By David Futrelle
Generally speaking, it’s a waste of time for sensible people to argue with TERFs — that is, Trans-Excluding Radical Feminists. But on rare occasions it can be, well, highly illuminating. And weirdly entertaining.
Take, for example, the strange debate that broke out in J.K. Rowling’s mentions last night (FWIW, Rowling herself had nothing to do with it). After a long pitched battle over such fascinating topics as whether or not TERF is a slur (it’s not, BTW), one TERF demanded to know why a trans lesbian was interested in dating … other lesbians.
@TheaGardO replied that it wasn’t about the genitals: “No one can change sex … males never get a ‘fully female body.'”
Emma responded with a question, and a NEW HERO responded with an unexpected answer:
Er, what?
Someone called Malachite Tiger tried to tease out the implications with a sarcastic comment, and then things got EPIC.
Um …..
“Vaginal mucus is certainly a key element [of] what straight men are attracted to in female bodies.” That’s a slogan I’ve never seen on a t-shirt, that’s for sure.
I can’t speak for lesbians, but as a straight man, I have to say that the term “vaginal mucus” has never once popped into my head during a sexual fantasy. I’ve never heard a guy brag about his girlfriend’s awesome vaginal mucus, or suggest to me that I “check out the mucus” on some hot gal walking by.
Yes, straight guys tend to get psyched when a cis woman they’re with gets really wet down in that, er, humid region, though to be honest this is generally because they like to give themselves credit for this happy development. Some guys are obsessed with going down on cis women, and the taste is part of that whole experience; but other guys — as cis women understandably complain — aren’t.
Meanwhile, you have probably heard about the obsession many straight dudes have with putting their dicks in women’s butts, where, by definition, there is no vaginal mucus and the necessary lubrication comes in little bottles or tubes you can literally buy at any drug store. And guess what, either option down there feels pretty good for the guy.
Seriously, as long as a cis guy has some place to put his dick, or maybe a couple of options (not all of them necessarily located on the bottom half of the body), he’s generally pretty pleased. And there is obviously a lot more to sex than putting dicks in, well, whatever hole or crevice feels good to put them in. Sex is about more than genitals. And while your preferences are your preferences, and that’s fine, the people who are the most open about what counts as sex tend to have (and to be) the most fun.
The talk about vaginal mucus seems weird because it is weird. Love is about people, not about sexual organs and their particular secretions. Straight men (and lesbians, and bi or poly people of whatever gender) can and do enjoy sex with women who have surgically constructed vaginas, or no vaginas at all. Women (and gay men, and bi/pan folks) can enjoy sex with guys whose dicks aren’t even close to porn-star sized — and with guys who are impotent or literally have no dicks. Anyone confused by any of this can easily find numerous videos illustrating all these scenarios online, and many, many more.
TERFs are obsessed with “natiral” sex, but they talk about it as if they (and we) were Martians.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
Not sure whether it falls into the puppet-porn genre (which I guess we’ve just agreed is a thing), but there’s an odd short film called The Blindness of the Woods, which is a sort of fairy tale/Swedish porn movie (it was actually made in Argentina iirc) about a blind woman living alone in the woods who is seduced then abandoned by a lumberjack but later finds happiness with a bear (who she thinks is still the lumberjack.)
Everyone and everything in this movie is either a knitted puppet or an actor in a full-body knitted costume.
OT: Not good.
Supreme court ruling on gerrymandering ‘imperils system of government’, says Kagan – live
Court withdraws from partisan gerrymandering cases, allowing voting maps to continue, as ruling on 2020 census citizenship question expected
OTOH:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/jun/27/trump-supreme-court-news-census-gerrymandering-today-democrats-2020-debates-latest-live-updates
@Amtep:
I’d almost forgotten that scene in Team America: World Police.
I enjoyed that movie, thought it did a wonderful balancing act between parody and homage. But it’s also just the epitome of Parker and Stone’s ‘everybody (else) on both Left and Right is stupid’ attitude.
In the ‘there’s an xkcd for everything’ category: I think this best describes my feelings on those two.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/atheists.png
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve commented here. What a thread to delurk on.
@brian I am going to have to check out that podcast at some point (wow, there’s a lot of it). I started a similar reread project with my partner (in writing, at our blog) but we only got through a book and a half before running out of energy to continue. I need to get back to that soon.
On the subject of J.K. Rowling and transphobia, it’s unfortunately been pretty obvious for a while. I’m reluctant to label her a TERF solely because I don’t think she qualifies as any sort of feminist and her work is fairly full of sexism and misogyny, but that’s more of a gripe with the term TERF than anything else (I recognise the history of TERFism having grown out of certain strains of radfem thought, but it’s basically all gender essentialism now). I like the term FART (feminism-appropriating reactionary transphobe) that I’ve seen used around here.
