What exactly has been “tough” about it?
There are, naturally, some sanctimonious comments about “punching down” – because of the obscure but binding rule that if a man puts on a skirt and tilts his head coquettishly he becomes the most marginalized person in the universe.
Precisely. Someone who is “comfortable with who they are” isn’t going to be hyper-focused on whether or not other people recognize them properly. Yet with non-binary, that seems to be the whole point.
And trans, of course.
Seen this? Very sad. Basically, a very young woman, who has presumably been told her whole life that women can become men (or rather, women can be men), goes with her friend to a male-only gay sex party, and everyone ignores her. Then: “I cried in the bathroom for like half an hour before my friend found me. While I was in there a few people knocked wanting to use it and I told them to go away mid cry. On the other side of the door I heard someone even said ‘I think that girl is still in there’. I had never felt dysphoria like this before and I don’t think I can go on with life this way. I know I’m a man but Id never felt more invalid than that point in my life.”
I’m sure it does feel awful, when you’ve been told so much “Yes! You can be a man!”, when you then try to test that out and you find that other people won’t affirm that.
GW, that is sad. She ‘knows’ she is a man, even though she is not. No one else knows that, because it is evident she is a woman…I suppose, since they did seem to regard her as a ‘girl’. The thing is, how does she know she is a man? Just…she knows, that’s all. It’s a feeling, an essence.
The thing to ask the TRAs that are “cis” is how they know they are whatever they are. They are “cis”, so there must be something they feel to say they are ‘woman’ or ‘man’. Can they define this for themselves without biology or gender stereotypes? I mean, the reason I know I am a woman is the structure of my body. That’s also how they know they are woman/man, but they can’t admit that because then it would be the same as saying that the trans are play-acting the other sex – which they are. In the case of transwomen, that means very broad stereotypes of behavior. Most of the trans I have known have been transmen, and I didn’t note the same rigid adherence to stereotype; in fact, at least one of them felt comfortable enough to wear purple nail polish even while looking very much like a male, including male-pattern baldness.
Why is it the transwomen must have these broad stereotypes, and not transmen? And why the hell do the non-binary think (1) we can tell the difference between them and the rest of us folks who fit imperfectly, if at all, into our gender expectations; and (2) we give a shit about their pronouns?
Because men are allowed simply to be human in our societies, so there’s no one specific way to be a man. So women who identify as transmen don’t need to adopt specific stereotypes in order to play at manning.
It’s worse for Moses, at least if he’s still speaking ancient Hebrew. It’s not just the pronouns that are marked for gender, it’s also adjectives and even verbs.
This is so much more of an issue in languages that have more extensive sex-based grammatical gender than English. For example, when we’re speaking Spanish at home, our dining room table gets upset when we refer to it as “la mesa”, because it insists that it’s non-binary. But given the constraints of Spanish, what can we do? (Oh, yes, we’ve tried “le mese”, but then the side tables object that we don’t refer to them as “los mesos”. Trying to keep the genders of all our furniture straight is exhausting.)
Haha. :-)
Don’t deprive tables of malehood! Or of non-binarity, or what was it that your table wants?
I do think that Ophelia’s line about “withholding bearhood from rabbits” would make a great bumper sticker: “DON’T WITHHOLD BEARHOOD FROM RABBITS!”
GW,
It gets worse. When we refer to the chairs as “las sillas”, they insist they’re masculine, but then if we revert to “los asientos”, they identify as pan-gender.
@GW #2;
At least with transgender there are usually clues, performances, characteristics, etc. besides pronouns. And the individuals are doing some sort of mental work. But wtf is “non-binary?” Sure, it may involve green hair and vaguely neutral clothes, but there’s really no real shift or change from “before.” It’s specialness all the way down.
I saw that article. On the one hand, I feel sorry for the girl who has been encouraged by her community to think she’s really, truly the opposite sex (and encouraged by her “friend “ to make a fool of herself.) But on the other hand, her sense of entitlement is breathtaking. She invades their space, and when the gay men don’t fall all over themselves affirming her self-identity she blames them and takes over the bathroom.
As I mentioned in an earlier thread, since this cartoon went up Cafepress have stopped selling most J&M merchandise. Because it’s only the goods featuring Mo’s image that have been removed from sale Author thinks that Cafepress have had a complaint or complaints relating to that, he doesn’t think that it’s related to TRAs, but I’m not sure. It seems odd that after 15 years of stocking Author’s merchandise it is only now that Cafepress are getting complaints, at the same time as Author has started to poke fun at special pronouns, and incidentally when the comments section for this strip sees several new commentors denouncing Author for imagined offences including bigotry.
Cutting off sources of revenue of those judged to be transphobic is a favoured tactic of the trans mob, but I seriously doubt that they could make a serious case of transphobia against Author, at least not one that would stand up to scrutiny, and it’s only Mo merch that’s been removed, which seems to rule them out. However, the trans and their allies (mustn’t forget the allies) are never shy about using unrelated groups to further their cause. If complaints of transphobia won’t cut it, does anybody think that they wouldn’t instead complain to Cafepress in the guise of offended muslims, with all the potential problems implied by falling foul of them? Honestly, TRAs are rank amateurs compared to muslims when it comes to expressing offense and outrage, and in getting their own way by doing so, and I would not be at all surprised to find that the TRAs have indeed used religion as a cover to attack Author’s income.
