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By David Futrelle
Ok, I confess that I wandered into the Semen Retention subreddit again. It’s like an addiction for me.
Anyway, I found this guy, who seems to have gotten just a little too excited about his new meditation routine. Just make sure never to sit next to him in meditation class. Or on the bus. Or anywhere, really.
That’s not satori; it’s satorgasm.
@Definitely Not Steve
The mammoth works in strange ways…sometimes comments with links don’t go through. I don’t know why. It seems to be random, so I’m not sure of a solution. Anyone got better ideas?
I was aware that paternal mtDNA is inherited at rates much lower than mtDNA, but I was unaware about the sheep and chickens. TIL something. Thank you.
The cool thing about mtDNA is since it is primarily from the mother, we can use it to trace back all humans to the most recent woman from whom all modern humans are descended, referred to as “Mitochondrial Eve”.
I really agree with everyone about the problems with gender essentialist thinking.
My slave is a cishet man (and that a cishet man, and such a gorgeous one at that, can experience and create together with me what we do is really amazing to me, by the way)
My mentor and I are both cishet women and one of her friends who helps me is a trans woman whom I love dearly too and I can’t see how anyone could say we aren’t three beautiful and amazing women.
I am so grateful again for all the great people here.
As has already been pointed out, this is incorrect. It doesn’t even make any sense. If sperm do one thing well, it’s swim. Swimming requires utilizing energy and metabolism. Without mitochondria, the sperm would just sit there waiting for eggs to come to them!
Check out the wikipedia article on sperm for a diagram, complete with all the mitochondria in it!
Also, no true. Lots of types of life do not have mitochrondria, in particular bacteria universally lack them.
Useful rule, anything following “it’s not politically correct to say this” is going to be rude and probably outright laughably false. For example…
True, and every single thing you’ve said so far has been scientifically false, whether you embrace that or not is up to you.
Nothing more to address that hasn’t been said better than I could.
@Michael Suttkus, II
The “whether you embrace science or not” part is another common one among assorted fascists. White supremacists use it as a jumping off point for rants about race and IQ, TERFs use it to go on about essentialism. Because, by their logic it can’t be wrong if “science” says so. Of course, as shown by Ms. Kaswell above, we have rather different definitions of “science” and “facts.”
@Hambeast,
My trans wife and I attend an annual pagan festival in Ontario, and it’s totally trans inclusive. Along with the King Stag and Huntress competitions they have one for people who don’t identify as binary or totally one gender. We are both atheists, and participate in some rituals as a psychological tool. Rituals of all kinds are as old as humanity.
Also recently joined the choir at a Unitarian Universalist church. We are presenting an original Christmas musical tomorrow at Don Heights UU church in Toronto. If any of you happen to live in the GTA, feel welcome!
@Monday Middlemarch
Not everyone can have or has desires for orgasm. I can’t do it and have zero drive for it. I’m not going to speak for all asexuals, but there you go. For me there is no drive, no desire, no ability. If people don’t want them they shouldn’t have them. It’s all the junk wrapped around these particular guys that is the problem.
@all the people regarding the problematic term Grammar Nazi
I tell people I am a grammar pedant. It has the benefit of being precise.
I’d consider myself a grammar, spelling and typing pedant.
(not to mention semantic pedant)
@ Samantha Kaswell
Not cool, friend.
I hope the pushback you’ve gotten here helps you to think through what you’ve said, the values those statements prop up, and what people objected to.
Trans women are women, even without eggs. Trans men are men, even with eggs. (Note: if you do travel in the TERF sphere, i am using those terms in the proper way, not the super confusing TERF backwards way.)
I learned some things from the corrections to what you said, so i want to half thank you for putting those mistakes out there. It’s always interesting what a community as diverse as this knows!
The reason i only ‘half’ thank you, though, is because your statements are setting off TERF or proto TERF alarm bells for myself, as well. I want people to learn, as hopefully you will through the reaction to your post, but not at the expense of some of the more vulnerable members of the site (commentariat + lurkers).
If you truly did not realise what reactions you’d receive, and aren’t a ‘terf’, ‘gender critical’, or (apparently?????) a ‘gender realist’, i hope being told that your statements ring those alarm bells helps you to understand why, and do some reading/thinking on it. It feels like you are working from an older understanding of gender, and i’m just going to have to go with the more modern understanding.
You have been previously corrected on the ‘sperm don’t have mitochindrial DNA’ thing back in 2018 so… This seems like it might be a favourite argument of yours, to trot out to show how essential an egg is. I’m sorry, but i have to listen to science here. *shrug*
Your emphasis on ‘woman and their children’ is a bit reductionary. Women don’t need to have children. Women might not even want kids, or want them but not he able to afford them, or can afford them but are terrified of the world becoming a hurricane on fire thanks to climate change.
Men can be good parents as well, and i think it’s pretty important that we keep that expectation front and centre. The culture around men’s parental responsabilities has started to shift! We’ve got a ways to go, yes, but it’s started.
