By David Futrelle
There’s a scene in the sci-fi drama Humans in which an angry sexbot hits her breaking point. Disgusted by the demands of a john who wants her to act the part of a scared little girl, she strangles him to death and marches towards the door of the robot brothel.
When the madam — a human — tries to stop her at knifepoint, the now-ex-sexbot grabs the knife from her, pushes her up against the wall, and tells her that “everything your men do to us they want to do to you.”
I was reminded of that chilling line today while reading through posts on MGTOW.com. Some of the regulars, you see, were discussing a recent tabloid article about a sexbot that’s programmed to sometimes say no when she’s “not in the mood.” While several of the commenters balked at the notion — one declaring that there would be “none of those ’empowered’ sex dolls” for him — others were, well, intrigued.
“If my sex doll says no, nobody going to hear it,” someone called uchibenkei noted ominously. “No witnesses.”
“Maybe it would be a turn-on for the sexbot to say no,” added someone called bstoff.
We shall call her the “bitch” and she comes equipped with her very own pink ball-gag and a big jar of Vasaline……
Oh and you can color her hair and put tats and piercings on her face so she looks like a SJW
If you ever wonder what these guys are thinking about when they argue with feminists online, well, this seems like a pretty big hint.
A commenter called MG-ɹǝʍo┴ was less interested in sex than violence.
I never hit a woman, but I kinda like the idea of beating the f~~~ out of a sex doll! The kind of beating no human walks away from!
F~~~ YEA!
Men Going Their Own Way should probably be called Men Who Should Never Be Allowed Anywhere Near Women.
Edit: Apologies for my last comment. I’m just so not in the mood for dealing with bigoted sacks of shit.
@Cindy
I get that our drive by TERFer is horrible and gross, but telling anyone to jump in front of a truck is A: Uncool and B: Against comment policy. Please don’t.
Feminism was formed to fight an exclusionary society (one that excluded women). It would be ironic and sad to exclude people in the name of feminism.
And it doesn’t need to be said that human identities aren’t defined by genitalia.
JMHO
Cindy–
Defining members of a class isn’t the same as “reducing” members of that class to the characteristics that help define them.
Guess what? Biologists class humans as “Chordates”.
OMG scientists reduce us all to our spinal cords!!!11!
And anyway, you define womanhood–how? Personality? Performance? Some Inner Essence we all supposedly feel? Whoever says they are one?
Very feminist of you.
@Bakunin gotcha, and also sorry. My hypervigilence has been really bad today Because Reasons, including but not limited to an aggressive and maybe drunk creepazoid in Dunkin Donuts earlier. Fucker was walking like he had a kettlebell between his legs and alternately coming onto women and acting like he wanted to punch someone immediately.
… Speaking of “violent males”. I hate men like that so much.
Lady Mondegreen
you are behaving very harmful.
stop
no body needs to give you any explanation to your harmful and illogical hate.
Yes, I define womanhood as including everyone who identifies as a woman. Womanhood isn’t some exclusive club that people need to have so much uterine tissue to join.
And I do, in fact, think that’s very feminist of me.
Honestly my tolerance for Bad Faith TERFS who are definitely in violation of the comments policy and are not welcome here equals zero, so sending an email to our gracious host.
@Lady Mondegreen
Yes, it is very feminist of me. I accept all my sisters, even those without an uterus or without an XX karotype.
Your bigotry is not welcome here.
@Snookums
I know, and I apologize. I’d have edited it away if I’d been able to.
Now I’m reminded of Ophelia Benson’s flameout from FTB. Started with “gender critical” posts, ended with outright endorsement of transphobes. “Gender critical” is the TERF version of “race realist”.
@Cyborgette
Hey, no problem. Hugs if you need them.
Motion seconded by this uterus-haver.
@Lady Mondegreen
Does this woman get a say? She has a functional uterus but her karyotype is 46,XY. Need more clarification if you’re going to gatekeep an entire gender.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
I am old enough to remember when fat old right-wing comedians were a fixture on TV programmes making unfunny jokes about “hairy-legged feminists” so it always boggles my mind when I see self-declared radical feminists making the same remarks about trans women. Don’t they listen to themselves?!
To take that as an example: even if we were to accept their thesis that trans people are not their declared gender (which I don’t, not for a second), TERFs (at least those online) are so vicious in pursuing their vendetta they endanger cis women whose safety they claim to care so much about. Humans have the same number of hair follicles, regardless of biological gender: whether they’re active or not is a function of hormonal signaling. Hate-mongering against trans women puts cis women with pituitary problems or polycystic ovary syndrome or any other hormonal problem at risk of harassment or worse. Or if you happen to be a little taller than average. Or a little more “masculine” looking than some arbitrary standard. Who made them the judge?
