Complete absence of thought
Damn. There I was thinking no one would be rushing forward to say “Barbie Kardashian” is no threat to anyone and that it’s transphobic and evil to say he is. DINGDING wrong again.
They also posted the statement on Facebook.
We are profoundly disappointed with the recent piece shared by the Limerick Leader. The Limerick Feminist Network have been active in Limerick and working on the ground with the feminist community for several years and we are disappointed that we were not contacted for comment. Never the less, here are our views on the matter.
Trans women are not a threat to cis women. With the rise of the far-right and the huge increase in calls to domestic and sexual violence support services since the beginning of lockdown it is clear that some of the biggest threats to women right now are cis men and white supremacy.
The notion that cis men are pretending to identify as female, changing their names and obtaining certificates of gender recognition just to get access to abuse and victimise women is not only ludicrous but completely inaccurate and a narrative that makes trans women incredibly unsafe.
Trans women are women, trans men are men. We stand with all of our trans and LGBTQIA+ siblings and will continue to promote and practice feminism that is inclusive and intersectional.
It is never okay to dead name a trans person. There is no place for transphobia in Irish feminism.
We hope that the Limerick Leader takes the time to learn from this and urge them to contact and include the diverse voices of local community organisations in future.
So, you know, if you’re out and about in Limerick and you run into “Barbie Kardashian” on the street you shouldn’t turn and walk swiftly away, you should approach him and offer your warm kind compassionate intersectional inclooosivity.
And make sure you have time to spend in the hospital.
Seriously, this is getting worse. To have such an egregious case as this, and to come out in defense of a violent man who wants to attack women? To be ‘disappointed’ in someone who reports the news accurately? Definitely a new form of religion.
And it isn’t just about men pretending to be women to get into women’s spaces, it seems that it is also about the men who ‘sincerely believe’ they are women. In fact, it’s quite impossible to tell the difference in many cases. I would say if a man is surgically altered and goes on hormones, that’s pretty much not someone pretending to be trans; that is someone who is trans. And men like Rachel McKinnon/Veronic Ivy and Hannah Mouncy delight in trouncing women. Jessica Yaniv is a predator.
My trans decoder ring long ago gave up on trying to decide who was trans, and who was faking. It blew out one day several months ago when the news from trans was particularly convoluted and chaotic. I mean, they are very much in the “oh, not really trans” whenever someone detransitions, and if they happen to accept that a trans person committed violence. “Not really trans”. Then they say that men won’t pretend to be women to get into women’s spaces.
The problem is, men don’t have to pretend to be women in some places. If you have a bathroom policy like my employer that says you don’t question someone you think is in the wrong bathroom, you assume they belong there, then no man has to say “oh, I’m a woman”. They just show up in the bathroom, everyone leaves them alone, and they are free to do what they want. This is the sort of policy trans wants everywhere, in every space.
What a rosy view they have of predators, who apparently are lazy, give up easily, and blush in shame over the mere idea of pretending to be a woman for any reason whatsoever, as macho as they are.. From what I’ve read on the topic (I’m a fan of True Crime,) obsession, stubbornness, and cunning and clever capacities to deceive would have been my picks for attributes, Their world is nicer.
Barbie is an extreme case, and yet they still see nothing. They don’t see the other end either — the casual pervs who wish to look and leer who are just in search of a plausible excuse if anyone complains. “I’m a woman, Dear. Bye, now.”
Honestly, the hills these people choose to die upon….
But this hill has such a dazzling view!
I still have yet to discern an actual, externally testable, concept of “truly trans”, nor have I found a real answer to why we should treat trans identity claims as veridical. To be sure, I’ve read “philosophy” papers on the subjects, but none of them—even accepting them arguendo—resolved these basic metaphysical and epistemological questions.
For example, I read one that posited the existence of internal maps, and that these maps are sex-specific. As an external map guides one through the physical world, an internal map guides one through the psychological world. Trans people have the internal map of the opposite sex.
This, of course, is just a long-winded way to say that someone thinks like a boy or thinks like a girl. Color me unimpressed.
There’s a distinction that gets forgotten in all of this nonsense, and I think it rather important, as it marks the difference between the LGBI and the rest: to be something has two relevant senses. Losing the distinction between these senses and the ability to properly delineate to which category a thing belongs results in confusion.
1) One can be something intrinsically or as a fact of one’s nature. This sense of to be is what it means to be straight or gay, male or female, canine or feline. One’s nature can, of course, change, and we can see a child who is short become an adult who is tall. A more subtle scenario is when nature is obscured. I am someone with black hair, although that’s changing. If I dye my hair blue, my hair may be blue temporarily. The new color does not change my nature, however. In a very real sense, I am still someone with black hair. Likewise, I am, in a very real sense, not someone with blue hair. (I actually did this in college. My goal was to recreate the way that black hair is drawn in comic books using blue highlights. It actually worked pretty well.)
2) Once can be something in virtue of (in)action. This is what it means to be married, respected, or neglected. There’s a reason that the participle appears here—especially in passive construction. One does not marry because one is a married person. People do not respect one because one is respected, nor do they neglect one because one is neglected. Being the thing does not precede some causal event(s). This sense also applies to ongoing states and recurring actions, as in successful, monogamous, or punctual. To be punctual means that one is usually (if not always) timely, not that one is timely by nature and cannot be late. To be monogamous means that one has exactly one romantic or sexual relationship at a time, not that one naturally has a single love interest and cannot have more. The past participle works here, as well, as one could be often neglected.
As the homosexual rights and acceptance movement has been so successful, the rhetorical and political strategy employed by the rest is to understand being TQ2S+ in sense (1) rather than sense (2). That is, they want trans understood to be something one is by nature rather than something one is in virtue of action or ongoing process. The same is true for states like “polyamorous”.
Treating trans-ness as something that is ongoing does not entail that the rights of a trans person should be curtailed or even that accommodations should not be made. It simply allows us to acknowledge the underlying facts and engage with reality honestly. A transwoman is not a woman by nature; a transwoman is a man who adopts many physical signifiers of those who are. “They are trans,” means that they engage in that process of taking on external features associated with the opposite sex.
The same goes for much of the rest. “He is polyamorous” means that he has multiple simultaneous relationships. “She is a furry” means that she dresses up in a certain sort of costume. Neither is a description of nature, but rather of action.
Nullius, one thing about those maps. External maps are human drawn. I think there probably are some forms of internal maps, but they are also in many cases human drawn. Our expectations of people with certain bodies causes the young person to begin developing those maps based on what is expected. Girls on TV act a certain way; girls in the movies act the same way; my mother and her sisters act a certain way. We put all of that into our young brains, along with more overt messages, such as “Girls don’t do that!” and build our maps. So, yeah, nothing inherent, and what the TiM think of as female isn’t part of being a female, it is just part of the way we train females and expect them to behave. Many of us (females) do not actually behave that way, dress that way, or do other silly things. Garter snakes? I refuse to shriek. I don’t jump on chairs at every slight sound, and I do not require a man to put things together for me (which is good, because my husband is hopeless at that; I have to put things together in our house. The tools he operates well are the phone and the checkbook, for those jobs that are beyond me).
Are you denying my existence? My inherent otter-ness? (Or should that be otter-hood?)