Representing
Owen Jones is happy though.
Note: the LGB Alliance is not “anti-trans rights.” It doesn’t want to take human rights away from trans people – of course it doesn’t. It opposes new, made-up “rights,” claimed rights that aren’t rights at all: to be “accepted” as whatever one claims to be, to be “validated” as X when one is Y, to be “included” as LGB when one is straight. Trans rights are indeed trans rights, because they’re not rights at all.
This isn’t just wordplay or pedantry, because it’s central to the war on terfs. We’re not arguing for the persecution or isolation of trans people, we’re arguing against our own persecution and isolation. We’re arguing for our ability and our right to recognize men as men when it’s relevant. That doesn’t take any actual right away from trans people, it just denies them the right to impose a personal fantasy on the entire world.
And of course Owen Jones is completely wrong to say the LGB Alliance doesn’t represent the exact people it does represent.
Jonny Best, a gay man, explained it very clearly:
It’s not about excluding transgender people like there’s a fancy club with a swimming pool and the snooty folks won’t let in their inferiors. It’s about the basic meaning of what it means to be gay or lesbian. It’s about same-sex attraction. It’s not about how gay men should get sexually aroused by vaginas on transmen because those are MEN’S vaginas. It’s not about lesbians being bigots if they don’t buy the idea that transbians have “lady-cocks.” Arguments otherwise smack of conversion therapy, along with gaslighting.
I don’t understand how some homosexuals fail to look at that term and unpack it.
Who ever argues that? Nobody cares about transmen.
@GW:
Yes, they’re going after “transphobic” gay men, too — both the activists, and the transmen. It’s just taking a bit longer because men as a class haven’t been as socialized into the idea that they ought to be “nice” as women have. But given how absolutist the gender identity doctrine is, and how aggressive its proponents are, it would be strange indeed if they gave one huge part of the community a pass. The “male vagina” is out there. “Trans women are women; Trans men are men; Non-binaries are valid (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.)”
Transmen who consider themselves gay don’t necessarily feel less entitled than the transbians. They’re having less luck, and are part of a movement which feeds on resentment and a sense of rejection. They’re complaining. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
@GW
I just found this:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipN6bUPUugEzmNmC-nZTunsVPUtgAuMANMmoVSD1j5gmROqY5E53VSCukHKc8zSRHA?pli=1&key=bTMzMDNKeC1vbkFkRjlqTHJKM284RU1IQ3JkSlF3
There used to be a Facebook page, The Boxer Ceiling. that did an excellent job of documenting abuse directed at gay man because of their insistence on sex rather than “gender identity” attraction. (The rejection of trans-identified males by lesbians has been termed “cotton ceiling”, in a stupid analogy to “glass ceiling” that references women’s underwear; “boxer ceiling” is essentially “cotton ceiling” but men’s underwear. Analogy is stretched too far, but never mind.) The Boxer Ceiling appears to have been removed, unfortunately; I knew they were under threat before, but I guess the trans activists finally prevailed. They used to cross-post a lot of good radical feminist material, and a lot of screen shots of abuse directed at gay men. It was eye-opening.
I did point a gay male friend at the page. He had been experiencing some amount of pushback over his rejection of trans-identified females as potential partners. I think the documentation serves to alert gay men that this isn’t some innocuous happy-slappy let-everyone-live-their-best-life pablum, but real issues with real consequences.
Unfortunately, it’s gone now. If someone knows if they created a presence off of Facebook, please provide a link.
@4 damn that is quite the collection.
Sacking, if they had thought it through properly, it could have been “cotton ceiling” for men and “silk and lace ceiling” for women. I mean, what kind of frumpy old hag wears cotton underwear?
@Catwishperer (winces in her comfy Marks & Spencers knickers – the most popular brand in the UK).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/313021/leading-womens-lingerie-and-underwear-brands-in-the-uk/
@sastra – I read through that collection and at first I find it incredibly difficult to believe that “kind’ people are willing to overlook the naked homphobia in transgender activism. How many of them say they hate cis gays? Even if they did have sex, what kind of sex would it be, “hate sex?” Then I remember how very recenlty it finally became acceptable to be gay in public, like within the last two decades.
But since “trans gays” and “trans lesbians” attack so viciously and no one, especially well-known gay men such as OJ, says boo about it, perhaps it is still not acceptable to be gay or lesbian and we were fooled for a brief shining moment.
Fierce misogyny and homophobia, wolves in sheep’s clothing, but people are shutting their eyes to the zippers in the costumes out of kindness.
KBplayer – I was being sarcastic, I assure you. (Six-monthly visit to M&S to stock up on comfy knickers scheduled for the coming weeks)
Also – Sacking = Sackbut, obvs.