Like-policing
The Guardian is very cautious about how it talks about Rosie Duffield – cautious in one way and incautious in another, that is. Mindful of one audience and bluntly indifferent to another.
Rosie Duffield has called for Keir Starmer to meet her and other female Labour MPs to discuss the party’s policy on transgender issues, confirming she will not attend Labour’s annual conference over worries she could face abuse because of her views on the subject.
She says he says he wants to do the meeting, but…somehow it hasn’t happened yet. I suspect it will go on somehow not happening.
Then the Guardian gets cold feet.
The Canterbury MP has become a focal point for criticism from some LGBT groups in Labour for actions such as liking a tweet that said “individuals with a cervix” should instead be referred to as “women”.
Actions? Actions?? Liking a tweet is “action”? This is what I mean by “cautious” – this creepy sniffing out of ludicrous trivia in order to “balance” reporting on threats and abuse. Liking a tweet really isn’t much of an “action.”
In July, Labour LGBT groups called for the party to investigate her after she liked a tweet from a gay US rapper which complained about trans groups appropriating the word “queer” and described them as “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying [costume playing] as the opposite sex and as gay”.
There again – liking a tweet. Does it not occur to anyone that just liking a tweet is not really strong evidence of anything? That it’s outright absurd as evidence that an MP should be “investigated”?
Asked if she accepted that liking the latter tweet could have inflamed the debate, Duffield defended her decision, saying the tweet author, whom she knew via social media, was “incredibly distressed and insulted” about what he felt was the appropriation of gay culture, adding: “I think he has a valid right to talk about it without being cancelled.”
All this because she liked a tweet.
I had been unfriended on Facebook for “liking” a post on cops found dead in a trunk. This was before they added the addiitional reactions. I tried to explain that I wasn’t giving the article a “thumbs up,” but he was adamant that my like was due to me being a cop-hater. And this was from someone who had known me for years, and should know that I am not a hateful person.
Another person that I had not met but who had sought my council on how to tell her boyfriend that she was going to have an abortion, and other conversations that only friends would have, decided that I was hateful because I attended a talk sponsored by WoLF at the Seattle Public Library. Just for attending. She didn’t ask any followup questions about why I was there, and further took it on herself to share with a mutual friend of mine (who I had dated and was stil friends) posts in a private gender critical group that she had surreptitiously joined. I’m not so grandiose to suspect she joined to spy on me, but she did, and the other friend also decided that I am hateful even though we had discussed my views 2 years before.
This is not saying I feel sorry for myself, or that I am a victim, although I do treasure the friends I have since they are few and I hate to losefriends without real cause. It’s to illustrate just how quickly people can judge based on a single factor, sometimes as innocuous as “liking” a tweet. And liking a tweet by Magdalen Berns was, correct me if I’m wrong, the incident that first got JKRowling in trouble with the transactivists. I don’t think that it mattered what the content of Berns’ tweet may have been, just that it was Magdalen. It could have been a tweet from Magdalen about a boxing match, and liking it would have caused the same stir.
And a tweet from a gay man about the appropration of the word “queer” damn well better be acceptable in the LGBTQ+ community, at least until they become honest enough to drop the LGB like they want to.
And I’m sure I don’t have to point out to anyone here that insidious construction: Her liking a tweet “inflamed”…not thin-skinned people took offense at a perfectly reasonable expression of free speech and free press. Sometimes I wish I was on Twitter so I could go around liking the “wrong” things…but I also know that I am not stable enough to deal with the shitstorm of abuse. I had to leave WHTM because of stupid attacks I endured simply by referring to my own anorexia as making me dangerously thin. I was “body shaming” and it was hateful. No, it was biologically accurate, but it seems biology is the enemy to the woke generation.
They don’t want to drop the LGB, they want to subjugate it.
I stopped following WHTM when I realized that he couldn’t make the connection between the misogyny of gamer-gate and transactivism. But, it’s really distressing to hear that you were attacked for body-shaming, when most people should understand the need for empathy in interacting wtth someone dealing with anorexia. Talking about it online takes courage. I’m sorry you had to face that from them.
iknklast:
Ugh, I got to the point where I couldn’t bear the virtue spiralling over there. I was called ablest for saying something was “crazy”, for instance, which I thought had died out as, well, crazy, years ago.
I’d finally had enough when I was widely taken to task for using “holy cocksucking christ” as an exclamation. Apparently this was shaming fellatio enthusiasts, although I can still not, to this day, understand how.
Then, of course, Futrelle spread what he knew perfectly well to be lies about LGBA, which pissed me off no end. And then blocked me on Twitter when I asked him for evidence.
Rant over. For now.
Following up: JKRowling hadn’t “liked” a Berns tweet, she was following Magdalen.
https://www.indy100.com/news/jk-rowling-twitter-transphobe-magdalen-berns-terf-lgbt-8974041
I know that if I was in England, I would have difficulty belonging to a party whose leader doesn’t have the courage to back Duffield, or even meet with her to hear her position for fear of the taint of being called transphobic.
Re #1
First, my sympathies. I and surely many others here have gone through similar incidents, but it hurts anyway.
The word “hate” has become overused and over-important. “Hate” is an emotion that can but doesn’t necessarily influence decisions and actions. The decisions and actions, such as discrimination or harassment or abuse, should be far more important than mere motive. Yet there are any number of organizations that track evidence that people dislike members of certain groups, not so much that those people do anything to harm them. Individuals do the same, decrying people who disagree or express any sort of dislike as “haters”, despite no reason to suspect any hostile actions.
Frankly, I’m impressed with people who treat others fairly and respectfully even when they don’t like them. It’s easy to do that when you like people, harder otherwise.
This is phrased too mildly. She isn’t worried about facing abuse, she is worried about being attacked. Physically.
latsot @5, weird. I would have thought that fellatio enthusiasts would have got a major rise out of being blown by Christ. Then again, maybe a large enough proportion of them are either closet Christians in denial, homophobes or both and the thought gave them a severe case of limpus dickus, to use the latin.
More broadly, and on point, the world can be divided into two types of people. Those who want to understand people with opposing points of view, and those who just want to out-group them. To the out-groupers, even the most mild inspection of an opposing view is proof you actually agree with the opposing view and deserves instant shunning and shaming.
Rob, keeping the ingroup small does make you more special, doesn’t it?
iknklast, so I believe. That’s what I’ve always told myself when I’ve rejected people attempting to join the group of those who identify as myself anyway.