By David Futrelle
Lesbians around the world face a deep existential crisis today as it has been revealed that they do not, in fact, exist. At least according to some dudes on the internet. Specifically, some dudes on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, long a hotbed of Lesbian Denial.
In a recent discussion, a commenter by the name of NathanHollister explained that so-called “lesbians” are just straight women who can’t find quality men.
Lesbianism is not real. It’s just women who are sick and tired of unmasculine, wussy, spineless soyboy men. They will magically turn straight for a real sexy, charming man.
Basically, women who cannot find a top 20% man become lesbians. Women who can find a top 20% man but also are kinky sluts become “bi”, but mainly because they know a threesome with another girl would turn their man on.
Other commenters agreed with the “can’t get a man” theory.
“Lesbians only exist because Chad said ‘no’ and didn’t give them attention,” declared edgysecularist.
Still others feel that lesbianism is more about the hatred of men than the lack of them. According to bbhuntt:
Any ‘lesbian’ Is really a straight person who doesn’t like men and is willing to have intercourse with women rather than not have intercourse. …
Being a lesbian is the ultimate move of feminist and nothing more. It’s all a giant game
Sir_manalot suggested that it was also about status, as no one apparently has more status than women today.
[W]omen just fuck whoever they believe is highest on the social chain. Right now, women are being given a bunch of unearned power and so lesbianism is in.
Fortunately for men — or at least for the cis men who make up the overwhelming majority of MGTOWs — they have one great advantage over all these fake lesbians. And it can be found in their pants.
“You have a dick and they don’t,” wrote rejac218.
They will never know what a woman’s pussy really feels like from balls deep. You should laugh right at them.
But of course as MGTOWs they don’t spend any time at all fantasizing about said pussies. Nope! As SprinterLyfe reminded his fellow Own-Way-Goers:
Pussy is all women have to offer. By placing little or no value on pussy, we regain control of ourselves, finding legitimate freedom from feminized cultures bent on enslavement and domination of men by women.
And there’s no greater proof of the freedom these men have from women than their tendency to discuss these completely unimportant-to-them women angrily on the internet all day every day while talking about how cool their dicks are. That’s what male freedom looks like!
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
I didn’t read down far enough in that reply thread, so I didn’t find these two quotes from the reply thread beneath the main quote until after I’d finished my last comment. But these two quotes are incredibly important:
Cody Severson:
Buck Angel:
So yeah, even in the moment he was absolutely 100% crystal clear that he wasn’t attacking other identities or attempting to argue that they were invalid. And as a bonus, he even called out the dynamic where people were saying he couldn’t even describe himself without others saying that he was attacking them, and therefore he was left without an ability to describe himself: that does erase identity.
For the 1500th time, Angel could have done any number of bad, bad, wrong things. And I’m open to that evidence. But quoting this thread isn’t evidence of Angel attacking other people. It’s evidence of other people attacking Angel for having the temerity to describe his own life.
@Universal Kami:
I don’t follow Angel. I’m not a fan of Angel. I’m not wanting to defend Angel.
But I sure as fuck defend the right of anyone, including Angel, to describe their own journey.
I personally haven’t seen the things you’ve seen because I don’t read Angel and I’m not on twitter (at all, ever). I’m not defending any of the things you’ve seen him do, except this one very specific thing.
And I’m just not sure how people who believe in our right to be authorities on our own lives could possibly criticize Angel for telling his own story.
@Crip Dyke
I respect you as a person, and I know that you are much more experienced than I. I’m younger and didn’t live through many of the things you lived through. However, a few things:
My problem with his quote is that he implies that one cannot be a certain identity without physically transitioning. Some people can’t afford to transition, others can’t for social reasons or health reasons. This kind of reasoning invalidates those people.
He retweeted it without comment. It’s on his feed. I’m not sure how to link in a way that shows that, but in general retweeting without comment implies agreement.
Oops. Does this link work?
