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.
@L.G,
FWIW I think transmisogyny and ciscentrism is both a harmful and prevalent problem in many feminist groups and spaces, so I can understand why TERF gets used as a descriptor by transpeople and their allies when they encounter it. As a cis woman I’ll never know that level of suckiness, to be in a movement that is supposed to address gender inequality and end up challenging cisnormative assumptions on a daily basis.
For me it’s more that TERF-talk gets focused on to the extent that it dominates 90% of a conversation in which the OP was actually trying to draw attention to the attitudes and behaviour of entitled white cis dudes. And I end up wondering if this is another vector of patriarchy at play, where we focus so much on ‘any wrongdoing done by a woman ever’ that the original, specific harm done by the white cis male demographic gets overshadowed. Or lost entirely.
But anyway, as SFHC says, TERFs aren’t welcome in Mammoth space, and I like the lion in a wheelbarrow.
TERF means a specific thing. TERFs are feminists who have made gender essentialism – which is always trans-exclusionary – an intrinsic part of their feminism. Transphobic feminists are not always TERFs and radical feminists are not always TERFs, because TERF has a real meaning that means something. It’s not a synonym for “feminists that I don’t think are really feminists,” and it’s not a blanket term that captures all self-identified radical feminists. They are called trans-exclusionary radical feminists for a reason, and that reason is because other types of radical feminists exist and there is a need to distinguish between the different groups.
And TERFs frankly have no fucking relevance to this so I don’t even with why they magically popped up. Pointing out that TERFs are not actually involved here is not the same as giving them a pass for their behavior. Where does that logic even come from?
Shooting up a Planned Parenthood is not misogyny, in your opinion?
Or do you think that David should only write about misogyny that comes from a specific narrow slice of all misogynists, with any misogyny that comes from other sources being off-topic?
I don’t see how your statement makes sense without one of these propositions being true, but neither proposition actually flies.
His record is still there, you have to put in the last name first. And it’s really easy for people like me to screw up typing in that zip code.
And those third-party websites are infamous for having totally made up information. Ever Googled a phone number and seen it at some “phone book” website associated with some random guy’s name (even though you later find out it was a charity calling)? Yeah, probability those are ever correct is about 0 too.
Either that or it’s run by a webmaster who unscrupulously assumes no listed gender + no listed party = “female Democrat”, but doubt people making a junk site like that actually took the effort that would be required to grab zip codes and birth dates.
The one time you can find right-wing commentators jostling each other to refer to a transwoman as “she” – and they’re talking about someone who almost certainly does not identify as female, but who HAS committed a horrific act of terrorism against women’s healthcare providers. 🙁
I really fucking hate Republicans…
@PoM,
Unsurprisingly there was a “Makes me wonder if the TERFs had anything to do with this” comment earlier re: the claim that Dear is a transwoman, and it went downhill from there. Safe to say it was a bit of a reach.
Speaking of the OP, it’s now hit the BBC. His ex-wife previously reported him for domestic violence:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34954474
Animal cruelty too, and somewhere I saw it reported he had an arrest for voyeurism. Seems like a lovely person. /s
Slightly disconcerting that he has the same surname, and looks quite a lot like, some of my relatives by marriage, who have long-lost relatives that moved to the US shortly after the Jurassic…
Soooooo off topic, but Policy of Madness!!! Hi!
Why do we even have gendered bathrooms? Just put stalls in all of them, eliminate urinals entirely and call it good. What are they afraid of, men’s rooms having lines as long as women’s rooms always, always do?
Failing that, transgender people ought to go to whatever bathroom they darn well want to go to. It shouldn’t even affect anyone other than the person who wants to go–we don’t have gender-segregated bathrooms in our homes.
Bathroom policing is dumb.
While we’re talking about rabid neo-reactionary conservatives, I’ve wanted to ask for a while: what’s the deal with that “Don’t tread on me” slogan they keep using, oftentimes with a picture of a snake? What’s it supposed to mean and why do they keep saying it?
It’s the Gadsden Flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag
Sunny,
It’s the Gadsen Flag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag I don’t really know why right wingers like it.
Ninja’d!
