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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.
I didn’t think stating that men consciously uphold patriarchy would be some kind of controversial statement here of all places.
@WWTH
I know they do, and I’m not trying to argue otherwise. I was mainly pointing out, for the benefit of rv97 and potentially lurkers, that even people who don’t think they’re reinforcing it can be reinforcing it unintentionally. I’m sorry if what I said seemed to take blame away from the men in power who are creating and reinforcing it. I merely meant to point out that they’re doing it with help from the masses.
My apologies if what I said seemed to be contradictory or otherwise problematic.
No one here is perfect, and you don’t need to meet some arbitrary “you must be this Woke to enter”, to participate in the community. We just ask that people act in good faith and in accordance with the comments policy.
This community probably maybe isn’t the best place to go if you want basic 101 tutorials on progressive stances, and the members will push back against regressive viewpoints if they are expressed here, but it’s important to remember that there is a distinction between “hey, that’s a shitty thing to say” and “you are an irredeemably shitty person”. If you find out that a belief that you hold is problematic, then that’s good! You’re learning! You have the opportunity to be better. It doesn’t mean that you’re fake or defective, just that you have improvements to make, same as the rest of us. You can’t fix something if you don’t notice that it’s broken.
Naglfar,
It’s all right. It’s just frustrating because hate – of all kinds, certainly not just misogyny – is becoming more and more openly expressed. There’s barely even dog whistling anymore. It’s just becoming increasingly difficult for me to accept that any kind of injustices are being perpetuated because people just have unexamined biases preventing them from being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. I’m just not buying that people don’t know what they’re doing when they reinforce patriarchy, racism or anything else. Not when the rapist of a 9 year old girl has been pardoned because her hymen is intact, not when impeachment is being called a Jew coup, not when babies are being snatched from migrant women immediately after they give birth. I’m just kind of finished seeing oppression as something that ever happens accidentally.
@WWTH
I understand your frustration, and I’m very frustrated with the situation myself. I agree that bigotry is rarely an accident. I guess what I was trying to say was that we should examine our own actions in relation to the patriarchy/white supremacy/etc in order to effectively fight it, but phrased my message very poorly.
No worries, I know what you mean now.
I didn’t meant to say that all thoses biases and effects are unconscious. They relatively rarely are directly enforced as a way to enforce patriarchy ; rather, it’s quite often mediocres people fearing being replaced, entitled people wanting nothing to change, etc. They, however, rarely even are unconscious. I don’t think when we offer a dinner set to little girl and a truck to little boy that it’s unconscious !
Also, with exceptions, they tend to be individually small, with very large total effects. Similar to how one lonely people saying “so gay !” isn’t much, but a thousand of them is devastating.
Huh. Not an expert, but seems to me like a horseshoe effect kinda thing. Though I do wonder if she ever expressed to “hubby” her ideas on superfluous males. “Honey, I love you, but while you’re a top-shelf sperm donor to have babies with, most of your friends are dispensable and superfluous, so they gotta go.”
And I wouldn’t be surprised if Hogwarts really was that way, since the wizarding world clearly has problems being an overly calcified, conservative and exclusionary society, so their ideas on non-heteronormative gender concepts are probably very much ass-backwards (Dumbledore’s orientation notwithstanding), and I wouldn’t even be surprised if nobody in it hadn’t even thought of a gender reassignment spell that would change the recipient on a genetic (or genetic-equivalent) level that would solve a lot of the related problems (certainly not all, of course, but it’d likely be a good start).
@Paireon
In most ways, I think the way she showed Dumbledore’s orientation was carefully meted to pander to conservatives. She didn’t out him until after she was done writing the series and it had made her a fortune, and it was only after fans had been saying it for a long time. As we discussed earlier, she’s also extremely transphobic, so that would suggest that Hogwarts is similarly transphobic.
When I first read HP oh-so-long-ago, I’d missed the first one and the second until just before the 3rd was published. A friend who teaches young kids was telling me I should read those before the 3rd came out. So I rushed through them, just enjoying them as mindless quick reads.
Even then, I was struck that polyjuice potion could turn Hermione half-cat, but HG, HP, and Ron were worried about making sure that they polyjuiced into someone of their own gender.
The HP universe: You can swap species, sure, but don’t swap sex or gender.
Of course, at the time I took it as simply yet another brutal failure of imagination that plagues pretty much every writer of modern novels (modern meaning post-Sir Walter Scott). Go back to Homer and you see Athena swapping sex anytime she feels like it just to take on whatever traits will help her do her task. (She wants Telemachus to listen to her? She turns into an older man. At other times she adopts the form of a mortal woman to gain the trust of someone else. She wants to avoid Zeus’ punishments for interfering with mortals? She transforms into a young girl, playing on Zeus’ bias against taking girls seriously to remain unobserved. It’s all about what works and fuck your gender limitations)
@Paireon : in my experience, the horseshoe theory is mostly bunk, and come from the fact that a lot of political movements, like stalinists and maoists, loudly say they are on the left wing while actually being far right.
