Flawed but vital self-obsession
Guardian headline:
Will Ferrell’s Netflix doc Will & Harper is flawed but vital viewing for cis people
Vital? I really doubt that. It’s not as if we don’t get lectured on the subject enough already.
Let’s admit it: cisgender people are really curious about us trans women.
Ok stop right there. First sentence and already you’re off the rails. No, we really really aren’t. We’ve heard way more than we want to about trans women. I can’t begin to express how much more we’ve heard than we ever wanted to. The only thing we can be described as “curious” about is where the hell do you get the nerve?
They want to know things such as: what’s it like to have a surgeon rearrange your genitals? How did you know you were really a girl all along? Does it suck having to be on the downside of sexism now?
Nope. I don’t. I really really don’t. I promise you. I’m not interested. You talk and talk and talk and talk about yourselves day in and day out and we are not curious about you. I for one think you desperately need to shut up about yourselves and think about other people for a change. Being trans has turned out to be a wildly effective excuse to be publicly self-obsessed all day every single day.
For our own part, trans women are curious about cisgender folk, too. We want to know things like: do you actually think I’m female, or am I just a deluded guy in a dress to you?
That’s hilarious. He’s actually reproduced, without noticing he’s doing it, the jokey catchphrase: “Enough about me, let’s talk about what you think about me.”
Skipping several boring paragraphs –
It’s extremely hard to survive a transition with your dignity intact, in large part because very few people stop to consider that a man trying to transform into a woman is in such an infinitely more disempowered position than they are.
It’s a good thing very few people stop to consider that, because it’s horseshit. No you’re not. You’re a man. The fact that you’re hell-bent on making a fool of yourself is your choice, so if that “disempowers” you because people now know you’re a fool, that’s your own work. You’re still a man; you still have that power.
It’s uniquely vulnerable, to feminize your appearance and your personality, and to put yourself out there for the world’s approval.
Try being a woman surrounded by a group of drunk men.
You are doing the one thing that – for your whole life – you have been absolutely screamed at to never, ever do. You are going against every last survival instinct you have, because it’s the only way.
Try being a woman surrounded by a group of drunk men.
He just has no clue, does he.
Thing is, this let me tell you about me media trope, is not, and has never been, a winning strategy for trans people. Riding on the coat-tails of the gay movement, infiltrating the centres of power and enforcing “no debate” was a brilliant strategy, and massively successful but it required a certain discipline to maintain its power. It seems that the reviewer here just about gets that but he also realises that expecting restraint from a group of narcissists is a forlorn hope. Better then, to blame “cis” people and try to suggest that the very interest trans people are demanding is somehow improper. Which pretty much defeats the point of big-budget propaganda like this.
And that’s the dilemma the trans movement faces in the post “no debate” era. Without the ability to control the narrative trans people they will be asked actual questions and the answers they won’t be able to bring themselves to not give won’t be flattering. It’s like the homeopathy awareness week promotion I may have mentioned before. If not, I’ll just say, I was all for it because you really can’t afford to let people know it’s just water (or men in dresses with some odd ideas).
Actually, I think this needs to be asked more…and more…and more…and without the breathless awe the trans women want. How do they know they feel like a girl? If you haven’t experienced life as a ‘girl’, then why do you assume what you are feeling is being a girl?
The only legitimate answer to that is not one that plays well – ‘because I like dresses, dolls, shopping, pink, etc’. In short, you are a girl stereotype. It isn’t an internal feeling, it’s a societal decision about what makes someone male vs. female.
I know someone who was telling me how much he had recently learned from his female friends, about how challenging it can be to be a woman. Things like, making sure you check the back seat of the car before you get in, and all those other things we are taught in safety classes. He was quite horrified at how women had to live just to have ordinary safety he took for granted.
About two years later, he decided he was a woman. I almost asked him…and would have, if the relationship could have weathered it…when he had EVER gone through all those things women go through. Had he EVER felt so unsafe in his own skin? He never did, then or now (especially since he has done woman pretty much like he did man – same face, same name, same clothes, same privileges).
This gives the game away. It isn’t about being a woman; it’s about the attention they get from claiming to be a woman…the world’s approval. Perhaps someone should explain to them that women do not get the world’s approval, except for truly beautiful women who get approval in the most superficial of ways, approval which will dissipate the moment she becomes middle aged. Women get chastised and criticized and hounded to smile and told they need to wear makeup, dresses, be pretty, make sandwiches…the world’s approval is reserved for men.
That sure narrows it down. No amount of makeup, clothing, surgery, hormone treatments, behavior adjustments, or anything else is going to make a man a female, EVER, so what was that other choice again? What does Will *really* think, way down deep inside, that he’s too much of a chickenshit to tell you? Is that a healthy, honest friendship, or does it just ‘identify as’ one?
There again, maybe neither one suffers under any pretense that Harper is forever a man, will never be female, and this is simply a money making scheme that takes advantage of the trans fad. More likely. Watch Will announce that it was all a hoax as soon as the film makes enough money from the idiots who would go see such a thing.
But if you were really a girl all along then you can’t also be a man trying to transform into a woman.
Francis @ 1
You know, that should be the next big thing – narcissist activism. LGBTQN. Narcissistic idenniny! Why, it could make millions!
“told they need to wear makeup, dresses”
Those and a few other things eg: high heels, reduce the attractiveness of a woman in my eyes. Basically, anything that gets in the way of her being physically active (unladylike) reduces her attractiveness to me.
That’s what they’re for. Hobbles. See also: bound feet.
That’s basically why I have hated skirts my entire life, even as a small child.