Women only have [redacted] to offer: A MGTOW shows his tender side

Ariblester,

Thank you for explaining you problems with the article.

The article is I believe a response to a certain kind of hypothetical statement which could – and in my country has – been used to discredit the activism and effort of the LGBT community

(There is a definition problem right here and that’s also a central point of his argument, i.e. what is the LGBT community? This difficulty can be used by opponents of LGBT rights to discredit and attack the movement for those rights – and that is what I understand him to be arguing against, more on that in a second. Let’s just be aware of this definition problem right from the start: LGBT community can mean a lot of things as you yourself pointed out).

The hypothetical statement the author is I think responding to is one at least I have heard a lot of times: “Look, LGBT community, this one person here is endorsing our candidate. See? Why are you against him, clearly he has something great to offer “the LGBT community” (unsaid: as represented in it’s entirety by this one person), too.” The assumption this “works” on is: “The LGBT community” is a monolith, one person can speak for all, one person’s experiences can stand for everyone’s experiences.

Now the author asks and that’s the foundation for all the rest of his article: “Alright, so this guy has sex with other men and endorses Trump. But does that mean that he is in any way “the LGBT community”, can he in any way speak for them, is this one person’s endorsement of Trump in any way representative or even “binding” to the rest of all people in the US (or the world) who would say of themselves that they are LGBT?” He phrases this in his article as “is a man who has sex with other men. But is he gay?” The point here is in my opinion not to police anyone’s – not even Thiel’s – self-identification as gay/homosexual/LGBT whichever their preferred term would be, but to deny that Thiel – because he has sex with men and might or might not identify as a member of “the LGBT community” however he (Thiel) defines it – has any right or ability to speak for the rest of the “LGBT community”.

This is what “gay” stands for in that sentence, an (imaginary in this case) monolithic, all-encompassing, homogeneous “LGBT community”. But, considering the general point the author is making, this is not his understanding of any LGBT reality at all. If it were, he would have to agree with the position he is taking apart here, that Thiel’s endorsement of Trump means anything at all for how the rest of us should deal with Trump. That’s what he’s arguing against. The position he has on the diversity and intersectionality of LGBT lived experience is – judging from this – pretty similar to yours and mine.

raises a broad and crucial distinction we must make in our notions of sexuality, identity, and community.

The distinction he means is not: This man is not “LGBT” (enough) because he does not check all the right ideological boxes. It’s the same I would insist on and maybe – from what you wrote – you would as well: That we need to make it clear that there is not one single monolithic LGBT experience, that the fact that he has sex with men does not automatically make him the same as me (a bisexual woman) and by extension it does not give him the right to speak for me. To be very blunt: No, I do not have to like Trump because “one of my kind” (urgh) endorsed him! And there is no “my kind” that is expressed solely through whom I want or do not want to sleep with.

In this specific sense that I understand the article to be about, I agree that sleeping with men does not make him “gay” (“gay” being shorthand for what I explained in the last sentence, “my kind” and stuff). There is more to an LGBT identity than having sex with someone who has the same biological make up as oneself. For some people that might be all there is to it, and that’s as valid as anybody else’s self-identification. But this one aspect does not make us all the same.

He should have said we need “differentiation” instead of we need “distinction”, that would have been clearer. But the distinction he means is not “gatekeeping”, but the following: Distinguishing between a) Thiel has sex with men and b) Thiel can speak for everyone else who identifies as LGBT.

In this sense – and for now in this sense only – “must” we distinguish between sexuality (a person’s concrete sexual behaviour), identity (his concrete sexual behaviour does not make him the same as everyone else who identifies as LGBT – which different people might also define very differently! – therefore he cannot speak for all others of this (imaginaryily simplified) identity) and community (again his concrete sexual behaviour does not make him a memeber of any monolithic LGBT community for which he can now speak, especially as the author speaks in the rest of the article about LGBT people who fought against being criminalized and pathologized and this activism is for him – in this specific article – the defining feature of the (one among many) LGBT communities he is talking about).

A very over the top paraphrase would be: “There could be the following argument: “This one man has sex with other men. He opposes LGBT rights. Therefore LGBT right must be wrong.” The author’s reasponse is: This is BS. We need to make a distinction here.”

This is why I don’t see three of the problems you see in the article, specifically:

1) How identifying as gay is automatically equated with being a part of the Gay culture and community

I agree and I’m pretty certain so does he as that is the hypothetical (or maybe actually stated in the past) position he is arguing against.

2) The assertion that an LGBT individual must satisfy a certain quota of ideological stances, in order to be considered truly Gay.

As I tried to outline above, I don’t think this is what he means by “distinction” or “is he gay?”. Instead I understand those phrases to mean: No matter which characteristics any one individual may share with other individuals who identify as LGBT, they cannot speak for all others based on this one criterion. Specifically in this case: No matter if he has sex with men as other people who identify as LGBT do, he can not speak for them and neither are his actions in any way “binding” for them.