I do not have a problem with people describing their own genders. I have a problem when someone starts describing there as being only one true way to be a gender (e.g. when he says “I had a #sexchange. I live in the binary and use testosterone and surgery to masculinize my body. I am male not #trans”).
I didn’t live through the time you describe, and I recognize that what was considered progressive in the 1990s may not be so today. This could be one of those things, that what he says may not have carried the same connotations then compared to now.
We can disagree on this and I will still respect you as a person and your right to an opinion, but I still think Buck Angel is bigoted against non-binary people based on what I have seen and is a transmedicalist, so I will not be supporting him. I did not mean to start an argument, I mentioned this in passing to say why I wasn’t a fan.
I completely agree with this statement, and seeing that retweet would have been evidence to me that he was doing something very fucked up. I just have never ever used twitter so I don’t even know how to look things up. For now, I’ll take your word for it that the retweet exists.
My only reservation is that because people use that one quote describing his own experience as evidence that he’s gatekeeping for others, I feel like I want more conclusive evidence than a retweet without comment. I guess I’m feeling that if one tweet is misunderstood, then it’s possible to misunderstand another.
This doesn’t mean that I need better quality evidence, though. For me one retweet without comment is enough to give me serious pause, and three retweets without comment would more than blow past my reservations.
Of course, I’m not trying to say that your standards of evidence have to be the same as mine, and I’m not trying to say that you’re wrong to call Angel truscum, just that I feel that first tweet of his has been so misused it makes me extra cautious.
Yes, it does. Having just read up on Linehan, I can say he’s clearly a nasty piece of cissexist work. I can also clearly say it was fucking awful of Angel to defend Linehan.
On the cumulative basis of the reddit personal story you linked before, your statement that Angel retweeted that horrible person, and the statement on RationalWiki that he made in defense of Linehan, that Angel is being fucked up as hell.
I still don’t know the exact brand of fucked up he is from those pieces of evidence, but people I know and respect say it’s the truscum brand of fucked up and at this point I’m happy to take your (and others’) word.
All that said, I would really like you to think through exactly what bothers you about that first piece of evidence you linked. I think in the context of the other fucked up shit Angel has done, you can read into that comment some sort of superiority or whatever, but that’s something you have to read into it … AND it’s directly contradicted by what he says later in that same thread. Again:
I also respect you and don’t want to have an argument. But please, please think about what you’re saying. There are literally zero words in that quote that say anything about anyone else’s gender. There are literally zero words about which way is the one true way to be a gender.
All he says is that he lives in the binary, not that people are supposed to live in the binary. I would strongly urge you to consider that if we can’t accurately describe our own experiences, we live in a fucked up world. I react so strongly to this because we literally have TERFs saying that trans* people can’t describe their own identities and experiences without being misogynists attacking women. If the TERFs are wrong when they say that, is it possible that we are wrong to say it in this case?
It’s possible for a really fucked up person to not be a demon who is thoroughly awful 24 hours a day. My very strong concern is that if we establish the precedent that statements describing your own experience are wrong because you were an asshat an hour before or an hour later, there’s no solid line anymore that says that it’s okay to describe your own experience.
When I came out as trans, my father disowned me. To my father and step-mother and at least 2 of my siblings, my description of my own life was construed as an attack on them. And hey, I’ve done bad things. I’d lied as a teenager. Like a lot. I never wanted to tell anyone where I’d been or what I’d been doing, even when what I was doing was perfectly fine. I just didn’t want anyone close. I didn’t trust anyone to be near me.
And so if they just said, “I’m not sure you’re telling the truth, so I’m not going to believe you until I see more evidence that this isn’t a phase,” I would have been hurt but I would have really, really understood. But they didn’t. They said that my mere description of my life was an attack on them, done to hurt them. And now I haven’t spoken to my father in more than 25 years and haven’t even so much as been in the same room with him since my sister’s wedding 20 years ago. Literally because I dared to tell him what was actually going on for me.
And, yes, TERFs are still attacking us to this day for this very reason: describing our own experiences.
