, etc) and at least most of the newer ones.
So they have this weird juxtaposition of beliefs, where they claim they ‘want to tear down the gender boundaries’ but then they support gender essentialism. ‘Gender is a social contruct’, except when it is biological.
There is also another thing which is weird, manyl hate and attack feminity being expressed by anyone, male or female, straight or gay/lesbian.
Their reasons vary a bit, a woman showing feminity is ‘sleeping with the patriarchy’ and a man showing it is insulting women.and ‘appropriating their identity’, which is contradiction.
Some go futher in the absurdity over this:Greer: ” Men can do feminity better than women can, because femaleness conflicts with feminity as maleness does not”.Get your head around that if you can.
That generation of feminists nearly destroyed feminism since they drove away the vast majority of women in the late 70s and the 80s. It has taken the newer and inclusive generation to repair that damage and bring it back into being a central part of women’s lives again.
My first partner was typicial of that in the late 70s. She was sucessful (a senior manager), femme, expected heck demanded equal rights (she was tough) , but did not identify with the feminism of that period at all, the exact opposite in fact and her female friends were all the same.
They saw those feminists as irrelvant to their lives as women at best, an impediment at worst. Such as their opposition to the new reproductive technologies coming out then, like newer contraceptives, morning after pills, IVF, etc. Or the weird ideas some of them had about sex, which seemed as restrictive to the women of that time as a Catholic priest would advocate. You read Jefferys and it is hard not to conclude she is against women having any genital sex at all with anyone.
It was common back then for women to say “I want equal rights and pay, maternity leave, etc”…then state “but I am not a feminist” that’s how bad an image it had then (at least in the UK). Which was tragic, because the prior generation of feminsts had achieved so much.
The current generation of the TERFs (of GCFs) seem to have more and more abandoned feminism as it applies to the real lives of the vast majority of women and what concerns them, in their endless hatred of trans people (especially trans women). You get some of them that use the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘social justice warrior’ as derogatory terms, in the same way and just as much as the MRAs do,
Because it is so intense with such emotional energy behind it, some of us in the trans world have speculated that some are denyng their own trangender feelings, like the intensely gay hating gay men that pop up again and again.
@Matthew Field
I think that quote was in “Billy Madison,” during some form of Quiz Bowl that his school entered him into. That was the moderator of the Quiz Bowl in response to a particularly muddled answer Billy had to a question.
Can I join the cats in boxes?
http://i.stack.imgur.com/Of40B.jpg
Here’s some (non cat related) good news:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/30/northern-ireland-law-on-abortion-ruled-as-incompatible-with-human-rights
This doesn’t mean that terminations will suddenly become easier for women in Ulster, but it’s a start.
The extra kooky part of the RW brigade has been going off about how this guy was a [slur redacted by DF], or homosexual, “clearly has gender issues” or one going to far as to point to that voter database and say “well, at least now we know the motive.”
(that one dropped my jaw) — based on a private / commercial “genealogy” website that compiles voter registration info — a site that states they take no responsibility for the info “no warranty…use at your own risk”
Well, that info is no longer available at that site. The owner took it down.
But, here’s something. I did some digging, and while it’s possible Robert Dear checked female on the form in error, and even remotely possible he did so on purpose…
I went to the Actual Colorado State voter site, Entered in the information, for Dear, and it pulled up all the voter information that was on the ColorodoVoters.info site — But it does not note gender there.
But this is what I found interesting — There’s a reallllll kooky Republican who runs that “genealogy” site called “ColoradoVoters.info” — Look at this rambling page:
http://coloradovoters.info/publish.html
He’s a former GOP lawmaker in NH who….
wait for it:
Advocates killing cops.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/ndstue05.htm
and beating women: See:
Nashua Rep. Alciere advocates killing officers, beating women
Former legislator charged with assault – New Hampshire
Not saying there is any tie-in, of course. It’s just freaky.
