In a recent interview with AARP magazine, Jamie Lee Curtis announced that she has a new trans daughter, saying that she and her husband Christopher Guest “have watched in wonder and pride as our son became our daughter Ruby.”
Ruby, 25, is engaged and hopes to be married next year.
Naturally, the news gave some of the internet’s biggest assholes — a mixture of spiteful trad-cons and Gender Critical “feminists” — a new opportunity to put their nastiness on display.
On Twitter, the assholes responded to Curtis’ interview with catty comments and appeals to SCIENCE or God. Here are some of the responses I found in a thread started by the right-wing “Not the Bee” site.
In many ways the comments from Christians were the meanest in spirit.
This one, by some sort of eugenics fan (I think), was the strangest.
I took a quick look over on Ovarit, a Reddit-style hangout for “Gender Crits” kicked off of Reddit. Some responses were merely spiteful, but others were deeply strange.
Some mocked the pre-transition pictures of Ruby that ran in a Daily Mail piece about Curtis’ big reveal.
Researcher1536 wrote:
I read [the Daily Mail] article earlier today and started laughing. It’s so textbook. It’s the biggest farce. Unbelievable that anyone takes any of this seriously. Look at him. Ffs. He’s like every slobby weird gamer bro with a porn addiction. It’s comical until you remember this is actually happening.
Scat added:
Look at him, cliche incel. She must be so disappointed in him.
Pennygadget thought she had an explanation for the transition:
When White men transition, they instantly go from the bottom of the leftie social hierarchy to the top. I almost can’t blame them for wanting to do it.
You’ll have to explain ProxyMusic‘s comment to me because I surely can’t explain it to you.
Slightly off topic, but for an adopted child, [deadname]/Ruby looks a lot like dad Christopher Guest during his “Spinal Tap” days. The face & bod are chubbier, but an image search of Guest from the “Spinal Tap” era shows that the resemblance is strong. IMO, it’s unmistakable.
So the pre-transition Ruby is the spitting image of her adoptive father? How would that work exactly?
Proxy continued:
Because Thomas/Ruby is adopted, he cannot inherit his father’s barony to become Lord Hayden-Guest, 6th Baron Hayden-Guest, though he & his sister can use the title, The Honourable.
Ok, I’m pretty sure no one asked whether or not Ruby was lined up to be Lord Hayden-Guest, 6th Baron Hayden-Guest.
I wonder if Thomas would have “transitioned” to Ruby if the rules allowed him to become Baron Hayden-Guest himself. Wikipedia uses The Hon. before the names of both Curtis-Guest kids: The Hon. Anne Guest and The Hon. Ruby Guest.
Well, I’m certainly glad that all this has been straightened out.
Gender Crits sure are weird.
I’m going to go lie down for a bit.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Okay, I’ll bite. Wtf is “the leftie social hierarchy” supposed to mean?
Right-wingers always act like the left is a mirror version of themselves. Their social hierarchy puts cishet white men on top, so naturally they’re at the bottom of the leftist hierarchy and the people they hate the most are at the top.
@David Futrelle:
So the pre-transition Ruby is the spitting image of her adoptive father? How would that work exactly?
Because children pick up the habits of expression of the adults (regardless of biological relationship) who bring them up? The more gray and disgruntled I grow, the more I see my (adoptive) dad’s resting grouchface in the mirror.
And is the scandal supposed to be that Ruby is Guest’s biological offspring (presumably by adultery?) Should that be the case (and it needn’t be; sometimes resemblances happen to happen), he took responsibility for her and Curtis accepted her.
(Does anyone remember the days when the grapevine used to throw conniptions about Curtis’ own rumored chromosomal makeup, or is that line of Hollywood gossip so last generation?)
I wish Curtis hadn’t deadnamed her daughter.
That’s bunk, everybody knows cats sit at the top of the leftie social hierarchy.
Also, Ovarit ? Fuckin’ really ?
That human genetic is weak argument make me want to shout at the top of my lung “THIS IS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORK”.
Which, granted. It’s not like any part of their arguments are grounded in reality. But what they do to science tend to grate me particulary bad.
Especially here ; their actual goal is visibly to spin the lack of actual human races and subraces as a bad thing for “genetic diversity”. Thy would want people to less mix together to increase diversity, the kind of “howling at the moon” logic that is expected for them but make no fuckin sense.