Obviously Angel has done fucked up things, but I can’t tell you how much I really want us to rally around the idea that we get to be the experts on our own lives and we get to describe our own lives out loud …not just even, but especially when our lives are different from other persons’ lives.
I understand that people honestly feel pain reading that statement from Angel. I’m not saying that anyone deserves that pain. But I am saying that however painful it is, if we can’t say even a fucker like Angel gets to talk about his own life out loud, how can we possibly defend ourselves against the family who want to abandon us or the TERFs who want to strip away our rights and dignity and self-determination?
Rights aren’t rights unless even the fuckers get to have them.
You don’t owe me any response, but please think about what it means to say that Angel was wrong for describing himself – because that’s all he did, and even fuckers get to do that.
BTW: I just want to say that I’m not trying to say that if something was progressive in the 90s it must be okay now.
If it’s fucked up now, it doesn’t matter that you lived in the 90s or that people would have accepted it then.
My concern was simply that it was possible that Angel was being misunderstood because he was expressing something that was actually fine, but using a dialect that was different and so people thought he was saying something else. My concern was based on that first piece of evidence and because other pieces didn’t have direct quotes from him (the RationalWiki piece did, but I hadn’t gotten your updated link when I was writing originally) the possibility that he was being misunderstood still seemed real to me.
I do not think that there’s any possibility that misunderstanding is at the root of this anymore, based on the RationalWiki link, but if Angel had been expressing something that was not fucked up, one of the ways that it could have seemed fucked up was if he were speaking a different (90s) dialect.
That was all that I was trying to say, that (at that time) I considered misunderstanding a possible explanation. I decidedly do not agree with the kind of thinking that says if something was considered progressive at one time, we must accept it now.
Also, even if something was “progressive” doesn’t mean it was right. Policing other people’s identities was as wrong then as it is today. Jim Crow wasn’t magically okay in 1950 just because slavery was worse and Jim Crow would therefore be “progress”.
I just think it’s important to put that out there.
@Crip Dyke
Fair enough, my other knowledge of Angel could be coloring my perspective here, so maybe that first tweet is fine and I’m seeing things that aren’t there. The important thing is, I think we can all agree based on the other evidence at hand that Angel is in the wrong and has some reprehensible views.
I recognize this and I definitely agree that we should each be able to describe our own experiences and stories. And yes, I understand that that means that even the assholes should be allowed to self-identify.
Nor do I. I know too many older liberals who would have been considered progressive at one point but are more reactionary now.
@Naglfar and Crip Dyke
Your responses on this topic are very illuminating. I’ve stood on the side concerning this issue, given that I hardly think I should be speaking over trans* people and their experiences regarding bigotry and discrimination.
That being said, I did watch Natalie Wynn’s video on the whole “Cancelling” controversy, over her using Buck Angel for a voice-over, but I do admit that, other than the well-documented harassment directed at her, I do not have sufficient elements to make a final judgement.
I do however feel that, as Naglfar mentioned, Buck Angel may be one of those people who led the way back in the nineties, but hasn’t moved forward since then and his views can totally be considered bigoted bigoted nowadays. Likewise, I understand Crip Dyke’s and Natalie’s take that he’s speaking from his own experience and using the terminology that was used at the time when he transitioned.
That being said I also do not deny the possibility he may be truscum, nor do I stand by his decision to lash out at critics by retweeing TERFs or the like.
Lastly, thanks for your takes on this issue, you do not need to keep on going if you’re not comfortable talking about this Naglfar.
Hey-ho, here’s the reminder that Buck Angel outed Lana Wachowski.
I think this was bad, even in the far away times of the 90s/aughts. Excuse me for not giving him the benefit of the doubt now.
(Source. Warning for description of BDSM practices.)
