A fair summation?
Plot twist in that story Monday about the commenter at The Freethinker who said I’m a Trump supporter. The first twist was haha it turned out she was joking (Susan Montgomery is her handle) and second twist was oh oops she wasn’t joking. The fact that the column she was commenting on, the column I wrote, is intensely hostile to Trump is irrelevant because:
Wut? That’s not my cartoon, the cartoon isn’t about me, how does that cartoon explain that my hostility to Trump is actually support of Trump?
Here’s how:
I think it’s a fair summation of Benson’s attitudes over the years as she’s sought to replace Camille Paglia as the Alt-Right’s Feminist organ-grinder monkey.
Do you have evidence to the contrary or are you sticking with the “NUH-UHH! You’re the real fascist!” that alleged freethinkers are justly famous for?
Evidence to the contrary? Well there’s the column she’s commenting on – and the fact that I said so. If I were a Trump supporter I would be supporting Trump, not writing columns about how chaotic his thinking is. And is there any evidence for her claim? Which I think is a good bit more outlandish than the claim that I am not a Trump supporter (given the several million not friendly to Trump posts I’ve bored you all with). No, there isn’t.
With exquisite politeness, she replied:
And, with your sterling reputation of honesty and integrity, why would I doubt your word?
On a completely unrelated matter, have you decided whether to advocate voting for the Green Party or for sitting out the upcoming election? After all, you’d never support Trump…
One of those “Do I know you??” moments. Why the fuck is this person being so grossly insulting when I’ve never heard of her before?
So I hied me to Google and found that she comments at Pharyngula, and that she has a blog, and that she’s a trans woman.
I asked him why he was calling me a liar.
Because I’m honest.
Anyway, I’m sure you have another Heritage Foundation do to get to, so I’ll let you get on with “not supporting Trump”.
EDIT: And I just had the worst incidence of l’esprit d’escalier by not saying “I’m a freethinker”. Ah, the road not taken…
So he’s an angry guy who likes to think of himself as a woman and really likes to let his misogyny loose on women who don’t believe men turn into women by saying so. And I remain what I say I am: not a Trump supporter, not part of the Heritage Foundation, not Alt-Right, not a Camille Paglia wannabe.
I like how he called you a Trump supporter and then put the burden of proof on those who claim you’re not a Trump supporter.
Not much on rational thought or witty comebacks, but he does think…freely.
She’s a man, baby, yeah! That explains a lot, the condescension mostly, and some of the outright wrongness.
Yep, just another internet troll.
What’s a good word to describe this kind of behavior? Puerile, which means “like a boy”.
I can’t vote in the US (obviously), but if I could, despite having politics probably well to the left of the majority of Americans, I wouldn’t vote green. Why? Because I detest Trump and everything that his corrupt twisting of an equally corrupt and morally bankrupt GOP stands for. I want him gone. A vote green (or anything other than Democratic at this point) is a wasted vote that increases the likelihood that Trump and GOP candidates all through the ticket win.
At this point I would vote for a syphilitic squirrel if it was on the Dem ticket, because it would be the lesser of two evils.
To (mis)quote Popehat (another well known Trump lover), Susan Montgomery can snort my taint.
Lady M, I know, that’s what I meant by “And is there any evidence for her claim? Which I think is a good bit more outlandish than the claim that I am not a Trump supporter (given the several million not friendly to Trump posts I’ve bored you all with).” It’s a pretty strange argument that takes the form
1. completely absurd claim
2. what’s your evidence to the contrary?
But no doubt it identifies as an argument.
I recall seeing a list someone collected of incidents of trans people being discriminated against in healthcare. Some of the items were legitimate: verbal abuse, actual denial of normal care. Some were not: refusal to provide cross-sex hormones or surgery, referring to someone using sex-appropriate pronouns. It’s terribly confusing (and likely deliberate) to merge the two categories. Denying someone gall bladder surgery because of trans status is totally different from refusing to remove a young girl’s healthy breasts, and neither of those is in the same category as calling a man a man.
Well aren’t you just the latest aspirant for the Camille Paglia Prize.
“But no doubt it identifies as an argument.” Maybe, but I’m of the mind that a simple statement to the contrary does not an argument make. Some minimal justification is almost mandatory for it to qualify as an argument (I learned this at the TPM forum many years ago ;)) So I’m with Peter N in thinking this is just another troll, who is identified by calling for “evidence to the contrary” to essentially nothing but a vacuous claim.