What’s with these people? It’s like they can’t be happy unless they’re making trans and non-binary people miserable just for existing.
@Trying
I get that.
What I find particularly weird, though, is that David replaced Ruby’s old name with
“[Deadname]”
in one place, but left the deadname unedited in other sentences.
I mean, if you consider it wrong the first time, why does it become okay the 2nd & 3rd times?
For me the important thing is that I know folks have my back. As long as Ruby feels confident she has Curtis’ and HaydenGuest’s support, mistakes like that can be overcome (or even just overlooked) the way that I don’t freak that David used the deadname more than once, but edited it out once. I don’t know how it happened, but David has been so consistent for so long, I don’t have to wonder if the cause is that David is actually/secretly some antitrans jerk.
It is what it is. People are imperfect.
My former best friend turned TERF recently wrote me asking if we could “catch up” and I KNOW it’s because our relationship was unhealthy and she misses her door mat, but she’s also a chronic liar and how do you tell someone their “political” views are disgusting if they’re gonna lie and say that they’ve changed. I’m trans, she should want nothing to do with me. And i just KNOW I’m her “I’ve lost people for the cause”-story.
No, i just tell her to go fuck herself in her biological bits, don’t i?
…Did they miss the part where Ruby, 25, expects to be married next year? By definition, not incel. It’s also WILD to put words in her mother’s mouth, especially words that contradict both what Curtis has said and left unsaid. She says she supports Ruby, and our best understanding is that she still has a relationship with Ruby.
Gender is a fantasy, a collective delusion that exists because we agree it exists. Under this paradigm (Which is the current scientific consensus on the topic of gender, though they use the term “socially constructed”), anyone can change their gender at any time, for any length of time, as often as they want.
As for sex – well now. It’s not like he would know about that.
I’m a little disturbed by the implication that you can change the sex/gender of a dead person. I’d argue that basic respect for the deceased would involve leaving their gender where the individual last left it.
The entire point of leftist social organizing is there is no hierarchy. If there’s a social hierarchy, it’s not a leftist group.
I think tis bit’s actually an important right wing defense tactic. Their opponents (i.e. us, reality) can’t just be wrong, they also have to be powerful. The hated-minority-of-choice can’t just be bad, they have to be domineering. They have to be the underdogs, or their world-view falls apart.
This is how they’re able to tell themselves that they’re good people. They aren’t picking on the most maligned, vulnerable, and suffering minorities in our society – that minority has actually wrested control of our government from the hands of the good, honest folk and is taking everyone’s freedom to suit their agenda. Instant justification. Now it’s heroic to oppress them.
And yeah, it’s the fundamental lie of fascism, too. Our enemy is both pathetic, weak, and degenerate, and also dangerous, powerful, and responsible for everything evil in our society. The difference between a modern conservative and a fascist is largely tailoring.
@David Futrelle:
I posted a comment nine hours ago (as of 10:30AM EDT) that’s still awaiting approval; did I commit some faux pas?
So my friend’s youngest sibling just came out as non-binary!
The only thing I worried about, when my friend told me, was whether I’d mess up and say “she” instead of “they” sometimes out of habit (they’re using a shorter version of the name they had before, which isn’t hard to remember). But now I’m worried that they’ll get reactions like this. Thanks, world. :/
But I’m glad that they – and that Ruby – have supportive friends & family. That outweighs any bigoted comments from strangers. And solidarity to those who don’t have that kind of support.
Ruby may have given her permission to use her deadname in the article, I wanna be optimistic and hope that’s the case.
And yet again, TERFs reveal themselves to be the worst feminists. Body shaming, mocking appearances, and being obsessed with sex organs
I love how they just vaguely invoke SCIENCE as a totem. I guess they finally figured out that every relevant field of science and medicine says they’re completely wrong, so they’re just vaguely waving at the abstract concept of scientific authority and hoping nobody actually checks.
I mean I guess it is the same way they do the “ignore every actual teaching of Jesus and do everything he explicitly condemned” version of Christianity they preach, so it’s consistent at least.
@epitome of incomrepehensibility, congrats to your friendsibling! Good for them! That’s great. You’ll do fine. They’ll get reactions like in the article, of course, but that’s the world. Your support will help them cope with that, and together you’ll be making the world a bit better.