@Crip Dyke
I have no problem with you defending Buck Angel’s right to describe his own lived experience. That’s an admirable thing to do. But that’s not what you came into the discussion doing. You took issue with Naglfar making a statement and instead of asking for clarification/evidence you immediately defended Buck Angel’s character by asserting that just because some people call him truscum doesn’t make it so. You made an assumption that Naglfar had no evidence they had personally seen to demonstrate that Buck is truscum, only that they were repeating what they heard and started arguing from that assumption. That very much makes it look like you have already decided that Buck Angel is not truscum and that you’re taking it upon yourself to defend him. I get that it’s not what you intended, but that’s how it came across.
This is simply not true. If I had made that assumption, I wouldn’t have been honestly looking for evidence, I would have been looking for a “gotcha” to prove that Naglfar fucked up. But I wasn’t looking for that, and I was looking for evidence.
Immediately after this, you say,
I really wish you had put this at the top. It may very well have looked like I had made that assumption, but I didn’t make that assumption and you’re not in my head, you’re not telepathic, and you can’t in fact know something that’s not true anyway.
Please don’t be the expert on what’s happening in someone else’s brain.
What’s actually true is that I have asked for the evidence multiple times in other places because I really, really do not want to support fucked up people in their fuckeduppedness. In every single case I have previously asked for evidence the ONLY evidence cited was that first tweet that Naglfar quoted.
If you sensed anything other than my openness to the evidence – which did exist, as proven by the fact that I actually considered the evidence – it was that I was desperately wishing that we were not here repeating the same mistakes as the fucking TERFs by saying that a statement of the form “I am not trans, I am male” is actually a statement, “You are not trans, your gender is invalid.”
Clearly Angel is supporting bigots, and clearly that makes him bigoted. But narrating your own story is not bigotry. I was desperate to hear some other evidence so that
1) I could know that we weren’t condemning people for describing their own experience, and
2) I could put my mind at rest that Angel really is a fucking bigot – which I have done.
It was driving me batty to hear people say he was truscum while putting forward that first tweet. Honestly, if from the very beginning people had presented no evidence at all other than their own says-so, I really, really wouldn’t have questioned it. I was in the very uncomfortable position that people were saying Angel was bigoted (which I agree is true, though I didn’t know that then) but using as evidence, as the only evidence, an argument identical to that of TERFs: that describing yourself is actually an attack on other people.
I will still be upset anytime anyone uses an argument based on that first tweet Naglfar linked, but because Naglfar took the time to show me other evidence, I no longer have to be in this batty, nerve-wracked place of wanting to support people condemning bigots, but not wanting to support the TERF tactic of saying that telling your own story and defining your own identity is an intolerable attack on others.
It really has been a horrible place to be, emotionally, not least because of the horrific harm that this argument has caused in my own life – might I remind you that I’ve lost my dad, my step-mom, and two sisters to this exact argument?
I was desperate, truly desperate, to understand exactly what was going on and to feel like I had sound footing for criticizing Angel. This is the fourth time I’ve asked people for the evidence. It’s the first time someone was as generous as Naglfar. I honestly owe Naglfar for giving me back a bit of sanity that I’ve been missing for days and days now.
About the rest:
I came across badly, and I can own that.
I can easily see how this bit
in particular came across as more hostile to Naglfar’s judgement than I meant it to be.
I apologize for this wording, Naglfar.
@Crip Dyke
I need to step away. You are being extremely aggressive at me for responding to your actual words instead of what you meant or thought you were communicating. I’m sorry, but I don’t see another way to interpret your first post other than what I summarized and I’m just not okay with how you’re being about this.
@Crip Dyke
You’re welcome. I’m sorry I cited the first tweet; I didn’t realize it would be so hurtful to you and I thank you for explaining to me.
It’s fine. I see why you have strong feelings, and I’m sorry you’ve experienced suffering.
CripDyke, I read your initial reply to Naglfar the same way kupo did. This (pretty aggressive) reply is… A lot.
Remember, many of us either are on twitter, or have read the twitter stuff about Buck Angel. You literally just learned about Linehan! He’s been a shitheel since late 2016 (link goes to his wiki page). Hbomberguy did his DK stream last January, because the unholy alliance of Linehan and mumsnet got funding for Mermaids, a charity for trans youth in the UK, put on hold.
