By David Futrelle
So-called “gender critical feminists” are obsessed with pronouns; they talk about them more often than a 7th grade English teacher, and the discussions often get quite vitriolic.
Despite the profusion of new pronouns in recent years, the pronoun that gets these rebranded TERFs the angriest is one as ancient as language itself: she. At least when it’s applied to women who aren’t cis.
In a notorious (and quickly deleted) Mumsnet post last year (which you can now find archived here), an angry transphobe called Barra Kerr declared that “pronouns are Rohypnol” — at least when the pronoun in question is “she” or “her” applied to a trans woman. As Kerr sees it, calling one of these “men” by a female pronoun is a “cheap but effective psychological trick” that confuses the brain and lowers natural female defenses against predatory males, whether cis men or wily trans lesbians (who in Kerr’s mind aren’t “really” lesbians at all but dudes who pretend to be women so they can pick up lesbians). By this convoluted “logic” the pronoun “she,” when applied to trans women, is the equivalent of a date rape drug.
If Kerr’s is the most radical transphobic attack on the pronouns of trans women, the meanest and most petty take on the subject I’ve seen so far comes in a Gender Critical subreddit posting from a few days ago by someone called vanillaorgtfo — arguing that calling trans women “she” is just a way to make
these ugly men in dresses feel better about the fact that no one is really fooled and everyone can tell they are actually men.
Let’s go through vanillaorgtfo’s, er, argument in detail.
“The fact is,” she begins, “the vast majority of transwomen do not pass.”
Er, maybe the reason you think this is because the other trans women (not “transwomen”) you run across on the regular do pass, meaning that you never notice them. And it’s also possible that some of the women you think are non-passing “transwomen” are in fact cis women with some stereotypically masculine features.
Even the ones I see who try to take a good selfie with all the pretty hair and clothes and makeup and who have gained weight in the face in “feminine” patterns tend to suffer from pretty noticeable “man jaw”, aka the heavy lower jaw and face women rarely get.
There are plenty of cis women with these so-called “man jaws.” And plenty of cis men without them.
That and other body subtleties tend to subconsciously clue a person in to their true sex. But by now most socially adept people can guess from their egregiously girly clothing they want to be called “she/her”.
If you’re going by twenty-year-old stereotypes, I suppose, or confusing trans women with drag queens.
For those who are passing badly or meeting people in a new situation or talking online or on tumblr, whatever, they use the “preferred pronouns”, however, so that people know. It’s a tacit admission that they are failing to adequately convince people of their preferred gender presentation, or that people are regularly pegging them as the correct sex.
Even aside form the fact that many of those who are careful to spell out their preferred pronouns do so because they don’t fit the gender binary, the fact that someone’s gender presentation doesn’t seem “correct” to vanillaorgtfo is less a reflection on them than on the narrowness of her notions of acceptable gender presentation. Some people actually have no desire to “pass.”
In any case, that’s the substance, such as it is, of vanillaorg’s argument, which essentially boils down to “ha ha, ‘transwomen’ are so ugly they have to tell people their pronouns in advance!” Which is not so much an argument as a dubious assertion based on a series of dumb premises.
The real question is why “arguments” like this make so many Gender Crits — generally a fairly indignant bunch — so gleeful. (Vanillaorgtfo’s post fot nearly 70 upvotes and virtually universal agreement from commenters.) I’m going to take a wild guess and say “transmisogyny.”
Indeed, much of what the Gender Crit crowd says about trans women is similar in spirit to what MGTOWs and other manosphere misosgynists regularly say about cis women. Some of the obsessions are not just similar but identical: the last person I recall going on about “man jaws” was alt-Nazi pickup artist Heartiste.
I would say something about “strange bedfellows” here, but it’s not really strange that there are so many parallels between misogynistic manospherans and transmisogynistic Gender Crits. Hate movements gonna hate.
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I saw someone on twitter coin the term Feminism Appropriating Reactionary Transphobe, to replace TERF, as nothing about transphobia is either radical or feminist. The acronym also helps in a juvenile matter.
