Guest post: More dishonest overgeneralizing
John Horstman posted this comment at the vacated blog over there yesterday, and I wouldn’t want it to be overlooked here.
From Stephanie Zvan:
Because the answers I’m hearing are that you just shut up for the sake of harmony at your blog network and watch as trans people are once again erroneously painted as bullies targeting heroic feminists who just have questions about gender, a trope used against them any time they advocate for themselves.
Emphasis added. This is more dishonest overgeneralizing. How, exactly, does critique of a particular model of gender identity, one not shared by all trans people, and denunciation of a very specific group of people, trans and not, who are lashing out at one individual over that critique, come to equal labeling all trans people as bullies whenever they advocate for themselves?What of the trans people who agree with Ophelia and disagree with Zvan? Why do supposed allies (and sometimes members) of an oppressed group so often do the same racist/sexist/heterosexist/cissexst/etc. homogenizing of the group in question that they decry as racist/sexist/heterosexist/cissexst/etc. when others do it, resulting in one subset of the group in question being presumed to speak for the entire group?
I really, REALLY wish all of these folks would pick up a copy of David Valentine’s Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. With its myriad of self-conceptions of people who consider themselves transgender, not-cisgender, genderqueer, contextually gendered, “gay” (in the sense that I might use “queer”), etc., I think it would do so much to disabuse them of what I’m reading as their homogenizing notions concerning both trans people and sex/gender/sexuality generally.
I’m confusted. It was Ophelia that was being told to shut up and toe the blog network line or GTFO. I haven’t been there in awhile but I’m pretty sure no blogger on FtB said that others shouldn’t criticize Ophelia. PZ came closest and even he didn’t say that. Commenters may have said something like it but they tell bloggers to do all sorts of things that they aren’t going to and “get along” is probably the least offensive.
It’s curious how a bunch of atheists are feeling righteous over condemning another for their “sins”. I thought that was a religious thing. Someone must have pointed that out by now.
All through this affair, I’ve wished that the people accusing you of all kinds of perfidy might remember the words of Ben Goldacre…
If Zvan told me the sky was blue I’d double-check to make sure the Earth still had an atmosphere.
I was going to correct “confusted” but frankly it’s a good word, so I didn’t.
I coined a new word! Confusted.
Thanks for changing “would” to “was” though. I hate when you hit post and suddenly you can see all the mistakes that were invisible in preview.
“Confusted” seems like it should be uttered in an Wild West watering hole by an old miner.
Also, I have bought that book, cause it seems like exactly what I’ve vaguely been wishing for.
Confusted sounds like a combination of confused and disturbed.
SamBarge,
Confusted = confused + frustrated
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=confusted
I think it sounds more like confused + disgusted.
Yup.
Sorry to toss in another book plug, but Alice Dreger’s ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ goes over several examples of ideologically driven stalking and harassment. Especially ones driven by rigid gender policing. Dreger started an organization for the rights and bodily security of ‘intersexed’ children. This put her in contact with a number of people in the field of gender and trans-gender. AND, put her in the middle of a campaign of smearing and character assassination launched against a pro-trans psychologist who challenged a relatively minor point of newly-minted orthodoxy.
I would disagree that anyone was painting transgenders as bullies in the discussion of the attacks on Ophelia’s character– one thing the people on her side kept noting was that cismen “allies” seemed to be some of the worst bullies, and Ophelia has transgender readers who have not seen transphobia or exclusion in her writing.