“Gender Critical” Redditors attack a trans woman for the crime of wanting to be pretty

@NautaliaC:

I haven’t met an actual TERF in person, or at least I don’t think I have. I wonder what happened to them to be so full of spite. It must have been the stuff of legends to “legitimize” their fear, discomfort and hatred.

The only person I’ve met who expressed such opinions was an ex – the only time we had a full-blown argument. It was many years ago, well before the TERF term was coined, but was definitely in the same ballpark. It was largely along the “you have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” line in that transwomen couldn’t really understand what it was like to be a woman because they hadn’t experienced things like periods or childbirth, even though such strict definitions exclude some women who were assigned female at birth. I never did get to the bottom of why she felt like that as we split up soon after for different reasons.

@Betrayer:

In related news, Graham Linehan created his own little twitter clone where he can be a bigot without getting ratio’d, and one of the first things he did was mock a cis woman for getting plastic surgery and make hateful comments about her appearance and denigrating the very concept of cosmetic surgery.

I saw he was nominated for The Last Leg’s “Dick of the Year” but they fudged the issue despite him being a solid frontrunner:

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/12/11/graham-linehan-channel-4-dick-of-the-year-the-last-leg-transphobe/

https://www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/content/8115/last-leg-dick

Mumsnet popped up at the top of my results when searching for that and the conversation goes about as well as you’d imagine:

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3768189-The-Last-Leg-dodges-giving-Graham-Linehan-dick-of-the-year

I’m really saddened by his dickery and I am still trying to square that with my love for Father Ted and The IT Crowd. I’ve not watched either since finding out about his views. I’ve also not looked up his Twitter account but I suppose I really should.

I’m not sure if this is a good idea, but here goes:

I fully understand the reaction to TERFS portraying trans women like us to grotesque males. Yet at the same time, it seems frustrating to only have a slightly queerer and more critical lens on social feminism to fall back on. The double-bind of having to conform to both expectations of sex (sometimes being in conflict with intersexuals at the very least) and socially-informed expectations that are often little more than a reflection of the first thing with a bit of queer deconstruction mixed in, is exhausting. I think that in a world that is as overexcited and overpopulated as ours, trans women have every right to embrace their unique perspective on femininity and argue confidently against both the push to conform to the role of the unpaid helper and the pull towards procreation as justification of their existence. Of course, this needs to be a choice for those who wish to embrace it, not a slightly nicer way of saying that we have to remain either unhappy or childless.

I’ve been away from the forums for a while and I’m from Germany, so I don’t know if all of this goes without saying and is just me being frustrated by all the suffering and deaths in my recent past, so here is some sort of holidays story (December 2013 Thailand at my SRS) that sort of emphasizes the point I’m trying to make:

It was warm and moist in Chon Buri and it appeared to be an end of a long and often painful journey. I had somehow managed to win in a fight against the gatekeeping psychologists in Germany, had my fair share of love, heartbreak and pain, was freshly in love with a great man after more than five years of dysfunctional relationships and was currently furious because I had decided to be extra sure to give my body the requirement level of testosterone so the surgery went without complications. Apart from annoying my trans sisters in the hotel and being too boorish to even register one of the cute girls attempt to flirt with me, I managed to put my body trough quite a lot of stress as I didn’t manage to gauge my pain due to very effective analgesia and rage. One of the things I did notice, however, was how our interests as patients and the fact that we could afford this surgery helped turn a small area around the Chon Inter Hotel into a safe space. Everyone was extremely nice and took great pains to ensure we were treated as girls.

This became a problem for me when a nurse/instructor explained the finer points of dilation to us on the cardboard part of a kitchen roll, tripped over her words in response to a question regarding homosexuality and upon being interrogated by a room full of trans women somehow managed to at least state her conservative beliefs and tried to smooth over the waves. We were later told that she would not be a dilation instructor in the future, although she had not done that much wrong, professionally. She had merely stated the unpopular opinion that homosexuality was not what her god wanted and thus made some of us uncomfortable. As I learned from her, however, she had no religious problem with trans women. She was just squicked out by the graphic image of trans lesbians having sex and the whole misunderstanding was because of feelings running wild.

I have thought about this event a lot and I still think that, as weird as it sounds, the anger in reaction to hatred is sometimes misguided. I think that a lot of people just hate us in theory and express their anger in the self-reinforcing spaces on the internet. So please remember that the person on the other side of the screen is also human, probably hurts because of things done to them for which we are a nice scapegoat and that activism or even fighting does not necessarily imply hatred.

