Yes but
Oh oh oh but what about the immense tragic suffering of the tranz commmunniny?
And, yes, I know that women lost their jobs for voicing their beliefs on biology. That was a wrong that required to be righted. But suffering is not binary in the way the court has decided sex is. Trans people have been under attack, too. Their besiegement has been amplified by the same judgment that has lessened yours.
Right. Ok. So the woman was raped, I get it, but the rapist has been under attack too. Now the rapist has been convicted and it’s your fault – you have amplified his besiegementitude.
Trans women won’t cease to exist because five judges decided the legal definition of a woman within the Equality Act 2010 does not include them, even if they hold Gender Recognition Certificates.
And now they have to navigate a world that is crueller than it was before. It doesn’t matter where you place the blame for that: with politicians, the media, extremists on either side of the culture war divide. There’s still a field out there strewn with casualties.
The world is crueller than it was before because men who pretend to be women can no longer grab all of women’s rights for themselves? How does that make sense? How is it cruel to tell men that they can’t take what belongs to women? Think.
No, they most certainly won’t. So what’s the fucking problem, then?
No, they fucking don’t. There is absolutely nothing cruel about acknowledging anyone’s biological sex, ever. If a man cannot cope with other people acknowledging his biological sex, he’s clearly got his mind tied up in mental knots and he needs serious therapy to untie them.
But most of these men absolutely can cope with acknowledging that they’re male, quite easily. They just don’t want to. These privileged, entitled men don’t want to let go of the luxuries they’ve embezzled from women.
I keep thinking back to the trashy, campy daytime talk shows of the nineties, like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. They often had transsexuals and crossdressers on them, acting outrageously, being silly, goading the audience into boos and cheers. There’s one clip in particular that comes to mind, featuring members of some death cult I believe. They were actually just gothy, eccentric young artists performing at being in a death cult to get on TV. One of them was Nina Paley, who is now a gender-critical cartoonist. Another was a transwoman. He didn’t really “pass” as a woman; it was pretty clear he was a man. But he was passed off as a woman until near the end of the show, when in a climactic moment, after he’d riled up the audience with some shocking statement or other, he leapt out of his chair and announced, as if putting the cherry on top of his shocking sundae: “And also, I’m transgender! That’s right — I’m a man!”
That’s right — I’m a man.
They used to just come right out and say it. In public! Even on TV! For fun!
Nobody dies when crossdressers admit that they’re crossdressers. Nobody suffers, really.
Well… I don’t doubt that there will be some discomfort as they come back down to reality. And to some of them, it will feel like suffering. But it’s like the suffering of the rich losing their fortunes. Like the Ratliff family in the latest season of the White Lotus, basking at a Thai wellness retreat, blissfully offline, unaware that back home in North Carolina, all hell has broken loose, the FBI has raided the family business and all the money is gone. Their life of luxury had been bankrolled by embezzlement, and the thought of losing it and having to go back to living normally like everyone else seems unbearable.
Here’s Parker Posey, in a high camp Tennessee Williams southern drawl: “I just don’t think at this age I’m meant to live an uncomfortable life. I just don’t have it in me. I don’t think I ever did.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woj5bc7XCe0
Right now in the UK, a lot of men are like the Ratliffs at the end of their vacation at the White Lotus, when they got their cellphones back and discovered they’re about to face the same reality as the rest of us. Tough luck, guys.
I’ve just arrived back home from an adventure in Another Part of Town. First bus went through Capitol Hill, ground zero for hippitude in Seattle – where I saw a poster or bit of graffiti that said insistently “YOU ARE LOVED.” That’s all it said, but we know who the intended audience is. So, why is it? Why do we know that? Why is it such a thing? Why does just this one particular set of people get love-bombed all day every day? We wouldn’t say that to a Black activist or a feminist or a union organizer – why do we (we the culture) say it to trans people? Why don’t trans people find it infantilizing and intrusive?
Hahaha, Lady Gaga said more-or-less the same thing, apropos of absolutely nothing, while accepting an award at the Grammys last month.
There’s gotta be some kind of connection between playing at being vulnerable children and knowing on some level that it’s all childish make-believe.
The childishness of it all…
Here’s another one I just saw:
Did you highlight that suffering and injustice? Did you call for its remediation? Or is your “And, yes”, and the telegraphed “But” just a hasty attempt to skip over an embarassing, complicit silence on your part, so you can concentrate on what you think is really important? That is, the feelings of Men.