When did radical feminists (or those who agree with their general drift) become right-wingers? This is just another of our culture’s mysteries.
Suspicious, I looked up comments by ‘Susan Montgomery’ and saw her lumping you (or somebody else named Benson) with Julie Bindel on a LGBT blog. Trans.
You “support Trump” because the Republicans are the only ones passing laws protecting women’s sports, safe spaces, and underage children from hormones and surgery. You will therefore vote the Republican ticket, because this is supposed to be an issue on which nobody compromises. Thus, you’re on Trump’s side. Even if you don’t actually vote for him, you inspire other people to vote for him.
There’s also a theory — well, assumption— that everyone who disagrees with trans ‘rights’ must be not just conservative, but religious.
It’s one of those things though isn’t it? If I were a woman in a position to choose and the Dems adopted the Labour version of trans “rights” I’d probably at least pause before filling out the bubble.
“So I hied me to Google and found that she comments at Pharyngula, and that she has a blog, and that she’s a trans woman.
I asked him why he was calling me a liar.”
WOW! Pharyngula really has become a joke, hasn’t it? A site run by a biologist who tosses biological reality out the window when it conflicts with his need to genuflect to trans cult dogma.
Guess this all falls under “why we fight” as in we fight because we cannot let these new age loons do any more damage to the ignorant and the innocent than they already have.
Does this “reasoning” apply to hard-Lefties who refuse to support the likes of Biden (or even Bernie), I wonder.
OK, found this Montgomery guy on FB and instantly blocked him. His header image there is pure AGP and the rest of the timeline does not get any better. https://www.facebook.com/susan.montgomery.12327608/photos
There must be a name for this phenomenon, where someone decides:
1. I don’t like your opinion on issue X.
2. Therefore, you are my enemy.
3. As my enemy, you oppose everything I believe in and hold positions I consider terrible on every issue.
4. Therefore, you support Awful Positions 1, 2, 3, 4, …. ad infinitum.
It’s moral and intellectual reasoning on the level of a Saturday morning cartoon.
I know it was intended as sarcasm, but it is accidentally a good point. With Ophelia’s sterling reputation of honesty and integrity, why do you doubt her word?
And who else got a laugh out of the ‘scientific consensus’ being demonstrated by a video giving the personal viewpoint of a single scientist? Ah well, TRA ideology makes people say risible shit example #185616841685.
Surely one the most misunderstood fictional characters in My country’s literature is Ludvig Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus. In the most famous scene of the play he uses (from memory) the following argument to “prove” that his mother is a stone:
Most people seem to take this as evidence that Erasmus doesn’t understand logic, but only because they’ve never actually read the play. Those who have read it know that Erasmus only puts fort the argument to show why it’s fallacious, as he goes on to demonstrate. So while it’s true that Erasmus is portrayed as arrogant, smug, and a bit too overconfident in his own intellectual powers, he is not in fact wrong. In fact the whole play can be interpreted as an early of example anti-intellectualism (it famously ends with Erasmus falling for his own logical tricks and being forced to retract his “heretical” claim that the Earth is round).
Anyway, thanks to Holberg’s play “Mother Nille is a stone” is probably the most famous logical fallacy in Norwegian/Danish literature. Montgomery’s whole argument seems to be based on the exact same logic:
Well, I suppose it serves as a prime example of the initial article’s point–the difference, and friction, between free thought and freethought. The one leads people to ‘their own truths’ which cannot be gainsaid by anyone (or at least anyone who hasn’t proved themselves a loyal ideological servant and who doesn’t take great pains to frame their disagreement as mildly and supportively as possible, and usually only in the wrong direction with respect to reality).
I know which kind I prefer.
That comic really struck me on several levels.
It is all about what the protagonist faces, not really the views of the antagonists. So to say it is a representation of anybody’s opinion, its not even intended that way.
But also the way it was used is a great illustration of how TRAs and the “Woke Wing” in general fuck their own cause.
If you look at panels 1 through 5, what you’ve got is the weaknesses of a highly unregulated market that does not protect consumer or worker rights.
For example, I’m a South African, panel 4 is illegal here not because of any specific legislation protecting trans rights, but because you have to have legitimate cause to fire workers. The employer in panel 4 would be facing a CCMA case which they would likely lose.
In any country where healthcare is not private, panel 2 doesn’t really happen. In any country governed by laws rather than corporations the first panel doesn’t work.
