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.
Nonwhite.
However, be aware: black Americans face different forms of oppression than other nonwhite groups. Be mindful before you lump them in with other nonwhite groups and be sure that the oppression in question is equally applied.
Kinda long, but: Racial and ethnic minorities. Or just “minorities” would do, I guess.
@Lisa, I believe the term you are looking for is People Of Color (PoC), alternately Women Of Color (WoC), which is terms I have seen being used by people themselves to describe themselves at least. Since I am white I am no authority on this though, so I would say to go look up what people that this directly affects have to say about it
Oh I agree, but that is a great term for the purposes of a short post about the generalised bigotry of those right wing, conservative, racist, misyogynist.religious men..
Can anyone actually point me to an example of a TERF (however we define that) actually claiming that Dear is trans?
Policy of Madness — this is prolly another small corner of radical feminism, but the whole “womyn as womyn” thing makes me noptopus back to places I don’t have to play pick a gender. Just my two cents on why I can’t don the label of an ideology I mostly agree with.
Lisa — Mediterranean? Huh? Maybe this is a New England thing but my Italian ass doesn’t face anything like the shit black Americans face. I am legit confused.
On topic — since when did being a minority, of any sort, mean you can’t also be an asswipe? I was unaware that assholery was confined to the cishet white men of the country. Oh, right, we’re playing “look over there” and since we aren’t babies lacking object permanence it’s not working.
Argenti Aertheri: perhaps it is my UK and Australian experiences where (for example and pre the whole terrorism thing) Lebanese (yes even the Christian ones) were beng attacked all the time by bigots just based on them being non-white. Indians too, Pakistanis and all the rest.
Users can’t delete their own comments here, and there’s no full time surveillance either -often when we do want someone moderated or banned we need to reach out to the mods/David and response is far from instant.
Also, any time someone was put in moderation/banned/had comments moderated or deleted, I have always, always always seen a note from David and/or the mod.
I think this is worth making clear since the text that followed was this:
Hmmmm nah, not really.
Either there wasn’t a comment to begin with, or it got deleted for some other reason, like a WordPress error (which I have seen and suffered here).
Also, seconding not being necessary to bring up TERFs when white cis het? angry dudes are terrorizing us.
What is the “womyn as womyn” thing? It sounds like gender essentialism, but I don’t recall ever seeing it termed that way so I’m not sure. Gender essentialism never leads anywhere good.
Policy of Madness — yeah, it is. There’s probably a huge overlap between that group and TERFs since they both seem to think trans people have no role in feminism (or worse). It’s excluding women not smacked, declared a girl and handed to mom, and people who were smacked, declared a girl, and grew up to go “nope, I’m actually not a woman”. I *think* it’s how trans men mostly fly under the radar, by being seen as confused women.
Full disclosure here: I’ve yet to encounter anyone calling themselves a radical feminist, with their own blog and audience and such, who didn’t eventually make me wonder just how feminist it was to claim that women who don’t agree with you are blinded by patriarchy. Like, even my best experiences out in the wide world of reading stranger’s words have left that nasty taste of “my way is the only way”.
Sprinkle more “I suspect this is a vocal minority” though.
Lisa — yeah, it’s a cultural thing then, all the places you named would be either Middle Eastern or Indian here, with this weird mostly ignored land in between that I’m not sure people could name on a map despite us being at war in the region and things like the border of Pakistan kinda being a big deal (huh? Did we cross it? Sorry about that *bangs head on wall*)
@Luzbelitx Then it must have been a WordPress error or something then as it was there last night when I posted a response to it. Why on earth would I make up something when a response could possibly (and turned out to be) inflamable when my entire point is to stop with derailing the comment section with “what about the radfems” and instead get back on topic?
Incidentily, let’s stop derailing this now, for gods sake.
I think trans folk have every right to be skeptical of self described radical feminists when, historically speaking, they have produced the vast majority of the body of feminist academic and political projects aimed at othering and demonizing trans folk.
Yes #NotAllRadfems hate trans people, but the vast majority of feminists who employ a particular kind of anti-trans rhetoric are self identified radfems. I do think they have rightfully earned my distrust and the distrust of others. I certainly don’t hate all radfems, but I would be particularly cautious around radfems until they’ve made their position on trans folk clear to me.
A few thoughts. Much of what I want to say has already been said by others here, but just to clarify where I”m coming from.
I don’t think debates over the acronym TERF are particularly constructive. It’s an accurate description of a certain subset of radical feminists (who are not allowed to post here, BTW). Using it doesn’t imply that all radical feminists are transphobic.
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 assume most of you probably agree with me on most or all of this.
As far as I know, there aren’t any TERFs calling Dear a trans woman. So let’s focus on the actual people making the claim, not on people who could hypothetically do so. Obviously, if TERFs take up this weird claim it’s something that we should definitely talk about. But talking about hypotheticals seems like a big distraction right now.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, I haven’t deleted any comments in this thread. There were some trolls who tried to comment in the thread, but I didn’t let their comments through; that’s true of pretty much every thread on WHTM.