My positives:
I’ve got two trans co-workers at my seasonal job this year, a transboy and a transwoman, both also seasonal. Even though the owners are fairly conservative, they’ve had no problem hiring these two. Both seem comfortable talking about who they are and their pronouns.
…and…
My transgirl ex-roommate is getting married this summer! To a single mom whose baby she’s been primary caretaker to for a few years, now (a very big dream come true for her, as she always wanted to be a mommy).
Also, this, which is making the rounds on social media:
https://focusblast.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/exploringmyscales-ocdplayer/
The report that he listed as a female is a fake. You can check his voter registration page online. It doesn’t list gender at all. Go to https://www.sos.state.co.us/voter-classic/pages/pub/olvr/findVoterReg.xhtml
Fill in “Dear”, “Robert”, “80449” (zip code), and his birthday “04/16/1958”. The real registration comes up. It is true that he didn’t list any affiliation, but the “female” claim is bull.
Suppressed pedantry: the TERF position as kale and Lisa have described it is very different from the kind of arguments I have heard anti-trans feminists make. Obviously, this isn’t the place to argue over the precise nature of their bigotry, so I guess I’ll leave it at that.
Good news, if a bit old. A year ago, my 14 year old cousin came out to our family as a transman. He is the first* person in our extended family to come out as any GRSM, and until it happened, I was a bit worried about how it would go. His parents are very kind people, and Democratic voters (at least since 2004), but very conservative in their own lifestyle and very image-conscious. As far as I know, his parents have been great. They were already working on selling their house when he came out, but at his request they made sure to push through the move before the school year, so he could start high school in a new district where he’d be known as a boy.
Sometimes I tear up a little thinking about how rare it is to have the opportunity to be out with family at his age, and thinking about the hope that that might change in America within my lifetime.
“I think an armed assault on a Planned Parenthood fits in the ‘misogyny’ category.”
I agree. However, the first words we read here about We Hunted The Mammoth are these: “WHTM tracks and mocks the New Misogyny online, focusing especially on Men’s Rights, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Pickup Artist (PUA) sites.”
Then we read about assorted right-wingers, racists, mass shooters and others with no claimed association with the Men’s Rights Movement or even the manosphere in general. “I focus on MRAs, also look what this murderer did” isn’t technically blaming MRAs for murders unrelated to MRAs, but it can have the appearance of an attempt at guilt by association.
Allen,
there’s been some drift in topic since that tagline was written — it would probably mention Reddit and Chan as locuses of New Misogyny if it were drafted today — but David has shifted his focus in response to shifting circumstances. The core / explicit MRA and PUA sites have been losing relevance quickly, but their language and their conspiracy theories have spread to many other online right-wing cultures. At this point you can’t cover the Manosphere without examining the was Manosphere bleeds into Neo-Nazis and theocrats, who themselves bleed into fringe Republican and in some cases mainstream Republicans, such as they are.
@Allen
Firstly, this is David’s blog. He can post whatever he likes here.
Secondly, no one else seems to share your opinion on this ‘issue’. In fact, I don’t think anyone else even sees an issue here.
I’m sure your concerns have been noted by David, but could you please give it a rest now? You aren’t contributing to the discussion.
What Orion said.
Plus, David has never even hinted that he’s trying to pin this on MRAs. So I don’t really see what the problem is.
Last time I checked, the Rocky Horror Picture Show never had any characters that were obese middle aged men with wild beards and hair that look like they haven’t seen a bar of soap in 40 years.
Their claims about the shooter are so ridiculous and far-fetched it goes beyond being affected in any way by what they’re saying. It’s impossible to feel angry or offended at all. You just kind of sigh. It gets so ridiculous you find yourself wondering if they’re actually serious or just trolling.
It was pathetic to the point that the only thing that bothered me in the slightest was their mention of Rocky Horror, considering it’s one of my favourite movies. How dare they tarnish its name! Lol.
Latte Cat,
Was it really necessarily to say “obese” there?