Do you remember when alt-rightsters wouldn’t shut up about “white genocide,” the alleged plot by our hidden (((puppetmasters))) to get rid of the white race by convincing people of color and white people to have biracial babies together? By their logic, anything that encouraged mixed marriages/relationships, from multiracial underwear ads to mixed-race emojis to anal porn, was an act of genocide against the white race.
Now the Gender Critical activists — as I noted in a post here last December — are using the same logic to argue that pro-trans activists are promoting “lesbian erasure” as former butch lesbians come out as trans men.
Well, fast-forward 8 months and some Gender Critical memester has taken this logic one step further with this meme denouncing, yes, “tomboy genocide,” which I found posted on the FightFemaleErasure subreddit (an attempt by Gender Critical Redditors to circumvent the ban on the Gender Critical subreddit).
The logic underlying the meme is the same as the “lesbian erasure” argument: by promoting trans rights, trans activists are somehow pressuring “tomboys” — that is, young women with “boyish” traits — to give up their identity and transition into trans men. If enough “tomboys” do this we end up with no tomboys — which of course means TOMBOY GENOCIDE.
Of course, this assumes that every trans man is really just a confused tomboy who got conned into getting top surgery.
It never occurs to the Gender Crits that maybe some of the tomboys they knew in years gone by were trans men who for a variety of reasons hadn’t decided to transition, or didn’t realize it was an actual real-world option. The relatively greater awareness of trans people these days has led to an uptick in people transitioning — especially trans men. That doesn’t mean they’re all getting conned or pressured or “trended” into it; it may be that transitioning to men seemed too radical a step to take back when trans men were virtually invisible in the culture.
When I went looking for other examples of this new meme I discovered yet more evidence of the Gender Critical/alt-right mind meld: one of the first search results was to this cartoon posted on 4chan, illustrating the “tomboy genocide” logic.
This cartoon is a reworking of this graphic, in which a “femboy” victim is being brainwashed by “Big Trans” into becoming a trans woman. (I think this cartoon is supposed to be satirical, but it’s hard to tell these days.)
I also discovered an assortment of other “tomboy” memes.
You’ll have to figure them out — and explain them to me — because I’m not sure where they’re coming from. Are tomboys having some sort of cultural moment I’m unaware of, or is this just a bunch of 4channers pining for a “boyfriend with tits?”
H/T — r/AgainstHateSubreddits
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@Snowberry
Wouldn’t it be way more sensible to do it:
Male↔Demiboy↔Genderqueer↔Agender↔Genderqueer↔Demigirl↔Female
That’d stop othering agender people.
@Snowberry:
This seems as good an opening as any to post this: Gimme Some of That Ol’ Atonal Music
@GSS ex-noob
Probably. At least in my case, the ‘agender’ comes with a sufficiently large amount of ‘more important things to care about’ that I haven’t really tried to slice the details too finely.
Ahhh, one of the most famous ‘diss’ songs ever written.
(Paul McCartney wrote the song ‘Silly Love Songs’ after an argument with John Lennon in which Lennon had complained that as musicians that people looked up to, they had a responsibility to be politically active and use their power for good by bringing problems to people’s attention rather than just writing silly love songs. McCartney, always more the businessman than the activist, rather obviously disagreed.)
@Jenora, <3! Me too. I like my body, me and it have been through five-some decades together, but I'd like my body if it had an outie instead of an innie, too. I'm just me, not female, not male, me.
And you're the first person I've heard describe feeling the same way. I annoyed a few people cis and trans, by asking how one felt female. Or male. Or any gender. I suspect it was like trying to explain blue to a profoundly color-blind person. I accept some people see a different shade than that gray, but it’s gray, sorry.
@C.A. Collins:
Thanks! As I said, I really had my ‘aha’ moment as a result of a discussion of people who don’t ‘grok’ trans issues, and it really made a couple of things come together in my head.
I mean, I’m at least demisexual if not asexual as well; I say ‘demi’ because I have a sex drive, it just doesn’t really seem to attach to other people much. Again, I’ve never really sliced the details finely because. quite honestly, I have other things to care about than finding a box to fit myself into, especially when the definitions of the terms are so acutely personal.
Granted, one of the less positive side effects of the ‘don’t care’ aspect is that, frankly, I’m not really one for activism. It’s not sufficiently important for me. So I’ve tended take the ‘stay out of the way’ side of a lot of this sort of activism. (As in: lead, follow, or stay out of the way. I’m not much of a leader, I’m not much of a follower, but I’m quite fine with staying out of the way and helping with the back-end support for the people who are more focused on activism.)
@Snowberry, Threp:
I think really what we need for this is something more like a triangle than a line, with one axis being male-female, and the other axis being intensity of experience. (I’m assuming mostly a triangle because at 0 intensity of experience, there isn’t really a male-female distinction, but it may be more of a trapezoid.) Granted, that doesn’t really include what you called ‘bigender’, though I’ll admit I hadn’t heard of that one before. I’ve got a couple of friends I could ask who are far more into this than I am.
Okay, now that got a laugh out of me. (Said as someone who has been involved with that fandom for a while throughout multiple of its metamorphoses.)
@Jenora Feuer:
(Paul McCartney wrote the song ‘Silly Love Songs’ after an argument with John Lennon in which Lennon had complained that as musicians that people looked up to, they had a responsibility to be politically active and use their power for good by bringing problems to people’s attention rather than just writing silly love songs. McCartney, always more the businessman than the activist, rather obviously disagreed.)
That, and silly love songs and music-hall novelties (what Lennon disdainfully referrred to as “Granny Songs”) have been where McCartney’s aptitude lies—making him a rare example of a rock musician who’s grown into his youthful oeuvre; he wrote “When I’m 64” at fifteen.