That said, nightmarelyre, one of your comments did get eaten by the spam filter, which sometimes eats random comments, especially in busy threads. (At this point, I’m inclined to leave it unposted in order to facilitate the whole “moving on” thing.”)
Sorry I wasn’t able to get to this sooner; my schedule is very weird these days.
Also: if there’s some sort of problem brewing in any thread, or if your comments aren’t being posted, or if there’s anything else I might be able to do something about, please email me. Even when my schedule is weird, it’s the fastest way to get my attention.
Ted, shut your cakehole.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/11/29/3726311/ted-cruz-planned-parenthood-shooting-transgendered/
Policy of Madness: yes it is biological gender essentialism.
Taking Greer as an example it is purely about XX genes (she doesn’t acknowledge the science about the need for hormones to trigger them properly at the right times) and that intersex people are all just ‘failed males’ (and that “cis women should be ‘cruel and unsympathetic’ to AIS, other intersex and trans women”).
She also stated that trans men are ONLY caused by endocrine medical conditions, the implicaton is that if they were fixed then they would not want to be trans anymore.
I did an analytic comparison between Greer and the right wing Christian Family Research Council and Geer was actually more gender essentialist than they were, because they at least acknowledge hormonal effects and intersex people.
Most of the rest of the TERFs are the same, biological essentialists, you are what your genes say, what genitals you are born with and that is that forever.
And on a different topic entirely:
@abars01
I guess I disagree about the mission of this blog. While I don’t want to duplicate what, say, Right Wing Watch does, this blog has never been exclusively about MRAs and the manosphere. I’m not going to start quoting every horrible thing that Pat Robertson or Donald Trump says, but I do think it’s sometimes worth pointing out when “generic” right-wingers say/do misogynistic things. And I think an armed assault on a Planned Parenthood fits in the “misogyny” category.
And as a few other people have said, when something big and disturbing happens in the world, commenters here generally appreciate having a thread (a regular thread or an open thread) devoted to it.
The conservatives are just going downhill, I wonder how many trans people will be attacked or killed over this:
“Ted Cruz Describes Alleged Planned Parenthood Shooter As ‘Transgendered Leftist Activist’.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/11/29/3726311/ted-cruz-planned-parenthood-shooting-transgendered/
I will defend not using that acronym because it has this nasty habit of showing up clipped out of context with allegations that it’s a “slur”. How about “genetic essentialists”? Seriously, I’m pretty obviously not against radical feminists as a radfem myself, so I don’t even know. That’s my personal call, but I don’t really want to end up being demonized for using the acronym, so I don’t. That’s selfcare. But I need a term to use to refer to the women who falsely take up the banner of feminism and use it to punch down on other women. I’m all ears, but I’m not using that acronym, because being accused of using a “slur” leads to demonization that’s very bad for me. No, it hasn’t happened here, but I am not free to use that acronym because what happens here can show up elsewhere.
Similarly, being accused of “blaming feminists” requires a reply. I’m sorry that part of that cascade got things off-track, but it is very necessary when someone accuses a trans woman of “blaming feminists” unbidden. There needs to be some level of shared trust, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request, as that accusation gets used to silence trans women, whether or not it’s the intent. How can I blame feminists writ large as a feminist myself?
I’m sorry things went sideways, but at the same time, please don’t assume evil intent because a trans woman is trying to participate and protect herself at the same time, and the assumption of evil intent and disingenuous responses on top of words being shoved in my mouth is deeply uncomfortable and alienating. Please understand these are real human beings involved and I’m trying to do my damn best.
AnAndrejaPejicBlog, I’m doing a quick post on the Cruz thing, would you like credit in the post for bringing it to my attention?
Just chiming in to say that I totally agree that this topic is well within the purview of the blog. Such transparent misogyny is, at the very least, sourced from much the same twisted viewpoints as the rest of the manosphere.
I’m really glad this blog is here and that this madness is being noted so we can all collectively /facepalm over it like responsible citizens.
And, boy, do I need to. Shaking my head, etc., etc. It’s sad that I’m so used to it now that all I can manage is a shrug and a sigh (and a short burst of explosive anger that thankfully dissipated).
I’ll take credit if you want to give it to me 😀
What do TERFs call themselves? What are not-TERFs ‘allowed’ to call them? Do they prefer not to be spoken of as being a distinct group? From what I’ve seen of TERFs, they’re big on trying to tightly control all discussion (maintaining frame?).
zyrusticae
Please don’t say “madness” it’s ableist. if you are new here then welcome.
Sorry. Old habits die hard. Still need to train myself to catch the ones that slip into casual usage.
Replace the word with “stupidity” if that works better for ya. Or maybe “foolishness”. Hmm, lots of options…
AnAndrejaPejicBlog (@A_Pejic_Blog): That varies, some call themselves radical feminist lesbians, some just radical feminists , others gender critical feminists, some just feminist butch lesbians, etc.
There is no clear self administered term they use.