@hammerofglass, I’m willing to be that that’s basically how they interact with everything. Application of authority as a totemic power. We lefties seem to care more about challenging our own understanding of things more, and are willing to be wrong about things, whereas their understanding seems to be more about assertion than critique. Interesting!
@bakunin
Oh, but, see, it’s “okay” to mock women for their bodies and sex organs if they’re “not REAL women”. That’s how they think they can justify that nonsense. They truly believe that they’re just mocking men, and that’s (for some reason) totally okay, just like even though I was assumed female at birth and should be off limits for body mockery, it’s fine to make fun of the size of my dick or relatively non-muscular build (because I’m “pretending” to be a man). As long as the mockery is rooted in making fun of some aspect of maleness/manhood that is either in “excess” or “lacking”, then it’s all good.
ugggghhhghghghghhghghhghgh. I look forward to the day we just stop making fun of people for gender based reasons or make it clearer that it’s about the foibles of society that can be improved (only anger and lust are approved emotions for men, Must Man Harder Or Teh Queers Will Get Me attitude, etc), not about aspects people have less control over (penis size, physical build, “effeminate” mannerisms that actually wouldn’t be seen as so funny/a problem if being feminine weren’t seen as a bad thing for a man to be, etc).
I do wonder how Christians like that think they’re not doing what should qualify as real virtue signaling. I mean, how much more supposed virtue can you signal, than “[I’m so virtuous that] I’m going to sit in heaven and watch God wipe that smug grin off your face as you disgusting people suffer for literally eternity”?
Somewhat on topic, because it’s about TERFs and famous people’s children. Some TERFs are trying to claim that PTerry would agree with them and then tried to argue with Neil Gaimen, Rhiannon Pratchett and even Stephen Briggs! Ms Pratchett got so much hassle because she challenged them for insulting her father’s memory by sullying it by saying he’d agree with them. Oh and there’s a shed load of TERFs screaming about how nobody knows what ‘Gender Critical’ really means. Clearly, TERFs have never read anything by STP or they’d know about Eskerina Smith, Jeffery the calmweaver, Sergeant Jackrum, Gladys, and last but definitely not least Cherry Littlebottom and Queen Blodwen.
@North Sea Sparkly Dragon
I’ve been hearing about that all over the Pratchett fandom on Tumblr. What I’m morbidly curious to know is where, exactly, the TERFs got the idea that Pterry would be one of them. Like what even.
Mostly I’m just hoping that such cases are “my child wants to be out to the world and I’m signal boosting them” and not “I want to be out to the world as the parent of a trans child”.
This is most likely exaggerated. With a bit research, I was only able to find a total of 7 celebs with a trans or nonbinary child, including adult children in their 20s (and not including Chaz Bono, because that’s not a ‘now’ thing and also he’s one of the parents). Might have missed one or a few, but I can’t imagine it’s that many.
Wait, is this about adoption? Because 3 of them are adopted. Do they think this is part of an upcoming trend? Because some celebrities are too busy to take time off with pregnancy/early childcare and adopt instead, and with the exception of Chaz Bono they’re probably not going to be adopting trans kids on purpose, it just happens.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes
I don’t remember seeing you around for a while. I missed you.
With absolutely no pressure, if you’d like to exchange email to be able to stay in touch in the future, I would be very pleased.
@snowberry
Jamie Lee Curtis is out as intersex. She adopted because she literally can’t get pregnant, nor can she impregnate anyone else. For Guest & Curtis, at least, it has nothing to do with too busy. In fact, she has written a bunch of children’s books because parenting and kids are that important to her.
I know this statement was part of your criticism of the TERFs, but I thought I would point out that not just their conclusions are wrong, but the premise is also wrong.
And, of course, I wanted a chance to praise Curtis, since she helped me feel better about my own body in the 90s.
@Crip Dyke:
I remember persistent rumors of Jamie Lee Curtis as intersex or trans– usually slung around as insults. But when did she come out? Wikipedia mentions nothing, and I suspect a google search of “Jamie Lee Curtis intersex” will have a lot of trash results.
@Crip Dyke, I’d love to exchange email, certainly! How would you like to do that.
I also saw on your blog that You Are Chidi and oh my gosh Chidi is amazing, that whole show though. Please tell me that you’re going to watch the whole thing, it’s an incredible production!
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes
The difference between a conservative and a fascist is that between a dogwhistle and a bullhorn, so far as I can tell.