Officers were asked to look into the ‘Dames on the Run’ race
A charity fun run that invited men to dress up as women is being investigated by police after a transgender charity claimed the dress code constituted a hate crime.
Officers were asked to look into the ‘Dames on the Run’ race – where men run dressed as women to raise funds for a children’s hospice – by a transsexual support group.
Chrysalis Transsexual Support Groups say the five kilometre run, organised by Derian House Children’s Hospice, in Chorley, Lancashire, is “dehumanising”.
Dehumanizing? It’s dehumanizing to wear clothes that are perceived as being for the “opposite” sex? So have I spent my entire life dehumanizing, because I hate skirts and never wear them?
Have we gone full circle now, such that it’s “a hate crime” to wear the “wrong” clothes for one’s assigned or not-assigned gender? Are we now going to start bashing men who dress too girly? Are we going to police how well people match their clothes to their official gender with more rigor than we’ve seen since about 1890?
Steph Holmes, of Chrysalis, said: “We get enough confusion with the word transgender, which mixes us up with transvestites.
“Transvestites certainly don’t dress for comic purposes and I don’t get up in the morning and think ‘what can I put on today to give people a laugh?’
“This race pokes fun at cross-dressing and, by association, us, reducing us to objects to be laughed at.
“Dehumanising us this way gives carte blanche to those that would do us physical harm, much like the gay bashers of old.
“It’s a small step from ridicule to persecution. The current stats suggest a 34 per cent chance of beaten up, raped or killed for being trans. We do not need to give the bigots any more ammunition.”
Is that true? Does a fun run in which some men dress in what are considered “women’s clothes” give ammunition to bigots? Does it cause persecution of trans people? Does it give carte blanche to people who would beat up or kill trans people?
I don’t see the connection, myself.
A spokesperson for the charity said: “As a children’s hospice, we deal with highly sensitive and emotive issues all the time and would never have considered organising a fundraising event that might cause upset or offence.
“Dames on the Run was conceived as a fun event, drawing on the much-loved Pantomime Dame character that is part of our theatrical heritage and supported by hundreds of thousands of people in every year.”
It’s true. The pantomime Dame is a real thing there. I’ve always found it somewhat sexist, in a mild sort of way, but also just theatrical and music hall-ish and quirky and not worth worrying about.
But sexism – meh, who cares about that, it’s only women. But when it’s trans women? That’s totally different.
Why?
Now, steady. Remember this is a race topic. It could run anywhere, fast …
“But sexism – meh, who cares about that, it’s only women. But when it’s trans women? That’s totally different.
Why?”
Yes. Exactly what I keep wondering.
Besides, this doesn’t even qualify as ridicule. They’re not making fun of anyone. It’s supposed to make the men running the race dressed in the “wrong” clothes look funny. If anything, they’re poking fun at themselves. They could have dressed as the Big Chicken from Sesame St to similar effect.
Ridicule would be if they were running as some kind of stereotypical trans people. Ridicule-that-normalizes-crimes would be if some of the runners pretended to rape or murder the pretend-trans among them, and if everybody thought that was hi-LAR-ious. Check on what happens with non-trans-women if that’s unclear.
“Are we now going to start bashing men who dress too girly?”
I get your point, but we’re not talking about a person, or even group of people, dressing in a way they’d like to dress, and challenging or defying gender stereotypes as a result.
Isn’t this group, particularly with the instruction to “dress as a woman”, reinforcing the gender stereotypes you so revile? I very much doubt that this is going to cause entrants to carefully integrate poritions of feminine dress into their athletic ensemble; I rather suspect that there will only be a sea of garish caricatures of womanhood instead. Doesn’t it also repeat the idea that one of the only reasons a male participant (of whom I’m guessing a majority will also be white, straight, cis and middle-class) would dress up “as a woman” is “for a laugh, it’s charity”, because no-one would do it “for real”. Isn’t that continuing to reinforce gender-fluid/cross dressing as “abnormal” behaviour which “should” be seen as odd or something to be shunned at other times?
Karellen, yes, pretty much, to all of your questions. But that’s not the reason for the objection. That’s what I said at the end of the post.
This makes me see red. It makes me feel like i’m not as supportive of Transgender activism as i used to be; at least, not *those* trans’ rights “activists”.
In Vermont twenty-five years ago, somebody i knew was horrifically gay-bashed. Roger Macomber was in the hospital for months, but he survived. The sympathetic public outcry finally became sufficient to push things over a line. During the subsequent year and a half, the state legislature took up the issue of hate-crimes, and then successfully passed a law which made it an aggravated hate-crime to attack anybody on the basis of gender, orientation, ethnicity, et cetera. It was already a crime to attack, but the hate-crime legislation made the punishments (in Vermont) more severe. This was supposed to be an extra deterrent against future such attacks.
And we felt like this was a success. We felt like this would help. We noticed that the number of homophobic assaults decreased in the subsequent decades.
Now, when people try to use hate-crime legislation in such an absurdly backwards fashion, they are squandering everything that was achieved. They are shooting their own fucking high-heeled feet. I am so mad, i want to scream when i read the article. The trans persons who are insulted by somebody else’s drag attire are being hypocritical; and i repeat: they are SQUANDERING the very legislation that people worked hard to attain for their very protection.
Now a bunch of people are probably going to say i’m not sensitive enough to the concerns of those trans persons who felt insulted. Fuck that. In my own life, until i pretty much stopped going out and socializing during the most recent years, i have been physically assaulted and repeatedly harassed enough hundreds of fucking times to know what it is actually like FIRST HAND to experience hatefulness, attacks, insults, and threats to my very existence, simply because of my superficial appearance being insufficiently conformative to heterosexist patriarchal popular norms. So those trans persons who are going to jump on me now for my “cisgender privilege and insensitivity” are not going to win my heart to their cause with this kind of bullshit. I was very sympathetic and sensitive, having had my own personal decades of negative experiences to help me understand their parallel struggles, but now they have SQUANDERED my goodwill.
I want some trans people to stand up and say “this is wrong. This isn’t what hate-crime legislation is for. This isn’t helping trans people, this isn’t helping any people, we need to do things differently.” If they are insulted by somebody’s Drag Race, then they can tell me all about what is wrong and where they’d like to see an improvement, but they DO NOT get to use fucking hate-crime legislation that was so hard-won as such a stupid blunt utensil here. Talk about going after mosquitos with a sledgehammer. Aaaaargh. I rage at the stupidity.
i suspect now that something pervasive and based on some tangled thinking is afoot in England re: trans stuff. I do not grasp the association between the Dames run and trans bigotry. In San Diego there were fund raisers for various things and gay men & friends wore all kinds of pink outfits including feather boas and high heels. It was kind of charming. I do not recall any talk of bigotry or hate crimes.
One of my favorite images of my father was him sporting ladies beach wear over his clothes with a long blonde wig. No hate crimes chez nous. . .
I think that will happen, Kevin – that the less off-the-cliff trans activists will push back. Some already are, but they too are afraid of the off-the-cliff types.
I hope so. I wish they would read this article:
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20091030/NEWS03/910300349/1004/http
and then think about the realities of violence against non-heterosexist people. Really, a reality check is needed for some of these people who are doing their best Road Runner hovering off-the-cliff moves.
Hey Kevin,
Are you originally from Vermont? I live near Burlington and my parents outside Montpelier. Are you in Washington now?
