Ted Cruz takes up the bizarre claim that the Planned Parenthood shooter is “a transgendered leftist activist.”

Fresh on the heels of a reminder of the cost of bearing false witness, Ted Cruz makes an outlandish, inflammatory statement that proves his lack of commitment to Christian values.

@some username

uh I am a trans nonbinary person who cant pass as cis of either gender and whose gender ID is rarely accepted. all Im sayin.

On the bright side, being falsely labeled and remembered as a liberal transwoman is probably a fate worse than death for Dear.

Hopefully that will cause him to come clean about why he did it and the right wing will be forced to see just how far toward extremism they’ve fallen.

But is more likely they would just say he’s lieing and the whole thing is another one of obama’s false flag operations like the Sandy hook shootings

Wait, I didn’t know one could “register” as a “transgendered leftist activist”. Where do I sign up?!

@Kale

I was asking you to be more mindful of your word usage, not “scolding” you. I’m not sure why you’re acting so defensive over this and apparently refuse to clear up a misunderstanding even though it’s causing you distress? But whatever, good day to you.

Wait, I didn’t know one could “register” as a “transgendered leftist activist”. Where do I sign up?!

You get automatically signed up when you commit a heinous crime obviously and directly inspired by right-wing ideology.

@kale

I never wanted a debate in the first place, I just wanted you to, as said, be mindful of your word usage. I don’t want, as you condescendingly put it, to put on “kid gloves”. Once again I have no idea why you’re acting so defensive. I am trans myself, a trans girl, so I know that great pains go to trying to present yourself as a certain way as most, if not all, trans people. That being said, not everyone can put in this effort for various reasons, which is why I took umbrage with what you said. Not everyone can “look the part.” Also, I was not saying you were distressed, I was asking and, at the most, hinting at it, hence the question mark.

All throughout this exchange it feels like you have purposely misunderstood me for reasons beyond me. You saying “he appears as a man” was not “clearly” the mindset of the people you were talking about. To me that looked like something you were saying personally, that you believe that Dears looks like a man, and I was telling you that saying people look like a certain gender and using that as “proof” to discredit them being trans is a damaging thing to say. If you somehow still do not understand that then I really have nothing more to say to you. That’s all I wanted from the start, not a “debate”, not an “argument”, just for you to acknowledge you said a bad thing and to, at most, apologise, but I’m not getting that so nevermind, go about your day and forget about the “stranger”, as you enjoy pointing out.

some sort of username,

I’m confused. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that it’s impermissable to say that someone looks like they have a particular gender. I find that surprising. It is, of course, always possible to be wrong. One should certainly keep their humility about this, and correct oneself with grace when one needs to be corrected.

That said, I’m not sure how to reconcile the idea that there is no such thing as “looking like a man” or “looking like a woman” with the fact that some transpeople of my acquaintance have invested a great deal of effort in looking– in their words — like a woman (or like a man).

I have always believed that it’s basically necessary to make guess about strangers’ genders based on their names and appearances. In principle, we could go to gender-neutral pronouns for everyone and avoid speculating on the gender of strangers (there’s probably nothing stopping you from using “they” for everyone), but most people enjoy being referred to with he or she pronouns, and in conversations where the topic of trans identities has not been raised, we have no qualms about taking our best guess. In a recent thread about Jennifer Lawrence, we all referred to her as “she.” I’ve never heard any statement from her about her gender, and as far as I know no one else here has either. We all gendered her female based on her look, her name, and the fact that she hasn’t made a public show of correcting us. It’s entirely possible that she’s genderqueer and hasn’t found it worth mentioning, or actually a man but unable to come out, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

To say that Robert Dear is most likely a cis man requires only 2 leaps of logic, both of which I find reasonable. First, he wears a beard. It is every transwoman’s right to wear a beard if she wants to, of course, and if I should meet one who does, I won’t say anything about it. However, I’ve never met or heard of one who does. I strongly suspect that they are vanishingly rare. (There are of course all kinds of genderqueer people who might wear one) On the basis of his name, look, and ideology, I’m pretty comfortable assuming he’s a man unless proven otherwise.

Assuming he is male-gendered, we still can’t be certain whether he is a cis or a trans man. However, he is 6’3 and able to grow a full beard. Some FAAB people are 6’3, and some FAAB people can grow enormous beards, especially with hormone treatment. But this is, again, quite rare.

What is the harm in assuming that someone like Robert is a cis man, absent evidence to the contrary?

So a bomb goes off at the boston marathon, there are 3 deaths and dozens of injuries, and it’s an act of islamic terrorism. But a man goes on a shooting spree at planned parenthood, there are 3 deaths and dozens of injuries, and it’s a murder committed by a “deranged individual” with no real connection to any ideology.
Conservative logic for you, folks.

@Bernardo Soares

Cruz has a farily good chance of winning the nomination. Assuming Trump doesn’t actually want the job, and assuming Carson will fizzle out, it’s probably down to either Cruz or Rubio.

Orion — I was gonna copy paste where this came up on the last thread, but it seems I was mistaken. It wasn’t kale last time but someone with a similar gravatar. Last time around it was far more clearly a case of “um, how about no”, I, obviously, can’t speak for some sort of username, but I’d conflated the comments (bad Argenti, no cookie!)

But yeah, that one was how they’d rather trust a form than their eyes and that’s a path I’d rather not stray down. Whereas, if I follow correctly, kale was pointing out (in a round about way) the trans misogyny of the right — assume trans woman, degrade trans women, profit! I’m way more comfortable questioning why they made that assumption, when breads are generally coded as male, than I am discussing whether you should judge people’s gender based on appearance.

I admit, I conflated the comments, and may be misreading the situation, but scrolling back up to read kale’s comment it looks like they were questioning the right wing’s assumptions, not Dear’s gender.

Kale — I’m failing to remember your preferred pronouns, and for that I apologize and hope “they” will suffice.

Orion, Some sort of username’s point was simply to highlight the implicit cissexism of saying the “well, [person] looks like a [man|woman]” as being harmful to transfolk, as there is no particular way of looking like a trans person, just as well as there is no particular way of looking cisgender. I can assure you there are trans women who’ve kept their beards, and it exposes them to a particularly vile form of transphobic mockery from MRAs as well as some regressive feminists. This seems to be a recurring problem; the previous thread had someone within the first dozen comments (now deleted, thanks moderators!) averring that Dear couldn’t possibly be trans on account of their height being 6′ 3″ or 6′ 4″, and here you are speculating about following the deliberately planted red herring to its illogical conclusion. Pro tip: Don’t do this.