@Naglfar

Absolutely and it would be absurd to achieve a degree in zen mastery before doing activism just because anger can lead to more escalation.

It’s just that I’m finding inspiration for my life in a saying of @pervocracy that you can be both a queer activist and treat a guy with a swastika tattoo in his face humanely (as a medical professional). I think that in the trap between becoming a cynical activist or a possible collaborator, this attitude is a good middle ground. Of course, it would be inhumane to deny yourself to the point where you’d have to be cruel to yourself and it’s tough to navigate these boundaries. My problem is that I have begun to find the discourse on this site to be a bit…well jarring.

you can be both a queer activist and treat a guy with a swastika tattoo in his face humanely (as a medical professional).

Of course, if my job were to provide medical care to someone, I would help someone, regardless of any hateful views they might hold. That is precisely why I don’t believe in religious exceptions for medical providers, didn’t they swear to ‘do no harm’?

Your point about how sometimes TERFs aren’t that bad, actually, is well… I mean, I don’t imagine any TERF coming in here being someone who steals candy from children and kicks puppies around. I’m sure they’re really kind to their kids, and smile at the clerk checking them out at the grocery store.*

Do those bits of ‘niceness’ override their hateful attitude? Not when it comes to them expounding on trans issues, it doesn’t.

I try to remember that everyone I’m speaking with through this magic box is human, but it is frustrating that we are often told that we just need to be nicer, more tolerant, of people who spout hateful or uncomfortable views.

Why aren’t they needing to be more tolerant of us?

I get that sometimes people can be working from an older understanding, such as using the term ‘transsexual’, for instance, instead of the now more commonly accepted ‘transgender’, and that depending on circumstances, people might respond to a gentle correction better than someone blowing up at them.

But sometimes the person has been doing little aggressions, micro-aggressions if you will, for a while. Sometimes they are weaponising things that don’t *seem* too bad, so they can skirt under the radar.

Sometimes I’ve had enough with trying to gently hand hold someone through something. Sometimes others have had that, as well.

There is no space for TERFs here, because TERFs have made a choice. If someone would like to learn about trans issues, they could admit their ignorance, and ask if anyone has any good places to start.

But the validness of trans women (and trans men, and enbies, and gender queer, and all sorts of gender related stuff) is never up for debate. Ever.

TERFs can go and debate someone’s humanity somewhere else, they have pretty much the whole of the internet to do that in. Just not here.

See ‘the paradox of tolerance’ for a good discussion on why one can never tolerate *intolerance*.

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that, “In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”

*(As long as none of those people are non-passing trans people, because then they’d not be so nice.)

Re: “trans” vs “trans*”: This might just be me, and I certainly wasn’t around for the historical debates discussed above, but the splat always seemed unnecessary to me. Either we accept “trans” as an inclusive umbrella term or we don’t. Hanging an invisible footnote off it seems to suggest it’s saying something like “we use this term to include both real trans people and fake trans people!”.

Fuck TERFs/FARTs

Thank you for attending my TED tolk.

@Rhuu

trans women needing to be SUPER FEMME to ‘pass’ + sometimes navigate the gatekeeping medical establishment pisses me right the hell off as well.

This really annoys me as well. There’s also a significant amount of gatekeeping around trans* women and sexual orientation, like certain truscum individuals (Blaire White, for example) claiming that the only real trans* women are those who are fully heterosexual and that others are secretly straight men (in other words, Blanchard rehashed). That’s BS obviously.

@Jesalin

Thank you for attending my TED tolk.

Great talk. Concise yet very informative and true.

@Jesalin

Truscum can fuck off away twice as hard.

IIRC a lot of truscum hang out with TERFs to be the “good ones” and make the rest of us look bad, so TERFs/FARTs and truscum aren’t really separate groups.

Not sure if this falls under truscum or not, but there’s also a few very vocal trans* women who repeatedly say that trans* women are not women and attack anyone person who disagrees with them (Miranda Yardley being one example). Naturally, the TERFs love them. They can fuck off too.

@Naglfar
I hope the paradox of tolerance is also a good framework for you.

@Rhuu, @Naglfar
We are in agreement that trans folk being nice to TERFS and only getting hatred back is a problem and that demanding niceness from the other side while doing horrible things to them is a cheap and cruel trick. I’m not trying to turn this forum into the more ugly parts of reddit or similar, I merely propose another viewpoint that, in my opinion, makes live within a framework of me-and-a-few-friend-vs-the-world or us-vs-them feel calmer.