I grew up in Colchester and Milton. I’m ashamed to see that Milton High School is still in the headline news for homophobic violence, rape, suicide, and lack of official protection being enforced in the school district. When i graduated in 1987 i was the youngest valedictorian Milton had (age 16) and then i came out of the closet when i went to UVM. In the early 90s i participated in OutRight Vermont’s group activities, up until i was 23, and so i got to make friends with lots of non-gender-conforming people. I’ve been out here in Bellingham, Washington, ever since i went on disability insurance fourteen years ago (i’ve had HIV since 1989 at UVM, and AIDS since the mid-90s) and there is a lot in common between the liberal parts of the Pacific Northwest and the liberal parts of the Northeast.
Explicit tolerance of trans, gay, and other minorities is an important aspect of life here, and back there. It irks me to no end when i see this being turned upside-down, even when it’s in a totally different country. How will the world ever become more tolerant and accepting if we do the same stupid things wrong that we were complaining about all along? Blasphemy laws are stupid; enforcement of the burqa is stupid; telling people what they can’t say and how they can’t dress is stupid. It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you are on, it’s stupid either way.
I agree with you so hard, Kevin. We sound fairly close in age, and I too vividly remember the height of the AIDS crisis. Watching young gay guys take it so lightly has been . . bracing. . . as I get into middle age.
Yes, the cultural vibe is very similar between where I am and where you are.
“Off the cliff”?
My son’s elementary school puts on an annual variety show. One routine this past Spring was a group of 5th grade boys who performed a dance while dressed in girls outfits (skirts, dresses, etc.). Messages reinforced:
Boys engaged in feminine expression are still boys, and boys dressing as girls is absurd. Hilariously so. The whole point of the routine is, “isn’t this so funny?”. The boys on stage think it’s hilarious. The other kids think its hilarious. And they’re learning that they’re right: this really *must* be hilariously absurd. The audience full of parents clearly think it’s hilarious. Even the school administration, in approving the routine (and openly laughing at and applauding its performance), acknowledge the inherent comedic value of “boys dressing up as girls”. Juxtaposed with the routine, I’ll add, was a routine where kids pretended to be different types of animals and acting out such animals eating at a formal dinner… clearly, boys pretending to be girls is every bit as ridiculous as kids pretending to be animals.
Sitting next to my transgender son (Kindergarteners – 2nd grade are too young to participate), I did not think it was “hilarious”. I didn’t feel the faintest inclination to even chuckle. Taking in all the aforementioned context, I felt horrified and scared. Based on a shared expression of cringing, and confirmed in follow-up conversation, my wife didn’t find it “hilarious” either. Fortunately, the undertone of the message on which our discomfort was based was too subtle for our son to pick up (or, more likely, this was late enough in the show that he’d pretty much lost all interest in anything but his work on a coloring book).
We’re not okay to bank on his being so blissfully unaware as he gets older, and my wife and I both agreed that this coming year, we’ll be letting the principal know how the messages conveyed by such performances are incompatible with the values the school supposedly stands by.
@Ophelia @Kevin Hutchins the Bellinghamster: Does our reaction strike you as “over the cliff”?
Well, Kevin…if the hilarity of boys dressing as girls is seen as insulting to girls as well as to trans kids, then I don’t see that as over the cliff. But if it’s seen as entirely unproblematic until parents of trans kids think it’s problematic, then I wonder why.
Yes, i think it’s over the cliff. What next? Shall we take all episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus off the air, and all episodes of Kids in the Hall of the air, because Oh God Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children?
I want the trans person to be safe, no matter young or old, but i don’t understand why it’s okay to tell other people how they can and can’t dress when you don’t want them to tell your child how they can and can’t dress.
Furthermore: i call Childism here. Let the Child decide for themselves what is or isn’t comfortable, don’t go forcing the adults’ views on them just because they’re legally treated like a piece of property. Children are people too, with fully capable ways of deciding for themselves what is “uncomfortable”. What did they indicate here? Disinterest. Shouldn’t we see that as reasonable enough? Why force the issue?
I think it’s more than reasonable for Kevin K. and his family to explain to the school why their show was hurtful. It would have been reasonable for the transactivists in the news story to have contacted the charity to discuss their problems (I’m guessing from the quotations that they didn’t). But calling the event a hate crime, yes, I think that’s over the cliff. It’s going straight for the hate crime charges without prior discussions (if that’s what happened) that seems over-the-cliff to me. It seems intended to intimidate more than to educate.
But that still doesn’t answer Ophelia’s question.
So, is Eddy Izzard a hate criminal now? Because he has performed in women’s clothes and gets laughs, and money?
Even though he’s been beaten up twice for wearing similar clothes in his ‘civilian’ life in London?
True, is routines weren’t ALL about being a transvestite, but a lot of the laughs came from that fact, especially his early stuff.
(from the OP: “Transvestites certainly don’t dress for comic purposes and I don’t get up in the morning and think ‘what can I put on today to give people a laugh?’)
I’m confused.
Apologies to Ophelia for this derail, as I don’t know how else to reach Kevin here–
Kevin Hutchins, a bunch of us Bellingham, WA folks are going to be rallying in support of Planned Parenthood next saturday starting at noon, which you might be interested in, given their focus on affordable healthcare (which I guess you might have or could have used at one point). The impetus for this was today’s mass assault of christian haters who blocked access to them today. We’re going to push back, next saturday. You would be most welcome and probably find some kindred people, were you to be there.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled B&W comment thread.
Oh that’s fine, MrFP.
Er, so, people express their hatred of a thing (people presenting as a different gender than the one assigned at birth) by doing that thing?
Wut?
How exactly do they know the participants aren’t at all people who are gender curious, gender fluid, or closeted transwomen finally getting a chance to publicly express themselves?
Kevin #12: The audience wasn’t reacting the way they were because they think being trans is ridiculous. Most of the audience probably doesn’t have trans on their radar, right or wrong. They were reacting as they were because “boys pretending to be girls” is inherently ridiculous to most people because female is seen as inferior to male, and therefore the idea of a male voluntarily acting female makes them laugh.
There’s a famous opera, “Fidelio.” In it, a brave political prisoner’s brave wife disguises herself as a man in order to work at the prison and rescue him. The character is universally regarded as heroic. Just *try* to imagine this situation with the genders reversed. Seems ridiculous and laughable, no? That’s where your audience’s laughter comes from. It is not about trans.
I just wrote the above in a state of severe aggravation. It’s quite possible that some of it is offensive. If that is the case, I am truly sorry and please specifically correct me. If I could edit it, I would.
Btw, some time in my late teens I saw a group of very hairy muscular people in very sparkly ruffled dresses standing around chatting to each other. It was San Francisco and I had literally no idea why they looked the way they did. If they were transgender, they were making no effort to pass. If they were performers, there was no clue to it. They were just male-bodied people in high femme gear standing around talking.
The effect it had on me was that I started paying attention to any writing on the subject of transvestites and transsexuals (that was the word at the time, and much clearer than gender; they needed other bodies) and learned that none of those things was really as odd as general prejudice would suggest.
So in my experience, public non-passing personas, whatever the reason, can actually help raise awareness and normalize transgender as being about comfort, identity, etc and not a form of perversion.
Thinking about what @bcazz and @SamanthaVines have said, and about the difficulty of classifying instances of cross-dressing as either reinforcing or undermining rigid gender stereotypes, the best way I can think of it is to imagine how a thuggish sexist bigot would view the situation. If they’re likey to think “Har har, men dressed up as women, I love that fucking joke”, you’re probably reinfocing the stereotype. If they’re likely to get uncomfortable, start screaming about poofs, faggots or queers, and threaten violence, you’re probably undermining it.
Is that a helpful way to think about it?
“Well, Kevin…if the hilarity of boys dressing as girls is seen as insulting to girls as well as to trans kids, then I don’t see that as over the cliff. But if it’s seen as entirely unproblematic until parents of trans kids think it’s problematic, then I wonder why.”
