Came over as

A further point about Jon Ronson v Graham Linehan:

The thing Ronson said. The “I couldn’t support you after you posted that picture of the sports team. That was incendiary and came over as just really unpleasant and harmful.”

Did it? Well, why? Unpleasant and harmful to whom?

That’s the joke, you see. That giant man dwarfing all the girls is the one who is unpleasant and harmful. Ronson wants us to think it’s unpleasant of Glinner to draw attention to this man being unpleasant and harmful to teenage girls, but hey, guess what, we think the problem is the man being unpleasant and harmful to teenage girls. Not the man pointing out the man being unpleasant, but the man being unpleasant.

I wonder if Ronson ever paused for a moment to notice that. He thinks the great big tall man is vulnerable to those mean teenage girls, but you’d think he’d have the basic sense to notice the other vulnerability in this story, and rethink his thinking.

It’s extremely odd, really, to look at that photo and think the vulnerability is with the giant man and not with the girls who don’t come up to his shoulders. (They’re teammates so it’s the girls on the other, unseen team who are vulnerable in this situation, but you get the idea.)

That man is not a sad vulnerable victim. You’d think Ronson would be able to see that.

Comments

5 responses to “Came over as”

  1. Lulu Avatar

    I presume what Ronson means is that drawing attention to these extreme cases makes all transgender women vulnerable and this is harsh as they’re already being picked on in the press and social media. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate is that the fault could be said to lie firstly witb the males depicted, but also those who insisted there was to be no debate or discussion of the real world consequences of TWAW and that vulnerable women in prison and sports should just suck it up.

  2. Ophelia Benson Avatar

    Sure, I know it’s that or something like that, but you’d think he could still notice that other Team Vulnerable.

  3. twiliter Avatar

    Not to mention that the photo speaks for itself, otherwise Ronson wouldn’t have a problem with it. Glinner was illustrating the glaringly obvious.

  4. Ophelia Benson Avatar

    Exactly. Why is it so mean of Glinner to post the photo, Mr Ronson? Because it shows a man being mean to a group of girls! Why don’t you talk to him instead?!

  5. Lulu Avatar

    …you’d think he could still notice that other Team Vulnerable

    The other Team Vulnerable are the wrong sort of women, I guess

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