Rowling never striked me as particulary leftist either. Her novels aren’t particulary progressive (but aren’t visibly ultra conservative to me). What personally struck me is how the fact some peoples are wizards and some aren’t is accepted by everyone, and there isn’t any attempt to see why it’s so or if one could not make everyone a wizard.
Rowling actually does address one aspect of this: it turns out that there’s a cottage industry that exists to make money off of squibs desperate to work magic.
Presumably if any of their teaching/development strategies worked, Argus Filch would have managed magic at some point.
I’m not saying that that relieves Rowling of any of the implications of her world building that places you in unalterable, undefiable categories by miracle of birth, but just noting that she does, actually consider that some people would NOT accept the neat division and would work to resist it – and overcome it, if possible.
@Ohlmann
The horseshoe theory also gets used by various conservatives as a way to argue “both sides.” When I point out that there’s white nationalist terrorists doing mass shootings, they shoot back by claiming that there’s equally bad people on the left because horseshoe theory.
@Naglfar – Yeah I remember some of those discussions a few weeks back, I think. And the “Dumbledore’s orientation notwithstanding” was more to showcase it as an aberration in the otherwise very heteronormative wizarding world than to excuse said heteronormativity through tokenism.
@Crip Dyke – Yeah, the polyjuice potion was what came to mind too. Personally I like how that Athena example you gave still shows that despite her gender-changing antics, it still shows how deeply misogynistic and patriarchal ancient Greek society was (otherwise at least half those antics would have been unnecessary).
Yes, I like that too. One of the things that I loved about Athena when I was reading her stories as a tiny trans tot* was how even though the people around her clearly weren’t over gender, even though certain other gods clearly weren’t over gender, Athena’s attitude towards gender was completely punk rock.
===========================
*OT: When I first was at someone’s house who was playing the “Tiny Toon Adventures” show in the 90s, the song (which was done rather quickly and in a cartoonishly altered voice, big surprise) sounded to me like it was saying, “Tiny Tuna Fencers”.
This misheard lyric has been a staple of jokes between myself and my friends for all the years since.
@Crip Dyke
Tiny Tuna Fencers sounds like a much more entertaining show.
RE: Horseshoe theory: Like I said, not an expert. Although I’d really like to read about how Stalinism and Maoism are actually right-wing (especially since I’ve actually known people who were or still are apologists for one or both, and so far they’ve all been pretty left-wing otherwise to my knowledge). So links or references would be welcome.
As for both sides having bad people in it, I’d say it’s pretty much a fact, although both numbers of assholes, how much of an asshole you have to be to be part of a side in the first place, and what the assholes of a side are ready to do/condone in their side’s name are very much important in determining the worse side. And since I’ve seen very few leftists commit murder, arson, rape and terrorism lately, or condone it, I think I know who’s the bigger assholes.
@Paireon
Well of course there are some people who are bad in any group. What I meant was that conservatives like to argue that the left is doing just as many bad things as them, which is false. The left is not motivating white nationalist shooters, putting children in concentration camps, or repealing decades of environmental protect regulations. The left and right are not doing equal amounts of bad stuff, so yes, the right are bigger assholes.
@Naglfar – That’s pretty much what I’d understood from your earlier post, I’m just a sucker for clarifying myself LOL.
And to put it through the warped mirror of “bad things the Left supposedly does or is planning (according to Alex Jones anyway)”, you should say that the Left is not motivating islamicist terrorists, putting WASPs in FEMA camps, or strengthening environmental regulations to the point of deliberately engineering a human (read: white) population decrease. Because the wingnuts and Right-wing conspiracy loonies very commonly accuses the Left of that bullshit.
@Paireon : stalinists and maoists are deeply nationalistict authoritarians who want to use force to enforce a specific society structure. If you have the impression I have just described fascism, there’s a reason. They are other similarity, like hostility toward intellectuals, a mindset of being sieged by the “hostile foreign powers”, and of course the xenophobia. (including antisemitism for stalinism).
Ah, and they are named after bloodthirsty dictators who are about as despicable as Hitler.
Pretty much the only point of difference with far right is that they aren’t conservative. (and successors to Mao are super-duper conservative)
While I am somewhat skeptikal of communism in general, thoses two examples really are communism in name only. Their origins each time is claiming to need extraordinary measure temporarily, and both kept thoses powers for undue amount of time.