One can agree on fighting for greater protections for workers without having to sign onto every line item on the TRA agenda. You can disagree with bosses having the ability to fire people without just cause, without having to agree that male bodied athletes should be allowed to compete against female bodied athletes in sports.
One can agree that court orders are binding, without having to sign onto a faith statement that male bodied convicted rapists should be sent to women’s prisons because they changed their names to “Susan”. One can agree that healthcare should be available to all, without having to agree that femaleness is “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”
One can agree that a landlord shouldn’t give a damn about the genitals of their tenant, without agreeing that lesbians who don’t like penises are being bigots instead of, you know, lesbians.
A big chunk of the problem with TRAs is because they engage in cancel culture and deplatforming, they have no fucking clue as to what people are objecting to, in which case how would one make a webcomic honestly illustrating an opponent’s POV?
And to address any one issue, they can’t get people together on that because anybody who is not with them on anything is against them on everything.
Just commenting to say that was a great analysis of the comic.
Other than the panels on healthcare and pronouns, every situation in that comic would fit someone who was gay. Or someone who was black or Jewish or from any other discriminated group. And that healthcare one is equivocation. When “transgender healthcare” is excluded on a policy, the term refers to breast implants or sex change operations for the purpose of changing gender, not any healthcare at all for a transgender person.
Bruce is right. This is propaganda.
#13
Agence Guinéenne de Presse?
Ambulatory Glucose Profile?
Accelerated Graphics Port,?
I’m assuming autogynephilia.
Or Anti-Gravity Pants. Either.
Echoing the applause for Bruce’s analysis @ 19.
With the Anti-Gravity Pants, are the make-up and flaming red comb-over optional, or obligatory?
Asking for a friend.
Also, also applauding Bruce Gorton’s dissection of the comic. It’s instructive being shown how much stuff I can miss, not knowing I’ve missed it.
Also that header – UGH.
I know I’ll regret outing myself, but FWIW,
I’m the one posting there as PixieCorpse.
Ahhh. *fist bump*
The cartoon is a lie in many ways.
They are pretending that those in favor of sex-based rights want to discriminate against transgender people in these ways.
Panel 1, name change — in general, people can change their names if they want to, and, if there is a legal decree changing the name, there should be no impediment. It’s not that gender-critical people don’t believe in the force of law. There are other considerations at work, here. First, where the legal document is a change of sex on a birth certificate or driver’s license, any law permitting that is aiding and abetting a lie. People should not be allowed to falsify vital records or state-issued identification. Second, as many TA’s make clear with their corollary demand that they should never be “deadnamed,” the purpose of the legal name change is to perpetrate a fraud. TA’s want to pretend they are the opposite sex (lie about their sex), and get the sanction of the state to help them lie. That is a perfectly valid reason in law to deny a proposed legal name change. These TiM’s want license to invade sex-segregated spaces to prey on women for their own power trips and sexual gratification, and they also want to bury their criminal record of the crimes associated with their male name. They want to erase their criminal past and make themselves untraceable. That’s not a legitimate reason for a name change. Requests to change their name to one associated with the opposite sex should be denied out of hand, as in furtherance of fraud.
Panel 2, as others have already explained, is an outright lie, deliberately equivocating between health care that everyone, including so-called transgender people, are entitled to receive, and “health care” procedures offered exclusively to transgender people as alleged treatment for the condition of “transgenderism.” THAT’S what exclusions of “transgender healthcare” mean. What they’ve portrayed is not what happens, and not what opponents of the transgender agenda want. All the TERFS and “anti-trans bigots” are in favor of health care for transgender people.
Panel 3 is a lie in this same way. TERFS and other “anti-trans bigots” believe that “Trans Rights” should *include* nondiscrimination in housing. The same is true of Panels 4 and 5. All the supposedly “anti-Trans bigots” believe that transgender people should not be discriminated against in employment. The problems come when the transgender employee arrogantly demands entry to changing or bathroom facilities for the opposite sex (not gender). In addition to that intrusion, the problem is that transgender people are, in general, personality disordered. Their narcissistic, histrionic, attention-seeking, and demanding behaviors make them problem employees. They can’t just be happy being themselves and doing their work. They produce an overabundance of workplace drama and disruption. They are toxic employees. That’s the reason they are terminated, passed over, or not hired, not “because they are transgender.” They make poor tenants for the same reason.