Cut the “both sides” bullshit. You’re right insofars as the suffering hasn’t been “binary” It has been digital. Zero vs. One. Women have been put through orders of magnitude more pain and grief for having resisted trans ideology’s attacks on their rights and safety. “Misgendering,” or “deadnaming,” or simply being told “No,” are hardly in the same realm as the world of shit that has been visited upon the women who have dared to stand up to the grotesquely unreasonable demands of men pretending to be women. These men wouldn’t be experiencing any sense of “beseigement” at all if they hadn’t invaded women’s spaces in the first place. What has been “amplified” is the breathtaking scope, depth, and audacity of trans impositions upon women’s rights. There is no cruelty in reversing this grievous, state-supported injustice. The only cruelty is that it was necessary at all, and that it has taken so goddamn long to get even this far. You can bet that transactivists (like “Sophie Molly”) will fight frenzied rearguard actions to prevent the confiscation of their ill-gotten foothold in women’s spaces. I imagine they’be heartened knowing that they’ll have you cheer them on and support them in their worthy fight . Starting with this very article. Bravo.
Women have had barely a moment to regroup and recover from their years-long efforts to wrest the very definition of their sex from imposters and interlopers. In your view, women don’t have the right to celebrate this historic, and at the same time wasteful, needless court victory. Why are you in such an ungodly hurry to “recentre” our attention on those very same men, whose selfishness siphoned off the precious time and energy of untold thousands of women who might have preferred to put them to uses other than fighting off the incursions of these gleeful invaders? Cry me a fucking river.
The worst of the activists and their allies were liars, cheats, and bullies. It was all quite simple, really. They wouldn’t be in the self-pitying position they’re in now if they hadn’t lied, cheated, and bullied women. Nobody forced them to do this. They weren’t drafted, they volunteered. Everything they got they stole from women. Now they’re going to have to start giving it back. They’re crying over stuff that wasn’t theirs to start with. The discomfort and frustration over their thwarted sense of entitlement is not our problem, and not deserving of any sympathy at all.
[…] a comment by Artymorty on Yes […]
A few years ago, I had a young student, shy, quiet and kind, who believed himself to be trans and started hormone therapy, growing breasts n the process.
If he were arrested and put in a male prison, I am quite sure he would be treated cruelly.
This is not an argument for putting men in women’s prisons, shelters etc (I am and always was stricty against this, probably special accomodation/third spaces are needed), but it does show that we should not forget some compassion to trans people only because some of them are narcisstic and aggressively trying to grab everything that belongs to women.
I hear you, Sonderval. But I’m also bothered by the fact that virtually no one from the cohort of diminutive, sensitive gay men who adopted trans identities has spoken up in defence of women’s rights, even as armies of angry burly straight guys in ill-fitting blouses were wrecking everything, and doing so while waving the same flag.
Yes, the “gentle transwomen” have a psychological condition which is complicated and merits some compassion, as does any psychological condition that involves distress. And no, the “gentle transwomen” still don’t deserve access to women’s spaces. But I’ve come to believe that the self-absorption of the whole movement has just proven so toxic that the whole project of trying to meet these people halfway was a mistake. After all the damage that’s been done to society, I’m no longer willing to go halfway, especially after these people themselves said and did sweet f.a. while society was melting down trying to accommodate them.
If someone’s vulnerable and confused about sex, therapy is the answer, and a suggestion to go and get some therapy is all I’m prepared to offer. Everything else was a colossal mistake, and that mistake literally has a body count.
Well said, Arty, and Bruce’s comment is excellent.
The whole ‘trans’ edifice was built on the shoddy foundations of legalised homophobia and misogyny. It was always society which was at fault, not those who chafed at the unreasonable expectations, yet generations of autistic and/or same-sex attracted people were persuaded that – even as society was dismantling (in law, at least) legal restrictions against them – they had been born as mistakes and had to be medically and surgically rectified. Such a ‘remedy’ for natural human variation was entirely unnecessary. What was needed was better education for everyone, leading to tolerance for effeminate men, masculine women, same-sex couples, and for anyone for whom fashion trends felt like torture.
Suppose that, instead of pioneering ‘sex-change’ operations on effeminate gay men to make homophobes comfortable, those doctors had joined the movement which was changing minds by persuasive campaigns to inform the public that homosexuality is a tiny but normal human variation?
Unfortunately, right from the beginning, all liberation movements are vulnerable to infiltration by evil people. PIE, all kinds of predators, and straight male fetishists, tagged onto the gay liberation and feminist movements in the hopes (sadly realised) that by sowing confusion they’re going to benefit from the good will being fostered towards homosexual people and women. Oh, it worked. Not only do we have men and women believing that men have a right to have everything about women, including the language needed to describe half the human population, we have people of both sexes watching the mutilation of children, and cheering for the mutilators; watching rapists being incarcerated with vulnerable and terrified women to offend again, and cheering for the rapist; and watching the massive increase in the trafficking of women and girls to be raped multiple times a day, and cheering for the men who own and abuse them.
So we reached the bizarre situation where the Supreme Court had to deliberate for months on the definitions of ‘sex’, ‘lesbian’, and ‘woman’ which were settled terms when the laws were being written – and the predators are objecting.