What I’m saying is that you’re coming at this without any of the background knowledge others have. Instead of asking for that, you said
Which implies that we all have only *read others* saying that he’s truscum, and that we should check if he’s actually truscum, because maybe we’ve been mislead by these mysterious ‘others’ that are never defined.
You also said
I read this as kupo summarising what you said. You did state that just because many people said he was truscum, didn’t make him so. The phrase you used assumed that Naglfar didn’t have any primary sources to back themselves up.
That’s how it reads. It might not be what you intended, but that’s just how it reads.
After reading what the rest of us have read, you came to the conclusion that he was definitely doing something Not Good. Maybe you won’t label it ‘truscum’, but you could now see why we’d have an uncharitable reading of his tweets.
You are used to being the expert in situations. In this one, you are not.
(also he outed Lana Wachowski, so everything I judge him on comes from that. TO TABLOIDS, he outed her.)
Snowberry:
Fanfic is often good for that, if you’re ok with mostly text rather than mostly visual (I always figure being written rather than visual is part of the reason fic tends to delve more into the characters’ reasons for finding each other attractive than mainstream porn does— of course there’s also that it tends to start with characters who canonically have some kind of emotional connection, and then take it further..)
File under “women did half the work, men got all the credit”: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/
@Beyond Ocean:
Not being able to do something else while a slow task completes in the background, leaving the user to just stare at the screen while some progress meter crawls, is tantamount to turning back the clock all the way to circa 1990, when we were all still using MS-DOS. I’d call that pretty major.
Also: do you have some kind of inside knowledge? You’re speaking in an authoritative manner about what was initially proposed as an hypothesis, rather than a definite fact.
Fuck this noise, I’m going to have to step away too, I’m dealing with enough already to handle people defending truscum (and yeah, that includes Contra).
@Naglfar
I don’t see anything you need to apologize for.
@Rhuu and kupo
I love that you never let truscum-y garbage or transphobia slide by quietly. The moreso because I rarely have the spoons to engage hurtful stuff.
OT: Can someone post a good study or metastudy about trans people, transitioning, dysphoria and suicide rates?
I’m asking because i’m currently arguing with someone who believes that sex-reasignment surgery is “mutilation”.
@Surplus – go to the mozilla forums and ask them, please. They will have better answers for you than here.
You could also try to find extensions that would help you get the behaviour you’re expecting. Maybe something like this?
I KNOW THIS IS FIXING A PROBLEM YOU DIDN’T USED TO HAVE. I can’t tell you why everything changed, and I’m sorry you’re upset by it. All I can do is try to help you find something that will fix the problem you are currently having.
Maybe this is a starting point.
If you want to have a browser that doesn’t do this, I believe firefox is open source.
@Makroth – sorry, I can’t list any off the top of my head.
@Jes – <3
@Makroth:
Why does it matter? Does the person you’re arguing with get to decide which trans people have surgery? Do they only get to do so if the suicide rates are high enough? What, exactly, is the suicide rate going to decide?
If they don’t want trans*-related health care, then they shouldn’t have trans* related health care. Problem solved.
@Makroth
I don’t have any studies handy right now, I can try to find some later. I do know that among SRS patients, less than 1% express regret.
@Crip Dyke
https://pastebin.com/YS8fFG1q
This is that user’s response.
@Makroth
This person has some familiar arguments and is pulling a number of logical fallacies. I’m not sure what to do next.
We actually do know, people have been doing these for upwards of a century now. But of course a troll would ignore that in favor of cherry picking.
I’m not very knowledgeable about these things. Most everyone on here is more knowledgeable than me and can argue better. I really wish someone better than me would have argued with him.
@Makroth
What was the original topic of argument (how you got to this point)?
For me, my biggest issue with online arguments is the sunk cost fallacy. I have a hard time knowing when to walk away even when I know I’m not persuading anyone.