I think any overt sexism would have come across in what the students *did* dressed as girls – e.g. dressing up as girls and exaggerating negative stereotypes such as being overly emotional, getting lost despite having simple directions, being unable to do simple math, etc. None of that was on display and I have no doubt that had it been, the routine would’ve been nixed from the get-go.
No, the “humor” of the piece was entirely: isn’t it funny that these boys are expressing themselves as if they were girls. You wonder why this would be so troubling. Our son’s transition was a life-changing event of such momentous importance to both him and our family that we have it marked on the calendar as a holiday. That life-changing event, to an outsider, might appear as nothing more than our son starting to go by a sllightly different name and donning clothing from the “boy’s” section. What was done during the routine, and presented as absurd and mock-worthy, was an act of boys wearing stereotypical girl clothes and referring to one another with girl names (such references alone, in the couple blurbs of dialog of the routine, were delivered as “punchlines” to the underlying “joke”).
This mockery and derision of something so close to (and, to many people: the same exact thing as) our son’s transition was hurtful in it’s own right. The endorsement of the mockery from parents and administration alike, coupled with the near-mirroring of the routine to his transition, left me deeply concerned for how kids might feel both correct and justified in not taking my son’s gender identity seriously.
Maybe that still doesn’t make sense – maybe nothing I (or any other trans individual) say or write can really get the idea across.
But on this point, I think there is a viable comparison to the racism of wearing blackface. I’ll be honest – I’m hard-pressed to explain *precisely* what makes “white people wearing blackface” such an offensive act. You could say, “I wonder why” it’s taken so badly. But “wondering why” it’s taken so badly does not mean I dispute that it’s taken badly.
“Wondering why” does not cause me to feel justified in dismissing the outcry from the black community that blackface performances are racist.
I wonder why your wondering why *seems* to make you and others, like Kevin Hutchins, feel justified in dismissing (or at least belittling) the outcry from the transgender community that drag performances often come across as trans-antagonistic.
@ Cressida
See my comment regarding blackface. You are arguing that transgender people are *wrong* / *mistaken* to offense at take drag acts. How is that different from me arguing, “Blackface performances aren’t really racist, black people are just misunderstanding what white people actually find funny about them.”?
Um, because it’s a comedy piece, specifically presented in a way to encourage people to laugh at that thing?
Cuz it’s a comedy piece dat make people laugh at da thing.
I don’t know that there is any such outcry. I don’t know that there is any such thing as “the transgender community.” I think you’ve been reading B&W for quite awhile, so you probably know that I’m generally very skeptical of claims to speak for “the ____ community.”
On the larger point…as a feminist woman, I like to see our ideas about gender mocked and undermined. I like to see gender norms treated as a joke. Some (many? most?) trans people don’t like to see that.
I don’t know what to tell you. I think this is the real crux between the two, and I don’t have anything consoling to say about it. I’m not going to start treating gender as sacred because some (many? most?) trans people want it treated that way. Frankly I hate gender. Other people love it. We differ. I can’t do anything about that.
Let’s forget “gender community” then. Let’s forget about “outcry”. Let’s stick to this: the performance we saw, the reactions of other students and parents to it, and its endorsement by the school administration, struck my wife and I as directly hurtful and establishing an air of hostility toward transgender students at the school. Statistically, it’s almost certain that students other than my son were in the audience learning the same lesson: expressing yourself in a way different from your assigned gender is inherently silly and worthy of mockery.
What would you do in our shoes? Teach our son the important lesson of growing thicker skin, in the interest of not taking away something so enjoyable from those around us?
What Cressida said is worth repeating: “They were reacting as they were because “boys pretending to be girls” is inherently ridiculous to most people because female is seen as inferior to male, and therefore the idea of a male voluntarily acting female makes them laugh.”
I agree, and I think it’s really VERY important to closely consider whether something is just plain sexist or genderist (for lack of a better word – what I mean by that is something that embraces and enforces the boy-girl gender binary), rather than being particularly transantagonistic.
It seems like most people commenting here would acknowledge that this current-day fun run and the fairly long tradition in English theatre of Pantomime Dame (which seems to be quite self-consciously sexist and includes women pantomiming as men) are both firmly rooted in comedic sexism. Just as blackface is comedic racism. But I don’t see any basis at all for interpreting these things as a hate crime aimed at trans people.
Ophelia, I agree that you’ve identified the crux of the late failure of two camps of people to find common ground, and it is fueled by this powerful yet undefined and under-theorized concept of gender identity. One camp sees gender as externally imposed and pernicious, another seems to be treating gender as a crucial part of a person’s identity, such that questioning of gender per se amounts to questioning a person’s very humanity. It’s not sustainable.
Kevin Kirkpatrick: If it were me, I would talk to the school leadership about how this kind of routine should be re-examined. Maybe it can be done in a way that embraces breaking gender rules and communicates to the kids and parents that it’s okay, even wonderful, to do that. And I would say that it shouldn’t be done at all if the purpose is just to reinforce the message that it’s ridiculous for people to break gender rules.
@Jennifer Chavez – so it’s the *purpose* that matters, not the actual effect? For the record, it’s not my contention nor my belief that either the students nor administration are intentionally “aiming” a hateful message toward transgender students. I think the kids putting on the show are just having a great deal of fun and the administration is primarily supporting that.
Also, taking your earlier comment into this: do you feel our decision to speak up on our son’s behalf should be contingent on whether or not there was a long-standing tradition behind the performance?
@Jennifer Chavez
Circling back to one part of your comment:
Do you have *any* idea how much outcry there would be if teachers endorsed activities that encouraged kids to explore breaking gender roles… respectfully? Seriously, a routine along those lines is the kind of thing that would generate national coverage, with Fox News leading the “What are these liberals doing to our kids now?” brigade.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m entirely on board with the idea, but I’d feel compelled to supply the administration with a suit of armor to accompany the suggestion.
Hang on – Jennifer isn’t talking about teachers endorsing activities that encouraged kids to explore breaking gender roles in general, but just around this particular event that you’re talking about, this annual variety show. Surely they could there – it sounds carnivalesque, and role-reversals have always been part of carnival. And since they’re already doing it, but in a less than ideal way…they could do it in a closer to ideal way, no?
It’s harder now for girls to cross-dress but there could be beards and moustaches, and I suppose suits and ties and those leather shoes with the holes in them…
No matter how important somebody’s religious holiday is to them, i don’t have to appreciate it. I don’t have to support it. I would rather leave it alone. I prefer to ignore people’s religions, whether they are about deities, genders, property, or any other imaginary values.
When i was in school, i wish my parents had been supportive, like Kevin Kirkpatrick is being supportive of his child. My parents were abusive, giving me the same heterosexist abuse that i was getting simultaneously from schoolkids, neighbors, cousins, and grown adults in our communities. Kevin K is being much more intelligent and considerate and thoughtful, caring deeply how the child feels, wanting the child to be supported and not harmed. I wish my parents had been that way when i was viciously abused for the first two decades of my life for being too “swishy, twitchy, sissy, girly” and all those other things that go along with treating femininity as inferior; for being insufficiently “butch, macho, tough, thick-skinned” and all those things that go along with treating masculinity as superior.
But i don’t think that changes any of my feelings about the school’s performance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making fun of gender stereotypes because i think gender is a ridiculous religion and deserves more mockery. Even if that mockery makes you uncomfortable as the parent of a child who didn’t conform to society’s gender expectations, i don’t think the mockery should be condemned. The more we mock gender, the more people realize how rigid gender roles are religious nonsense, the sooner we can have a world where gay and trans and les and bi and genderfluid and agender people can be treated in a more egalitarian way; the sooner we can have a world where people are treated equally regardless of percepetions of whether they are masculine or feminine or conforming to anybody’s prejudicial ideas about what is the “right way” to present gender expressions.
