Waves of criticism and accusations
What was that we were saying yesterday about the ever-escalating demands to obey the ever-inflating rules, and how impossible it is to obey them all when they’re constantly in motion, and how that trap is indeed a trap and no we can never escape the new demands? The trap caught Chelsea Cain:
Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain has deleted her Twitter account after facing mounting backlash and accusations of transphobia due to a creative choice present in the latest issue of her comic book series Man-Eaters.
Cain’s self-described “feminist” series Man-Eaters, published by Image Comics with art by Elise McCall, follows the exploits of a twelve-year old girl named Maude as she navigates a world wherein a mutation causes women’s menstrual cycles to change a woman into a ‘were-cat’ creature and the ensuing harsh, fear and paranoia motivated response from the government.
Cain has repeatedly faced waves of criticism and accusations of holding Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (or TERF) beliefs due to the alleged trans-exclusionary nature of the series’ concept, as some believed associating the monstrous change in women with a biological menstrual cycle excluded persons who were not biologically female but identified as such.
There.
Seriously?
A woman writing a comic based on menstrual cycles is bad and politically criminal because doing so excludes men who “identify as” biological women?
If that’s the standard then women just can’t write or talk about anything related to women, because it will always be found to exclude men who “identify as” biological women. Is it now obvious enough that the woke are absolutely determined to push women all the way out of the public sphere with this shit?
In the latest issue of Man-Eaters, Cain took a swing at her critics by including two tweets critical of her work as propaganda posters in a “pantherism recovery clinic,” a re-education camp-like facility meant to keep women from transforming into the were-cats.
The Tweet featured in the first panel reads, “I appreciate any comic on menstruation and the literal violent eating of men-I super duper do-but #ManEaters further cements the toxicity of a gender binary in a heavy handed, sad way.” The second, “I want to like @ImageComics #ManEaters so bad, but it is SO HEAVILY founded in bio essentialism and TERFness that it’s impossible to not feel like it perpetuates the same misogyny/systemic violence that it’s attempting to tackle.” While Cain did not include the respective handles of the users who posted these Tweets, they remain easily found through a quick search of the tweets’ body text.
And? Tweets are public (unless the account is locked); everybody knows that; so what if the handles are easy to find? If you attack someone on Twitter, you’re making it possible for other people to see your tweets attacking someone; that’s how Twitter works.
But she got pounced on anyway, and she ended up deleting her account. Score?
Yeah, and she did it crawling on her figurative hands and knees. Her scraping apologies (“I’m so dumb—I’m sorry!”) made me cringe behind my hand, peeking out through fingers.
This is all so abusive.
Everything “excludes” somebody. Every piece of art, literature, film, etc. is only about the thing it’s about. The thing it’s about is always going to be a fraction of all the things.
Why don’t men who self – identify as women just self-identify as menstruators, too ? Surely “ having a period” or “being on the rag” isn’t really a biological circumstance, is it? It’s primarily an experience — a felt experience, or a lived experience, something you know, deep down and personal. If someone says they menstruate, then they do. Problem solved.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Sastra, some do. The same ones that demand access to women’s reproductive healthcare and contraceptives. I remember when Caine – at the time the Hordes leading instant expert on all things woke – ‘explained’ to some poor sod that transwomen absolutely do have wombs, do have periods, can be pregnant, can require abortions, do need cervical smear tests, and on, and on.
There is no parody of trans activism that does not fall under Poe’s Law.
Cain should have added some transwomen to the story. They could have used makeup and wigs to simulate that they were also turning into werecats.
We’rewerecats, Skeletor, you we’rewerecatphobe.
This sounds like an awesome idea for a comic book, so I just bought all 9 issues, and subscribed to the series. I’m also emailing Cain’s agent and the big wigs at Image Comics to express my solidarity with her.
Well done!
It’s really so childish. ‘It’s not fair! If cis-women can be fictional beasts then we wanna be fictional beasts, too. Waaaah!’
I certainly would not have apologised. In my opinion, if they want inclusion in comic fantasy books, they should pick up a pen and start writing their own fiction, rather than just living one.
It’s been done, apparently. I believe in one tweet, J. (Jonathon/Jessica) Yanniv said that his/her period was about to start. Aked pervy questions about helping young women with their tampons, hung out in girls and women’s bathrooms ready to offer said help, and in hopes of seeing girls in vulnerable states of undress.