The idea is using niceness as a tactic (not strategy) to match the cruel niceness of the opponent (not necessarily an enemy). In trying to become a teacher for computer science and ethics, I eventually found Richard Rortys idea of irony v.s. Metaphysics (Der Metaphysiker, die Ironikerin) a good fallback layer to discuss disjunct models of the world in regard to sex and gender without letting the bitterness of my experiences or the problems my lifestyle causes to others make it impossible to forget their or my humanity. Of course, I don’t want yet another binary model for sex-gender (Geschlecht) and having one that has at least 4 genders (2^n for n=2) is a far cry for the thousands of genders that tumblr once promised me — but it’s a start and seems to work reasonably well in practice. It’s based on the idea of n+1 in German teaching (you have to take one step after the other) and describes a mode of a slower but more secure extension of personal freedoms. It’s something I really yearn for after having had to rush trough my transition and a good part of my life, leaving a lot of mayhem and suffering. It can also be criticized as respectability politics.

The idea is to try to be civil when talking instead of giving in to the anger. I’ve often had problems with this in the past, especially on the internet and I don’t want to dismantle the specific culture of speaking plain but harshly when necessary, I just want to complement it. After an official education in Germany and an unofficial education in the part of the internet that speaks English, I would like to avoid being reminded of the holocaust/Shoa and playing out thought games of who-goes-nazi-under-what-circumstances when all I’m really trying to do is talk to people I view as sisters and potential friends about my feelings. I realize that this is exactly the song a collaborator and future fascist would sing and you have been quite candid about your feelings for “truescum”, so I’l try to use my model in relation to your arguments.

But sometimes the person has been doing little aggressions, micro-aggressions if you will, for a while. Sometimes they are weaponising things that don’t *seem* too bad, so they can skirt under the radar.

I agree. Whether you call it feelings, misunderstandings and aggression or micro-aggressions is a question of perspective. I propose to call it the former when talking about individuals who might be simply mistaken and the latter when they leave little room for doubt.

Sometimes I’ve had enough with trying to gently hand hold someone through something. Sometimes others have had that, as well.

Sure, sounds familiar.

There is no space for TERFs here, because TERFs have made a choice. If someone would like to learn about trans issues, they could admit their ignorance, and ask if anyone has any good places to start.

Not accepting people in social circles or banishment is a harsh strategy but I can see its utility in an imperfect world. The old dream of a noosphere where humankind works together in harmony is not quite there yet.

But the validness of trans women (and trans men, and enbies, and gender queer, and all sorts of gender related stuff) is never up for debate. Ever.

This could lead to a scenario in which being trans(*)/enby/queer or a certain gender is used as an excuse for committing crimes but I agree that cruel and unnecessary punishment like denying medical care in prison or vigilantism is unjustified.

TERFs can go and debate someone’s humanity somewhere else, they have pretty much the whole of the internet to do that in. Just not here.

Ok, let’s keep known TERFs out and consider banning those who appear to be too terfy.

THIS. So many people ask why well-known trans* people and activists can’t simply debate TERFs. We can’t, for the reason you listed. To debate them would mean to debate our humanity.

Well, I’m not Simone Weil, but so far I haven’t met a person I could not debate my humanity and the consequences my freedom has with. Sometimes there was a threat of violence and oftentimes the discussion (or me reading their books and texts) hurt like hell, but I often learned something. I even learned a lot from the specific torture of having to justify my existence to psychologists in Germany while the testosterone hurt my mind. I also learned a lot from the people I met in my fragile and overly emotional state. Often I was cruel while doing this, but the one time I thought about killing my psychologist for his specific brand of smugness, I thought better of it and am glad that for the fault-correction algorithms the medical sector still has. So I think that debate is sometimes possible, even though none of us should be forced to endure the pain. Maybe I’m just too sensitive for the candor of the international english language.

Case in point: Hitler was a vegetarian, and he loved dogs (his favorite was a German Shepard named Blondi). That does not excuse the Holocaust. An extreme example? Sure, most TERFs haven’t killed millions of people, but they cause harm in more subtle ways, and have more than a little bit in common with Nazis.

