Let me perfectly clear
The dogma is digging away its own foundations.
In other words everything has to be about “the trans community.” Even rape, and rape victims, and the solidarity rape victims may feel or seek with other rape victims. That has to be about trans people in some way, and this sociology grad student won’t tolerate our refusal to agree that men are women if they say they are.
By “a space here” all she means is replying to her tweets. Some people take a weirdly grandiose view of their own Twitter accounts, and treat them like exclusive clubs. Not being able to reply to someone’s tweets isn’t the loss of or banishment from “a space,” it’s just not being able to reply to someone’s tweets. It’s not a big deal. It’s so pompous and self-admiring to threaten people with it, as if it’s like being banished from a university or union or political party.
It’s almost as if all this performative shouting about “the trans community” isn’t really about “the trans community” at all but about the narcissism of the shouter. “Look at me look at me I’m saying something bravely pugnacious about thetranscommunity! Look how heroic and correct I am!”
And that bit about ‘breaking gender roles’ also gives it away – this is about gender stereotypes, period.
Interesting point. I’ve thought about this performative aspect before, the self righteous anger, the hostility for a “good” cause,” but I’ve never really thought about the idea that any cause would do, so long as it offered a license for virtuous hostility, and aggression. Some people have just happened to glom onto trans issues; but it could have been recycling, smokers’ rights, or baby seals.
Women aren’t raped or assaulted for breaking gender rules. They’re usually raped or assaulted because they have female bodies. The “natural allies” for the transgender would be homosexuals and cross-dressers, who like the transgender do break gender rules and are therefore attacked by the same kind of men for the same kind of reasons.
The only women who are regularly assaulted for “breaking gender rules” are probably GC feminists.
“We understand the stakes of losing control of our bodies.”
Except she won’t permit rape victims to take back control of their own bodies by setting boundaries. That doesn’t sound like understanding at all.
Of course they permit rape victims to set boundaries – so long as their boundaries have the trans within them.
Don’t they. A couple of days ago someone said something ludicrous on Twitter (I know, hard to believe, right?) and I went to see what kind of person they were and replied to one of their tweets. They made a huge deal out of the fact that I’d ‘gone to their timeline just to say that’.
Yeah, it was one click, pet. I didn’t stop in the middle of brain surgery to do it, I was procrastinating anyway.
But yeah, people do get very upset when they get the ‘wrong’ kind of replies. And certain kinds of people really don’t like quote tweets. They say it’s because it encourages piles-on but it’s because it takes the things they actually write out of their self-congratulatory echo-bubbles and forces them into the cold light of day where just anyone can see it.
It’s one of the reasons certain people got so upset at Helen Staniland; she quote-tweeted some of the unprovoked horror scripts they wrote about her.
~Bruce:
Any cause probably would do, but some causes are more friendly to incomers than others. TAs have done a wonderful job of making this one friendlier than most (whether by accident or design, a bit of both, I think) and it has the always-attractive quality that Twitter activism (Twativism?) for this cause costs nothing and attracts adulation like moths to a flame.
The fact that the trans ’cause’ has grown alongside and along with the increasing authoritarian nature of the left hasn’t hurt. It costs a lot more to even ignore the issue than it does to bathe in unearned vainglory by ‘supporting’ it. They’ve fed from each other and the trans cause is now one big strange attractor, sucking in people and causes like someone pulling the plug out of the Atlantic Ocean.
In other words, it’s a giant whirling vortex of delusion.
That! What do they even think Twitter IS? Twitter how does it work?? There’s this little thing under tweets, under the name “Reply” – so people can do that. It can be disabled now but there’s still quote-tweet. It’s not a matter of locking the front door and taking a bus to the station and taking the train to a place and a bus from the station to the Your Timeline Hall.
Such a complaint makes perfect sense on Facebook, and it is the standing policy of many people I know, including me. It makes absolutely no sense on Twitter. Facebook has a “place” where you write something; Twitter does not. Sounds like someone didn’t quite grasp the difference between the platforms.
True but even on Facebook what you see is partly a matter of what Facebook selects. You can seek people out (as you can on Twit) but you also get shown a selection of posts, so even on FB a reply isn’t necessarily a matter of deliberate seeking.