Also, maybe it’s a french phenomen, but there’s a LOT of ex-maoist who are far right or ultra-liberal (or both). It’s not exactly a coincidence.
Two other notions that are relevant right now :
* projection : people who are ready to do X think everyone is ready for that. Explain why far righter think the other parties are trigger happy about putting opponents in camps or think about an ethnic genocide.
* private communism (translated from french, so maybe the actual english name is different ?) : the final stage of ultra-liberal capitalism is to have a small number, perhaps a single, firm that do everything and is undistinguishable from a communism monopoly apart from the fact it’s privately owned. Think Amazon.
@Ohlmann
I mean you can make good arguments that Stalinism is “far-right”, but at the end of they day I think this sort of “no true leftist” thinking mostly just contributes to lack of self awareness, perpetuation of evil power structures, and far too many atrocities.
Stalinism might be “far-right nationalism” but it emerged from a bona fide leftist revolution. Lenin was much more clearly a leftist, and committed war crimes regardless. Male socialists and anarchists have been brutally misogynistic, white feminists have been brutally racist, etc.
IMO the modern left needs to be willing to grapple with this directly, or the same awful shit will keep happening.
But TBH I don’t expect much grappling. I expect a bloodbath in the US, and if the left prevails – and I don’t think we will – I expect genocide, oppression of women, and murder of disabled people to happen anyway, all in the name of “revolution” and “the proletariat” and “the white working class” etc. etc. And if the left does not prevail, I expect white, Christian, abled leftists to gladly throw people like me under the bus first.
TL;DR I expect myself and most of my friends to die in the next decade or so, because white goyim collectively don’t want to ask themselves how Stalinism grew out of their precious leftist doctrine. So forgive me for being somewhat bitter about all this.
Whether you consider Stalin or modern China “communist” or “state capitalist” seems to depend on who on the left you ask. I think it’s just semantics, really. In my view, I agree with Cyborgette in that the effect of the “state capitalist” phrasing seems to be a minimization of leftists’ culpability in perpetuating the colonialist bigotry that in theory is supposed to be an invention of capitalism. On the other hand, that also seems to happen with the “communist” phrasing. I’m sure a lot of others here have had similar experiences with far-left communities, but I’ve actually seen authoritarian-leaning communists arguing with other leftists about whether the Soviet Union really did anything wrong, whether North Korea is secretly a well-run country, and whether the concept of totalitarianism has had an unfair reputation. And then they got into scandals involving harassment and/or letting their open-source projects get run over by right-wingers, so. (I do think a lot of people have exaggerated impressions of some of the things done by communist states, and I think there’s an argument that capitalist countries haven’t been faring much better on quality of life than communist ones, but I’m talking more about seemingly pushing back against every criticism of communist countries here.)
One time I met someone who works with various organizations for anti-racism training, who observed that banks were better about it than non-profits. That’s not to say that banks are good and blameless, but I just think the typical narrative by (white) leftists is simplistic and reductionist to the movement’s peril.
In the US, there seems to be this prevailing attitude on the left that Medicare for all will solve racism, homophobia, transphobia and abelism. Last week, Elizabeth Warren – who makes it a point to acknowledge by name black trans women who are murdered – said that she would make a speech in rose garden every year and say the names of black trans woman murder victims. Bernie bros mocked this because what’s really important for combating hatred against black trans women is Medicare.
It was just so fucking gross. I’m not saying Warren is 100% perfect on either race or trans issues, but at least she’s acknowledging that the intersection of racism, misogyny and transphobia results in horrific violence and is a problem worth addressing for its own sake. Medicare for all (which Warren is actually for anyway) is necessary, but it’s hardly the cure for all social ills and I refuse to accept this notion that we can’t talk about any “ism” other than classist.
Sorry to drag presidential politics into it, but I’ve been kind of seething about it for days and wanted to grab an opening to vent about it.
We have universal free health care here; and I think there’s still the occasional bit of racism, homophobia, misogyny etc. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.
Not that Bernie is personally responsible for the behavior of these fuckups, but Grilled Cheezus if that kind of thing happens, the right thing to do if you’re Bernie is come right out and say that he would do the same thing.
I remember that there was an election for student association president at a traditionally-women-only college (I think it was Smith, but it might not have been) where one of the main candidates was an FtM trans person. There was some noise about refusing to vote for him because of supporting the college as a place that emphasizes boosting up women as leaders.
The other (or at least another) main candidate immediately put out a statement that said if you’re thinking about voting against Candidate1 solely because Candidate1 is trans, then she didn’t want your vote either.
I hope that if/when this shit comes to Bernie’s attention, he can respond with as much grace and moral clarity.
BTW: Sources would be excellent if you can link them.