Guest post: Cutesy pushy is still pushy
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.
Another neighbourhood vignette. Trans bullshit makes me cranky. Maybe at this point I’m spending too much time looking for it, but its omnipresence makes it hard to avoid. Today’s encounter with it took place in a local store selling handicrafts. Right at the door was a little Pride Progress flag (complete with the Intersex yellowtiangle with purple circle). Beside it was a happy rainbow sticker assuring those in need of such reassurance that You Are Safe Here. Of course this wasn’t telling everyone entering the store that the building they were entering was up to code and therefore unlikely to burst into flame or collapse onto us during our shopping visit. No. This is a different kind of “safety” we’re talking about here, and this “safety” is reserved for Special People, as the sticker was gaudily announcing that the store was not just a retail establishment, but also a 2SLGBTQIA+ Safe Space. One wonders if there are any regulations or guidelines for that. Not just any old place can be a daycare centre, for example. Restaurants here are required to display the results of the latest health inspection. Somehow I doubt there is any such certification or registration needed, and that any store can simply “identify” as a safe space, with no need to fulfil any requirements other than a desire to advertise one’s piety and righteousness. You just slap on a sticker here and there and voila, you’re an Ally! And, despite the rest of the flag, I think at this point. these displays of obedience and loyalty are all about the Trans. If it was about gay rights, you’d just have the good, old fashion Pride Flag, except that it’s now insufficiently “inclusive”, and about as welcome as a Swastika flag, or the Confederate one, as it is verboten to have anything LGB without the T.
These stickers operate on several levels at once. However much of a “welcome” they might be for the target audience, they are also a warning. They mean, theoretically, that the staff will not only not challenge trans bullshit, but also defend and enforce it. I would expect any sticker-displaying establishment large enough to have separate male and female bathroom facilities would allow men-pretending-to-be-women to use what, until recently, would have been exclusively female spaces. If anyone questions their use of women’s spaces, staff will defend the intruder, rather than the intrudeed upon. So, not “safe” for women, then.
More insidiously, these stickers play into the trans victimization and fragility narrative. If the store is a “safe space,” then by implication everywhere else is hostile. THE WHOLE WORLD IS OUT TO GET YOU! COME INSIDE: YOU’LL BE SAFE HERE! As if hatred falls from the sky like rain, and stores with stickers are offering life-saving shelter from the storm. But there’s more than one storm brewing, as women well know, having had their own safety eroded in favour of the validation of delusional males.
Do trans activists really assume that any store without a sticker is “unsafe”? Is that even the actual point? Displaying such stickers advertises putative allyship, but it also shows surrender and obedience to gender ideology. It represents a promise to comply. This puts pressure on other shopkeepers to announce their own stores’ “safety”.
Most of the products were fairly typical craft items, mostly handmade. Felted, knitted, or crocheted animals, jewelery, candles, soaps. You get the picture. But one item was a “Rainbow Certified” tote bag emblazoned with the slogan “Support LGBTQ+”, with fluffy clouds, flowers, and a rainbow. (The company’s website informs me that Rainbow Certified is a queer owned small business who makes apparel & accessories for the LGBTQ+ community. I feel excluded already. Am I allowed to even look at this tote bag? Why yes, I am. Read on.) Perhaps I’m reading too much into this, but notice that it’s not a simple statement in which the person carrying the bag is declaring “I support LGBTQ+”, but a demand that the viewer do so. It might be printed in a 60’s-esque flower-power kind of font, but it’s still a demand, and a forced-teaming one at that. Read and obey. Cutesy pushy is still pushy. Push someone else.
Shopping doesn’t usually make me this crotchety, but I get tired of all of this public display trans crap. It feels like swimming through a treacly sea of lies. Lies that I’m supposed to accept and believe. We’re supposed to be happy with our own coercion. All the rainbow colours and glitter hide an underlying malice and darkness that comes to the fore in accusations of bigotry and hatred. As I’ve commented before, the Progress Pride flag feels like the flag of a hostile, occupying force, passed off as the banner of a well-meaning, public-spirited campaign of kindness, compassion and concern. Look more closely, and the actual focus of that “compassion” and “concern” is very narrow. Its demands are enforced with very little kindness, and at a very steep cost to women and girls.
What they could use is a sign saying: “Men purporting to be women are requested to bring their own bucket, use it in the yard out the back, and to then take said bucket, contents, and themselves, when they leave.”
