By David Futrelle
I have to give the inhabitants of the “Gender Critical” subreddit credit for one thing: they are endlessly creative in coming up with new ways to be assholes.
Today, the TERFs-who-don’t-want-to-be-called-TERFs on the subreddit are working themselves into a lather over a report from one college student who was shocked and stunned to find the singular “they” used on a college exam in a slightly confusing manner.
How to fight this terrible gender-inclusive menace? Several commenters thought they had an answer : with a bad faith Americans with Disibilities Act challenge.
“Imagine having dyslexia and having to deal with this absolute word salad,” wrote someone called strawlesbian.”Pretty sure it would not hold up to an ADA challenge.”
I’m not quite sure what dyslexia has to do with it; I mean, dyslexia makes everything hard to read, regardless of whether or not a singular “they” is present. But at least one GenderCritter thought this idea was hilarious — and possibly workable.
“Lol, we might have to get ourselves classified as disabled,” wrote someone calling herself sojourner_truth_.
“My little ladybrain is so broken that when I see a man in a dollar store wig and lopsided fake boobs, I don’t see a woman at all! Poor widdle me! You have to accommodate me or else!” Dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.
In a followup comment, she made clear she wasn’t actually joking.
I joke around on here a lot and I know sometimes things don’t come out right. In all seriousness though, for my part I think it’s important to use any and all legal tools at our disposal to get the ship righted.
Of course I’m not suggesting violence or anything immoral here- but these protections were put in place to support the greater goal of making learning accessible for every student. This example fits that goal! OP said it was very difficult to understand and very frustrating as she was just trying to take her exam. Why should the TRAs get to make university exams harder for everyone else?
Just as I used a privacy law to shut down my university’s shitty racist program, I think it’s perfectly fair and good to use disability law to stop this compelled speech insanity.
You might want to check with some actual disabled people about that. Indeed, several other commenters called sojourner_truth_ out for being “demeaning to disabled students and students that need accommodations.”
But sojourner_truth_ was not dissuaded. Whet if, instead of simply presuming to speak for disabled people, they could find an actual disabled person to be the face of their bad faith challenge?
Are there any students in OP’s class who have a diagnosed disability, though? I think it’s much harder to prove without that key person involved.
I think this sub is onto a very valuable strategy for getting this trans nonsense out of school materials. If we can find the right person, one who has a doctor’s diagnosis already, then this could be a real victory!
It’s basically GamerGate’s #NotYourShield all over again.
NOTE: If your political strategies seem like they were directly cribbed from GamerGate, you’re probably not the progressive movement for justice that you’re pretending to be.
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As a disabled person, I want all of these people to listen to a lecture on why they should not appropriate our experiences and difficulties for their transphobic shit. I mean, they might not change their minds, but it’s important to be clear to them that many disabled people hate this.
I need to know more about this. Why do I suspect “sojourner_truth_” is white and shut down something she thought was “racist” against white people? I would love to be wrong on this when it comes from someone appropriating that name.
How fucking dare she call herself Sojourner Truth!
I’m not in law school yet, but I have a strong feeling that it would take a judge less than 30 seconds to throw that lawsuit out for having no legal standing if they actually tried to file it.
I don’t have dyslexia, but from what I know about it (I have a close friend who has dyslexia), the word “they” would not be any harder to read than any other word of the same length. Also, whether it’s singular or not should have no bearing on how hard it is to read.
Also, what is this with transphobes talking about wigs? I assumed most trans* women had natural hair, much like most cis women (and men, and non-binary people). Is this not correct? I’ve only ever heard transphobes bring up wigs in conjunction.
This isn’t the only thing GCers borrowed from GGers. They also have a lot in common in terms of doxxing their enemies, claiming they don’t support harassment but supporting it in plan view, and then claiming that their enemies are the real bigots.
I’m actually somewhat surprised that anyone called the idea out as demeaning. It is, of course, demeaning, but r/GC is usually an echo chamber of transphobia (with the occasional racism and ableism). In other words, I’m surprised any of them noticed the ableism.
@Tabby – I checked, because I thought exactly the same. Turns out not so. Here’s the story, told by her – to be fair, the institution in question does sound a bit shitty, but this is from the point of view of someone who is clearly willing to lie to make their point in other areas:
What surprises me, reading some of the comments on the reddit, is that several members seem very aware and alert to issues of sexism and homophobia, and yet they can’t bring themselves to see transphobia is also wrong.
As for faking a disability to get their way – sheesh. That is just low.
@Amy E
It’s definitely possible to be aware of some forms of bigotry but still harbor others. My guess is the redditors only care about sexism and racism because those affect them. And even then there is tons of racism among TERFs as well (e.g. Posie Parker’s friendship with white nationalists).
Not to mention that a significant number seem to hold gender essentialist views that are by any definition sexist.
@naglfar The TERFs think all trans femme folks are balding men with goatees who pancake on makeup, throw on a dollar store wig, and put on a bra & falsies.
they have an image of us in their head and that’s who we are to them, no matter what.
Amy E, thank you for wading in to check on that.
@Alexis Filth
I’ve never seen anyone who fits that description, but it doesn’t surprise me that the TERFs have created a stereotyped image that they project. It’s a common thing for bigots to do. Like the racist who has a stereotyped caricature of a black person and can’t imagine one who isn’t like the stereotype.
Apparently TERFs think AFAB people have naturally long hair and AMAB people have naturally short hair. I guess they forgot about the hair metal bands of the 80s and early 90s.
