The entirety of your community
Trans advocate Jayce Carver said she believes Igor Dzaic should bow out of the Ward 7 byelection after his “transphobic” tweet came to light.
“Imagine thinking that to be a woman all you have to do is say you are and get a few surgeries, even though you’re a man,” read one of Dzaic’s tweets. “You must not value real women at all.”
Carver said Dzaic apologized for some of his social media posts, which she said is “kind of too little too late.”
How much do you value real women though, Jayce Carver?
“When you are a politician, you’re supposed to represent the entirety of your community,” said Carver. “Trans-identified people — although we are a small part of the community — we are part of the community.”
Wait, what does that mean?
When you’re a politician, you are supposed to represent everyone in your district or riding or state or whatever it may be, in the sense of working for everyone, doing your best for everyone, using your office to help everyone where necessary, and the like. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to “represent” everyone in the sense of being like everyone (which is impossible), or approving of everyone, or agreeing with everyone, or being uncritical of the views of everyone.
It seems it was Chase Strangio who inspired him.
Well we can’t have that.
Meanwhile, on the campaign trail some candidates have spoken publicly about Dzaic’s tweets.
“Many of these posts were uninformed & misleading, and the hurtful language this candidate used in his writing has caused residents of our community great pain,” said candidate Farah El-Hajj in a statement.
There’s the “pain” trope again. Why is it dogma that trans people – mostly trans women i.e. men – are peculiarly subject to pain? Why is it dogma that men who say they are women are vastly more subject to pain than women are? It’s a weird inside-out form of bullying, but bullying it is.
Candidate Howard Weeks is also calling for Dzaic to step away from the byelection race.
“I want to state in no uncertain terms that that spewing this kind of garbage is totally unacceptable and due to the fact that his actions may reflect badly on the other candidates and the race itself I’m calling for him to remove himself as soon as possible,” he said in a statement.
If it had been casual Twitter misogyny, would El-Hajj and Weeks have responded with such vehemence and catastrophizing?
I don’t think so.
Except, apparently, women.
I can think of several reasons. The most obvious is that saying that Transwomen “feel pain” supports the gender distinction. Saying that hurtful language makes Transwomen feel insulted, get angry, or sends them into a towering rage is more likely to bring up an image of a ‘Karen’ or — worse — a man. Instead, they’re appealing to chivalry and sympathy. The poor dears.
But I think it would be wrong to limit the Pain trope to Transwomen, since Transmen and the Non-binary are often included in the community of the injured. So some other possible explanations involve anti-bullying campaigns and a therapeutic culture. The first focuses on preventing the strong from harming the weak; the second focuses on Becoming Who You Are and healing from that which has prevented it. Both anti-bullying and therapy are valuable. They also both flip the power dynamic. “The last shall be first and the first last,” and the meek shall inherit the earth.
I just finished reading Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage (it’s good) and, though she focuses primarily on TIFs, she brings up the idea that the last few crops of mostly middle class, mostly white parents felt a strong obligation to keep their kids safe and happy — particularly so. Highly involved in their children’s lives, they chaperoned play dates and ran interference, helped with academics and requested teachers. All laudable things in themselves, but the accumulative effect was a lot of kids with less ability to cope with adversity. They seem younger than their years. And, in some cases,feel entitled to safety.
I’m sure there are other explanations. But yeah — “I feel unsafe” is a thing, and not confined to transgender, and not confined to actually being, you know, unsafe.
But somehow JK Rowling’s pain and trauma (of the abusive marriage she had been in) was waved away as totally irrelevant.
There are probably more white supremacists than trans people in Igor Dziac’s ward. Does this mean Chase Strangio thinks that Igor Dziac should represent white supremacism?
As far as I can tell, it’s specifically emotional blackmail, being employed outside of a close personal relationship… which certainly does make it seem very weird, but also suggests (so say I as an armchair psychologist) the bully/blackmailer imagines a close personal relationship normally required for emotional blackmail to be effective.
Yes I called it emotional blackmail in the post before this one. That’s absolutely what it is.
“pain”, imo, is now being used in place of “offence” – having realised that the argument of “being offended” is no longer working, they’ve just changed it to pain for a better effect, though it still means exactly the same thing.
And also, I think it was in the comments here that someone said “the vulnerability is part of the fetish” – it feeds into the femininity=weakness self-image that they are uniquely fragile, like the Princess and the pea. I don’t see any women’s groups using “pain” in the same way to describe the denigration and dehumanisation that we’re subjected to on a much more regular basis.
Really? It seems you don’t even have to shave your beard.
Min, no, exactly – women don’t put it that way. It sounds weak and beseeching and submissive coming from us. But somehow coming from men who say they are women it sounds…what…I guess womany, but there’s womany when it’s women, which is gross and disgusting, and womany when it’s men who say they are women, which is noble and brave and heartrending all at once.
Women are shit, but men who say they are women are THE BEST THING EVER.
It’s quite amazing how this works.
It’s a point that bears reiterating ad nauseam. The concept of woman that operates in this phenomenon is perfectly sexist. To be a woman is to be weak; to be weak, a woman. To be a woman is to be vulnerable, tender, sensitive, emotional, submissive, servile. “To be a woman is to be fucked,” saith the trans author.
Ah, get fucked, say I.