Challenge those Karens
Some deep breaths taken; back to Futrelle.
Rowling came up with the idea for Beira’s Place, she told anti-trans feminist Suzanne Moore, in what can only be described as a fit of pique caused by remarks from Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman in charge of Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis centre.
Wadhwa had said that transphobic clients of the centre would have their bigotry challenged.
Futrelle simply assumes that the clients in question are “transphobic” and that their awareness that men are men is “bigotry” and thus he implies that Wadhwa was right and virtuous in promising to bully women who need rape crisis services for knowing that men are men.
Wadhwa also said it was possible to “reframe” one’s relationship with trauma so that “it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life.” As a result of these comments and the fact of her being a trans woman in the first place, the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre endured a torrent of death threats and other abuse from transphobes that led to the centre having to lock itself down.
In other words Wadhwa was right and virtuous while the women who objected to his role at the centre and his outrageous entitlement in lecturing them were wrong and evil. Wadwha was an innocent benevolent victim of “abuse” from “transphobes” and that’s all there is to it.
Furious at Wadhwa’s comments, Rowling didn’t send any mean emails; she just decided to build a Rape Crisis centre that wouldn’t employ, or serve, Wadhwa’s kind.
That is, Rowling decided to fund a rape crisis centre for women.
So here she is, funding a service that avoids the “politics” of the sexual abuse of women by systematically excluding a whole class of victims.
Men are not a whole class of female victims. Men are not a whole class of victims of the sexual abuse of women. It’s only women who are female victims, women who are a whole class of victims of the sexual abuse of women.
The idea behind excluding trans victims is that cis women need a place to go where they feel safe. Never mind that there’s no evidence that trans women accessing support services would make cis women less safe. If feelings of safety are all that count, racist whites could make the same argument about a shelter needing to exclude women of color.
Trans women are men. Will men accessing support services for women make women less safe? I wonder why Futrelle doesn’t ask himself that question. (No I don’t. It’s all too obvious why he doesn’t.)
H/t Holms
Then all the breathless students who claim they feel unsafe when GC views are expressed at their university or in public, anywhere, would automatically be justified. Good thing we can question that.
It’s rather rich that someone who believes a feeling of conviction is what makes someone a man or woman would be so dismissive of feelings.
Sastra already addressed the feelings aspect, but the analogy assumes that women in this case are equivalent to white people; i.e., they are the oppressive majority. A better analogy would be if he objects to black people wanting a shelter that excludes white people in blackface.
Also this:
So screw all you women who choose to wallow in your abuse–you’re just professional victims! You should be more like Saint Wadhwa, and revel in the pain.
Not surprising. I gave up on Futrelle years ago, when he prostrated himself at the holy temple of trans.
I really can’t fathom the responses and attitude that are the equivalent “I know you are, but what am I?” or sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” It’s incomprehensible. I remember Hitchens saying something to the effect of “If you ever hear me profess faith in a god, you can safely assume I have some sort of injury or disease that has resulted in brain damage.” That, I would hope, would be me in regards to “gender identity.” I can’t imagine anything short of losing my mind causing me to change my mind. Nothing else would ever lead me to embrace this sort of bullshit.
It’s rather rich that people who were skeptics and atheists who vehemently criticised the religious for beliefs based on ‘feelings’ have now so wholeheartedly done the same. Almost as if they were just seekers, rather than adhering to any consistent philosophical and scientific beliefs.
Probably like pretty much everyone here I guess, the thing that beggars me is the way so many people are prepared to throw all of the female category under the bus and heap scorn and contempt on them as some sort of privileged class getting what they deserve, in favour of a tiny minority whose (almost) every argument is a fabrication. Even within category ‘trans’, even though the bulk of trans are now young women and girls (hello contagion), the focus and special pleading focus on biological males. I utterly identify with the little boy staring at the naked emperor as I say “why do you not see this shit people?!”
Would it be rude to ask Futrelle to define “transwoman”? He would probably perceive it as a trap, and I suppose it is… Yet, if he can’t do that in some coherent way, wouldn’t even he have to face the absurdity of his complaint?
The men who want to be accepted by all and sundry as women can if they wish portray themselves as victims of something. The fudge is in their attempt to assert that all victims are equal, and all victimhood likewise. The said men who want to be accepted by all and sundry as women are surely victims of the said something, and I would suggest that the something is the disconnect between the reality of their male physical being and their demand that all others accept their mental denial as being beyond question, and particularly their desire to access ‘women only’ facilities.
Which others, commonly preferring not to be told what to think, and particularly by some bloke in drag, are commonly disinclined to do. Independence of mind and thought is a pretty important get-out-of-jail card for one helluva lot of people, including me.
Once the central beliefs are accepted, it’s like they’re never revisited or examined, however absurd. “Of course the bread and wine of Holy Communion become the Body and Blood of Christ!” Once committed to and invested in the dogma, defence of it becomes paramount. So I wonder: what was Futrelle’s “conversion experience?” Would it be possible for him to be peaked and brought back to the reality based community? Can he be deconverted?