Almost on cue, here’s someone retweeting some of JY’s greatest hits:
https://twitter.com/JackieMacmilla5/status/1138507772537004032
I have seen screenshots of a conversation on a trans discussion board of people sharing recipes for ‘menstrual blood’. I assume this is trans women desperate to feel they are authentic in their experience. Since the particular proposed version I saw was composed of an admixture of red coloured sticky, lumpy food products (jam and sauces plus other stuff), I was also relieved to see a number of people saying do not under any circumstances stick that stuff into any bodily cavity.
but yeah, thee are some sad people out there who clearly need help and compassion, but not the kind that includes supporting delusional and unhealthy behaviours like that. Then there are the Yanniv’s of the world who may be sad cases (but are more likely bad), but are also dangerous and need a different level and kind of treatment again.
How mainy other mental conditions are there out there where going along with the delusion is considered a valid form of treatment? isn’t it wiser to try to get the person suffering to see it as a delusion? If someone thinks they’re Naploeon, you don’t furnish them with a uniform, a horse and an army. If someone thinks they can fly, you don’t take them up to the top of a tall building and offer suggestions as to which direction to jump.
I wonder if the push to get children (and parents) to go the medical/surgical route is part of the validation process for TRAs. If the kids are given time and space to get through their identity crises, then that counts as an invalidation of trasns ideology and narrative, as is to be discouraged and shouted down.
I think people who are genuinely dysphoric are being used by the AGP crowd to help push self ID, just as the existence of intersex people is used by TRAs. I don’t know how much of an overlap there is between these three groups in particular (never mind the disparate and diverse groups of GNC, queer, etc. lumped under the “trans” umbrella), I’m guessing that there’s less overlap than TRAs suggest or claim.
And in any condition, it can be difficult to be told the things you believe are wrong; it is painful to hear that you are not seeing the world accurately. I think I could truly be said to have body dysphoria, with a 20 year history of anorexia (though not always intense not eating; much of that I was thin, but not dangerously so). What if someone had said that my desire to have control of my own body was a good thing, that I should eat even less (at a time when my entire intake for a day would be three peanuts and a Diet Coke)? What if my doctor felt the need to validate my body image? To support my desire to control my intake to such a drastic extent? I would be pushing up daisies today. Fortunately, he had enough insight to treat my condition as dangerously misguided, even delusional. I was never out of touch with reality in the way of a schizophrenic; I was functional in most ways, so it was hard to convince me that I was “mental”, as most the people around me referred to it. Most of the trans activists I see are apparently the same way – holding down jobs, perhaps raising families, doing the things that are normal parts of life. So they don’t feel delusional. It hurts if people say they are delusional. But the language they use is not that of science, it is that of delusion.
I am so glad that I was ill in a time before we had to validate everyone’s self image, and that my current on-again off-again therapist sees no need to validate my negative self image of myself. I suspect if I had a positive self image that was delusional, she would probably not validate that, either. Like, say, believing I had the best brain and was a stable genius.
YNNB, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
And there is little to no overlap between those three groups you name. Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey have made the point that “gender dysphoria” is not one thing. There are several different phenomena lumped together under that category, among them AGP and childhood-onset gd, which are very different.
https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/
Way back in the shadowy history of not-so-very-long-ago, one could not speak of female biological issues because to do so would fail to center male issues and force the men to think of female biology as something other than a plaything.
Plus, it was icky, gross and disgusting with the lights on.
Now here we are a gain, it seems.
From the article mentioned by Lady M:
I think a lot of people also find this narrative easy to understand because most people believe at some level that there is a substantial difference between male brains and female brains. They see the headlines, maybe see Louann Brizendine on the nightly news or a talk show, and they don’t see any of the other research being done, or read anything like Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender. And they don’t understand statistics, neurology, sociology, psychology, or any of the other fields relevant to determining what reality shows us.
The entire trans-edifice is built on the idea of different brains for males and females; even gender dysphoria, which I accept as a legitimate (though rare) condition, relies on the idea that there is something essential about gender. Would there be true gender dysphoria if our society were not dominated by a patriarchal, heterosexual system? If women or men could be who they really were without being pushed to go back into a box?
How much is gender dysphoria exacerbated by parents, teachers, peers, and media all relentlessly pushing the idea of “this is what girls do and this is what boys do”?
And the TRA’s push it harder than most, it seems, whilst simultaneously claiming that this is what gender critical feminism is all about.
I was thinking about this yesterday and came to the conclusion that the conflation of gender critical with gender essentialism is a deliberate TRA ploy to muddy the waters, and it works because ‘critical’ and ‘essential’ can mean the same thing; not many people will realise that gender critical means – if I understand it correctly – critical of traditional gender roles and stereotypes.