Unsurprisingly, that’s not how the ADA works. While i admit that it’s a mild mess with some major holes still in some areas, which the DOJ is slowly patching, “I can’t read these words” is not an ADA issue.
At BEST they’d be able to argue that due to language processing difficulties they need extra time to do work and testing. But having specific words thrown out? Not going to happen.
They may come up with unique ideas, but this one is just pure BS.
@Naglfar – thanks, I guess I should know that. It just constantly baffles me when people do this to one another because they understand their own oppression but can’t recognise anyone else’s, can’t see the pain they’re causing, and don’t realise they’re also self-pwning because encouraging one form of oppression encourages all of them.
@Tabby – most welcome. Fact-checkers gonna fact-check 🙂
I remember a trend in the 90s (at least this was when I was in middle school and high school) where the male teachers would dress up as women for Halloween for laughs and they’d come up with what they thought of as the grossest outfits and worst, most garish makeup and such. It was horribly homophobic and transphobic. It sounds like the TERFs are still promoting this image because that’s what comes to mind from their description.
As for the ableism, I completely agree with Jorge… stop appropriating our experiences for your own agenda!
@Yutolia
That sounds awful. The misogyny is definitely there as well. For many of the TERFs, I would guess that they’ve never actually met a trans* person, and they’re basing their stereotypes off of impressions like what you described, or off of media depictions. Or if they have met a trans* person they ignored them in favor of projecting stereotypes.
TERFism always seems to come down to policing other people’s femininity/masculinity. To them, unfeminine women are acceptable collateral damage in their quest to defend “real” women from those spooky transes.
@Alexis Filth, Naglfar
There two places where AMAB people toss on wigs and pancake on the make-up. Hollywood movies about trans women and drag. Hence my annoyance whenever a cis man is cast for a trans woman, cis folk assume we’re all like that.
Ugh, David,
I don’t know how you can stand this horrible stuff, I hope you have a relaxing Thanksgiving.
Here is more filth from a male supremacist blog:
https://promalecollective.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/this-is-why-feminism-must-be-defeated/
They sound like they could fit in well at the Gender Critical space if they pretended to be women.
The two trans women I’m closest to both wear wigs and share tips with their friends about where to find nice ones, along with dresses, shoes, makeup, etc — just like any other normal person who cares about the clothes they wear and about their appearance. They were particularly excited about it when they first came out and were experimenting and learning; several years on, it’s not as big a topic of conversation.
They both came out in their late 30s, so were indeed balding. If you’re balding and you want to look fabulous with a full head of hair, why not wear a nice wig? It’s kind of what they’re made for. (Well, that and for judges.)
Had society been more accepting they’d have come out much younger and maybe not have suffered hair loss.
At this point I wonder how many TERFs are the usual detritus and how many posters on this sub are Chan-kid incels posing (in this case as a black woman.)
Thinking everyone is as dumb as them and “must accept their disability” is also an Incel shtick devoid of empathy and cleverness.
@Amy E
The posters on these subs are hideously unreliable narrators, posting how unfair it is to be white
@Naglfar
The cruelty is the point. Telling trans women they’re ugly isn’t an opinion, it’s a performative act.
Having both taught at universities and used disability accommodations: this tactic is bullshit. If anything, an individual student could possibly have an accommodation letter saying they can only have they used in the plural third person, but I doubt any doctor would sign off on that as a need to level the playing field for a student with learning disabilities, let alone the assorted college/university offices that have to approve the accommodation as reasonable and necessary. This isn’t even lawsuit material. It’s just foolishness and appropriating the tools to ensure disabled people get the education we deserve to try to force their anti-trans bigotry in under the guise of “fairness.” It’s frankly disgusting.
GC doorknobs need to go pound sand. Shakespeare used a singular they. If students are learning Shakespeare, they can learn singular they. This whole idea has me livid, from every perspective — as a disabled person, a university instructor, and a trans man. Sorry, assholes, we’re in universities and we’re not going away. You need to get over your insecurities and deal with the reality that trans people exist, have always existed, and the recognition of hour humanity isn’t marking some emergence of a hitherto unknown perversion. It’s literally the culmination of generations of work to secure our rights and our dignity in society. And no amount of manipulation or lying or bigotry will make us go away, because we’ve always been here, dammit.
I’m just gonna state the obvious here, but…
Trans women generally aren’t the ones using they/them singular. Non-binary (NB) people are.
Admittedly, some trans ladies may use them while in the process of coming out, and obviously there are transfemme NB individuals who may use one or the other (or both!).
But the fact that they’re hounding trans ladies for an NB scent is…telling, I suppose.
My sample may be biased, but of the NB people I’ve met, most of them were assigned female at birth. Hell, the stereotype of the “Tumblr SJW Snowflake” has that person being NB as part of the punchline of “oooooooooh look at all the fake injustice she’s making up to make herself the victim, oh does me using she T RI G GER you lolololol” or whatever the fuck.
-ahem-
This likely does not accurately reflect the whole story, and the division is probably closer to 50/50. But the notion of an NB person is often that of an AFAB one. So even in their bigoted land, they’re barking up the wrong tree.
Speaking as an AFAB genderqueer individual: if you can’t be a decent person, at least be fucking [i]consistent.[/i]
(But they’ll never do that, will they?)
Also, speaking also as a disabled individual, fucking lol good luck getting your doc to sign off on the papers you need for that.
“We had to enforce the gender binary in order to abolish it” is the route which they’ve been taking for some time now.