I think Kevin K is being a great father for trying to protect their kid and keep them healthy. I don’t think that requires the rest of the world to stop making fun of gender roles and pointless gender stereotypes. These are not incompatible, and in fact i would argue that the more we eliminate pointless gender policing, the sooner Kevin K’s children will have a safer world in which to grow up. If we have to dress up in the “wrong clothes” and do things “that the OTHER gender does” in order to emphasize the ridiculous nature of the religion of gender, so be it. Drag queens have been leading the way in social progress for all my life, and Kevin K’s situation actually makes me feel more certain of this, not less. I don’t care if Kevin K doesn’t like drag queens, they get to exist. NO amount of pleading “won’t somebody think of my children!!1!” is going to get me to stop supporting my drag queen friends. And if kids in school are in a performance that challenges and laughs at gender, those kids might even grow up to be more accepting of drag queens, and i say that’s good. So let them laugh.
Now i’ll just sit back and wait to hear how i’m a horrible cisgender monster, just like those racists who approve of blackface. Except, of course, racists who don’t like blacks are going to dislike blacks regardless of whether you make blackface jokes about stereotypes; whereas, ignorant people who believe in gender role conformity are potentially going to give up some of their dogma when they are exposed to comedy and humor which demonstrates how pointless the gender stereotypes are.
So there.
And comment #33 just goes to show: if you want to condemn something and tell people to stop, that’s easy. And we’re supposed to all be sympathetic? But if you want to make real progress, that’s hard, and you won’t even want to begin doing the hard stuff. And we’re all supposed to say, “oh yeah, that’s too hard. Well then, don’t bother doing what’s right; it’s too hard.” Let’s just forbid everybody from doing everything too complicated, and that will solve our problems. Just like in Saudi Arabia.
I think purpose and effect should be taken into account — but keep in mind that we’re commenting here on a blog that was about calling the flipping police to report a pantomime dame event as a hate crime. Crime has always taken purpose (intent) into account and I think that’s appropriate.
Yes, of course I realize how controversial and difficult it would be in many schools with conservative parents and staff to do the kind of event I’m talking about, but we have to start somewhere.
Kevin #25: That’s not exactly what I was saying (it’s more general than what i was saying). Nonetheless, I was wrong to tell you that your reaction to the performance was invalid.
Girls don’t cross-dress as boys for jokes because society doesn’t think that being a man is a thing to ridicule and laugh at.
There’s a programme about Muslim drag queens coming on to Channel 4, which Ian McKellan has heartily endorsed.
https://twitter.com/IanMcKellen/status/635539742650580992
I’d say that looks very positive, Muslims coming out in that way. Drag queenery can come across as liberating, just like those Turkish guys who demonstrated in mini-skirts to show their support of a woman murdered when fighting of a sexual assault.
http://time.com/3718618/turkey-men-miniskirts-ozgecan-aslan/
“Men throughout Turkey and neighboring Azerbaijan aredonning miniskirts to honor Ozgecan Aslan, a 20-year-old student who was allegedly murdered after fighting off a sexual assault by a minibus driver.
After Aslan’s burned body was found by a riverbed, the BBC reports, young people in Turkey were galvanized to protest violence against women. And these protests took place both on the streets and on the Internet:”
I was astounded and impressed as Turkey is a fairly macho society and in the conservative parts the sexes are pretty much segregated.
I don’t think trans women crossed their minds at all.
Sorry but in some circles that I move in women do dress as men (moustaches, black tie and other stereotypical male clothes) for a joke, and the men might wear dresses. The suggestion that “society does not see dressing as a man something to ridicule” is in my view disingenous. Surely there is a simpler answer. Women don’t generally see wearing “men’s” clothes as a joke because they already have the freedom to wear pretty much what they want (in liberal western societies) and they do, any day of the week: it’s called fashion. On the other hand a heterosexual man who wears a dress will not be taken seriously anywhere, any time.
I don’t hate anyone. I would like the freedom to put on a dress from time to time and run around with my friends, male and female, without being accused of sexism, genderism or anything else. And if people want to give me money for a good cause to do it, so much the better.
Are sitcoms about successful black families racist because they show black people adapting to wealth as a source of humor? (Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Jeffersons)? Are old movies about women in the workplace sexist because they presented career women as a source of humor (The Desk Set, My Girl Friday)?
On the other hand, Kevin, of course you should speak to the administration about finding it problematic, and complain higher if it isn’t addressed. But your child didn’t sound bothered by it, which makes me think the school has not created a hostile environment.
Some years ago, a male librarian at work, whose gayness was a not-quite-open secret, effectively came out by attending a fancy dress party with his boyfriend dressed in stereotypical French maid outfits. (The theme of the party was the letter “T” and they were French tarts.) I remember dancing with them, which felt slightly odd, I must admit. How silly we all were not to see that they were homosexuals perpetrating a hate crime against transexuals. And French maids. And French prostitutes.
This in Jennifer’s comment above:
“One camp sees gender as externally imposed and pernicious, another seems to be treating gender as a crucial part of a person’s identity, such that questioning of gender per se amounts to questioning a person’s very humanity. It’s not sustainable.”
has brought one of my edge thoughts bobbing into view. That’s the problem exactly.
Further, it seems to me that it’s a spinoff from an even more fundamental error. At some point, tolerant people decided to play on conservative ground.
From the tolerant perspective, what kind of sex you have, with whom, and all the rest of it so long as all are adults and unharmed in the situation, is absolutely nobody else’s business. You don’t have to be born gay or trans or (fill in the blank). You can choose the life you want.
But in the conservative view, you have to conform to the accepted code, whatever it is, and the only loophole is that if you can’t help it because you were born that way, then you might get some slight accommodation.
That’s the origin, as far as I can see, of the whole insistence on various kinds of sexuality being genetic. Much complicated by the fact that biological sex is genetic. But, honestly, clams have biological sex. It has extraordinarily little to do with sexuality.
So maybe the solution lies is ceasing to play by conservative rules? Trans people can do whatever they want. The only thing they can’t do, any more than anyone could do it to them, is tell someone else what to believe and how to live.
Have I understood this correctly?
A trans- activist group has condemned the race on the grounds that being in the ‘wrong’ clothing, and thus mismatching your assigned gender, is bad. IRONY IS FUCKING DEAD.
In our local carnival parade every year, we have a group called the Major Wrecks. These consist of a group of generally middle aged to elderly men doing a parody of US majorette routines in majorette type costumes. We haven’t had any objections so far…
@ #47: Apparently the problem has been identified as some kind of issue of particle physics. It appears that Drag Queens and Trans Activists are forms of matter-antimatter opposites, and when you try to bring them together in the same place at the same time, it’s too unstable. They explode and cancel each other out. Then Patriarchy rushes in to fill the vacuum left behind.
Ha!
Quick update – I think there’s lots to unpack here, and I don’t think those who have challenge my stance on this subject have been making points without merit. Unfortunately, career and family demands have really been encroaching on my SIWOTI time. Hopefully those engaged in this comment section are being notified of updates via email (and don’t mind prolonged response times), because I’m only cautiously optimistic that I can get back to everything here even within the next week or so.
That said, I would like to nip one thing in the bud. Please stop with the gas-lighting (looking at #47 and supportive “hardy-har-hars”).
I have no issue, and have expressed no issue, with people cross-dressing. I do not think transvestites expressing themselves in whatever manner of dress they choose, or with whatever level of flair / flamboyance they choose to do so, is trans-antagonistic. It comes across as condescending of Holms to suggest that the objections to drag acts, voiced by myself and other trans activists, are so shallow as entail a conclusion that’s contradictory to a whole-hearted support for transgender people transitioning their gender identification and expression from that which they were assigned at birth.
