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By David Futrelle
So-called “Gender Critical” feminists — that is, the artists transphobes formerly known as TERFs — like to fantasize about removing the “T” from LGBT, severing trans people from the solidarity and support of the broader community of which they now are a central part.
But some in the GC crowd want to go much further, effectively removing all the letters except for the L for Lesbian. Consider this highly upvoted comment from the Gender Critical subreddit painting gay men as slavering predators who’ve supposedly ruined the movement with their sexual obsession.
“The worst mistake lesbian women made was allying themselves with the gay male movement,” GCMAdamXX begins.
“Gay liberation” was only ever about unfettered male sexual desire. The first riots were about the police raiding sex clubs (where prostitution was common). Stonewall itself was a known hangout for underage boys to sell sex to closeted businessmen. Sylvia Rivera himself was only 17. His lover Marsha Johnson was 26.
FWIW, every source I found online that refers to the two trans activists describes them as “friends,” not lovers, but why let the mere facts dissuade you when you’re trying to portray female trans activists as gay male pedophiles?
Within a year of the first AIDS cases the cause and the vectors were understood, and yet gay men fought to keep the sex clubs open and resisted using condoms. So AIDS kept spreading. Because men refused to give up their sexual “liberation”.
It took a lot longer than a year for people to understand what was going on with AIDS.
Now we have drag queen story time peddling this shit to children.
Apparently reading stories to kids while dressed in drag is equivalent in GCMadamXX’s mind with pedophilia and knowingly spreading AIDS.
Gay liberation has always been about male lust. Trans is just an extension of that into ever creepier realms. Including pedophilic realms.
Bullshit.
Lesbianism is about liberation FROM male lust. It’s time the L split from the G as well.
Presumably bi men — and possibly bi women? — would be excluded as well due to all the “male lust” involved in bisexuality.
A quick tour of GCMadamXX recent comment history on Reddit reveals that she has similarly strong feelings on a number of topics.
She’s really, really into women making babies.
The acme of HUMAN experience is the creation of another human. That is correct. Every other thing humans have ever achieved has been driven by the desire to reproduce or improve the odds of survival for offspring or relatives. …
Until we recognize our power and learn to wield it we will never be free.
In another thread she waxes poetic about women and their wombs:
Literally what matters in this world more than the creation of life? Everything you believe about being a woman is a lie told to try to control us. We are the goddesses of this world. Not only can we create life we can create more goddesses. We are eternal and powerful.
As much as she loves the baby making thing she’s not so thrilled that men are a part of it, and would seemingly prefer it if the world were free of most men beyond a few sperm donors. She sounds more than a little like a MGTOW dreaming of a world in which flesh-and-blood women are replaced by compliant lady sexbots.
Males are dispensable and most are superfluous to the continuation of the species. Females are not.
She doesn’t think men should be watching porn:
Combine a dating app with a porn blocker. For every month a guy doesn’t watch porn he gets to contact one woman. If he stays off porn for a year he unlocks the whole site. Women would pay for this.
But she herself sometimes indulges in a little porn-watching — and her favored genre of the stuff is a little surprising:
I try not to watch porn at all but when I occasionally slip, I watch gay porn. You’re so much less likely to find someone being horribly abused in the m/m scene.
edit: I’m not a gay male LOL
No, we didn’t think you were. And she’s not a lesbian either. Despite her strong opinions on LGBTQ politics, and her general low opinion of men, she’s evidently a straight (or possibly bi?) woman with a husband and kids
Regardless of her furtive interest in m/m porn (which she nonetheless thinks should be eliminated from the face of the earth) , it’s doubtful she’s be a good fanfic author as she is probably the least erotic sex-describer I’ve ever run across, at one point describing the penis as “something through which small gametes are excreted.”
HAWT (NAWT).
Oh, and she’s a fan of JK Rowling with has very definite opinions about the proper management of wizard schools:
Trans kids WOULDN’T be allowed at Hogwarts. The stairs to the girls’ dorms turn into slides if boys try to use them.
Wait, what? So she’s assuming that the stairs are making their decisions after scanning the students’ genitalia and not, say, by looking at how they present themselves to the world? That’s more than a little creey.
The inside of the Gender Critical mind is a deeply weird place and I’ve had enough of it for the day.