My father flies it >.< It's basically asshole for "don't fuck with me, I shoot back" — a bastardization of its original use I think?
What P.O.M. said.
I, too, can understand why someone might cry “TERF”! at every instance of transmisogyny, just as I can understand why a trans person who is an asshole would cry ” TERF!” over you telling them not to be ableist. But that doesn’t make either of those things okay.
Feminists definitely don’t have to be part of a specific, radical feminist ideology of gender essentialism to have issues with ciscentrism and transphobia.
@Weir
@Jarnsaxa The Fantastic Ironwood Giantess
@Sunnysombrera
I like the parody version of the Gadsden Flag in which the snake is replaced by a pile of poop and some flies, with the same “DON’T TREAD ON ME” motto.
There’s also a version with a clenched fist squeezing the snake, with the motto “NO TEA FOR ME”.
Regarding the article itself: it seems as if the Reich Wing has, in a haze of fear-sweat, initiated their Damage Control Protocol, as they usually do when one of their henchpeople makes good on their thread
It’s doing that thing again where you can’t see the comments. Here’s hoping that posting a comment will trigger something.
Even if Dear does turn out to be a trans woman, so what?
Oh, wait. These people don’t realize that trans people can be straight and conservative, and that women can be misogynist.
I didn’t imagine this story to go to being transphobic but there it is. Proof that conservatives are opportunitistic shit eaters
Carly Fiorina continues to be a front-runner in the Republican’s Worst Human on Earth pageant:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261444-fiorina-spin-after-planned-parenthood-attack-typical-left
http://www.clipartpal.com/_thumbs/pd/cartoon/Dont_Tread_On_Me_banana_peel.png
Alas, not new at all. Just the first time I’ve brought up anything besides MRAssholes, and beginning to regret it from the tarring and feathering I’ve gotten here.
The problem here is I get three options here, and they all suck:
1. Issue a pass to radical fauxminists for their place in pro-patriarchy activism through gender essentialism and involvement in forced-birther politics. Not appropriate, as it’s allowing people who agitate for patriarchy to have a free pass based on gender.
2. Use that four-letter acronym, and the same people implying I’m three inches from being Paul Elam for bringing up that radical fauxminists are part of pro-patriarchy activism will then scream that the evil trans woman used a slur, since I fully believe that four-letter acronym is unwise to use.
3. Do what I did, get tarred and feathered and accused of “blaming feminists” when I’d be blaming *myself*.
So I think given that implying some awful things about my fat ass > THREE GODDAMN PEOPLE ARE DEAD BECAUSE A FORCED-BIRTHER SHOT UP A PLANNED PARENTHOOD is apparently how we do business here, and that this is basically the same old crap when it comes to splitting hairs about trans women who scare people so as to bury the lede, I’m going to step back from discussions here for a while.
I explained where I’m coming from further on my blog, because some of this is coming perilously close to implying that it’s a trans woman “blaming feminists” and that has some really, really ugly implications.
Oddly, the same people who would have howled had I used that T acronym are going to slither away and disappear once they’ve made that implication.
In the meantime, three people are still dead for the pro-patriarchy forced-birther agenda. What was I saying about no quarter?
If you think TERFs arent willing to declare this man a trans women, you dont know TERFs. I would bet all the internet chips that TERF accounts are talking about this too. I think its *strange* to tell the targeted people – trans women – which of their harassers they can causually mention in a comments section that frequently veers off topic.
Also, why is he presumed a trans woman and not a trans man, which would make more sense (idk ant trans men with beards that epic and if such a man is out there I wanna know his secret)? Because trans men are mostly invisible.
@erica
I think everything you say is basically reasonable and correct, except for:
1. This post is not specifically about those “radical fauxminists”, so it comes close to derailing when you make the comment section all about them.
2. You’re not being “tarred and feathered”. Some people are disagreeing with you. This is normal.
Now I’m really, really confused. I don’t think my reading comprehension is terrible, but I’m just not parsing erica’s comment. Who said they’re Paul Elam, or that they’ve got a fat ass? What tarring and feathering? Trans women are blaming who for what?
I’m honestly not being rude or sarcastic here, I’m genuinely confused.