Every time the conversation about her transphobia starts up again, I start noticing upticks in traffic to this post my partner wrote, in which she quotes a disgustingly transphobic scene from one of Rowling’s (“Galbraith’s”) Cormoran Strike novels.
https://pointstick.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/the-silkworm-part-eleven-i-quit/
[Trigger warnings for transphobia, violence, incarceration; worse at the link] Short version, the detective protagonist beats up a trans woman (admittedly it starts out as self-defence) and threatens her with prison rape while musing on whether she is “pre-op”.
While I have not read that book myself, I don’t get the impression that scene is written as though we’re meant to have any sympathy whatsoever for her, but rather that we’re meant to find the detective’s reaction reasonable and possibly “badass”. It’s disgusting and I think this deserves greater exposure.
Rowling is a regressive hack, but that’s a lot easier to see in her non-Potter writing (it’s obvious in Potter too in retrospect, but I understand how people missed it at the time). I think a lot of people are just too attached to their nostalgia and/or fandom goggles to see it, and remembering a better version of her work that they actually had a fair hand in creating themselves.
I was just reading “The Martian” by Andy Weir. At one point in the book, Mark Watney, the titular character and a straight guy, talks about having sex with women. Nowhere does he mention vaginal mucus though ?.
Maybe it’s something #notallstraightmen talk about?
Just on the topic of the debates, I got into it with some of the regulars at Wonkette about their obvious loathing for Bernie Sanders. I get that this is a touchy subject and if it’s something best left elsewhere, just let me know (I certainly don’t want to relitigate 2016), but… there’s something that really bothers me about the “liberal” discourse surrounding Bernie. I’m not American, so I don’t have any skin in that particular game, but looking at it from a Canada where the promise of Justin Trudeau’s optimistic social justice was quickly revealed to be pretty shallow, these people that claim to be so hyperfocused on issues of social justice are blowing off the one candidate that seeks to redress underlying systems out of grievances stemming from the 2016 election. And aside from maybe Marianne Williamson, he’s the only one to declare that intent.
Most critiques of “identity politics” are made in bad faith, but I’m starting to see some of the cracks forming in my interactions on Wonkette. The repeated mantra I see in opposition to Bernie is that “He’s an old white man! Time for a woman! Time for a person of colour!” To which I would agree… if the other candidates shared a democratic socialist epistomalogical standpoint. But they don’t. Liz Warren thinks capitalism is okay, it just needs better referees. Kamala Harris doesn’t even go that far (and her actions as a DA leave a lot to be desired). The rest are worse than them.
If they would simply say “I think Bernie’s critique of capitalism is wrong” or “I like Bernie’s policies and narrative, I just don’t trust him after the convention in 2016”, I’d accept those answers. We all have our dealbreakers. I just find the “YAAAAS QWEEN KAMALA! Let’s get a woman of colour!” responses really obnoxious given what I know of Harris as a candidate. Because it smacks of Justin Trudeau’s feminism being limited to a gender-balanced cabinet. That works for a while… until things fall apart. Then what?
*sigh* I foresee a bright future for President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vice-President Stacy Abrams, and I can appreciate the African-American community being for Joe Biden because he’s perceived as the “safe” candidate and they’re focused on removing Trump. It just seems so superficial and short-sighted to me.
I don’t mean to open any can of worms with this, I just needed to sound off on it. I hope it made sense.
If you look closer at his policies he’s not all that progressive. And he ignores people of color and women. And you seriously need to stop doing this. Why do you keep doing this?
It’s not an issue that Bernie is old, white and male in of itself. The issue is that he really doesn’t know how to empathize and speak to people who are not white and male. And yeah, his supporters, or a subset of them, have really poisoned the well.
Elizabeth Warren has an equally progressive vision on economics and a more progressive vision when it comes to gender, race etc. She’s just selling that vision in a way that can appeal to everyone, rather than the angry revolutionary language that will scare voters off. That Bernie and his supporters are seizing on Warren’s campaign skill to sell a conspiracy theory that she’s some sort of corporatist mole is extremely troubling to me. I fear that once again, the Bernie or Bust crowd is going to do as much as Putin to help Trump get elected. Still, better Bernie than Biden for sure!
tl;dr do not buy into the attacks on Elizabeth Warren and trust that a lot of women and POC have good reason for side eying Sanders candidacy.
Kupo,
Yeah, what more needs to be said at this point? I mostly replied because that Elizabeth Warren conspiracy theory is a new thing the Berners are trying and I’m really not happy about it.
Lainy – The thing I think of when I think of the Muppets and rule 34 is Professor Honeydew chasing Beaker around the lab with lewd intent.
Yeah, you guys are right. Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I didn’t want to cause any discord and I really shouldn’t sound off on everything in my brain on these threads.
*sigh* I hate being me sometimes.
I read “vaginal mucus” & instantly think of John Cleese in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”– “Have I done vaginal juices? ” to a room full of bored teenagers (most of whom are played by other Pythonites).
Well, I don’t know, John. You’re a grown-ass man. Wouldn’t *you* know if you’d done them or not (just me being completely facetious).
@ObSidJag
I didn’t know that was Magenta from Rocky Horror as his wife in that scene until I rewatched it recently. I find Meaning of Life a mixed bag, but it’s got some great bits in it.
