You’ve never been
Trans-identifying man Brianna Wu tells women we’ve never been denied anything so we just don’t get it.
Yes he actually wrote that. Women have never been denied any area of expression, he says, blithely ignoring all the many many areas of expression we have been denied, and in some cases punished for trying to enter. Man lectures women on how we have never been told “No” so we just don’t understand.
…you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for granted. You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone.
Now let’s talk about all the things you don’t know what it’s like, Mister Wu.
What’s extra crazy is that Brianna Wu has been marketing himself as a kind of “middle ground” moderate trans person. He’s dabbled in presenting himself as a “rational trans.”
Yet he fails so spectacularly at any attempt at reason or rational thinking. I’m afraid that his idea of “rational trans” is analagous to “Independent Scientologist.” Trying to hold onto half the cult’s worldview while abandoning the other half just doesn’t work. You’re either all in or you’re all out. You can’t really half-believe in The Evil Intergalactive Overlord Xenu, and you can’t really half-believe that you’re a woman who was born in a male body.
(I say “for the most part,” because I know people whose relationship with their transgender identities is genuinely rational and pragmatic. They’re distressed about the sex characteristics of their bodies and they’ve found that modifying them has been a pragmatic solution. They don’t ascribe magic “sex change” qualities to their decisions to modify their appearances. I have no beef with them. That’s a different thing.)
Ignorance of history runs strong through the trans movement. Women were told no on a lot of things; even as late as the 1970s, it could be difficult to impossible for a woman to get a loan in her name. Getting equal pay for equal work hasn’t happened yet. Getting to complete a sentence without a man talking over you? Hasn’t happened yet. Being an expert on a topic who is asked a question, but some man in a different field jumps in and answers? All too common.
This is like the young man (born in 1992) who took precious time to explain to me exactly what it was really like to be a woman in the 1980s. I was a woman in the 1980s; I was married, a college educated professional, and had a child (born in 1982 so my son is older than this dude). But whatever I said about being a woman in the 1980s was wrong…he knew, I didn’t.
This is so infuriating in so many ways.
My reply:
Says Wu: “ You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying.”
I don’t think you really mean that. And if you do, I dare you to say that to any woman who has ever tapdanced as fast as she could, surrounded by terrifying toxic male social dynamics (the women at Diddy’s parties, or on Weinstein’s casting couch, or Cosby’s lounge room, on a bus that’s empty except for a group of dudes leching all over you, or even just trying to be heard in a boardroom or meeting), if she knows what that’s like.
The combination of myopia and entitlement is staggering and horrifying.
“ “You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine.”
No, but we may be punished when we act in ways that are not.”
Sometimes we are: don’t care about your appearance? Ugh, so unfeminine, you should put some effort in. Do care about your appearance? Ugh, why so shallow? And why *that* particular dress/shoes/nail polish/hairstyle/etc which is not to my taste?
Some quotes from Wu:
Interestingly, Wu denies that crossdressers and drag queens are part of ‘trans’. Oh, and insists that transness has to do with brain chemistry, which violates the current mantra of ‘don’t medicalize us!’ (which never seems to recognize that if they were not being medicalized, no one would be calling for them to receive medical treatments).
If men are punishing other men for liking makeup and high heels, that’s too bad, but Wu hasn’t explained why it’s a problem for women to solve.
It’s absolutely astounding.
“You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine.”
Someone tweeted:- “She was wearing the wrong clothes.”
Women are/were punished for being feminine all the time – from not being taken seriously as speakers about anything at all to being complicit in their own sexual assault. They are also punished for not being feminine.
Looks like the post has been removed. I can’t imagine why.
Must be transphobia.
This really does make it look like a men’s problem. But if we conclude that men should be kinder to the less masculine men among us, then the TRAs still bite our heads off.
What a liar.
Women “have never been denied any area of expression”? In what world? Women have for centuries been, and continue to be, denied almost every form of expression until relatively recently, and then only partially permitted, and only in modern Western democratic countries. Women in Afghanistan aren’t even permitted to speak in public, and not even in their own homes if someone outside could imaginably hear their voices. Women take what for granted, now? On account of “never [having] been denied any area of expression?
Women are “not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine”? Are you kidding me? The stereotypes of femininity imposed on women because of their sex are the punishment for having the audacity to be born female. That’s precisely why many women rebel against “act[ing] in a way that is feminine.”. Of course, women are also punished for not acting in a way that is feminine. The stereotypes of femininity are designed to oppress and to punish women. Submissiveness, subordination, relegation to unpaid domestic labor, and the like are promoted as proper standards of femininity because these qualities keep women powerless. Women’s fashions are created — largely by men — to keep women vulnerable. Women’s shoes? Modern footbinding. A woman couldn’t run in those shoes to save her life. Skirts for women but not men? Gives men much easier access to women’s private areas for humiliation or rape. Tight skirts, like pencil skirts, aren’t as easy for men to penetrate, but they restrict women’s natural stride. Again, women couldn’t run to save their lives if they had to. Women’s clothes deliberately designed without pockets? Burdens women with an auxiliary appendage (purse) subject to easy loss or theft, rather than allowing women to keep their valuables on their person and hands-free, unlike men. Women being forced to “act in a way that is feminine” is the punishment. Don’t tell me that women don’t know this and don’t feel this.
Women “don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying”? As if women don’t see those social dynamics up close and personal? As if women don’t suffer the consequences of ” toxic male social dynamics”? As if the “toxicity” of male social dynamics isn’t comprised of misogyny? As if women aren’t terrified of and terrorized by “toxic male social dynamics”?
There may be a point that women “don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone,” but that’s pretty rich coming from a man. Women are commonly accused of being crazy, or “having their brains malfunction” from estrogen. That’s why women are called ” hysterical”; this supposed illness is used as a bludgeon against women to dismiss what women say, to ignore what women feel, to overlook women’s concerns, to keep women oppressed. Now you want to claim ” testosterone brain poisoning” as an excuse for male behaviors, as a reason not to hold men accountable for their testosterone-influenced actions. “Crazy hormones” is deployed against women, but proffered as a mitigating factor in favor of men. Classic double standard, that.
TL;DR: You lie. There’s a lot you “take for granted” that you don’t know about what women really experience.
[…] a comment by maddog on You’ve never […]
Not much that I can add at this point but I just wish every one of these comments could be appended to the now non-existent post a preserved somewhere for eternity (or at least till this madness ends).
If it really were due to brain chemistry, I would rather see medical research look for a pill rather than cut off my balls and pump hormones to give me breasts and soften my features. It’s an incoherent ideology, rather like religion. Because there is no science to use to examine a “gender identity,” they can make up anything and with an authoritative enough voice it becomes fact.