If you pretend
Meanwhile McKinnon – who teaches philosophy, let’s not forget – is still defending the “die in a fire” brand of rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1111596918449278977
Haw haw. Yes, so funny, so wry, so sophisticated. Of course it’s also true that mouthy feminist women tend to be targets of a great deal of “voicing of violent revenge fantasies” of that kind on Twitter and other social media, and it has been known to drive some of them off social media altogether, which means they are silenced in that particular medium…but let’s giggle about it amongst ourselves anyway, because we know better than those stupid cis women who are too uncool to pretend to be the other sex.
But if you don’t take these threats as potentially serious and someone gets hurt, wham, someone’s harmed and you get blamed for it.
What a marvelously convenient way to ensure women always lose.
Statements of fact, especially clarifications, don’t end with ellipses. The entire purpose is to invite the reader to consider what’s not being said.
Oh and wait a minute, didn’t MkKinnon say earlier that it was an actual, literal grease fire she wanted us to die in?
Not that I saw. What I saw was just that one tweet whose purport was: not just any fire but specifically a grease fire.
Not to mention telling women to “Die in a fire” is similar to telling Jewish people to “Go get gassed” or telling African Americans that they “Should be strung up”. There is a disturbing ignorance regarding the historical significance of threating women who don’t subscribe to the the correct theology with the pyre.
Yeah, but wasn’t that a response to someone saying about an actual literal fire?
Someone said “most of us don’t want you [cis people] to die in a literal fire”
Someone else excused themselves from the “most”, indicating that they presumably did.
And McKinnon specified a grease fire.
The emphasis on literally suggests she wants us to figuratively die in a grease fire? So, in other words, STFU. Yeah, we women have never heard that one before, I’m sure. No one would ever have told us feminist women to STFU.
Or does dying in a grease fire actually mean “make me a sandwich”?
“account suspended”
for once?
McKinnon is a lying shit. He was responding to an item on a list that said ‘4 & [most of us] don’t literally want you to die in a fire’, and his exact words were ‘I mean, I’m more specific and want them to die in a grease fire’ (emph. mine). Nothing figurative about that, it was very clear: McKinnon wants women to die in grease fires (or, taking the plural ‘them’ and singular ‘fire’ in context, in one mass burning in a huge grease fire).
He was showing solidarity with another respondent who specifically stated that they weren’t included in the ‘most of us’ who didn’t want women to die in a fire, thereby admitting that death by fire is something he wants to happen to women, and McKinnon went further by being very sepecific about the fuel he’d want to see employed in starting the fire.
There is nothing ambiguous about ‘I want them to die’, and to claim later that his words weren’t meant to be taken literally is disingenuous at best, an outright lie at worst.
AoS,
Yes, that’s what I thought.
Violent rhetoric followed by “I didn’t mean it literally” as soon as there is scrutiny. It’s pretty impressive that McKinnon has adopted the approach favoured by MRAs and incels so fucking quickly.
Huh – it is suspended. One threat too many, perhaps. Whaddya know.
Permanently suspended, the tweeps I know say.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvmhyU7FD9D/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1pps2d84nj50q
SO mean of those evil CIS women to object to McKinnon’s dreaming aloud about their deaths in grease fires.
Oh wow, it turns out pointing out violent rhetoric in an effort to de-escalate the discussions is transphobia. This reminds me of those disingenuous conservative muslim apologists that call all criticism of islam islamophobia.
McKinnon really is brazen. I mean, so many screen caps of the offending tweet, which is absolutely clear. The word ‘not’ simply isn’t in that tweet. Sure, after he was in the shit and had deleted the original tweet, he tried saying he didn’t literally mean it. Conflating the two tweets to claim a different original history takes either balls or some very malleable thinking. Then again, that seems to be his M.O.
@11, time for a specific term? Misogynist Trans Activist (MTA)? I suspect it’s been suggested before.
So he’s trying to claim that his second, ‘didn’t mean it literally’ tweet is what got him suspended. Dishonest little turd. But of course, it is transphobic to push back against a person saying that they specifically want women to die in a grease fire, and of course many individuals who found that tweet beyond the pale did not simply take it upon themselves to push back as individuals, it just had to be a coordinated attack because McKinnon is important enough to necessitate
transphobesdecent people to coordinate their complaints. Not just a dishonest little turd, but a narcissistic one at that.Having said all of that, there was something about the item #4 that McKinnon was responding to that has been bothering me since I first read it, but couldn’t quite figure out what. It came to me as I was preparing dinner earlier (my own recipe pork curry, buttery onion rice with chillis and spring onion, and home-made naan breads, if anybody’s interested).
When I was at school I was taught that the way a sentence is structured is important in avoiding ambiguity over the writer’s meaning. Maybe someone here who works in an academic environment could confirm that this basic rule is still taught to students (I sincerely hope that it is). So, to the point. I would assume that the author of the original tweet, Dr. I Rohl, being a doctor, would have a fairly high level of education, and should understand that clarity in writing is important if others are to correctly understand what is being said, and that is why the sentence structure of item #4 concerned me.
Simply put, ‘I don’t literally want you to die’ has a subtle, but different meaning to ‘I don’t want you to literally die’. The former could be interpreted to mean ‘I don’t literally want you to die, but I don’t particulary care if you do’, whereas the latter is clearer as to the meaning.
The follow-up tweet from Dr. Rohr is no clearer; he finds the voicing of violent fantasies from ‘some’ activist spaces to be off-putting, but doesn’t specify which spaces, then goes on to declare that as off-putting as he personally finds those fantasies, anybody who thinks they are a credible threat can fuck off. He’s saying (or his words are most easily read to mean ‘I don’t like it, but if somebody declares that they specifically want you to die a horrible death, and you take them at their word, then you are the problem. He is actually defending McKinnon whilst pretending to censure him.
Rob, #15, I think I may have suggested this before, but I really like SMURFs: Shouty Men Undermining Real Females.
Got terfed from PZ’s blog for pointing out that McKinnon’s use of the just joking defence is not tolerated when it comes from xtians, theocrats, etc.
The only worthwhile bloggers left at FTB are Mano and Marcus.
PZ’s post directly following the one in which Roj was banned contains an…erm…interesting exchange in the comments.
Ophelia, you’re killing humanism.
So now they’re agreeing they’re not feminists? Cool.
Oh, no, I’m sure they’re still feminists, just uber-woke Female-Exclusive Radical Transfolk, or ‘FERTs’, if you will.
Female-Antagonistic Radical Transfolk I suspect you meant.
Rob, I was going to with ‘FART’ but the thought making an anagram of ‘TERF’ tickled me.
English I spoked once, y’know.
I what you meant.