4) The attempt to draw an arbitrary line in the sand between men who have sex with men (MSM) and gay men, and to minimize the experience of MSM.

Mostly the same as I tried to explain for your third point. I think he isn’t “drawing a line” anymore than I would for example, when I said that not all LGBT experiences were the same. He is trying to counter oversimplification, which to those of us who do not oversimplify in this way to begin with, might not be that obvious, so it might seem like a kind of “othering” or “gatekeeping” of a certain kind of LGBT person when in fact it means the (for us here) obvious fact that not all LGBT individuals are the same nor are their experiences.

Now the last point,

2) The assertion that there is only one Gay Culture, whether it was found in 1920s Berlin or 1970s Greenwich Village, wallpapering over the differences in the experience of LBGT individuals of Color, of a non-middle-class upbringing, etc. (hence my observation that the author is apparently unaware of the concept of intersectionality)

I didn’t understand the leaving out of other experiences as denying their existence. I read it as him giving one example that very well illustrates the point he is making about the cultural and historical dependency of LGBT identity as we understand it today – historically is was very different – which he in turn uses as an argument to support his initial statement: That “the LGBT community” doesn’t exist and that it definitely isn’t one monolithic bloc characterized by people who have sex with someone of the same sex. On the other hand I’m a bit too familiar with how this kind of writing works (and am guilty of the same bad habits problably), so I may well have assumed things which I am used to usually being implied – not mentioning something does not mean denying it’s existence or thinking it necessarily of less importance – but which weren’t made clear well enough in the article.

Moreover, he has a somewhat limited space for his argument here, but if his actual professional work on this subject did not clearly state and discuss this aspect of diversity in much more detail, I’d be tempted to agree with your initial evaluation of his qualities.

Okay, the rest, the distinctly historical approach – tracing backwards of current phenomena, the care to distinguish and avoid projecting back – I can go on for ages on this, as it’s my job and I love it and there are actually good reasons for arguing the way he does, but I have no idea how long comments can get before being “eaten” here…

I hope I didn’t come across as preaching or as if I was talking to child here. I simply tried (quite desperately I’m afraid) to express myself as precisely as possible in a language that’s not my own. I hope I made clear why I don’t see the same problems you do.

HawkAtreides,
Your points are very good, as well, especially as they touch not only on the projecting back issue but much more importantly on the many dangers of results of academic work being abused and instrumentalized. In this instance by people attempting to erase the real experiences and oppression of contemporary LGBT individuals by quoting some result of historical research that is absolutely beside the point… I you are still interested I would like to address this in a different comment, although maybe not right now, since I have an appointment and just spent 1hour on this comment. Just know, please, that I’m not dismissing your concerns, they are very valid.

I have PTSD and I bluescreen embarrassingly easily by talk of rape, but actually reading that confession just made me feel relieved. I don’t expect everyone to experience it the same way I do, of course.

I do believe that we as a society need to allow repentance for awful crimes, or else there isn’t any motivation for a criminal to stop. We feminists talk a lot about how to teach young people not to be rapists, but I believe we should also be talking about teaching people to stop being rapists. We need to teach rapists that they don’t have to stay that way forever, and that they can make amends. I wish we heard more narratives about ex-rapists and what they did to set things right.

Obviously, no individual should be expected to forgive in any way, but institutionally I think we need to be making room for rapists to repent. I know I would give just about anything to hear regret from one specific individual.

@Snowberry
I don’t mean to pile on you, but I want to address a different part of your post than what has already been discussed.

And then are disappointed, because that’s not the kind of personality that they’re attracted to.

Personality and gender are two different things. There are many facets of my personality which I’m told are not feminine enough or are too masculine. But I’m 100% cis. I despise the idea that my personality conform to the roles the patriarchy has determined to be acceptable for women’s personalities and only those things. And that if I decide to incorporate some of the acceptable “cool girl” masculine traits I must then be doubly as much feminine in other aspects. That’s not who I am.

@LittleLurker

Thank you for your reply; I found it to be very well-argued and I feel that I’ve reached a better understanding of where your were coming from as a result.

However, I will still have to respectfully disagree on your reading of Downs’ article, as I feel that you’ve, perhaps unconsciously, minimized the degree to which Downs argues in favor of precisely the monolithic idea of “The LGBT Community”. Specifically, one that follows the precepts of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s.

I will allow that, at the very end of the article, Downs writes that

This does not mean that LGBT culture is homogenous or that all LGBT people have the same ideological viewpoints or values, but it does mean that they all understand, on some level, the notion of gay culture.