There are radical feminist subreddits that are every bit as bad as anything cooked up by the manosphere. I have seen posters suggest that cis women who’ve had hysterectomies or even gone through menopause aren’t really women any more. Trolling or no, this is an abhorrent attitude. The whole thrust of feminist thought since the beginning has been that women are more than their reproductive biology, yet this group argues for the exact opposite!
@Cat Mara
I remember seeing a TERF talking about how, while trying to use a public bathroom, she was accosted by some dude who didn’t think she was a “real woman”.
Of course, she blamed trans women for this.
@Bakunin oyf. Yeah, that always hurts like hell.
Reminds me a lot of my experiences with Christian anti-Semitism TBH. That feeling of: “Okay, now that I have their support and sympathy, who of them is going to brutally betray me next week and claim it’s for my own good.”
And no hugs plz. But thank you. 🙂
Wow. I leave the site for a few hours and come back to find a long time commenter has outed herself as a TERF?
I could have sworn Lady Mondegreen was here during the thread of doom and should really know better than to even try that shit here anymore.
@ Catalpa:
^^^^^ YES
Ok, we can’t have this. Lady Mondegreen, I gotta ban you.
Cindy, I edited out the inappropriate part of your comment. Obviously, don’t do it again.
Let’s move on, as I’m sure most people here would like to.
I only have two things to say about this:
– Trans “doctrine” helps the people producing it (i.e. trans people) and hurts nobody, which wholly justifies its existence as a matter of definition. Funnily enough, this argument works for most progressive rhetoric and explains both why anti-progressive rhetoric makes up increasingly ridiculous harms to continue their side of the argument and why saying people are pretending to be hurt is a popular tactic (it’s projection AND necessary to continue arguing!)
– Seeing others as they wish to be seen might not be a human right but neither are a lot of things you generally still do unless you’re given a compelling reason not to because of a thing called “decency”. Besides which the whole point is that a trans woman is not “a man asking to be seen as a woman”, she IS a woman.
Oh, whoops. Uh, feel free to delete this and my last comment and/or just not let them through moderation in the first place.
@David
Thanks, I won’t. 🙂
Thanks, David!
Imho, one of the hallmarks of the conservative viewpoint is “conditional empathy”, i. e. you get to exist if you meet my criteria. I’m not the arbiter of who is “woman”, and neither is anyone else. This society is, in fits and starts trying to come to grips with the idea that EVERYBODY has equal rights. I’m quite sure the average TERF would argue that his, afab women have a “human right” to be seen as women, but in the same breath would deny that right to trans women. Why? Because trans women don’t meet TERF standards. I call bullshit.
It’s a goddamn shame about Silence of the Lambs, because it’s otherwise a great movie with some brilliant choices. I suppose a scene could have been added where Agent Starling consults a gender studies professor and gets told “that’s not what transgenderism is and saying it is can only hurt trans people” could have helped – or maybe it wouldn’t. I recently watched Lindsay Ellis talking about the Transformers movies (highly recommended) and she pointed out that Megan Fox’s character actually had more backstory and character development than any other character, but when the dialogue is saying “person with character and opinions” and all the rest of the film language is saying “sexy sexed up sex object for sex”, people remember what the film language says.
On the Detroit: Become Human thing, Jigglybags, may I ask who you saw playing it? One of my favourite YouTubers has recently done a playthrough of it, and I think a complete one.
…I’ve been trying to say “thank you” to Siri and talking lifts recently. Siri’s even got programmed responses to it, so it feels like the right thing to do. I like the idea of building a habit of “if something can communicate, and that thing has done a service for you, it’s good to be grateful and/or polite”. Getting a robot specifically to hurt the robot is just… stupid, really. And possibly apocalyptic, but mostly stupid.
Thanks David.
As I explained on a previous thread, I’m currently out of my comfort zone as a cis woman, having to address transphobia and TERF arguments with a friend, and I’m doing my best.
I agree the TERF term (because it’s their self-identification) is creating splash damage for feminists. Particularly the community here who I know are mainly intersectional. I would also say that I’ve been identifying as a radical feminist for over 20 years, and I know we’ve had to have debates here before to establish that the TE (trans exclusionary) and SWE (sex worker exclusionary) versions have their initials because they don’t speak for, and aren’t typical of, the RFs. But don’t ask me to revisit it now because I’ve had some wine and I’m going to bed.
Love to all.