This is besides the point, but shouldn’t we be skeptical that these sort of men are in need of rape shelters in the first place? The odds of them *being* rapists would intuitively be far higher than being victimized and if sex work is work the trans street walkers shouldn’t come in to the conversation.
Not to derail the thread or anything…
Well, even if sex-work is accepted as work (as it is in New Zealand law), sex workers are still frequently victims of sexual assault and rape. I would hope that trans women and male sex workers who experience rape or sexual assault in their personal or work lives would seek and receive support. It doesn’t need to be in facilities intended for women though.
Women-born-without-penises* saying so doesn’t count as evidence, duh. But trust whatever a TRA or TIM claims to be True without question, you bigot.
Feeling of safety don’t count when they’re feelings of women-born-without-penises*. But TRAs and TIMs have Feelings that must be prioritized above all else, you bigot.
*Don’t ask, you bigot.
Sigh.
Rob wrote:
I was and am always surprised at the number of atheists who emphasize that they’d have no problem with religion — let people believe whatever they want — if only they wouldn’t try to “impose” their beliefs on others. The problem they say is that the religious use religion to justify their hate and hurt people. And there are skeptics with a similar mindset. If it wasn’t for the damage and control exerted by paranormal or alt med beliefs on the innocent, they’d be happy to live and let live as those people screwed up their own lives, but kept it within their community.
Yes, they champion science and reason, but it seems to me that there’s a higher principle or motivation here: Thou Shalt Not Force Your Beliefs On Others. People who do that are jerks and of course it’s perfectly justified to tell them they’re jerks and do all you can to stop it. There’s also a sharpened focus on preventing suffering. It’s not enough for a belief to be wrong — that can be overlooked. But if there are victims, now it matters.
It’s far from all who seem to have abandoned the concept of a disinterested search for truth as a human endeavor for an engaged process of fighting the bad guys and defending the damaged. They might even be a small minority within the larger ASH (atheist/skeptic/humanist) communities. And of course I can’t really say that they’re wrong. Relieving human suffering is hardly a bad goal. It’s laudatory.
But it still sits a bit funny with me. It’s partly the epistemic insouciance, partly the demonizing of people “using” religion and woo for the purpose of “trying to control others.” That’s not necessarily so. Good, reasonable, thoughtful people can believe weird things for reasons that seem good on the surface.
Which might be illustrated by those good, reasonable, thoughtful atheists and skeptics who have accepted popular trans ideology and turned like fierce avengers on everyone they see as using seemingly rational arguments to justify their hatred of trans people and exert control over them. “Leave them alone. They’re not hurting anyone. Don’t force your epistemology on them — It’s not an academic exercise. They know who they are and so do I. TWAW.”
But TiMs demanding everyone use their preferred pronouns and forcing themselves into women’s single-sex spaces is doing exactly that. It’s an excellent example of Forcing Your Beliefs On Others. And they’re being more than just jerks about it, too. Garden variety “jerks” don’t go to the effort to get people fired, or engage in threats, intimidation and harassment. Futrelle thinking he’s on the side of the weak and downtrodden, the damaged and marginalized hides the fact that he’s going to bat for white dudes in dresses and lipstick.
We might as well just say it: Futrelle and his ilk are, objectively, pro-rape.
Futrelle came up with the idea of objecting to Beira’s place in what can only be described as an access of misogynist hatred. Futrelle’s fury at the idea of a women’s shelter without men present comes from his passion for victimizing women who have already been the target of violence.
The idea behind not allowing women to recover from male violence in a setting without males present is that bitches gotta learn that’s what they deserve. If womanhood is just a state of mind, when you don’t accept being the receptacle for male aggression, you need to reframe your trauma. And also you’re a racist.
Again, I think it’s useful to make a distinction between:
1. why people adopt a belief / join a movement / dedicate themselves to a cause in the first place
2. why they stick to their guns after the red flags start showing up everywhere*
Even if (1) is both smart, clever, noble, and worthy, (or seemed so at the time), it doesn’t follow that the same is true of (2). People get into things for good reasons and stay for bad reasons all the time. Regardless of your reasons for “choosing a side” in the first place, once the choice is made, other, far less admirable, motives come into play: “saving face”, minimizing cognitive dissonance, keeping the team together, not antagonizing your new bedfellows etc. It doesn’t mean you’re still a good guy, let alone rational. As I keep saying, there are no brownie points for doing the right thing as one sees it if the way one sees it is based on motivated reasoning rather than any honest attempt to find out what’s true.
*Or even after the cause has mutated into its polar opposite.
Of course, if you believe rape is just kink, and anti-rape activists are just kink-shaming, you might not think there’s a need for rape shelters at all.