H/T — Thanks to Zinnia Jones, who reposted the “drop the t” comment to Twitter.
Dallillama and mcbender – Thanks, very interesting! As Rhuu notes, there doesn’t seem to be much reason for this distinction in HP. IIRC, The Finnish HP translation implies that “witch” would be the primary/umbrella term for all Hogwarts students. It’s like Rowling maybe wanted to combine wizardry and witchcraft?
In Finnish HP (and Discworld and generally any fantasy literature translated from English), “witch” is rendered as noita and “wizard” as velho. AFAIK, these were historically masculine and probably more or less synonymous, but have evolved largely different (and mostly opposite-gendered) connotations in modern pop culture.
(In old Finnish culture, professional magic was generally reserved for men. Different terms would have more positive or negative connotations, for example tietäjä would be more benevolent than noita or velho or kade.)
On the main topic : what a surprise that a racist piece of shit say she dislike men but prefer to abuse transgenders.
On Rowling : in addition to be hateful, I just can’t make heads or tails of how her wizardry world is supposed to work. (and it’s not the first time she add random assertion about how her world work that I find nonsensical).
Note that while I think that Hogwart have been logically constructed by some very, very bigoted people back in the past, and I wouldn’t be surprised if random enchantments were *super* bigoted, there is litteraly no reasons that current deans could not either re-enchant differently the stairs, create a new dorm, or find another creative solution if the problem happen. (problem = stairs acting up, not a transgender wizard). I know we are supposed to believe each and every deans would share her belief, but even within the romans it’s not quite true, and regardless of if she would find that abominable, the dean could not.
Compare and contrast to something like Sleepless Domain, where only girls can have magical power, but that don’t stop transgender from the action. (also, it’s treated like not being a big deal)
On wizard vs witches : I don’t know for every language, but it’s amusing how subtly different the words are in french and english. In french, witch would be translated by “sorcier / sorciére”, as would, rather logically, sorcerer. “wizard” would be “mage” who is neutral, or “enchanteur / enchanteresse” (which, rather logically, is also synonym with enchantress, but existing in both male and female version, while I don’t think I ever head the male version of an enchantress in english).
Which mean a male witch or a female wizard alway felt very natural for me : there are words for that. Compare and contrast with doctors or engineers, who in french *don’t* have “natural” feminine. Up until ten years or so, I even thought a doctor women was a nurse.
Note that it don’t change that generally speaking, witches still tend to be represented as less academic, less potent, and less serious than wizard, just like in english. It’s just easier to see a men using a cauldron to do evil potions (and, in fact, the big bad evil of a very popular french comic is exactly that).
@Malitia:
It seems like you misunderstand me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t critique the magical community. I’m saying that the particular way in which the magical community is fucked up is not the same as the particular way that Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” is fucked up.
Different problems, different critiques.
@BekaBot:
I think Tonks does have a gender, as portrayed by Rowling. Whether it makes sense to think of Tonks as “having” a sex is a more interesting question to me. If Tonks can changer her anatomy faster than she can change her clothes, then what does it mean when one says that Tonks “has a sex”.
Now, Tonks can be female (or male, or have some other sexed body type) in the sense of right this moment she’s female, but wait 5 seconds and that could change. But with her body so malleable, that statement is very different from what we think of when we think of “having” anatomy (including “having” a sex).
On the other hand, while we as readers don’t know anything about how frequently Tonks, for instance, shapes her body with a vagina, we do know that she encourages the use of feminine pronouns and that people around her never use masculine pronouns for her.
Tonks gender, in short, appears to be much more enduring and consistent than her anatomy.
@Ohlmann:
As an aside, I think you probably mean “masculine” and “feminine” versions – neither of those words have reproductive systems of any type.
But about not hearing the word “enchanter”, while I’m sure that’s true, there is actually a very pop culture-famous enchanter: Tim.
@Cryp Dyke : said like that, I can’t help but think that it’s the same for regular humans, including transgender people.
@Crip Dyke:
I was going to say something very similar about Tonks. As written, her gender is one of the few things that stays consistent about her. Whether that would be the case for someone else with her abilities is an open question, and something that would probably be pretty interesting to explore in fanfiction and I don’t think I’ve seen much of it. I might have to look around for Tonks stories and see what there is sometime soon.