What I have a problem with is the presentation of the experience of transitioning as intrinsically mock-worthy. I have a problem with performances wherein the joke, the entertainment value, is no deeper or more enlightened than “isn’t it funny to see a male-bodied person donning culturally-feminine attire (especially when clearly failing to ‘pass’ as female)?”.
That was the bothersome part of the fifth-grade presentation. That presentation was “funny” because the performers were clearly boys making a superficial effort to “pass” as girls. The humor lied in how their masculine identities showed through the surface changes [were it not evident that the show consisted of boys dressed in culturally-feminine attire, there would be no “joke” – it’d be a dance routine no different than any other].
I was equally troubled by the context/broad acceptance and approval of the presentation. “Let’s all of us, as a collective community of hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and administrators, join in agreement that the spectacle of boys trying, and failing miserably, to pass for girls, is worth a solid belly laugh.” Do I really need to explain how this might leave me concerned about my son’s school environment not feeling like a “safe space”? Because certainly none of that is going to carry over to the day my son shows up at school inadvertently wearing a t-shirt which hints at breast buds underneath, right? Certainly all the kids understand that it’s REALLY FUNNY when boys on stage are dressing like girls but are still clearly boys; but there’s nothing remotely funny about a transgender girl’s voice cracking into a boyish tone for a couple syllables. Certainly no transgender kids watching the performance are going to feel the least bit more anxious about transitioning to their preferred gender, nor about the imperativeness of doing so flawlessly and convincingly.
You’ll have to forgive me for feeling a little non-touched by any “harm” that would come with changing policies to preclude this type of performance in future variety shows. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there is a non-zero rate of kids ending their lives because their idea for a variety show was rejected as potentially discriminatory. Maybe, though dozens of other 4th and 5th graders managed to fill the other 110 minutes of the show with acts that were fun and entertaining without ostracizing any minorities, maybe the show would’ve have disastrously “flopped” without the inclusion of this one act. But I doubt it.
I’ll address a similar-flavored objection in advance of it being voiced: enforcement of such a policy would not require kids to get their performances approved “in triplicate”.
Kevin K wrote: “Certainly no transgender kids watching the performance are going to feel the least bit more anxious about transitioning to their preferred gender, nor about the imperativeness of doing so flawlessly and convincingly.”
And therein lies my the point where i have suspicions. I suspect your child was disinterested and not bothered. I suspect YOU are bothered that eventually they might come to feel disturbed and mocked. But that’s not what happened, according to your own report.
If you weren’t so eager to perpetuate the mythology of the religion of gender (“flawlessly and convincingly”) then maybe your kids wouldn’t be either.
Ever watch the Canadian show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes? Did you ever see all of their drag characters (women playing male roles, men playing female roles, sometimes mixed together, sometimes individually) and look at how they parody and poke fun at the stupidity of gender stereotypes? Did you ever notice that their mockery is actually a useful thing because it challenges the religion of gender and forces people to see that gender is an absurdity rather than a necessity?
Because it sounds like you’re teaching your kid that gender is so important they should be upset and up-in-arms about any perceived slight or any mockery of their situation.
Your kid, on the other hand, sounds like they are not interested in joining the battles in your war on Drag Queens and Kings.
So: call the cops. I’m pitching my voice really high here, to sound more effeminate, and to sound mocking. So it must be a Hate Crime, and you should teach your kid to get a lawyer and charge people with vicious hate-crime attackes whenever they wear mis-gendered clothes and laugh at how absurd gender is. No? Well then, just what are you trying to teach your kid? Because so far you’ve taught me that comedy which incorporates jokes that make fun of gender performance is somehow an aggression and an existential threat to trans gender children who need to be protected from the horrors of people laughing at gender absurdities. No?
So if you were at the charity race with men in dresses, would you have called the cops and complained about a hate crime? If not, why not? Why wouldn’t you call it a hate crime and demand that Oh God Somebody Please Think Of The Children?
And before you jump to answer, think carefully for a second. I was literally beaten hundreds of times and had my life literally threatened hundreds of times during the first two decades of my existence because i wasn’t conforming to supposed expectations of gender, because i appeared too “girly” for somebody who was supposed to be “manly”. I know what it is like to be actually harmed by people’s gender stereotypes and gender-related violence. Your child was surrounded by protecting parents, and didn’t get upset by the school performance. I, on the other hand, had my own parents joining in the violence against me.
So i want you to think very very very carefully before you make generalizations from your feelings outward to project onto the rest of the world. Think about other people’s experiences as well as yours, as well as your child’s, and then give me your answer. Would you call the cops and say a hate-crime took place? If not, why not?
@Kevin Hutchins,
Please switch out of “Must Win This Internet Argument At All Costs” mode. You’re dropping discourse to rock-bottom levels.
In discussing the “hate crime” aspect, for instance, you keep conflating cultural norms in order to make rhetorical points. I cannot speak to UK norms or law (the context of the original article), but in the US, “hate crime” means something very specific. In the US, if I walked down a city street denouncing every person of every minority I saw with the most vicious slurs imaginable, I would not be committing a “hate crime”. If I saw somebody doing this, I would not consider them to be committing a hate crime (and would not call the police).
However, if we’re talking about a country or culture which does treat such speech as a “hate crime” in it’s own right; I *might* agree that certain drag performances could be put in the same category. This does not amount to an endorsement of that category of behavior being treated as a crime. To the contrary, I’m wholly against any state infringing upon its citizen’s rights to engage in such speech (nor the rights of other citizens to respond to such speech with their own freedom of speech and association).
Does that answer you “If not, why not?” question satisfactorily?
With respect to last year’s variety show. Maybe I didn’t make this point as clearly as I should have, as you’re not the first to read into a description something that was not there. For the record, I’m pretty convinced that after about 20 minutes, not a single act was of more interest to my son than finding the right shade of blue for coloring around the smiling whale (or whatever picture he was working on at the time).
For future reference, please don’t presume to know more about my son’s thoughts and feelings on being transgender than me. If you don’t know, you can ask; if I don’t know, I’ll say as much. Please don’t pretend that your desire to win an argument on the internet outweighs the emotional toil I’ve seen trans-antagonistic statements have on him. I’m particularly on edge about this right now, as just this morning he indicated he might not want to do summer camp next year because, “I’m just not sure how everyone will be. With me being transgender, I mean.”
On that note, in light of a suicide rates of transgender kids being 10 to 20 times higher than their peers, I think “thinking of the children” is entirely merited. The meme, “Oh God Someone Please Think Of The Children” has it’s place (perhaps “How could you possibly consider denying this performance as discriminatory; won’t you please Oh God Think Of The Children?” works); but the sentiment alone does not render legitimate concerns for children’s well-being null and void. If you had a child being taught Creationism in Biology class, I doubt you would curb expression of concern, just because someone pointed out that you were “thinking of the children” in that classroom. Even if they pointed it out in a mocking and condescending fashion.
Nice try, but no, you didn’t actually do or say anything to convince me. The suicide rate of gay and lesbian kids is high too. The homelessness rate of gay and lesbian kids is quadruple the rate for straight kids, because of parents kicking them out and making them unaccepted. So i will pull the “God Someone Please Think Of The Children” meme out frequently, forcefully, and with personal experience behind my angry words.
I don’t want to “win an argument” with you. I want you to see that you are perpetuating gender-performance demands just as much as anybody else. Your demand that people do or don’t dress a certain way, do or don’t make mockery of gender and dressing a certain, do or don’t say things that joke about gender and crossdressing: your demand is just as absurd as the far-right-win religious jerk or the assholes like my parents who insisted that there is only a single correct way for genders to be expressed and presented in society. You are doing the same thing they did wrong, you’re just doing it from the other side of the fence.