Well. They might be a bit fascist, but I don’t believe that each and every one of them is in ideological Nazi like Ilse Koch in regard to gender. Nor do we do ourselves a favor when pretending that every feminist (or man) that has a few more rigid or radical ideas is out to kill us. About half of humanity thinks they are female, about half thinks they are male and the often-overlooked third part (to say nothing of genders that have not yet been established) has a hard time getting worn down by the radicals on all sides of the issue. Those of the people that do want us dead probably like the fact that we can be simultaniously weak and strong. Using cold logic, aggression and a body that is often read as male while at the same time being able to appear just as alluring, gentle, wholesome or anything feminine. Just as a fascist requires according to Umberto (http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html).

And they make a habit out of reading our posts and doxxing our people. So, please remember that while venting your anger in a safe space that is not writeable by the enemy is reliefing, it just might give them some good ideas and justify their anger for themselves. That’s why I personally would like a bit more civility.

Part of the problem with using only civility and only niceness and never EVER anger as a tactic is that the other side just sees pushovers, and keeps pushing until they get pushed back.

I’m sorry for this misunderstanding, but I did not try to advocate for niceness at all costs and without any anger. I just tried to complement the necessary anger so that it works better. I know about being a pushover from experience and am trying to explain how civility acts as some sort of mantle that dampens the blows of the oppositions arguments.

So yes, I am sort of tone-policing but as far as I remember that used to mean an ad hominem attack on a given argument, not a general plea for a bit more civility.

And this is one tactic. However, if you’re relying on someone ‘on the other side’ to understand the undercurrent of anger you’re layering in with your niceness… They just won’t see it that way?

I don’t think they have that much of a choice. Sure, they can justify their worldview in whichever way they want and hype up their anger until it boils, but their best argument to newcomers and their wider audience are the very things we say and do. The best criticism of trans people there is problematizes the wrongdoings and problematic speech of some trans people. Sure, they could also just lie or make up fake accounts to generate some strawpeople to hate, but I don’t think this has as much effect on the mainstream as our own words and the people (those who merely read us and those who wish to become like us) influenced by them.

It’s like how liberal people read Stephen Colbert’s character on the Stephen Colbert show as being an obvious caricature of a conservative, while conservatives thought he was just speaking truth to power. The framing is too different for both sides to see the same thing.

Yep, irony depends on people getting the joke. A similar thing is true for good points made in anger: If the audience cannot relate, they notice the feelings but twist their meaning. This is why I think civility works better than using the argument having the most impact on the feelings of the adversary.

I thiiink is saying that you wish that people would understand that there is more to discover about gender? Or that the journey of a thousand steps starts with just one, so someone could learn something small and then keep learning, at their own pace?

Well, I tried making a 4-point model of gender to argue why asexuality is as valid a gender as being trans* vs. a lot of technically inclined guys who did not care a lot about feminism or long texts without graphics and math in general. The goal was to argue why we need at least 4 genders instead of 3 (otherwise we would be encroaching on the rights of intersex people). I argued that in the social sphere, there needs to be freedom to act, not just the existence as a neutral fact or perhaps a medical problem and thus the best way to describe gender was to have more than 3 (e.g. 4) genders which represent idealized tendencies of humans to (re)structure their vocabulary regarding gender.

I threw all I knew of feminism on the problem and tried to put it in a geometrical form despite not being that good with space but it was neither elegant nor very convincing because there were constructions like ♀’ to signify things that derive from a critical (but not sufficiently critical) understanding of gender. It was good enough to get a few nerds in line in a social conflict but not good enough to turn it into my model for gender in the context of living and teaching.

Then I happened to find a text from Richard Rortys regarding the Metaphysiker (some rather masculine figure who believes that objective truth is possible and who has a rather rigid model of the world) arguing against the Ironikerin (someone rather feminine who has learned that rigid models of the world eventually fail and hurt people, thus remains sceptical and tries to convince people to not build models that are to rigid while being mindfull of the pain changes in world models cause). Those figures seemed like a good approximation of the two basic gender-based worldviews and fit into my model perfectly. I would like to improve this model which seems to be a good idea to explain possibilities in gender dynamics which I have either witnessed or lived as well as personal comfort zones. This should help to explain interaction between those genders without requiring a crash course in feminist literature which are a pain to people more oriented in space and math than text. It’s basically my rather nerdy way of being out and proud. Also, I’m trying to explain my rather quirky way of relating to a world that does not always like trans people like me in the hopes that this is helpful to others in a similar situation.

I don’t think we’re using ‘truscum’ in the same way. I’m using it to refer to a subset of trans people who insist that there is One True Way to be Trans, and anyone who doesn’t go through the same steps are TRANSTRENDERSSSSSS (ie: the worst).