But note the important point here; the idea that Gay Culture is a common touchstone that all LGBT individuals have access to, and which they must protect:

The power of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s was to shatter previous negative connotations associated with homosexuality and to imbue a new meaning of the term “gay,” revealing how sexual identity translated to a specific community of people who were part of a distinct culture.

[…] Since the end of the ’70s, many gay people have not invested in the creation of a cultural identity to the extent that their forbears did. Part of the success of gay liberation meant that they no longer needed to do this kind of cultural work.

But there are real human consequences to this retreat.

And where does this Gay Culture stem from? Who were the individuals who birthed this movement? Downs has the answer:

[T]he people who began to be identified as homosexual started to disagree with these assertions and found promise in this alternative identity. They established enclaves within the mainstream culture, places like pre-war Greenwich Village in New York City or Berlin in the 1920s, where they lived and socialized.

[…]

When the people in the [Stonewall] riot stood up against the police, they embraced a definition of homosexuality that recognized that people who had sex with people of the same gender had a distinct culture, identity, and history that connected them to 1920s Berlin and beyond.

[…]

[In the 1970s in] Toronto, gay people began The Body Politic, which was a newspaper that reached readers across North America and throughout the word, solidifying a global gay identity.

He credits, by name, Western urban neighborhoods, a New York riot, and a North American publication, written by and catering to a mostly White urban gay audience, for “solidifying a global gay identity”.

By the logic of gay liberation, Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity.

Note that, if we follow his rhetorical trajectory, Downs isn’t just dispassionately listing what the 1970s gay liberation movement’s ideological roots are: he expects us, given what we have just absorbed, to agree that the gay liberation movement’s positions are a right and natural development of the gay communities of the past, and that Thiel’s rejection of the cultural struggle to preserve the Gay Culture is something to be condemned.

And what are the dangers of not protecting this Gay Culture?

“Gay” does not simply mean sex with another man or even interest in another man physically, as in [Orlando mass shooter Omar] Mateen’s case, but rather “gay,” as defined by the liberation movement, meant an open declaration of acceptance within a community of people who understood that their sexual orientation made them a part of distinct culture.

Further, identifying Mateen as gay plays into an early-20th-century definition of homosexuality as criminally deviant. The unspoken subtext in this assertion is that gay people are aberrant and their sexual orientation drives them to commit such horrific crimes.

Downs is basically advocating that LGBT individuals work harder and signal harder to those outside the community, to define more stringently who is and isn’t Gay, lest they become lumped in, by those outside the community, with criminals like Omar Mateen.

And, of course, people like Peter Thiel.

When the people in the [Stonewall] riot stood up against the police, they embraced a definition of homosexuality that recognized that people who had sex with people of the same gender had a distinct culture, identity, and history that connected them to 1920s Berlin and beyond.

Something that I believe gets forgotten when discussing Stonewall (and Comptons in ’66 and Cooper’s Donuts in ’59) is, the people who were involved at the beginning of all three were trans women

@ Freemage

Thank you. I was confused to the point of drooling over that!! (>|<)

There have been rumors before, but Trump has denied them. But maybe those rumors have now been confirmed?

I’ve been wondering for a while now whether Trump was waffling about whether he wanted to be president or put on the best reality TV show ever: Presidential Campaign 2016! At this point (and probably from here on out), he seems to be leaning toward the latter.

Donald Trump May Launch TV Venture After Election
Son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner reportedly “approached” a firm specializing in media deals.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-tv-venture_us_5804d13fe4b0e8c198a8f3cb

So he admits he is a rapist and still maintains that men are more moral and romantic than women?

Of course.

If women are nothing but wet holes, then MGTOW should be perfectly content with a cored apple.

Or is he saying they’re defective wet holes, because wet holes are supposed to care what he thinks? But women don’t have empathy, remember? Or ears? How can women be passive inanimate objects, and yet be subject to moral judgment? I’m confused. I’m going to go outside and yell at a mud puddle now.

@ Buttercup

Yelling at mud puddles is probably a more constructive and enlightening activity that Mr GOAT has managed ever. Certainly better than his reddit post.

not sure if maybe I’m just giving him(?) too much credit or something but the way it came across to me was that whatevsGOAT was being all: “Men are more romantic, but since women suck, I choose not to be” though it’s entirely possible that we are just dealing with a severe case of lack of self awareness…

A past-rapist who was truly repentant would accept the consequences of the act, including the legal consequences. Maybe I’m just sheltered from the world, but I’ve never heard of a repentant rapist going to the cops, confessing to the crime, and being willing to take the penalty. Therefore, I don’t really believe there is any such thing. There are rapists who wish they weren’t rapists and feel guilt over what they did, but it seems like it’s never enough guilt to actually pay the price.

Uugh, why does my comment seem so awkward? It’s like there’s a part missing or something… ?