Every one of the situations in 1-5 is a lie. Gender critical people, feminists, TERFS, and so-called “anti-trans bigots” are in FAVOR of transgender rights to the same extent as other people’s nondiscrimination rights.
Transgender people are demanding much more, however. They want to be able to lie, falsify, and perpetrate fraud. Panel 6 is infuriating in the sense that they want to make it seem as if they are asking for only a very small accommodation, i.e., pronouns. I.e., it’s so trivial that people are bigots for refusing a small courtesy. It’s not a small issue at all, though. If it were truly trivial, it wouldn’t be a big deal if people used pronouns appropriate to one’s sex. The TAs’ insistence on conformity to their demands for special pronouns is a power move. They want to force everyone else to believe and participate in their fantasies too. That’s not a “right.” There’s no right to lie about your sex. There’s no right to falsify public records. There’s no right to perpetrate a fraud through the power of the state to declare you a sex you’re not. There’s no right to erase your criminal history. There’s no right to force others to tell lies.
I’ve followed someone else’s lead, and will no longer refer to them as TRA’s, because the “rights” they are demanding are not rights. If they were content with the same rights as everyone else, that would be one thing, but they are not. They spend zero time advocating for these ordinary rights. They are not interested in that, not interested in equal treatment. No, their focus is entirely on the extra and special demands that they have no “right” to.
That part is SO crucial. The longer this mess goes on the less “tolerant” or “inclusive” I become because I am just not into narcissistic, histrionic, attention-seeking, and demanding behaviors, and the entire “movement” seems to be based on them.
#22 — yes, autogynephilia is AGP.
#29 — about that housing discrimination against trans claim in the cartoon: I would never advise somebody with personal property to take the risk of renting to a trans person. Sorry, but after seeing how vicious and narcissistic so many of the TIMs can get and seeing how they can scream transphobia at anybody who upsets them and be believed — why should any regular person put their income and safety at risk by letting unstable people rent from them?
Now, if we are talking about some huge apartment complex owned by some corporation, I would feel that the risk is lower just because LLCs protect their owners in many legal ways.
Holms,
I laughed because it doesn’t even serve to address the point. It’s just, “sexual differentiation is complex”. Yes, PZ, most of us are aware of that fact. And intersex conditions exist. There is indeed “scientific consensus” on these facts.
But from there, we’re supposed* to infer that “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN” and any man who identifies as a woman is one.
No, Susan, PZ’s little video provides no evidence for such claims.
* By Susan, but also presumably by PZ, who, as usual, is very careful not to outright state that conclusion. He knows it really doesn’t follow. He wants us to embrace it, without laying himself open to charges of the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion.
It’s really quite slippery of him.
Laurel–I’m diannebrown. *fist bump*
Oh I didn’t know that either!
@15, Screechy Monkey wrote
Psychologists refer to it as splitting. The person who engages in splitting puts all people (and things more generally) into mutually exclusive categories that define the people in those categories. If you have any property in S, then you belong in category A; if you don’t, then you belong in B. And all members of A have property S, so not only do you have s0, you have s1, s2, …, sn as well.
A splitter views people as wholly A or wholly B. If A=good and B=evil, then the splitter views other people as either wholly good or wholly evil. So a good person can’t do or be anything evil, and vice versa. If a person is shown to have an evil property, then that person is evil and has all evil properties. (NB, that entailment usually is either not consciously known to the splitter, or the entailment is known but not closed.)
Nullius, I suppose that is related to something else I’ve noticed, where people seem surprised when “bad” people have families and loved ones. So a ruthless businessman is found to have taken a young boy under his wing, given him a home, educated him, and is bringing him into the company. He has done something so good; he must not be a ruthless businessman after all. We expect all “bad” people to be like Ebenezer Scrooge, living life alone and loveless, in a cold, dark nothingness. I shudder every time I see that, because it allows a lot of people to get away with things because people assume they must be a decent human being if someone loves them.
iknklast: Yes, precisely. What you describe is the “benign” form that most people experience. We tend to desire an easily described world, so our impulse is to hold people and things in basically pure categories for as long as possible. This is especially true when combined with the tribal impulse. I mean, just look at how quickly people on side A believe accusations against members of side B and how slowly claims in the opposite direction are believed. Or how Krystal Ball drew ire by saying that Tucker Carlson did something not entirely shitty for once.
The cognitive-disorder version is that on PCP. It’s … cray-cray.