If you really want your kid to be safer, to make the world safer for all kids, you would teach them that gender is absurd and unnecessary. You would tell them that no matter what mockery they get at camp for their gender, you support them anyway. But trying to stop OTHER people and other people’s kids from doing gender expressions– “right” or “wrong” gender expressions– is exactly the same kind of stupid reinforcement of unncecessary cultural “norms” that SHOULD be challenged all the time.
I’ve actually never done drag. Not even on Halloween with my friends. But this conversation with you is making me feel like i want to put on a wig and makeup and pitch my voice higher just to emphasize my fucking points.
[…] concerns (such as lesbian and gay rights and feminism) is the high suicide rate among trans people. Kevin K on the Dames on the run thread for instance […]
@Kevin H,
You are projecting onto me attitudes I do not hold. I was crushed (and powerlessly enraged) by my son’s decision to stop wearing earrings this summer because the other kids kept asking him, “Aren’t earrings for girls?”. I do not support the stereotyping of gender expression or gender roles whatsoever. Our household echoes with refrains like, “What do you mean ‘Pink is a girl color’? Colors are not boyish or girlish.”
You keep acting like my objection to the variety show performance was on the grounds of “Oh hell no – boys should NOT be allowed to wear dresses”. For crying out lout, I bolded the aspect of the performance that I found objectionable.
The performance was a comedy piece that “worked” on, and reinforced, the message that it is okay to laugh at and mock boys who choose to dress as girls. I am wholly supportive of boys being able to dress however they’d like; and am objecting to the reinforcement of the idea that cross-dressing is inherently absurd/funny/mock-worthy. That is the idea the performance was reinforcing; that is the message it was conveying; and I don’t think it’s a healthy message for any kid to be taught.
In contrast, I would have no problem if the variety show were *filled* with boys dressing in conventionally-feminine attire, or vice-versa, so long as the acts lacked the comedic undertone of, “Look everyone, this boy is wearing a SKIRT! And that girl is wearing A TIE! Isn’t that RICH? Have you ever seen anything so RIDICULOUS??”
There is a 180-degree difference between “Doing/supporting X” and “Mocking/scorning X”. In the case of the performances to which I object (at least, to which I object to official endorsement of), X is “expressing oneself in a manner unconstrained by gender stereotypes; identifying as male or female unconstrained by bodily appearance.”. I’m not okay with schools sending or endorsing the message that it’s okay to scorn and mock kids who do not adhere to gender roles, gender stereotypes, or assigned gender identities.
So how do you know that none of the children in the performance were transvestites, or future transvestites?
If the message they get is: “everybody is laughing at boys dressed as girls” and “everybody thinks it’s funny to mock the silly appearance of people who dress in a way which defies gender stereotypes” then perhaps they will eventually feel like they could be accepted in society as transvestites. Perhaps they would even be accepted as transgender. Perhaps they could be accepted as anything else, genderfluid, agender, whatever. But as long as you teach your child that mockery of dress codes is somehow wrong, you are not allowing the child to develop their own sense of comfort around appearances, gender expressions, and social attitudes. You are contributing to the problem, not solving it.
I repeat: you are making the SAME mistake as Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps, you’re just doing it from the other side of the fence. They say men aren’t allowed to wear dresses; you say i’m not allowed to laugh at boys in dresses. They say stupid things because their religion tells them there’s a “right and wrong” way to express gender. You are saying the same things, you’re just flipping the polarity. There’s no right and wrong way to laugh at boys in dresses and girls in mustaches: your efforts to enforce a supposed rightness or wrongness are just as misguided and illogical as Robertson and Phelps.
And if it helps to drive my point home, i’ll go put on some high heels and mascara while saying these things. Have you never seen Eddie Izzard? Have you never seen Torch Song Trilogy? How dare you imply that your transgender child’s existence is threatened by the simultaneous existence of drag queens and people who laugh at them.
Like i said above: matter-antimatter and it’s too unstable. You claim your concerns are for the wellbeing of your son, but all i’m hearing is your attempts to erase the existence of transvestites.
I’ll stick up for the transvestites just as much as i stick up for your son. And if you had any sense, you would too.
“So how do you know that none of the children in the performance were transvestites, or future transvestites?”
And if they were, they’d be learning, “If I choose to wear a dress to school, then everyone will laugh at me. My friends will laugh at me. Their parents will laugh at me. Even my teachers will laugh at me. It won’t even matter if I want to be laughed at. Maybe, eventually, their sides will become sore from all the laughter, and then they’ll accept me.”
“They’ll laugh at me”… but they won’t demand that i cease to exist in this format. I’d prefer laughter to erasure. Your efforts to put drag queens in the same category as people who commit hate crimes against transgender people is what’s wrong here. Your discomfort was not your child’s discomfort. Your discomfort was because you were worried about how your child would hypothetically feel… and they indicated that they felt nothing wrong.
So when and where will drag queens be allowed to exist, if not on stage and on television with people laughing at them?
From Harvey Fierstein’s opening monologue in Torch Song Trilogy, which was rather prescient as he wrote this forty years ago:
“Once the Civil Rights Act and ERA have been passed, they’ll just sweep us drag queens under the rug, like the blacks done to Amos and Andy.”
Oracular, Harvey was.
I’ve been fuming about this all day.
“I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a drag act at the school performance.”
Who said that? Do i hear the ghost of Fred Phelps here?
Would you be okay with nine-year-olds being allowed to do blackface acts at a school performance?
If not, why not?
I wouldn’t have a horse in that fight since i’m not black, but i wouldn’t try to censor them. I’d tell them that they were racist, but i still wouldn’t try to force my view against them.
So:
“I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a drag act at the school performance because it offends our Christian sensibility.”
“I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a drag act at the school perormance because it mocks our trans gender experience.”
“I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a blackface act at the school performance because it reinforces harmful stereotypes against a minority.”
Which of these is more valid than the others?
What about 9-year-olds doing impersonations of people with Down Syndrome? I mean, they might grow up to be impressionists, so who are we to stop them? Besides, any kid in school that actually has Down Syndrome will think, “Hey, everyone’s laughing at me and this is great because living day in and day out is better as the butt of everyone’s joke is better than not existing. And if our school didn’t let other kids go up on stage to do a performance that makes a joke of having down syndrome, then that’s no different than making those kids not exist.
So if i dress up in drag and people laugh, i’m doing harm just like somebody who makes fun of a child with Down’s Syndrome? And if i have a charity race and people laugh while i run in drag, i’m doing harm like somebody who makes fun of Down’s Syndrome?
That’s… interesting. Authoritarian poppycock, but interesting that you fail to see the obvious way you are aping Anita Bryant.
You forgot one:
“I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a drag act at the school performance because it reinforces harmful stereotypes against a minority.”
And really? Really, you wouldn’t want a school administrator to step in and tell a group of 5th graders that they can’t do a blackface show at the school variety show? What if the kids just wanted to go up and tell their favorite “dumb blonde” jokes. Should they have a captive audience of other students and parents sit through 5 minutes of dumb-blonde jokes because they don’t want to censor?
Dude, you’re striking me as more and more out of touch with each post here.
Yes – this isn’t rocket science: a drag act specifically designed to mock boys dressed in girls clothing is directly harmful to any boys in the school who’d like to wear girls clothing without being mocked.
So then, rocket science question: at what age are they allowed to have the drag acts in school performances?
And will be still be allowed to do drag within a thousand feet of your school, or is that a hate crime?
You literally try to ban a drag act because you want to save the children, then pretend you’re not being authoritarian. Do you want to try again, or has the rocket left orbit?
