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.
Ug, *is forbidden
*you weren’t going to
Also, don’t know why this didn’t post, but are these asshays claiming that he’s MtF or FtM? I was assuming FtM, but others seem to be assuming otherwise? 🙂
mrex: Does the particular flavor of shit really matter?
They keep saying “he identifies as a woman”, and they compare him to Caitlyn Jenner.
Is this a calico thing? Dracarys would only poop off the edge of the box for about a year after I adopted her. Now she mostly goes in the box, but occasionally will still hang her butt of the edge and go on the floor. I don’t get it.
Mrex,
Their little theory is that Dean is a trans woman who is super jealous because only cis women can get abortions. Because ebil liberal women get pregnant and get abortions just for fun because we hate precious babies that much. Or something.
When I was door knocking for the Kerry campaign in 2004, we would joke about our abortion quotas and how we were so eager to get preg so we could gleefully abort because we got called “baby killers” all the time for simply campaigning for a Democrat. But apparently we weren’t being hyperbolic. This is what the forced birthers really think. That progressive women see abortion as a goal and not a necessary aspect of health care for uterus havers. Sigh.
Yeah, I don’t understand this viewpoint. It’s the same sort of thinking that’s being demonstrated by the assholes in the article above; that being part of a specific group somehow has significant bearing on the judgements that can be made on the actions that individuals choose to take. Background information about the person might help explain why they acted the way they do, and indicate certain cultural trends, but ultimately the actions that a person takes are their individual responsibility. If you do shitty things, you deserve to face the consequences of those shitty things, regardless of whether or not you’re one of “us”. Trolls on this site also sometimes demonstrate this behavior, using a female screen name and then being shocked that they don’t get a free pass to say shitty things just because they’re a woman. What’s wrong with us, they thought we were FEMINISTS! That means that anything a woman/self identified feminist says HAS to be accepted, doesn’t it?
People demonstrating a pattern of consistently non-shitty behavior may be granted more patience or benefit of the doubt if they do fuck up, sure. But I’m not about to minimize or ignore ableism, misogyny, transphobia, violence, or any other assorted awful things just because the perpetrator is supposedly liberal/female/trans , etc. Those things are wrong, period.
Yeah. I remember the baffled responses to Hillary Clinton being proud to become a grandmother. How could someone who thinks that women should be able to get terminations when they need them possibly like babies? An unfathomable mystery to these bozos.
As proven by all of us telling Alan to shut the hell up over in the BLM thread. =P
And then, of course, we get called meanies who are eating our own. We can’t fucking win.
All vectors of pro-patriarchy activism are part of the problem when it comes to harming women.
Trying to delineate between them and claiming one is “attacking” transmisogynist women is assuming that a free pass is being given to any transmisogynist, whether religiously motivated, radical fauxminoist, or MRAsshole.
It’s not “attacking” to point out the vector of violence through pro-patriarchy activism. It is galling to see how many words have been stuffed in mouths here, and it’s actually making me think mayhap this might not be a safer space for addressing all forms of pro-partriarchy activism like MRAssholery.
No passes. No quarter. And all this bad-faith argument is ignoring that some shitstain killed three goddamned people for the forced-birther movement, the granddaddy of all pro-patriarchy movements.
Accountability for actions isn’t “attacking” or next I’ll be accused of “attacking” Jack Barnes, I’m thinking.
Same hate, same bullshit, different paint job.
@WWTH
“Their little theory is that Dean is a trans woman who is super jealous because only cis women can get abortions.”
That is literally the single most rediculous thing I’ve ever read. Thanks for clearing that up. Just when I thought nothing else on this planet could baffle me, so I’m off to go hide in bed.
Mildly Magnificent,
It’s like that stupid anti-choice “point” where they ask “what if your mother decided to abort you!?” Like it’s some kind of check mate. Yeah? What if? I was the product of an unplanned pregnancy. Guess what? I’m still pro-choice. What if my mom decided to abort me? Well, she didn’t. So? Our lives are all the end results of a series of events. What if my parents had unprotected sex on a different night? What if a different sperm fertilized the egg? I wouldn’t exist. Someone else would. It’s such a stupid argument. The thing is, my parents wanted to have me and therefore were able to give me a decent life. That a particular sperm and egg met to make the human with my specific genes was pure happenstance. It’s so dumb to try and play the what if? game.
I’ve had an entire bottle of pinot grigot so sorry if this last post was a rambling mess!