I may well be wrong about this, but to me this sounds more like a TRA tactic than a muslim one.
True. I remember once seeing a young woman (girl? she looked quite young indeed, maybe younger than 20) at the end of a party, when the party was mostly over, playing piano to herself, and she had very pale dyed hair (pink? purple? green? something like that), and, as you say, “vaguely neutral clothes”, and I wondered quite hard what she was trying to “present as”: is she trying to project that she’s trans? But she doesn’t seem to be projecting anything “manly”, so, probably, non-binary or something. (Neutrois? ἑλεφαίνω)
Under most circumstances, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything at all, except: “Oh, there’s a girl with pale dyed green [or whatever] hair”, but one of the (many) co-sponsors of the party was some Queer organization, so I really did wonder. I suppose I could have asked her, but she probably would have been insulted. I mean, if xe’s, say, enby, isn’t it totally obvious that xe’s enby? Same if xe’s neutrois, or nonbinary, or agender, or nongender, or whatever; if I I have to ask, that would probably be considered offensive.
Aaaaaaaaaand writing that comment just inspired me to do a bit of googling on the difference between “NB” and “enby”. I found this:
Wow. The lack of self-awareness is astounding.
GW, #12, where does that leave Nota Bene? Will it now become nobie in order not to confuse people? Explaining it might make heads explode, mind:
“nobie” replaces NB (Nota Bene, not to be confused with NB (non-binary, or enby)) or NB ((Non-Black))). “Enby” was created to avoid using NB for non-binary because of the potential for confusion with NB (non-black). In short, NB and NB will no longer be used because of the potential for confusion with NB.
Clear?
AoS,
As long as you’re not wearing your NBs while visiting NB. (I’ll leave it to the reader to decipher.)
@iknklast #3
Yes, indeed.
I am a man and I know I am a man because I was told from birth that I was / would be a man.
But what does it feel like to BE a man? I don’t know, because I’ve never been anything else, I have no points of comparison. I know what it is like to be married, to be divorced, to be single, to be employed, to be unemployed because I have points of comparison for all those things.
The only way I can describe what it feels like to be a man is to use the stereotypes of maleness, accepting some, rejecting others.
I can empathise with girls/women, I can see their struggles against sexism, misogyny, etc, but I DO NOT know what it FEELS LIKE. I can wear a dress, put on makeup, perform as a woman, but I will still never know what it is like to be one. And trust me, I have done all those things as an actor.
@Roj #15: Bravo.
Reimagine this scenario with the sexes reversed, with a TIM going to a female only lesbian sex-party. When rejected, and ignored, does he lock himself in the bathroom, or pull a Clymer? Does he cry by himself, embarrassed, or storm out and come back with trans “allies” to shut the party down, denoncing the rabid transphobia and cotton ceiling?
So, No Wrong Way To Be A Man, then?
(Pardon me that this is not news to many people reading this, but articulating these ideas in this way lets me figure stuff out more completely, and also helps elicit feedback to refine and correct my thinking)
I think part of it is that transmen (I don’t have the same resistance to using this term as I do “transwomen”) aren’t really considered that important in gender ideology. I think trans identified females are useful to genderism insofar as their existence can be used as a battering ramto weaken and destroy the definition of “woman.” Replacing the word “woman” with “menstruators,” “vulva-owners” “vagina-bearers” etc., as well as the replacement of “mother,” “breastfeeding,” to “birthing parent” and “chestfeeding” is about watering down the female experience to allow more than females to claim it as their own. Transmen are a convenient pretext to do so. It is telling that there is no parallel campaign to replace “men” and “man” with “ejaculators,” “prostate havers” or “scrotum people” in the equivalent health campaigns, legislative initiative, prersonal care services, etc. for and about men.
It’s easier to reduce and erode women’s spaces and resources if you make it more difficult to say what a woman is. Blurring the boundaries is key. If some “men” (trans identified females) can menstruate and give birth, then some men (trans identified males) can be “women.” This blurring is at the expense of women and girls, who are expected to accept the removal of language to describe themselves and their experiences. AS an added peril, opportunistic and predatory males get to use self ID, along with the new and improved “inclusive” definition of “woman,” to invade female only institutions and spaces with impunity. There is no equivalent risk or danger faced by trans identified females, and no effort to limit how men name and descibe themselves.
Somehow this sounds like a vehement argument against lapinivory in bears, a rewording of “DON”T IMPEDE BEARS’ ACCESS TO RABBITS!”
Go figure.
Which fits nicely with your analysis about predatory men using self-ID to gain access to women’s spaces.
YNNB: Amazing summary of the whole set of issues. Kudos. The insidiousness of the movement, even when it is purportedly to benefit often confused, unhappy young people, has to be emphasized.
And now to Ophelia’s post about cannibalism.