“So if i dress up in drag and people laugh”
The combined belief that
1) there is something inherently funny or ridiculous about a man wearing a dress,
and
2) that there’s nothing funny nor ridiculous about a woman wearing the same dress,
is transphobic.
Do you believe #1 and #2?
A variety show wherein a group of girls in skirts performing a choreographed dance routine is a “talent” performance (and anyone who laughs loudly at the performance is met with hundreds of icy glares); but a group of boys doing the exact same routine in the exact same outfits is a “comedy” performance (and everyone collectively laughs their asses off), is a variety show that is reinforcing that belief.
Would you find one performance funny and the other not?
You’re dodging all the good questions:
Try that one again. I mean, without being authoritarian.
Asked and answered.
I would do what you would probably do if there were sketches about dumb blondes and Down’s Syndrome. I would complain. Most people would complain. We would say it was pointless. So you are complaining because the nine-year-olds in dresses were mocking your trans gender child? You said your son wasn’t interested.
So when do the drag performances become legal? When everybody is eighteen or twenty-one years old? Not in schools? Not within a thousand feet of a school or church where there might be a trans gender child? When and where does drag become legal IF NOT when nine-year-olds want to do it in front of all the parents and teachers?
Asked and answered.
Parent: Hey, what’s with the skit making fun of kids with Down Syndrome? My son has Down Syndrome!
Admin: Was he upset by the skit?
Parent: Well, he’s only 6. Fortunately, he was more engaged with his coloring book by that point of the show.
Admin: I’m very confused now! If your son wasn’t upset by the comedic impersonation of people with Down Syndrome, then how can you say there’s a problem?
Parent: Ah, you’re so right! I didn’t think of it that way; he WASN’T upset. Clearly there’s no reason for me to speak up. Sorry for wasting your time.
What world do you live in where things work this way?
And “pointless”? That’s what you think parents would complain about? “Hey, you really shouldn’t let kids do sketches that include ‘dumb-blonde’ jokes; they’re so pointless. And that next skit, with all the jokes about stingy Jewish people? It should have been taken out too. Because it’s so pointless.”
One last question:
What would you be complaining about? Would you be complaining that the school administrators failed to censor the kids who wanted to tell “dumb-blond” jokes?
The nine-year-olds are doing a drag sketch in front of the whole school. Call the police, it’s a hate crime against my trans gender family’s sensibilities.
Make it illegal. Make it impossible for nine-year-olds to laugh at a drag act, to perform a drag act, to discuss a drag act. Go ahead, if that’s what makes you such a wonderful parent. Complain about the drag act, call the cops and report the hate crime.
Good grief, if i had you as a parent in the 70s during the days of Anita Bryant, i’d be just as in trouble as if i had Fred Phelps as a parent. Authoritarians having children is just bad news. I don’t care whether they are christian or trans gender, the whole thing of authoritarian parenting and using it as an excuse to censor whatever makes your family uncomfortable is just … so … tiiiiiired…
Really. As a child who knew they were gay and had to go through an entire childhood of abuse from my school and from my family, in a school district which is still being the subject of headline news horror stories about homophobic abuse right up into recent times, along with children being driven to suicide by macho bullying… and then you try to act like you’re being a good parent by trying to forbid nine-year-olds from doing a drag act at school. I’m picturing you in 2014, i’m picturing my school in 1979, and i’m having a really hard time figuring out why you can’t understand that you’re not helping, you’re actually adding to the problem instead of contributing to the solution.
The solution is less authoritarianism, not more of telling other people what their nine-year-olds are allowed to do in front of everybody.
FFS. “Hate crime” again? “Illegal” again? “Call the cops” again?
If your intent is to “win” an argument by repeatedly demonstrating that you are not reading my responses until I give up in frustration, then buy yourself a plastic crown from the party store and start celebrating. I’m done until you show any sign that you’ve actually read what I wrote in #54:
… says the guy who just acknowledged he’d complain to school administrators if a group of nine-year-olds were allowed to perform a skit mocking people with Down Syndrome.
I’m also done until such time you show any sign of even being coherent.
So you want to forbid the drag act that the nine-year-olds do in front of the whole school. You want it to be okay to call the charity drag race a hate crime.
When is the drag act okay? It’s okay at the race, but not at the school? I’m confused. It’s okay in our country but not in Britain? It’s not okay in front of children? It’s not okay in front of nine-year-olds? It’s not okay if nine-year-olds do it? When and where is it legal, then, IF NOT when the nine-year-olds want to do it in front of the whole school?
My question is perfectly coherent and on topic: When and where is it legal to do a drag performance, then, IF NOT when the nine-year-olds want to do it in front of the whole school?
My response in #54 was perfectly coherent and consistent; I even reposted it in #78. But your sentence in #80 “You want it to be okay to call the charity drag race a hate crime” to my words “This does not amount to an endorsement of that category of behavior being treated as a crime. To the contrary, I’m wholly against any state infringing upon its citizen’s rights to engage in such speech” makes me wonder if maybe you are reading my responses, but struggle with complex sentence structures. Let me try to help:
It should never be a crime to do a drag performance.
It should never be a crime to tell “dumb blond” jokes.
It should never be a crime to do impressions of people with Down Syndrome for laughs.
Now your turn. You said you would complain to administrators if students were allowed to tell “dumb blond” jokes during a variety show. What would be your complaint? What would you have had the administrators do, if not censoring the kids from doing that particular performance?
“We should shame all of those transvestites and nine-year-olds who might become transvestites, because it offends our families’ sensibilities. We’re not Anita Bryant, we’re not Fred Phelps, we’re good liberal parents of trans gender children. We just say the exact same thing as Anita Bryant. We’re doing it to Save The Children.”
Whether blonds, blacks, Down’s Syndrome, or any other situation where i am not involved: if other people complained and said they were offended, i would probably try to understand and sympathize. I don’t like it when people try to hurt gays by telling gay jokes, but i don’t ever try to forbid gay jokes, even if nine-year-olds tell them in front of the whole school. I think they should deal with the consequences and complaints. I wish more people had complained when i was being hurt by gay bullying, so it’s not like i don’t care for your child to be safe, i totally want them to not be harmed.
But you are saying you want the nine-year-olds to not do a drag act and get lauged at by the whole school? Your child didn’t mention caring. Why should we forbid the drag act? Where should it be legal, IF NOT when the nine-year-olds are doing it in front of the whole school?
You think it will mock your child’s experience, and this will hurt them. Anita Bryant thought transvestites would harm her children’s Christian sensibilities, and they should be kept away from schools and children shouldn’t be exposed to them. So why is it okay for you to tell nine-year-olds not do do drag for laughs in front of the whole school? It’s okay? Anita Bryant hated that stuff, you hate that stuff, and both sound like made-up reasons for hating that stuff. Save The Children. Christian or Trans Gender, just Save The Children.
Save the children by ERASING the transvestites. Make sure they never ever ever wear the other gender’s clothes for laughs in front of everybody. Then our children will all be saved.
Sigghhh… Like i said: so tiiiiiiired…. really, even Anita knew a few other tunes to sing…
In all honesty, i’m not a complainer. If i had a blond friend who complained, i would probably listen to them and find out what was wrong with the joke, and then i could tell you about the complaint.
In the case you presented, all the kinds laughed at boys dressed as girls. You said this was a mockery of your trans gender family member. I say this is a made-up complaint because your family member did not tell you they had any problem.
In the case of the blond jokes, the blackface, or the racist slur, i would probably understand in the context, i would probably be able to give you a specific complaint. But in the real world context of your transgender son, i don’t see the complaint. I think the nine-year-olds should be able to have their drag act and have everybody at school laugh at them, and until a harm is demonstrated, i wouldn’t complain. You didn’t demonstrate a harm, you make up a hypothetical and the evidence doesn’t show me that it’s truly harmful.