For instance, I do wonder how parents would approach raising such a child (for that matter, how did Tonks herself end up being assigned female? IIRC we know the shapeshifting abilities are present even in childhood). How would their gender identity develop if they can change their body however and whenever they wish?
I don’t know if “witch” was always gendered, but the modern notion of a witch largely comes from 15th-16th century (and earlier) brewers, when brewing beer was a woman’s job.
This is where most of the stereotypes come from: a broom symbol over the door of a brewer’s house indicated beer was available; brewers kept cats to keep mice from getting into the grain; wide-brimmed hats were worn to market as a way to make beer-sellers instantly recognizable; and a boiling cauldron, well… what else do you suppose the “witch” would be brewing?
I have read historians arguing that the Church wanted to promote the takeover of brewing businesses by men at some point in the 16th century, so they cruelly invented an excuse to persecute any woman who exhibited the classic symbols of the trade. Men couldn’t compete in a fair and open market, so why not just outlaw the competition?
Sadly, a whole lot of brewing traditions and recipes were almost certainly lost because of the witch trials.
So, yes, witches (as they are known in the West) are coded as women, and they are supposed to be evil and weak, because they were defined as anti-Christian.
@Lumipuna
Does Finnish have grammatical gender? I recall hearing somewhere that the language doesn’t, but I don’t know because I don’t speak Finnish.
@mcbender
I’m guessing Rowling didn’t think of the shapeshifting possibilities of Tonks, seeing how much J.K. dislikes anyone whose gender is different from what they were assigned at birth.
Your post on Rowling is good.
@Definitely not Steve : once again, language muddy that up, and I would argue that witches are coded as women in english-speaking countries, which isn’t the same as “in the West”.
I mean, in french, if you ride a broom, you’re a women. But every other part of the stereotype *also* work for men. And the stereotype for the infernalist burned by the inquisition is actually a man, not a woman.
(I know, it’s an easy bias to have, doubly so because it don’t change the end result of women being disparaged)
No, but job titles might include “-man” or a feminine suffix, like in literal equivalents of “waiter” and “waitress” (the latter now nearly obsolete).
When I said noita/velho used to be masculine, I meant simply practical connotations in old Finnish tradition.
@Ohlmann,
That’s an important distinction, and thank you for pointing it out! However, my understanding (which is certainly subject to flaws, and based on limited available historical information) is that the association of women brewers with witchcraft was common across mainland Europe as well as the British Isles, so it is not a strictly English-speaking phenomenon.
And I think there are corresponding female-coded words for the practitioners of witchcraft in most European languages, which also had (or still have) associations with similar or analogous symbols.
@Crip Dyke
Hmm, I wounder if, that in regards to Tonks, that she may be arguably gender fluid but with perhaps a stronger lean towards feminine presenting under that itinerary?
It’s kind of interesting to think about.
To slightly deviate from the topic of HP, I do feel incredibly vulnerable to this sort of ideology, because I never saw what was so great about being a guy. Well, there was one time I did use the word “feminist” in a disparaging way when I was a child, but I didn’t really see what was so great about being a guy. At the same time, this sort of ideology would prevent me from being able to realize the solutions to my issues around gender, since transitioning (should it be fit for me) would be totally out of the question for these people, and they’d uphold the gender binary; I’m not sure if they want to get rid of it.
To this day, I still feel towards women, mainly those who are cisgender and attractive in my eyes.
Historically in Finland, women would routinely cast spells especially to protect the cattle but it wasn’t deemed worthy of a title. Only in early modern era this became gradually associated with Germanic and Christian ideas of female witchcraft. Men would do, for example, healing and necromancy and projectile curses and weather spells.
(17th century witch hunts were very small scale phenomenon in Finland, targeting more often men than women)
TERFs are reactionaries first and feminists a distant second. Nothing about this surprises me in the slightest.
In Japanese, Wizards are called Maho Tsukai (literally “magic user”) while Witches are called Majo (witch, literally “magic woman”). Wizardkind as a whole is called Maho Zoku (literally “magic tribe”).
In an unfinished novel of mine, made long ago, there were that concept that most people had a soul, but about one third didn’t, and the only way to found out was either incredibly long and difficult tests, or discovering that demons weren’t interested in buying your soul.