We live a couple blocks away from the westboro Baptist church. they hate everyone. Soldiers, lgbt, goths, feminist, anyone not Christian, and Catholics. They protest at our school all the time. Some of them protest a home coming party for my husband with signs about how god hates soldiers. I truly believe you can fine your courage as we found ours. It’s not easy and there is even a large chance of injury. I’ve had glass beer bottles thrown at me, You just got dig down deep, find that courage and figure out what makes you happy as a person.
@Nicholas Kiddle
You should do that. In addition to getting compliments for yourself, that will use up their time and means they won’t have as much time or energy to harass unwilling people.
@Lainy:
Re Westboro Baptists:
Ugh!!! You have my deepest, sincerest regrets that you have to put up with those wastes of carbon, especially given that your husband’s serving in defense of our country…just…UGH (sorry, just got off work & I have neither the energy–or the vocabulary–to adequately describe my utter revulsion for that group).
@ Naglfar:
Ahahahaha my angular jawline definitely runs in the family, and it’s gender-nonspecific, though we don’t all have it.
I sometimes wish I’d got my mother’s aquiline nose (we only have two noses) to better balance it, but I ended up with my aunt’s.
@Moon Custafer
For a minute I pictured a person with two noses. I’m assuming that the members of your family only have one nose each, but it was a strange mental image.
Re: jawlines
My mother has a stronger jawline than I do and she’s a cis woman. I have my father’s jawline and my mother’s nose.
@ Patrice_Luroomba
Having read King Solomon’s Mines and She, I can confirm dude certainly seemed to think colonialism was just peachy.
@Lainy
I’ve always wondered what I would do if I ever saw a WBC protest in person. Start a fistfight, probably.
This isn’t a born trait, it’s learned, and “engineering humans” is also known as eugenics. You seriously need to stop this shit.
@rv97 – please stop. You are clearly going through something, and you need to find some *qualified* people to talk through your complex feelings towards both organised religion and masculinity.
When you put down masculinity all the time, you aren’t just punching up, you’re also hitting people who are trying to figure out their own relationship to their masculinity, and how to express it without being toxic.
Masculinity, like femininity, isn’t INHERENTLY toxic. Toxic masculinity is toxic. Saying all masculinity = toxic masculinity means that all masc people, from cis men to gender non conforming men to enbies to trans masculin people to trans men are hit.
It gets really freaking tiring to feel little connection with ‘femininity’, but be constantly surrounded with people bashing all men and all masculinity in progressive spaces.
Makes the person thinking about presenting/defining themselves as more masc feel super shitty, and possibly super dysphoric.
We are not therapists. It is unfair for your shit, which we are not qualified to even attempt to deal with, to make others feel bad about themselves.
So, if your comment comes down to: all men are monsters and all religion is monstrous – please don’t make it. We know you feel that way.
You’re harming people.
Something like that accidentally happened to a friend of mine! He’s a trans guy who generally dresses in what’s categorized as men’s clothing, but isn’t super rigid about it. He did a post online for Transgender Day of Visibility, and was wearing…I can’t remember if it was an androgynous-looking shirt or a brightly-colored scarf, or what, but something that lead to some random troll making the wrong assumption.
The troll made some comment along the lines of “You’re a man, you’ll always be a man, everyone can tell you’re really a man, and you shouldn’t pretend to be a woman.”
He thought that was awesome.
@rv97
Your argument also sounds reminiscent of something I’ve heard from TERFs when they claim that the sexuality of AMAB people is fixed and destructive. In addition to the harm on men, t‘s also hurtful to trans* femme people because the TERFs say that we’re the same as men, and therefore extend this idea to us. Please stop.
I can just about imagine how these transphobes interact with random trans women they meet. It goes something like this:
TW: *presents self in a casually feminine manner, introduces by female name*
TERF: *casually misgenders with an air of plausible deniability*
TW: “BTW, I’m a woman.”
TERF: “Ok.” *continues misgendering*
TW: “Please refer to me as ‘she’.”
TERF: “Oh, I’ll try to remember.”
….
TERF: “Damn these trans women, always announcing their pronouns as soon as you get within shouting distance of them. And it’s just because half the time you couldn’t otherwise tell they’re “women”, hah. And heaven forbid you accidentally use the wrong pronoun for them. It’s Tumblr gone real life, is what it is.”
