That’s not Woman’s Hour.
Charlie Craggs is a man who identifies as a woman, aka a trans woman. Woman’s Hour is supposed to be for and about women.
Also I hate that word “pampering” in this context. It’s so patronizing, so infantilizing, so “aren’t women adorable sweet empty-headed bunnies whose idea of luxury is some uncomfortable body-modification shit.” Keep your god damn “pampering” to yourselves.
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16 responses to “On how pampering”
Wow, that’s a very convincing costume, bro! You going to a costume party?
Why do so many people like CC sound as if they have been educated in an advertising agency, and have nothing in their heads but sentimental cliches?
This. In fact, people “identifying” as otherkin or trans-species or whatever are far less offensive than men “identifying” as women, because whatever stereotypes the former are portraying or acting or whatever aren’t stereotypes of a class of actual people. Ophelia has worked with elephants, so perhaps she can correct me, but my guess is that elephants wouldn’t be offended by people that wake up in the morning and pretend to trumpet in front of the mirror, or (once we’re talking about stereotypes) pretend to never forget. But women are actual people (caveat: unfortunately, not everyone agrees with this), so when men co-opt stereotypes and pretend that this makes them into women, it is, yes, infuriating.
Women’s Hour does do programmes about make up and hair and fashion, but not in such a gushy kind of way. Why this constant “affirming” of something which is supposed to be unarguably true?
Also, I have nothing against make up and hair and fashion, but you expect a little critical distancing on such phenomena as the spa weekend and nail bars, eg on the conditions of the workers (nail bars are known for actual slavery) and the kind of constant You’re worth it flattering of money out of women’s wallets.
In that case, it makes sense that they would want to feature a man this time — double your clientele. Capitalism. Now, they could just say: “Hey men, you too need to have our services so that we can make you Beautiful and flatter money out of your pockets!”, but that would upset the fragile cart of the gender stereotypes of the two sexes, so instead they say “Oh hey, men, have you ever considered that some of you might actually be women? Well, if so…”
My “That’s not Woman’s Hour” wasn’t because the subject was makeup but because men aren’t women.
Also – “Why this constant “affirming” of something which is supposed to be unarguably true?” should be a side of the bus advert!
Which of the two people in the picture is a real woman?I suspect that the one in green is a pretend woman, but I could be wrong.
Athel, always choose the one with the head tilt.
I see a lot of male-to-female trans bullying of their intended gender, but am I missing a comparable amount of female-to-male bullying? I interact with a couple of people who are female-to-male trans but they seem to have no agenda other than finding their own way in the world like the rest of us.
Is there a differential in the aggression seen in social media depending on the baseline sex of the individual? Would be an interesting thing to study.
I think it’s fair to point out that while Woman’s Hour has broadcast programmes centred on trans, the above is a tweet from the Woman’s Hour Twitter account promoting a podcast available on BBCSounds.
Re #10
The Facebook page The Boxer Ceiling documents a great many instances of FTM bullying or maligning of gay males, much of it because the gay males don’t wish to have sex with females regardless of identity. (This “bigotry” is called the “boxer ceiling” as a parallel to the “cotton ceiling” of lesbians refusing sex with men.)
Sackbut, that’s the first time I’ve connected the ‘cotton’ in ‘cotton ceiling’ to underwear, and now I’m reminded of an old joke concerning underwear and ceilings that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Pretty sure boxers are made of cotton too (I mean, there’s silk boxers but I assume ladies’ unmentionables are also potentially made of the substance)… Why the need for an extra label?
The extra label is for gay men. The situation with TIMs pressuring lesbians to accept TIMs as faux-lesbian sex partners is the “cotton ceiling”, and is a variant of “corrective rape”, more examples of male bullying of women. Gay men also encounter pressure to have sex with TIFs, and wished to talk about it, so “boxer ceiling” was coined to distinguish it from the misogynist “cotton ceiling”. They can’t retroactively demand that all these misogynists use the term “panty ceiling”. They need a separate term for the same reason “women’s health” should not be supplanted by “reproductive health”.
Regardless, I recommend the FB page, as it’s very gender critical and it does document TIF (and others) verbal abuse of gay men.
Re the ‘boxer ceiling’, I recall James Schuyler, who was gay and a rather good poet (I rather regret having given his poetry away some years ago), complaining in one of his poems about men wearing boxers as opposed to briefs. I shan’t go deeply into the reason, which is pretty obvious, but just in case I’ll say that boxers, for Schuyler, made something less obvious.