There were a lot of people who attached importance to having a soul (like, for example, the clergy), and a lot of stupid, non-working tests. In the end, what people called a soul was just a particulary esoteric and useless part of most individual, but mostly nobody admitted it and a lot of people made their own lifes miserables in creative way because of that.
Thinking back about it, I suspect there was some unconscious analogy made with gender.
What does this mean?
@rv97
I’m a bit unsure of what this means, but TERFs definitely want to uphold the binary and do not want to get rid of it. As a result, they enforce very strict gender roles for men and women and get very upset whenever anyone deviates (i.e. I read an anecdote from a man about how a TERF told him he needed mental help because he was wearing nail polish.
Do you mean you are attracted to women, identify as a woman, or what? I’m a bit confused, much like kupo.
@kupo
I envy a very narrow set of women; admittedly those often featured either in porn or in media, but I have envied women in non-sexual ways too. I envy the more varied ways they can express themselves and I don’t seem to enjoy being a guy a lot of the time, often feeling pathetic for being one.
The women I envy do tend to be attractive in my eyes or in my assumptions – they’re almost always skinny and don’t present in a butch manner. The latter means that I envy women for how they can express themselves easily in a traditionally feminine and traditionally masculine manner, while men have to make do with one in nearly every case. It gets worse in more socially conservative backgrounds, especially those heavily influenced by colonialism or generally social conservatism.
Hating men just seemed a very persuasive thing for me because I didn’t see what was so great about being a guy, and, well, owing to men committing the majority of crimes and general abuse, I thought it seemed justified to give men hell in many cases.
TERF ideology hence sounds very persuasive to me, but as I’ve mentioned before, what they suggest may not help resolve my issues around gender; some may just want to enforce the binary even further, whereas I find the gender binary a prison that perpetuates toxic relationships in many cases. I’m not sure if they advocate anything like what separatist feminists do, but I doubt they do and they seem more willing to side with conservatives, at least from what I’ve seen here.
BTW, I’m sorry if my messages aren’t coming through instantly, this is outside my control.
Speaking of TERFs, this happened. TL;DR is that BBC made a documentary about detransitioners that interviews TERF groups and people who’ve detransitioned, but does not interview any trans* people who are glad they transitioned and presents detransitioners as being many in number.
Terf Wars?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/jk-rowling-transphobic-tweet-mark-hamill-maya-fortstater-terf-a9254446.html
Looking through the Google News feed for JK Rowling shows generally awful people on her side and, under normal circumstances, I’d imagine she’d largely oppose most of the output of outlets like the Daily Mail and Catholic Herald.
Best summary – love the end:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/j-k-rowling-s-maya-forstater-tweets-support-hostile-work-ncna1105201
@Lumipuna
Velho is apparently Russian in origin, while nõita is Finnish, but I don’t know mote than that because I can’t read Russian or Finnish
@Ohlmann
Sorcier[e], in English Sorcerer/ess, is from Latin sortiarius, one who tells(and/or influences) fortunes by casting lots/dice (you may recall an appearance by such a person in Le Devin if you read Asterix as a child), and enchanteur/enchanter literally mean ‘one who sings or speaks incantations’.
For the sake of completeness, magician is from a Greek root meaning ‘one who is like the Magi’, and magic is derived from magician. The Magi, in turn, were the Zoroastrian* priests of Persia, believed by Classical Greeks to have supernatural powers. Conjurer is a person who binds [supernatural beings] by oaths or sacred names, from Latin ‘bring together by oaths’, while warlock is from Old English waerloga, ‘oath-denier’. In a magical context the oath in question is to God, and hence a warlock is someone who has entered a pact with rhe Devil (indeed, the word was sometimes used as a euphemism for the Devil to avoid attracting his attention).
*and possibly also pre-Zoroastrian
I don’t know the etymologies either, though noita does seem to have a cognate in Sami languages, either by loan or by common origin.
Tietäjä seems to have an etymology similar to English “wizard”. In modern Finnish, this word is generally used in historical/anthropological context, as opposed to fantasy literature. English equivalents would be variable, such as shaman, druid or medicine man. In English translations of Finnish folklore, “wizard” is also used.
Kade has evolved into an adjective meaning “jealous person” and derived into the noun kateus “jealousy”, apparently from the connection between aggrievement and malevolent magic.