It’s patently obvious why the TRAs use this tactic. If more people bought into the gender critical ideas – that one does not have to restrict oneself to those traditional stereotypes; that a man should be free to think, feel, dress, in any way he wishes without having to believe he’s a woman in a man’s body – the whole transgender edifice would crumble. That, of course, would mean that the ones who insist on the ‘proper’ pronouns, on gaining access to female-only spaces, and so-on, would be seen for the fantasists they clearly are, rather than the extra-special uberwomen that they wish to be seen as.
I know it’s been said before, but it needs repeating as often and as loudly as possible until it finally sinks in: it is the TRAs that are the genuine gender essentialists. Their entire agenda is centred on that one fact.
This, I believe, is EXACTLY why gender critical views are shouted down with cries of “TRANSPHOBIA!” and “TERF!” so that people will get the message that the people who hold these ideas are evil and to be shunned without their ideas being discussed. They are so corrosive to trans ideology that they cannot be permitted to be aired or talked about. Demonization short circuits debate. TRAs claim that their “existance” is not up for debate. Well, obviously they exist as people, but that does not mean their own understanding of their collection of mental configurations is correct, and the rest of material relaity is obliged to conform with that understanding. Hell, I can’t say that my own understanding of the interior life inside my skull is “correct.”
Lost in the trans uproar is the acknowledgement that women have any legitimate concerns or value in the current discussions over such things as self ID and the safety of women-only spaces. TRAs “centre” themselves by painting these concerns as being deployed exclusively for reasons of antipathy and hostility to trans women rather than the legitimate staking a claim for self-interest of women and girls. Jane Clare Jones (perpetually eye-opening and clarifying to me) notes in her response to Weinberg’s post tutting over the alleged treatment of “t philosopher” :
Anyway, the point here is that the entire conversation – at least with respect to Justin’s exhortation for empathy with t philosopher, and this is very much mirrored by the ease with which gender critical women are being publicly monstered – is being focused around trans people, and specifically trans women’s needs and feelings, while refusing to grant any recognition to the fact that women also have needs, interests and feelings here as well.[2] We are not playing games with other people’s lives. We are engaged in a debate about our own lives, a debate we consider to be of massive existential importance to us, and which is deeply and unerringly distressing – because we keep being told that we should accept our existence being redefined, and that the definition of our own existence is of far less consequence than trans women’s – that is, male-born people’s – feelings.
This perspective was a real whack upside the head for me, as this whole debate has had a tendency to revolve around things as they effect TIMs exclusively. For me this shift of focus (which I need to constsntly remind myself of; slow learner here) really puts things into a clearer perspective. A tiny percentage of loud TRAs versus billions of women. If it was simply a numbers game, it would be no contest, but it’s not just a numbers game TRAs leverage their power and influence by recruiting allies, threatening those who oppose them, and trying to get everyone else to see these issues through their values and filters and keep them the fuck away from GC views. For some people simply chanting the TWAW mantra is enough to make them nod off or tune out. For others, painting GC feminists as TERFs who are to be pre-emptively despised and shunned works.
If the disparate groups uneasily huddling beneath the trans umbrella could see that not everyone’s interests are truly being served by TRA extremists, and that their turn under the bus could be next, that might put some roadblocks in front of their legislative and regulatory end run, which they hope to acheive before too many are peak transed and awaken from wokeness.
Sorry for the length. But when you’re on a roll…
I identify as a wizard, but in Harry Potter, the wizards can all cast actual magic. This is exclusionary!!!!!
…
We are told, again and again, that identifying as _______ is as good as being _______. So, identify as a uterus-haver and there you go.
And yet if you put that proposition to a TRA, they will most likely deny that charge and claim that of course the female sex can still be included in media… so long as it is respectful of trans people. And how does one deal with the female sex in a way that respects trans people? By declaring that identifying as female overrides mere biological differences.
This reminded me of some dialogue of Koko in The Mikado:
It’s like this: When your Majesty says, “Let a thing be done,” it’s as good as done — practically, it is done — because your Majesty’s will is law. Your Majesty says, “Kill a gentleman,” and a gentleman is told off to be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead — practically, he is dead — and if he is dead, why not say so?
Wonder how Gilbert would have worked “bepenised” into a lyric…?
Having now read all nine issues released so far, I can report back that Man-Eaters is an excellent comic – darkly comical, and unsubtly but delightfully satirical. I would say, though, that it reads much better in trade than if I had been waiting for monthly installments.
Holms:
I’m waiting for the release of Tarka II: Tarka versus Iknklast the Trans-Otter.