Naglfar & Pink Haired Old Lady – None of the groups we met with were at all trans exclusive in general, but they all seemed to have some sort of women-only regular meeting for some reason, from which trans women were mostly excluded. Most had no equivalent for men, which also irked me.
We would press the representatives for their reasoning and got a bunch of gender-essentialist talking points. It was very frustrating.
But I’m only talking about a half-dozen groups, so not at all a representative sample! Also, this all took place at least ten years ago.
We live in an area that sprang up in the early 2000s and there wasn’t any sort of pagan group (or much of anything else non-Christian, for that matter) so we had to go kind of far and wide, mainly Orange and San Diego Counties.
Husbeast has found a group that is truly all-inclusive but he has to drive almost an hour to get there. I go with him for general fellowship stuff, but not rituals. No one is banned from rituals, mind you, I just don’t wish to participate. The group is very accepting and supportive of spouses/significant others who aren’t believers and we’ve made a fair few good friends there.
@Rhuu
Do you mean the deliberate misgendering that TERFs do with terms like “TIM” for trans women (I’ve never heard them say “TIF” for trans men but it wouldn’t surprise me)?
The way TERFs use those terms confuses non TERFs as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve corrected well-meaning people who think a trans man is called a trans woman and vice versa as a result of TERFs misleading them.
Me too! I learned about the sheep and chickens and their mtDNA from Definitely Not Steve’s post.
She’s also previously endorsed Alyssa Milano’s sex strike, which was panned for being unfeminist. And she’s talked about women being destroyed or replaced, which is a popular TERF talking point.
@Nagldar – that, but also just flipping ‘transgender man’ to mean ‘transgender woman’. Here’s an example, WARNING FOR TRANSPHOBIA AND EXCUSING/JUSTIFYING IT
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Later on in the article, the horrific Rosie DiManno continues with:
And i was confused what she was talking about, until i realised that she’d tipped her TERF hand here, and *also* flipped the genders. Because what she is claiming is a woman and will always be a woman (a trans man) should have no problem in women’s shelters, right? She would say they are all womaning together. (Note: they are not, just to be clear. Trans dudes are dudes.)
This was all in response to the backlash the toronto library got, after hosting a huge TERF. The opinion piece is here, but it’s full of bullshit. Content warnings DEFINITELY apply.
I actually emailed the star, don’t think i ever heard back though.
Usually trans men are forgotten about, honestly. TERFs are so obsessed with traditional gender roles that they don’t care about a woman who wants to be the ‘better’ gender (a trans man), just angry about a man who wants to give up all of his status and privilege to become the ‘worse’ gender. (Trans woman)
Which is all BULLSHIT, of course. And not very feminist at all.
@Rhuu
I read that article when someone here (Katamount?) was talking about Meghan Murphy’s hate thing at the Toronto Public Library. The article is awful, and is a clear example of TERFs deliberately obfuscating terminology. Of course, I don’t think I need to say who else likes to deliberately obfuscate words for their agenda (hint: rhymes with light dupremacists).
And when TERFs do notice trans men, it’s usually to claim that they’re misled lesbians, or to claim that they’re traitors to womankind, or something. Or occasionally to offer a sort of condescension about it all.
@Samantha_Kaswell
TERF spotted.
as for the claim of a tantric orgasm through meditation. I’m sure it happens. Dunno if the Nofap muppets have the necessary discipline or if this is just some chud bragging with bullshit to seem better than his fellows.
@Alexis Filth
I’m pretty certain it’s the latter. That’s what they always do, what with all their claims of superpowers from jizz.
And it looks like Ms. Kaswell is neglecting to respond. Probably because she realizes she’d get banned if she says much more in the same direction. She’s very carefully skirting the line of being TERFy but not enough to get banned.
@naglfar
what’s funny to me has always been the nofap claim of superpowers to attract women after not jerking off for a couple weeks.
I mean if that was the case there’d be a lot of depressed people with dicks just drowning in feminine attention.
I know when I was severely depressed I didn’t feel like doing ANYTHING masturbation included.
Delurking re: transphobia in pagan circles – Part of the problem is that there’s a significant emphasis on the menstrual and reproductive cycles in a lot of goddess-oriented pagan ritual material. Transwomen are often excluded on the grounds that they don’t have the necessary organs to have the same experiences. The rituals are for people who menstruate (or used to) or have been pregnant (or could become pregnant). Not, mind you, that they check at the door. If you can pass for a cis woman while nude (a lot of these rituals are nude), they’ll let you in.
@Hambeast, I am sorry you ran into so much bigotry. There’s a really nasty TERF vein through goddess-oriented paganism, the same way there’s a nasty white supremacist vein through Norse-flavored paganism. It sucks. It’s all finally being discussed in the open, which I take as a hopeful sign.
There are also a nonzero number of super queer pagan types around, and we’re gaining visibility as well. Outside the Charmed Circle is a great blog (and there’s a book coming in January!) on the subject.
@Alexis Filth
Heck, a number of the “field reports” talk about things like “being surrounded by half a dozen young women, sitting on the floor and gazing up at them adoringly” after two days. That doesn’t even take a medical condition – just being busy, tired, or not feeling like it for a few days.