By David Futrelle
After hearing the news that the Miss America pageant is dropping its swimsuit and evening gown competitions to focus more on talent and brains, I headed over to Reddit to see what the resident misogynists were saying about the end of these noble traditions dumb things.
I expected some fulminating in places like the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit (and there was some), but it turns out that the Redditors who have the most to say on the subject are the Trump superfans who populate the TheDonald subreddit.
In countless threads on the subreddit today, TheDonald’s angry young (mostly) men set forth their trenchant critiques of the move.
More than a few of the critiques consisted of sometimes angry, sometimes resigned predictions that fat women with dyed hair would soon take over Miss America.
Others imagined the competition taken over by trans women:
![Shun_SPICY 6 points 4 hours ago Calling it now, next winner will be fat genderqueer mess of a human being with a sociology degree. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]Supreme_Dear_Leader 3 points 3 hours ago Micheal Moore??](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/0015.png?resize=546%2C364&ssl=1)
And then there was this exchange:
![shannon9473 40 points 7 hours ago I’m genuinely upset. Why are they taking everything feminine away from us? permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]That_SoundDTOM 24 points 6 hours ago You know why. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]shannon9473 9 points 6 hours ago Can you elaborate why? Thank you permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]potatosurplus 20 points 4 hours ago They want to destroy masculine men and feminine women. They want a genderless society like in THX 1138 so they have subservient minions to rule over.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/000001.png?resize=580%2C770&ssl=1)
This dude had an even more alarming prediction:
While the denizens of TheDonald had the most to say about the pageant, don’t worry! The MGTOWs had some terrible opinions to share as well.
Such is the state of the discourse on Reddit today.
The haters won’t know who to hate. Or exploit, etc.
P.S. Are some of the posts that had gone missing this evening back?
@rv
a) It’s impossible
and
b) the proposal of one is a TERF dogwhistle. Please don’t blow it anymore.
@Violet the Vile
You didn’t scare me away, don’t worry. I just couldn’t think of anything to add at the moment + I’m really scatterbrained/absentminded and easily distracted and was trying to catch up to David’s other posts. I have this thing that I feel like I need read all the other comments first before I comment on a post to make sure I don’t just repeat things already pointed out, and by the time I get there people have usually moved on to other posts or I forgot what I was gonna say.
@Dalillama
How is the proposal of a genderless society a TERF dogwhistle, just for some clarification?
@rv
It’s a TERF proposal, that TERFs bang on about. It’s blatantly predicated on erasure of trans identities.
@rv: as I understand it, if there is no such thing as gender, then there is no such thing as someone being transgender. How can you be trans if the thing that feels out of place doesn’t exist at all?
Gender rolls, on the other hand, can really just go away.
Searching “genderless” on Reddit only makes me want it to be realized sooner. Authoritarian conservatives mostly back gender roles from what I’ve seen. TERFs defend gender in a way, since they believe that people shouldn’t look like the sex they want to be, just like authoritarian conservatives.
I stand with people who say that gender is a spectrum for now, because a gender binary would make me feel forced to take sides that I don’t want to. Ideally, I wish humanity will be genderless, but we have neither the technology nor a clear idea on genderlessness to be able to fulfill it. Why do I choose that over the spectrum? Logistics. It would be far easier to cater to one pronoun and one gender as opposed to anything more than one.
@Rhuu – apparently an illiterati
I believe that trans people should be able to receive the necessary intervention upon request, but I dislike the differing standards that the genders have. However, I’m beginning to see it as increasingly justified for women to have higher status than men in various cases.
A genderless society has the same problems as wishes for one culture and one language or declarations of color blindness.
First, people don’t particularly want their identities erased because a homogeneity would be easier or more convenient for some people. Second, how do we choose what the one gender or culture or whatever is? Chances are, it would align with the dominant group.
What does this mean? How are women higher status? I’m not clear if you’re speaking of all women or trans women only here, but either way, I’m confused.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
I think it’s justified that we make them have higher status than men. It might make the men resentful, but I fear they’re right on how equality can’t be achieved.
It seems to me that lots of people who support men are all Trumpists and Putinists.
@rv
I don’t think we can have a society where we say “one gender is higher status than the other” without members of the lower status gender – whichever that may be – being unfairly victimised and treated badly. Yes, equality is difficult to achieve, but I think we do have to try, because every other option is basically signing someone or other up for a shitty life. We’re not going to get anywhere giving women higher status than men, we’ll just end up with exactly the same society the other way round and that’s a deeply tiresome idea
@Violet the Vile, Wielder of an Ideologically Weaponized Vagina
It seems like we’ve tried and failed. I expected a more gender non-conforming decade yet people look anything but gender non-conforming this decade (even though I live in a very liberal area). I would like to see a more ethical alternative to capitalism, but it seems like they had a point in how communism and socialism won’t work. So I feel like that any attempt for change in our favour is futile, and that maybe we could be driven further underground as a result. Look at where places like the US and Europe are going since 2016 – they seem to be going backwards and in an authoritarian direction.
I’d really like to be convinced that we’re winning though, or else I fear I may end up shunning a lot of people I’ve come across and known.
On the original topic, from a CBC columnist:
Let’s not kid ourselves: Miss America dropping its swimsuit competition was a business decision
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/miss-america-1.4694620
Basically, the whole thing may just be ‘traditional beauty contests can’t make money when everybody can see anything they want online anyway’.
An interesting hypothesis. On the other hand, the last time I heard, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was still a thing. Or do you think it’s next?