Problem solved.
not Bruce, I have the same experience every time I go to the theatre. If the program includes cast bios, there are going to be a number of they/them pronoun announcers. Trans and non-binary are rife in the cast, and I often believe that the individual was cast because they were T/NB. Otherwise, I can’t explain otherwise sound directors casting so many individuals completely unsuited for the part. A recent production of Midsummer Night’s Dream was ruined by the FtM playing Lysander, because (1) she couldn’t act; and (2) she wasn’t right for the part. Even more recently, we went to one written by a friend of mine, who announced at the beginning that it was a much needed ACE/ARO play – though she just referred to it as asexual. The leading character was unlikeable; the non-binary woman playing the non-binary asexual aromantic male lead even more so. (The main character was never said to be trans, therefore putting a female in the part of a male was more confusing than woke. It can be done well…it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it done well, since now it’s more about making a statement of pious adherence to the ideology than about casting someone to create an interesting role and flesh it out.)
Something my husband and I have always done is go to the Mahattan Shorts. These were announced in our local theatre recently; fortunately, they showed enough preview to make it obvious that at least one is focused on the narcissistic trans cult (not their words, mine). He announced his intention not to go this year, because of that film. I agreed with him. With all the trans I see all the time, I wonder why they need trans days of visibility. Try a little invisibility now and then. But that wouldn’t be validating, would it?
Over the past several years, my wife and I have taken in a show or two each season at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, about an hour’s train ride from where we live in London. I’ve noticed mostly he/him, she/her pronouns in the programs’ artistic and production staff biographies. So far they’ve all been announcing the Blindingly Obvious, rather than claiming to be the sex they’re not. I’d say from memory that most do not include pronouns. Most that do are younger, with the split between male and female doing so fairly even. One one of the notable age exceptions is the artistic director, who’s an older guy. I’m guessing that all of this pronoun use is performative, a proclamation of allyship and declaration of solidarity, as almost everyone including them seems to be obviously the sex they’re claiming to be. (The solitary they/them was one of the design staff, and was female.) It will be interesting to see, as enthusiasm or tolerance for gender bullshit waxes and wanes, whether there will be quiet adding or dropping of these little nuggets of righteousness in program bios. One can hope that the fad fades away, as I imagine most people are as interested in this oversharing of belief as they would be in the performers’ astrological signs.
An event that was held earlier in the season in connection with Pride Week was Trans Families: An Interview with Kinley Mochrie, Colin Mochrie and Deb McGrath , described thus:
Colin Mochrie and Deb McGrath are Canadian actors; Kinley is, of course, their son.
As the trans “explanation” of dysphoria, of being “born in the wrong body” isn’t possible, there must be something else going on. (Unfortunately, whether the trans hypothesis possible or not, we know the trans “solution” is a horror show.) I wonder from which direction did the suggestion (I won’t say diagnosis) of “transness” come? Nobody can know what it feels like to be anyone but themselves. A little boy isn’t going to know what it feels like to be a girl any more than he’s going to know what it feels like to be an okapi or an aardvark. No parent would take claims of okapihood or aardvarkness as signs of their child being a species they’re not (and can never be), but somehow it’s perfectly acceptable, and in some circles absolutely imperative to take a little boy’s claim to be a the sex they aren’t (and can never be) at face value, and to start immediately shopping around for skirts and surgeons.
I now always if it’s another case of transing away the gay, following in the footsteps of Susie Green. For young children, this is my first guess. How does it manifest? Why does it feel to me less likely to be a case of being “born into the wrong body” and more likely their being “drawn to the wrong toys”? How else but by exhibiting sex(ist)-stereotypically defying behaviours and preferences could a child possibly “present” as trans? How do parents justify ignoring the okapi/aardvark “noise” while supposedly receiving the trans “signal”? If a child is creative and imaginative, there’s going to be lots of noise to root through. But somehow, like a brilliant, neon needle, the trans “signal” is there in the haystack of imagined, fantastical identites of robots, dumptrucks, astronaut and firefighters for some parents to “discover”. Of course parents who are looking for it are going to find it. Homophobic parents (or maybe even just one of the pair) will hail this as a godsend, preferring the impossible certainty of “transness” to the unpaletable possibility of homosexuality. And yet, this can still be sold as “progressive”? How?