(Which leads to an out-of-left-field thought: a grand total of one Beatle got to be needed and fed, at least by a happily committed partner, at 64. Lennon and Harrison never made it that far; McCartney, at that age, was embroiled in a messy breakup with Heather Mills. The winner: Starr, who at that point was 23 years and counting into a contented marriage with Barbara Bach.)
(And another: I, for one, didn’t even remotely anticipate running out of original Ramones before Beatles.)
@Jenora Feuer
I may have misunderstood this, but doesn’t demisexual mean someone who only feels sexually attracted to people they know? Having a libido doesn’t have anything to do with asexuality, since it’s just lack of sexual attraction. I’ve seen people use “grey ace” in a a variety of ways to denote some place on the ace spectrum.
Regarding gender identity, I haven’t really looked into all the terms out there but just settled on nonbinary because I assumed it was an umbrella term. It’s kind of weird thinking about this, since I’m pretty meh about my gender identity most of the time, and intellectually I feel like either of the conventional body configurations could be fine (seeing as neither would probably feel right), but I’m also fairly certain that as a physical reality both would come with dysphoria. I feel like “well I’d be fine with either if only my brain would shut up about it” would probably be missing the point entirely,
@Full Metal Ox:
Honestly, I’m not entirely surprised. Ringo always struck me as the most ‘regular bloke’ and ‘comfortable with who he is’ of the four of them.
@Masse_Mysteria:
My understanding was that ‘demisexual’ was pretty much to asexual what ‘I’d go gay for (X)’ is for straight: an indication that there exists some subset of people without any necessarily obvious connection for which you’d have a sexual attraction despite not normally having such.
I may, of course, be wrong. As I’ve said, I haven’t looked really deeply into this.
The confusing thing, or at least it was for me, is that demi exists in gender as well as sexuality. Demisexual people need a connection or friendship with sexual partners.
This is a bit of how it feels for me with respect to gender. But more that I don’t even really know what the boxes should feel like. At the same time I have a body that very obviously reads afab so I am placed in that box by others. By virtue of lived experiences I don’t think I could fit into the male box anymore. And regardless of gender, I like the body I have – it’s housed me for a while now – and would not want to change it. So I feel sort of “stuck” in the female box just by how others view and treat me.
I guess I’m at a point of not being sure where I land, but also does it even matter if I’m not going to change anything?
@bumblebug,
I recognize your feelings, a lot. It doesn’t help that I’ve had some bad experiences with physical space gender divided groups. My feelings have changed a little as I’ve gotten older, but what you described was me in my teens and early 20’s.
I’m not feminine enough physically (endocrine shenanigans) and I can’t grok the ineffable womenhood enough to be comfortable in those types of spaces. Even when people in those places say nice things about me in a gendered way, it makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I’m also not masculine enough to pass as a dude. And occasionally guys say things about being a guy that I cannot grok, and it’s a “is that really a way guys think/experience the world or is this just YOUR socialization speaking, my dude?”
So, the double whammy of people recognize me as my assigned gender, but a malfunctioning copy. And the other side seems like a good potential of not wanting me either. Even if I was more sure.
These days I prefer gender neutral, don’t object to my assigned gender, and low-key look at the opposite longingly.
A friend who blogged a few years ago about being demisexual definitely complained that it was a confusing term that makes it sound like one feels less-than-average-but-non-zero sexual attraction, but continues to use it as it’s the only term she’s seen in regular use for how she feels (only feels sexual attraction to a person *after* falling in love with them, can’t judge whether strangers, acquaintances, etc are hot or not).
Hi @Jenora Feuer,
Back in the old days things were different here, and a lot of us could well have made that post provoking your ‘A-ha!’ reaction, by making a distinction between the strong genderists and what I call the ‘gender apathy’ people, who each have separate problems empathising with trans people experiencing gender dysphoria. I used to write quite a lot about this sort of stuff (besides the single guest post I wrote here at WHTM back in the day) and if you’ll pardon me plugging a long-neglected personal blog, eight years ago I was writing stuff like this: https://creatinganxiety.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/gender-neutrality-and-inclusivity/
These days in the UK we have seen that anti-trans hatred is being used as a gateway to push people into fascist politics, and apathy is about the least appropriate word to describe that.
@Xanthë:
Now there’s a name I haven’t seen in a while.
One of the big things for the ‘gender apathy’ people like me, of course, is the realization that even if I don’t see what the fuss is about, I know that other people do feel strongly about this. And that I should always come down on the side of treating people as people and how they want to be treated.
@bumblebug
I can respond a little perhaps. I’m neutrois/transneutral. Disclaimer: I know not all trans people experience dysphoria but I sure do.
That’s what tipped me off, physical dysphoria. I never felt meh about my body, it just seemed like something that wasn’t mine, more so after puberty. What I mean is that I looked in the mirror at my body and saw something that wasn’t a part of me at all, or even me.
That’s a part of the equation that cis people often don’t think about. Their bodies are so much a part of who they are that they simply are beneath their notice unless the body itself differs from conventional norms of attractiveness in some way thus causing insecurity.
Unfortunately, that really isn’t what happens for many of us who are trans. When cis people think dysphoria, they compare it to the second paragraph I think.
The YouTuber Misinformed did an episode recently (from a cis het male perspective) on the relative merits of a tomboy girlfriend and a femboy boyfriend.
It’s intended as humor, but he seemed refreshingly receptive to both possibilities.
Tomboys are cool and great, so are trans men and trans women and non-binary people.
Can we stop policing other people’s identities now thanks
Is this not the same when a woman would like her male partner to be more like her?