@Invisible Mikey,
people are upset with you because you led with the suggestion that Deer was mentally ill, and any suggestions around here that mental illness can explain bad actions or that being trans is synonymous with being ill, always goes down like a lead balloon. Making assumptions about women not being tall (and when it comes to trans women it’s kind of irrelevant if they have typically male physiology) was just the icing on the cake.
My advice if you want to post here again is to wait a few months and have a quick read of the comments policy first.
@anomie,
Thank you for your comment, it’s clarified for me something that I’ve been uncomfortable with for a while but haven’t been able to word well.
All of this. Which isn’t to say that TERFs and TERF ideology isn’t harmful or damaging and can’t ever be talked about. Rather that the rapid conversational shift in the comments sections in feminist spaces worries me, maybe, because sometimes it seems to fit uncomfortably close to the notion that whenever a woman does something wrong, all eyes must be on her. And then a lot of attention gets misdirected away from much larger, more prevalent and more immediate sources of harm to the trans community, as voiced by the trans community (i.e the actions of cis, non-feminist white men).
Trans-exclusionary feminism is harmful, and I’ve learned a lot from discussions challenging this, but I can’t count how many times comments to a post detailing the abuse of transpeople by this bunch of dudes ends up being 9/10ths about TERFs (not just in the Mammoth by far, fyi).
Thanks for the comfort and the cats folks. This story hit me cold this morning and you made it all better 🙂
this happy gilmore quote is always relevant:
“What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
David, while I agree, as much as you or anyone else here, that these people are awful, I have to question how on-mission this is. This doesn’t, as far as I can see, have anything to do with the men’s rightster crowd. I come here to read about the antics of manosphereans. For the antics of generic conservatives and white nationalists, there are other venues, such as Right Wing Watch, Americans Against the Tea Party and Fundies Say the Darndest Things. (Although I recognize, of course, there is a large and steadily shrinking overlap between the three aforementioned camps).
I’m so thankful for this community. This story, both the shooting and right wingers trying to make it a trans issue, have just really got to me. I really appreciate being able to come here and read some thoughtful commentary on it that doesn’t make me want to hide in my bed forever.
I’m also raging about the Christy Mack case that has been going on. War Machine’s defence case is just horrifying and in every comments section there are people justifying it based on her occupation or based on the fact that she was in bed with another man. Feminism is as needed as it ever was, when someone can justify a woman being almost beaten to death because of her sexuality it’s clear that misogyny is alive and well.
@abars01. Because it’s about people spreading wrongful information under the assumption that a woman is an easy scapegoat to avoid discussing how their anti-woman ideology caused his actions. It’s not explicitly a MRA issue, but it’s the same general thought process.
And the posts on the Paris attacks weren’t exactly on mission either, so I don’t really see the problem in this case.
HE HAS A BEARD! A FULL GROWN, LUSCIOUS BEARD! Trans women generally don’t grow beards. Do they not know this?
Yeah, I’m no friend of TERFs but I’d rather not drag them up when they haven’t actually done anything.
Anomie and Misha –
THANK YOU. I have long thought that the paranoia surrounding TERFs and their supposed presence everywhere is problematic, but in many spaces, saying so is a good way to get yourself labeled a TERF.
Mind you, this one’s a sore spot for me because I got kicked out of a feminist group for being TERF a while back because….I called a trans person out on consistently and aggressively using ableist insults. :-p ‘Cuz that obviously meant I supported the transphobe those insults were directed at.
I see “TERF!” get thrown at a lot of cis feminists who simply haven’t questioned some of their transphobia and ciscentrism, but who are pro trans inclusion. I also see it tossed at cis feminists who legit show some nastily TERFish paranoia about transwomen and are iffy about inclusiveness but while this is bad, it’s not a radical feminist conspiracy.
@erica
Are you new? If so, welcome! Just wanted to say that some of the twitchiness regarding “TERF” is due to the history of arguments we’ve had about the word in the past (with one or two people genuinely using it to shut down discussion – you aren’t, of course). Actual TERFs aren’t welcome here. David’s made that very clear before. =)
Personally, I think everyone has points, but yeah, just wanted to clear up any confusion. A lot of this was before my time and it confused me for a while too. =P
No, they don’t believe Dear is a trans woman. This is just the right wing lie machine in action. I saw claims that they shooter was a disgruntled former PP employee with an Arab name; I’m still seeing BS about the incident being a bank robbery. Facts be damned.
They are just trying to muddy the waters, to give people who really, really don’t want to see the wave of rightwing violence something to cling to.
I’m confused. Are we certain that Dear’s voter registration doesn’t say “female?” Are we certain Dear doesn’t identify as a woman? I’m not sure why being MTF is a “slur” being cast upon Dear by anyone.