Should really read
With the ‘just’ removed, i think. ‘Just’ makes it seem acceptable that saying all masculinity = violence and rape is sometimes okay, and it really never ever is.
Tyko I am 100% with you. I just can’t wrap my brain around why feminists would hate women.
ChloroFluoro I think that’s what it is. People get really weird when they don’t know “Is this human male or female?” I have broad shoulders, no hips to speak of, and short hair and I’ve been called “sir” (or some derivative) all my life. It doesn’t bother me but seeing people flustered and trying to correct themselves after misgendering me has been uncomfortable, really. Why is it sooooo important to you (the general “you”) that you make sure *I* know *you* know I’m a woman? I don’t care.
Another Laura That is awesome.
My first real love (I’m a cis lesbian) was a trans woman of color in Phoenix in 1984. She was a woman and I can’t believe this shit is still going on in 2020.
My (charitable) first thought was, “Maybe they have never known any trans women?” But David put it so perfectly,
Spot on.
In addition, it discourages people from trying to improve. If we say that all masculinity is horrible and toxic and abusive, then we’re basically telling all masculine folks that there’s no point in trying to develop better behavior, because the only thing that can possibly fix them is if they completely discard their entire identity.
It doesn’t help anyone and it drives away people who are trying to learn.
@ObSidJa
It is not easy to say the least. It’s actually kind of funny because you can tell who is part of that church. They all have like spikes fences and really over done security systems while the people around them have like community gardens and bird baths and shit like that.
Talonknife
A bad habit my husband and i both share is antagonizing the idiots. He believes in socialism pretty heavily but being in the Marines he is mostly around conservative Republicans. He will get into these “debates” where he tells them he is a straight up communist just to piss them off. He has started some fist fights. Me, I have gone to the church protest of LGBT people in my gayest outfits i could do and kissed other girls in front of them while flipping them off. Sometimes this was a girlfriend sometimes this was just a fellow gay lady friend who wanted to piss off the idiots as well. They literary protest everything thing my college LGBT club does. It’s a very quick way to piss anyone involve off.
@rv97
You need to stop. Masculinity is a beautiful thing and way to express ones self. My husband has a masculinity personally type and body and it is beautiful. It’s a specific form of masculinity that is toxic and causes harm’s to others.
@Nicholas Kiddle:
I want to do the same thing as a cis woman one day – post a picture of myself posing cutely in r/GenderCritical and watch the comments about my big jaw and ridiculous posturing roll in
Lainy–Lucky you. You just keep on appreciating your hubby. Masculinity does offer its own beauty and adds value to the world.
Toxic masculinity is about cultural conditioning and is not “inborn” in anyone. It hurts everyone because it separates men from essential aspects of their human selves and it degrades women, thereby limiting their contributions to the human collective.
I grew up with four older brothers and I have never doubted that the men that I encounter in the world are–in essence–my brothers. I just wish more of the men in the world saw the females in it as their (fully) human sisters.
Wasn’t there some commercial a year or so back with a bunch of different women in it, including one trans woman, and some conservatives and/or TERFs proceeded to angrily fixate on the model they *thought* was the trans woman (not really a spoiler: she wasn’t)?
@Lainy
That is awesome. That is all I can say. Keep it up.
@Moon_custafer
I haven’t seen it. Anyone got a link?
They would love you to do that, as they’re generally a bunch of sue-happy lawyers.
It still strikes me that FARTs are allegedly convinced that trans women are really just straight men who want to jump their Sapphic bones – while some transphobic straight men claim that trans women are really just gay men who want to trick them into sex.
Both groups seem to see each other as natural allies.
Regarding masculinity – my sister-in-law was raising her daughter* a block away from where my husband and I were raising our two sons. She referred to our ‘overwhelmingly masculine’ household with good humor. I joked that my kids never saw women eating dinner except for the monthly visit to my Masonic lodge. It wasn’t a toxic environment, despite the constant testosterone fog.
*My husband rebuked me for referring to their house as the Land of Yin.
@Robert
That’s the thing about bigots—even if they hate each other and hate their targets for opposite reasons, they’ll find common ground. Like how white supremacists and black supremacists join together in their hatred of Jews and LGBTQIPA+ people.