I feel like I am already in violation of

Don’t post too much or try to make threads all about you. Try to avoid drama.

I was trying to talk to you and the rest of the commenters on the issue of truescum. I felt threatened by you implying I was a bit of a transmedicalist and @Naglfar and others expressing their anger towards them. I do not believe that one needs to fulfill extremly rigid standards to transition in the one approved way, but I cannot grasp the meaning of unlimited creativity in regard to sex in a world where my estrogene would cost about 60$ a month without insurance (still heaviliy subsidized) and can be carciogenic if used improperly.

This could lead to a scenario in which being trans(*)/enby/queer or a certain gender is used as an excuse for committing crimes but I agree that cruel and unnecessary punishment like denying medical care in prison or vigilantism is unjustified.

Um, what? My point is that you don’t debate a cis white gay man on his humanity. You don’t debate a PoC on their basic humanity. You don’t debate a trans person on *their* basic humanity.

I don’t quite get how being valid relates to basic humanity. Yes, being denied pronouns, names, bathrooms or the right to fall in love with consenting adults is hurtful to a concept of basic humanity. However, being valid means a lot more than that for trans people (or just to me?). It implies that one gets to buy hormones, change their name, use gender-appropriate bathrooms etc. There was, however, more than one case in my life where a would-be-trans person (i.e. someone who was insecure in his masculinity and found me fascinating) abused my solidarity with a potential other trans girl to hurt my friends and me. In a polarized case, one could imagine some asshole trying to use their status as a gender minority as a shield and this is where solidarity would end — there assholes among as, because we are humans. They still ought to have human rights, and we should not disavow their status as a gender minority. If the still insisted on being a gender minority, they would happen to be a criminal individual of that minority.

I’ll repeat what I said above – debate is not possible, because it allows the possibility that there should or even could be one.

Yeah, that about sums up my problem — yet, here we are, trying to debate the issue with me being overly captious, words (and quite possibly emotions) running wild and posts dragging on forever. I hope you are not too put off by my words so far, but I have to go to bed now.

So yes, I am sort of tone-policing but as far as I remember that used to mean an ad hominem attack on a given argument, not a general plea for a bit more civility.

A ‘plea to be more civil’ says that we are being uncivil, which would be a tone argument.

Basically, i’m reading this as “if only all the minorities were more civil! We’d get more allies!!!”

I would say tone policing applies, here.

Also, if someone’s allyship is dependant on them being treated woth kod gloves and receiving ‘best ally’ cookies, they are not an ally.

Well, I tried making a 4-point model of gender to argue why asexuality is as valid a gender as being trans*

Asexuality is NOT a gender. In no way, shape, or form. It’s a way to express one of the ends of the sexual attraction spectrum, nothing to do with gender.

(Aromantic is also not a gender.)

I’m glad you’re exploring gender in a way that allows people with different knowledge to join in the discussion. Good luck with that!

I understand more what you are talking about.

Re: truscum – i don’t read anyone calling you that, i’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific on where that happened, sorry.

Naglfar referenced someone (unless you are Blaire White?) As truscum, and Jes added her feelings on that subject.

Re: not debating someone’s humanity –

(Content warning for violent transphobia)

i mean like… Being allowed to Use the proper washroom.

Not needing to worry that if someman thinks a trans woman is cute, only to attack after finding out she’s trans, and then get off from being punished because of the gay panic defense.

Being evicted for being trans. Losing your job.

Dying in the emergency room from a refusal of care because a trans person happened to be trans in the wrong spot.

Being unable to go through the ‘proper procedures’ to get an HRT prescription. Being unable to fill the prescription. Having the pharmacist mess up your medication (probably on purpose) because it’s for something that they don’t approve of.

All of these things wouldn’t happen to your average (cis, the dominant ethnicity, speaking the dominant language) person. They happen to a *trans* person, because a trans person *isn’t a person*. They are an ‘other’.

This is what i mean.

And i’m not debating you on the idea of debating TERFs. You can, but i think it gives them a platform to stand on that they don’t deserve.

I, personally, will not.

I will answer someone’s questions, if it feels like they are asking them in good faith.

I am, however, a terrible judge of that quality! I will often spend time on people who aren’t here for a discussion, but just to waste people’s time.

Honestly though, I know i’ll never change the mind of the person i’m having a discussion with, but i might share something that someone else resonates with.

Or maybe i’ll put my foot in my mouth, and someone here will correct me, and i will learn a thing!

AW SHUCKS @JES <3

ETA: thank you, Naglfar!