@Katamount
What bothers me more is that you’re so fucking dismissive of women and POCs’ concerns when you stan for your bro, and you even hold other women and POCs up as a shield against criticism of your beliefs, as if the people you’re talking to on this blog are misguided and don’t know what’s best for us because there are other members of our demographics who do like his policies.
@kupo
Then I shall endeavour to be more mindful of those concerns. I’m trying to do better all the time. Like I said, it’s just a feeling I had.
Just out of curiosity, are there any other topics I do this on? I didn’t think I had promoted Bernie around here in a while, so if there’s anything else I’m a nuisance on, let me know.
Actually, for me, it is a matter of being *done* with old white dudes. We’ve had 43 of them as presidents (b/c Kennedy is always described as young) and I think that’s enough for a while.
But to be serious for a minute, white male-identified people of a certain age seem (to me) to have a calcified way of viewing the world, no matter how “woke” they actually are. And? They often seem to think that they’re way more woke than they appear (or else they’re trying to sound more woke than they are. Lookin’ at you, Joe Biden.)
Hell, I turned 59 last week and I’m probably pretty calcified in my views, too! Even though I’d like to think I’m not, I try to be realistic. I’ll never be a conservative, anyway.
Bernie, for all his talk of being an outsider, has a long record in politics. If he’d wanted to center the concerns of women and minorities he’s had years to do so. His record on that score is pretty mediocre, and his defensiveness when called on it isn’t pretty. (I’ll never forget his butthurt declaring Planned Parenthood to be The Establishment when they endorsed Clinton over him.) Not every problem can be solved by breaking up the banks.
I know I’m fed up to HERE (that’s a long ways, too!) with Old White Dudes. Not so much that we’ve failed to perform on just about every occasion, though that’s a concern…. Additionally, I fear we have a “survival response” that seems almost hard-wired, to view the world in our terms, i.e. “how will this affect Old White Dudes, and specifically, how will this affect our social position/privilege.”
We’ve reached the point where if we don’t start viewing the world as a closed system, no one is going to survive. Old White Dudes who can’t see past the end of their entitlement aren’t cutting it.
The nice thing is that even some old white dudes get it. I’ve mentioned Neil Macdonald’s basic sensibleness before, haven’t I?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/democratic-debate-1.5190801
@Katamount
I can’t recall any other topics. If it’s come up, I probably would have said something, though.
I watched a little MSNBC this morning and the pundits were out in full force whining about how left the candidates were going. For all the Bernie Bro talk of Elizabeth Warren being the establishment, the establishment sure seems awfully scared of her. Particularly the Medicare for all part.
It’s all their own fault though. If they had been willing to let the 99% have just a little piece of the pie, if they’d kept things like they were in the 50s and 60s economically speaking, we wouldn’t be here. People are apathetic enough to be just fine with centrism if their own lives are secure. But the rich got too damn greedy. Now centrism is not good enough for much of the Democratic base anymore. And the Republican base are, as we know rejecting the center right for fascism. If the 1% knows what’s good for them, they’ll allow the peasants a little money and security and in no time, we’ll be back to our usual stupor. But wealth tends to make people very shortsighted and unwilling to learn anything, so they’ll probably back Trump if we don’t nominate Biden.
I have a big problem with the use of the term “TERF.” Specifically, the fact that this term directs violence at women. There is no equivalent term for men who are deemed transphobic. Could not one simply use the term “transphobic” for anyone who was thought to be behaving in such a fashion?
I refuse to use this term. This page contains multiple examples of why it’s a problem.
https://terfisaslur.com/
A woman can be branded a “TERF” for any reason from feeling that using puberty blockers on children may be damaging to their future physical health to actually hating transgender people. Keep in mind, it is not men who are being called TERFs. It is not men that statements such as “punch a TERF” are being directed against.
I don’t believe that TERF is necessarily only applicable to women. (Although, granted, given that some TERFs seem to think that all AMAB people are predators, the ranks are likely mostly cis women.)
TERF refers to a particular brand of transphobe that cloaks their rhetoric in ostensibly “progressive” vocabulary. A man who started making the same kinds of points could also be considered a TERF. The term is used to describe specific behavior, behavior that works to infiltrate progressive spaces, and as such the term is a useful tool in bringing awareness to the fact that a person who may share some political ground with you can also be a person who makes this space unsafe for marginalized groups. It is important that progressive spaces be inclusive, and awareness of the type of bigotry trying to get past our radars is important.
Transphobic behavior that comes bundled with conservativism and all of the other assorted bigotries that are associated with that viewpoint is no less awful than TERF-specific transphobia. But it is generally something that is far more easy to see and condemn for the pile of shit that it is, at least in progressive circles.
Thanks Mels.
@sly fawkes
And it is your right to refuse to use the term, and no one should be insisting you do.
Doesn’t mean it’s not a useful and needed term to describe a specific type of transphobe (and carries quite strong associations as to how they operate), and Catalpa hit the nail fairly to explain why.