For older children, particularly those steeped in social media, there’s always the pathway of social contagion, building on any pre-existing confusion or uncertainty about their sexuality and sex-roles, with the added promise of specialness and social approbation that goes along with the “trans” package. “Look, they’re flying your flag at the school!” Why settle being your boring-ass self when you can become someone more interesting and valued than you could possibly be as you are?
It’s tragically ironic that much of the trans pathway is a desperate attempt to pass for “cis”. Why else does Willoughby make such a huge deal of the fraudulent “F” on his passport? Why else insist that all of his procedures actually make him a woman? Why else torture their bodies so? They want it both ways; they want to be special, and they want to blend in. If adults (including so-called health-care “professionals”can’t keep all of this straight, what chance do children have navigating this incoherent, contradictory mash-up of nonesense?
While the Mochrie-McGrath family tells us that their story is “beautiful,” what exactly is this family actually “supporting”? Are they things that should be supported? I’m sure that beneath the obligatory Trans Joy, there’s plenty of ugly that’s being papered over, whether it’s unacknowledged parental homophobia, the acceptance of the delusional claims of gender ideology, or the lifelong medicalization of their son in pursuit of an impossible goal. Are these things we want to celebrate and valourize? Are they really brave and stunning? I wouldn’t count on the moderator having asked anything but soft, fluffy, affirming questions: I’m also guessing that any audience member asking the “wrong” question would have been treated to something akin to the reception Emmanuel Goldstein might have received if he’d ever put in a personal appearance at a Two Minutes Hate session.
While I don’t doubt that they’ve been subjected to transphobic trolls, I wouldn’t trust their definition of either “transphobia” or “trolling,” as the trans definition is elastic enough to encompass the mildest criticism, questioning, or resistance as “hateful bigotry.” I’m sure that many, if not most of the questions I’ve asked above would have been considered beyond the pale transphobic, because I don’t believe in “trans.” Unbelievers break the spell. That’s why smug beardy white guy Jay was so adamant about refusing his fellow panelist to call “transgirls” “boys playing on girls’ teams.” Level the playing field, speak clearly and honestly, and the whole edifice of “gender identity”, trans “rights” and “transition” falls apart into a mess of self-contradictory incoherence. And as for thosee “uniformed relatives”? Chances are they knew too much.
(Something I meant to add to the above, but forgot to, as a final comment):
While I wouldn’t normally single out the Mochrie/McGrath family, they’re the ones stepping into the spotlight to publicize their “beautiful story.” I have no regrets in suggesting that they might have made a horrible mistake in connection with the raising of their son. To some degree it might be too late for him, depending on how far along the surgical path he’s “journied”, but my comments here are intended to reframe this as a cautionary tale, a course to be avoided, rather than an example to be follwed. Better to face difficult, uncomfortable truths head on, than to embrace a seemingly easy, comforting, escapist fantasy based on lies.
You raise a number of good complaints, but I personnally wouldn’t read too much into the actual intent of these stickers. Keep in mind that the “LGBTQ+ community” represents a very tiny minority of customers which it isn’t especially profitable to target. Rather, I’d suppose that these stickers are mostly used as a cheap way of displaying virtue to the masses, making them neither a warning nor a welcome, but an advertisement. As you pointed out, being a “Safe Space” doesn’t really mean anything specific, so most of the large companies slapping these promises on their stores’ windows probably don’t bother making them “safer” in any way.
I wish that were the case here. Almost everyone who announces pronouns either appears to be the opposite sex from their pronouns, or is very plainly one sex or the other but announcing they/them. It isn’t the bulk of the actors or crew, by far, maybe only a handful. What is becoming more and more common is that every cast will include at least one trans, usually FtM but occasionally the other, and almost all of them so miscast that you think they can’t act at all.
I suspect it’s done deliberately. At one audition for a festival where one of my plays was being performed, the artistic director for the festival announced that they needed to find a role for this one youngster, and it had to be a male role, because ‘he’ needed to be validated. Never mind that this young woman could not learn lines, could not read the script, and was probably the worst actor I’ve ever seen…we had to cast ‘him’ in a male role. I was able to keep ‘him’ out of my play only because every one of my characters was too old for ‘him’ to play.
Of course, said artistic director is involved with about five of the theatres, uses her/they pronouns, and has a ‘son’ who is really a daughter. She’s always been a good friend, but it can be difficult to deal with her/them sometimes.
If we don’t get out of this morass soon, theatre could end up being ruined.