Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Who stole the dino emoji?

As far as “ownership” of dinosaurs goes, the “genderqueer community” are at the end of a very, very long line of other people and institutions that got there first. Waterhouse Hawkins’ Crystal Palace dinosaurs (which outlasted the Crystal Palace itself) were unveiled in 1854, just a little more than a dozen years after Richard Owen’s coinage of the word “dinosaur” itself.

They’ve been up for grabs ever since, used by everyone from museums, gas companies (Sinclair), toy manufacturers, to movie studios, to make money. If the trans/queer paleoart community wants to make some sort of IP claim, they’ll have their work work cut out for them. The beauty is that dinosaurs “belong” to everyone. They are part of the very fabric of the story of life on Earth, which is our story. It’s not surprising that the “genderqueer” is ready to lay exclusive claim to something that doesn’t belong to them.

I think my initial knee-jerk reaction, um, was just like, Well, you can’t have them. Like dinosaurs are ours.

Ha ha, good one. Back atcha. You return the word “woman,” and maybe we can talk about dinosaur emojis later.

“I hate to speak for the entire trans or genderqueer community but…”

Liar. This isn’t something you hate. If you hated it so much, you wouldn’t be doing it at all. You’re relishing this chance to smear “[y]our social enemies.” You’re fine with taking this opportunity to muddy the waters, claiming feminist use of dinosaur emojis is some sort of secret handshake/dogwhistle.

It really just made zero sense to me whatsoever in terms of like, you know, they could have picked anything else and it might have made a little bit more sense to me.

Here, you’re pretending complete bafflement as to the motives and reasoning behind this move. As Ophelia points out, it was clearly too much work to uncover the real reasons that lead to this. It wasn’t random, capricious or arbitrary. Looking too closely would reveal ugly facts that would murder your beautiful theory of sheer bloody-minded, transphobic hatred. This amounts to the purposeful concealment of information that would ruin your story altogether, turning it into the opposite of what you’re claiming. It makes me wonder: are all of your articles and books as shittily researched as this? You might be able to frame the narrative for those only ever hearing about it from you, but you’ll never fool anyone who already knows the facts of the matter. This is a risky strategy for a science writer. It destroys the trust of knowledgible readers, who will now see you as little more than an unreliable, partisan hack. Where does that leave you when your product is reputation, and trust itself?

Eventually, grudgingly, comes the admission that there is in fact more to the feminist use of dinosaur emojis than the simple, dishonest explanation of hard-hearted anti-trans bigotry. That it is a snarky, political response to an attempt to shame women standing up for their rights. Trans activists can’t admit of any conflict between women’s rights and trans “rights.” They are forced to portray feminists’s legitimate interest in defending their rights and spaces against male appropriation as blind, hateful anti-trans spitefulness. To do otherwise opens the door to questioning and debate which trans talking points cannot survive.

Some years ago I met “Riley Black” when he was just plain old Brian Switek, bespectacled science writer. No blue hair, no head tilt. This was before he “came out” as a “furry” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/21/furry-wild-side-fursona-animal-nature Does the furry “community” get to claim “ownership” of mammals? No, though I’d say they’ve got a better claim to them than the “trans and genderqueer” one does to dinosaurs. At least “furries” are actually mammals themselves. The optics are a bit better too, since, save for birds, dinosaurs are largely known for being extinct, which is an ironically inapt choice of emblematic creature for a community constantly claiming that they are potential victims of “genocide.” As far as a better icon for the trans struggle for pretend “rights” goes, I would recommend they stick with unicorns, which are, appropriately, imaginary. It would be a perfect fit if they were also poisonous.