It’s not that you won’t see disagreeable content on Facebook; it’s that on Facebook there is a difference between someone saying something on their own page and saying something on your page. It’s sometimes seen as more insulting for someone to argue with you on your own page. A number of people I know, myself included, have said “I don’t go on your page to challenge you, and I request that you treat my page the same way.” I might choose to engage in an argument, but THERE, not HERE, and only on pages of people I know are OK with arguments on their pages. I’m not. So I have been on both ends of “don’t come on my page and say that”, it’s familiar and reasonable to me.
But, as noted, there is no such thing as “my page” on Twitter. Replies are replies.
Yes but your own page isn’t just your own page, at least not in the sense that your posts appear on your “wall” and nowhere else. Facebook can show your posts to other people, so they haven’t necessarily sought you out on your “wall” or your page if they reply on a post.
We seem to be arguing two different things.
I saw the complaint about “going to my timeline to say that” as exactly what I see on Facebook, people complaining about others writing on “my” page (also called Timeline). Yes, of course other people can see what you write, that’s the point of social media. But people (e.g. me) are picky about what other people write on “my” page, and treat things they see differently if it’s written on “my” page or on other people’s pages or on public pages or whatnot.
So to me this “not on my Timeline” demand is garden variety Facebook behavior, related to how Facebook works, and the person who made this demand on Twitter is pretty obviously confusing the platforms. That’s my main point here.
I’m not sure if you agree that they are confusing the platforms, or if you think the demand makes no sense on Facebook, or both, or something different.
You seem to be arguing that these other things are still seen, and Facebook serves you a mishmash of stuff. That’s true. And you often can’t avoid these replies and comments. Also true. And I gather you assume the complaint is about seeing the reply, period. I don’t agree there. I think this person is confused, and thinks Twitter works like Facebook. I think this person is mad not entirely about seeing the reply, but about seeing the reply on what he or she thinks is their Timeline.
Again I use myself as an example: I see crap I don’t want to see on Facebook all the time, but I simply will not permit certain arguments or discussions to take place on my page, and I tell people to go talk about it elsewhere. I may see the elsewhere, I may even participate elsewhere, but it will not happen on my page. A fair number of my friends (and former friends, sigh) treat their pages similarly.
I guess I just think of it as one post as opposed to “my page.” Maybe if someone in particular made a habit of picking fights on my posts (or “my page”) I would get tired of it and say go pick fights with someone else, but I’m not sure I would call it “my page” or “my wall” even then. Maybe I’m just wrong not to, but I don’t think of my FB posts as “my page.” On the other hand I do of course share the different feeling about comments on a post of mine as opposed to someone else’s.
It appears Facebook changed terminology some years back. They used to refer to your “page”, but they’ve done away with that except for things like businesses or organizations or public figures. They do still use the “timeline” term elsewhere. The privacy settings refer to “your posts” and specific items from your profile, handled separately.
Perhaps “posts” makes more sense because the privacy on each post can be set individually if you so choose, although I never do.
I do, because sometimes I want to share something as widely as possible, like Leo Igwe’s posts for instance, or Kate Smurthwaite’s, so those I make public, which means other people can share them with one click.
I might be able to clear things up a little, about my personal anecdote at any rate.
I don’t think this user – let’s call her Idiot – was confused between the platforms. She meant that I’d visited her profile by going to the URL:
and replied to one of the tweets listed there under “tweets.”
It’s true that I wouldn’t have seen the tweet I replied to if I hadn’t been to Idiot’s profile, but it’s also true that Twitter is just a big list of tweets and a profile is just one view of it. Idiot’s mistake was that she thinks of her profile as her curated page rather than just a view on a bunch of tweets.
She wasn’t actually annoyed that I’d replied there, messing up her timeline. She was gloating that I’d gone ‘all the way’ to her profile (ie clicked on ‘Idiot’ in Tweetdeck) to do so and was therefore owned. The mistake is the same, though: thinking she owns that little area of Twitter because it’s what she sees when she goes to her profile.
Yep, that’s what I’m talking about, at any rate. On FB as well as Twit one has a profile, and one can go to it, but it’s not like a house or a farm complete with horse pasture and strawberry patch. There’s no need to carpet it or hang curtains. It’s not real estate.
latsot:
I chalk it up to memetic evolution. It’s an unsurprising result, really, when we consider the sheer scale of the genetic algorithm that is social media platforms plus users. We’re rather bound to find/develop some rather serious mind viruses.