Burning times
Interesting.
Spotted on Market Street in Manchester. One of several.
Not a brilliant angle but reads "trans kids burn terfs."
Incitement to violence? pic.twitter.com/8c1AawVxIQ
— WorldGoneMad (@GenderfreeCamp) February 14, 2019
Not a brilliant angle but reads “trans kids burn terfs.”
Incitement to violence?
Well let’s see what happens when we change “TERFs” to something else.
“White kids burn niggers”
“Straight men burn faggots”
“Men burn bitches”
Yes that doesn’t sound what you’d call benign, does it.
But, a voice from the back of the room calls out, trans kids are oppressed, so they’re not comparable to white kids or straight men or men in those examples. Ok, so does it sound more benign if we make the first term a subaltern?
“Gay kids burn niggers”
Better? No, I don’t think so. The coupling of the emphatic “burn” and the hate-label is enough. It’s not a literal threat in the sense of “We will burn you,” but it’s a menace. It’s not friendly.
This guy is a Labour councillor.
https://twitter.com/nealeggibson/status/1096332406334935041
That they should be burned; oh well that’s all right then.
It’s weird how happy people are to let their hatred of women just hang out there for everyone to see.
In the transactivist world, a terf is essentially ‘huge bigot that hates us’, so I think a slightly more accurate recasting of the poster would be:
“Gay kids burn anti-gay bigots”
“BLM kids burn racists”
etc.
As this means they are burning the people that they consider are bigoted against them.
And yet it is still an unconscionable slogan, which would not be employed against any group except… people that consider biological sex a thing that exists, and gender identity a thing that is risible. This group, and only this group, is unhinged enough to consider it a good idea to espouse violence (non-literally or not) in their messaging.
‘X burns Y and that’s OK’ is the underlying assumption in that. Shock effect, anyone?
Holms, considering the use of the word TERF and what it tends to mean to trans-activists, that might be better termed thusly:
“Gay kids burn straight kids”
“BLM kids burnwhite kids”
Because when you say “bigots” you are buying into their assessment; in this case, TERFs means any woman who questions the gender essentialist dogma, so it’s probably more accurate to say:
“Trans-kids burn feminists”
Holms – well yes and no. It’s sort of that, especially when questions arise, but it has also evolved into a straight-up epithet like “cunts”; in addition it treats “radical feminist” as a hate-word, which can’t help being misogynist.
When people burn crosses on black people’s lawns that’s just an indication of how they feel about black people.
So.
How is it not an incitement if the whole sentence is about how SOME people feel about some other group of people and the “feeling” is that one group should be burned to death?
And notice this white dude Neale does not even say some people, he claims that the whole world of humanity shares this “feeling” that women who don’t bow to trans demands be burned to death. Guess it is a good thing I don’t live in the UK because I would be showing up in this dude’s place of business and giving him an earful of my opinion on his claims.
Now, swnow, it didn’t say “too death”. They could just be burning them enough to leave them horribly scarred and in terrible pain…one way to mark a TERF, no?
Same here.
#3 #4
Oh I never meant to imply that I bought into their view of the term, I agree that it is now merely an epithet reserved for anyone that dares disagree with their worldview or selfview.
It strikes me that ‘burn’ is an odd choice of word to use here. I would expect to see ‘kill’ or ‘shoot’, maybe ‘destroy’ or even ‘punch’, but ‘burn’? It might just be coincidence that the women historically condemned to be burned at the stake were those convicted of being witches, but having seen how the modern-day Matthew Hopkins-esque ‘Terf-finders General’ and their accompanying smart phone-wielding mobs accuse, convict, and condemn anybody they choose, based on little or no evidence at all, I find it easier to believe that coincidence played as big a role in using that particular word as truth played in the convictions of Hopkins’ victims 400 years ago.
On a lighter note, it seems to me that ‘trans kids burn terfs’ sounds more like a clickbait headline leading to a series of screenshots of twitter exchanges where trans-kids (adults who identify as kids?) have made what they think are Oscar Wilde-standard clever insults to their critics, their tweets ending with a ‘burn’ or ‘feeltheburn’ hashtag or similar.
What does ‘burn’ actually mean here? I haven’t lived in Britain for forty six years, but I think that ‘burn’ in American slang can mean something like ‘insult strongly or cleverly’ and perhaps by extension ‘beat’ in the sense of ‘win’, or ‘are better than’; and the usage is probably common now in Britain. I doubt whether it means ‘burn at the stake’. Which is not to suggest that the phrase is innocuous.
Tim, I often suspect that the use of such ambiguous phrases is at least partially deliberate. It gives one plausible deniability, though often deniability that is as believable as “cunt doesn’t mean that in England” or some such nonsense.
“Burn” is an odd word to use, as AoS points out. I suppose the point was just to threaten some form of violent pain-infliction and/or thorough defeat, without being so crude as to threaten murder.
But…burn both is and isn’t euphemistic. It is because as Tim says it can just mean “win” or win with mockery – similar to “crush.” It isn’t because literally burning people has a long and bad history.
The contemporary context is one of constantly escalating threats of literal violence directed at feminist women, so the ambiguity itself is creepy.
In December 2017, a trans activist Pinky Shear wrote a Facebook post about the Bloodroot Vegetarian Restaurant in Connecticut. The post presented a story about an alleged incident written in two image files, so I transcribed the story to Butterflies & Wheels here, where I noted that the story inciting rage against the two restaurant owners looked like unbelievable lies.
The Facebook thread still shows this comment:
I reported the comment to Facebook, and they replied to my Support Inbox:
I filled out a survey that asked me:
I replied:
I Googled “Facebook death threats” to learn more. I’m not a legal expert on the details, but I think the US Supreme Court might have ruled on this, and Facebook might be legally in the clear. In the year since my report, the incident might be against new Facebook Community Standards against bullying, but it looks like the comment might still be legal.
So about the signs in Manchester this week that say “Trans Kids Burn T.E.R.F.s”:
• I read “burn” as an incitement for some males to kill some females with fire.
• The legal system might approve “burn” to express how deeply some males hate some females.
• In either case, I read “burn” to mean “males killing females with fire”.
Facebook would be better if your Community Standards were against comments promoting arson and murder.
Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
OT but you inspired me to look up Bloodroot again. They seem to be flourishing, at least if the effusive reviews are anything to go by.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/bloodroot-vegetarian-restaurant-bridgeport