If the nine-year-olds can’t do drag in front of your son, who can? How old do they have to be? Do they have to be a thousand feet away from the school, or will they harm your son when they do drag somewhere else, like at the beach or in the park or in the shopping mall? Should we only forbid the nine-year-olds from doing drag at school, and allow drag as long as it’s a thousand feet away from The Children That We All Must Save Oh God Please Think Of The Children?
And what if they just do a liiiitle drag next time, and don’t do the whole act. What if they just do a tiny tiny bit of transgressive signalling, maybe a string of pearls on an otherwise male-identified person… is that wrong to do in front of your son, too? Is that still to aggressive against your trans family? What if only half of the audience laughs, is that only half as offensive to your family’s sensibilities? Would it be better if lots of people complained about the nine-year-old transvestites, so then your authoritarian urge would have some external validation?
I want to know why the nine-year-olds can’t do drag in front of the whole school but your trans gender son is hopefully going to be accepted by everybody at school. Your son is supposed to wear clothes that are referred to as “boy clothes” and we are not supposed to mock them. But when the other people’s sons wore girl clothes, and they weren’t really girls they were just dressing up for a joke, and everybody laughed, you say this is a way of harming your trans gender son. I want to understand you, so i can figure out what i’m missing. I want your son to be safe at school but i don’t want to imitate Anita Bryant and Save The Children by banning the nine-year-old transvestites.
If you don’t want the nine-year-olds to do drag in front of the whole school, then where and when is it okay to do drag without harming your trans son? Should we erase all transvestites and make sure they don’t exist? Or should we just make sure there existence is kept out of every place where your son might potentially think it’s mocking their life experience as a trans person? And should we avoid mocking the Christians, too, if we avoid mocking your son? No more sketches about transvestites, no more sketches making fun of Christians, would that solve lots of problems?
Anybody who loves drag comedy should google Vista with Star and Verdean on 22 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v_x1jc8rZU
If we had been allowed to dress up in drag as nine-year-olds and do good jokes like that in front of my school, i would have felt like school was awesome. But nine-year-old boys in dresses, that’s just so offensive to transgender people, we could never permit that kind of humor in schools. Save The Children.
Also, google Mary Walsh on 22 Minutes and see her doing drag king performances that will have your sides splitting. Oh, how i wish my school had been able to put on funny comedy drag sketches like hers!
Oh, wait, we can’t have drag sketches at school. Save The Children.
What i’m saying, all sarcasm aside, is that maybe you aren’t uncomfortable with the drag performance. Maybe it just wasn’t good comedy, and you’re seeing that as a bad reflection on the drag performance. But hey, they were only nine-year-olds, right? The ones who love to perform on stage will probably get better at the drag eventually and make you and your transgender son laugh at the jokes! Then maybe you’ll allow the drag at your son’s school and church.
Yeah, now i see the solution. We don’t have to forbid transvestites from existing. We just have to demand that they be funny enough to entertain us and don’t make us uncomfortable. Then we can even have them over for dinner! And let them teach at schools! And adopt kids of their own! Huh? Wut?
And this is how you tell a gay joke without offending gays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e6kGH-qTU8
Even if there are nine-year-old gays in the audience (like i was nine years old once) i would argue that the gay jokes in that sketch are not harming anybody.
Is any of this helping you to understand me? I want to understand you, Kevin Kirkpatrick, and figure out why we should ban the nine-year-olds boys from wearing girls’ clothes in front of the whole school for laughs? Is it because the drag act is wrong, or is it because the comedy has to be of a certain quality?
I never did drag in my life, but if i ever did run in a drag race for charity i wouldn’t want to be charged with a hate crime. I never had a trans gender child but if i did, i would want the drag act in the school performance to make them laugh, not make them uncomfortable in a hostile environment.
First they came for the transvestites, but i was not a transvestite, so i didn’t speak up. Then they came for the people who told gay jokes, but i didn’t speak up, because i’m not a comedian. See where this goes?
And this is how you make jokes about the “N Word” if you are a Pakistanian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ6D1nHgO2c
I wish i had been able to see that kind of comedy when i was an abused gay nine-year-old. Challenging prejudice against gays, transvestites, transgender people, ethnic minorities, and any other groups, would have been a boost for me, would have made me better able to deal with a world which is so hostile to my being gay, especially when i was nine years old.
But we can’t have a drag act in front of all the nine-year-olds at school because if everybody laughs, and it’s not a really good joke, then it is harming all of the families with transgender children. Am i getting closer? Or am i still missing something important here where we are all supposed to Save The Children?
Speaking of drag comedy, those who do not live in what used to be the British Empire, may not be aware of Mrs Browns Boys, a TV sitcom in which the title character is played by Brendan O’Carroll, who is, as far as I can tell, a heterosexual male
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDdVoFds56w
It comes from a long tradition of British comedy featuring broadly humorous (?) treatments of sexuality and gender. This tradition grew up in a time when homosexuality was brutally repressed and transexuality was unheard of. One can draw a parallel with Amos and Andy in relation to the issue of race in the US.
To be honest, I’m not sure where I’m going with this comment, but I really don’t think the intention (or effect) of the drag act in Mrs Browns Boys is to be offensive to transgender people or women.
I’m not a comedian, but when people say stupid things like how they don’t want transvestite performances in front of their nine-year-old, i think maybe i have some material to work with. Perhaps that is how the writers on 22 Minutes see things sometimes? And on the Daily Show? But we can’t allow our nine-year-olds to watch 22 Minutes because they might see a drag performance and hear the ENTIRE audience laughing at the lady with the mustache. Just because she’s a lady… with a mustache! The nine-year-old trans gender children will be so damaged, it is just going to destroy their family. And if they ever saw Gavin Crawford in drag as Verdean, with a skirt and pearls, their little nine-year-old trans gender heads would explode, they would have their lives ruined. Save The Children.
I find three quotes above:
“It should never be a crime to do a drag performance.”
“Yes – this isn’t rocket science: a drag act specifically designed to mock boys dressed in girls clothing is directly harmful to any boys in the school who’d like to wear girls clothing without being mocked.”
““I don’t want the nine-year-olds to be allowed to do a drag act at the school performance because it reinforces harmful stereotypes against a minority.”
All three statements are uttered by the same person. They seem to contradict each other in a very incoherent way, so i have been confused by that person. My responses were sarcastic, but my confusion is real. I want to reconcile the contradictions.
I want to know if it’s ever going to be okay– EVER– for nine-year-olds to do a drag act in front of the whole school? Should we stop the nine-year-olds from doing a drag act because it’s bad for transgender children? Should we stop the nine-year-olds from doing a drag act because it’s bad for Christian children? Should we stop the nine-year-olds from doing a drag act because they just aren’t very good at performing on stage yet and a drag act is so complicated it requires a special adult level of skill and nuance?
When will we be allowed to have a charity drag race with men dressed as women, without being charged with a hate crime, and without harming the nine-year-old transgender child?
Or is that impossible? Should we just round up all the transvestites now, and send them off to concentration camps? Or is that too extreme? Should we just demand that they stop transvestiting in front of our precious nine-year-old transgender children? Save The Children?
And how long will it take for some people to admit that they are Transvestite Erasure Radical Family supporters? I mean, if a person keeps demanding that transvestite activity be forbidden in front of schoolchildren in their family, doesn’t that make them a TERF?
We want transgender children to be safe. This seems to be where we all agree. But some of us want transvestite behavior (performed by adults, performed by nine-year-olds, performed where it’s laughed at, performed in front of schools) to be ERASED. Some of us apparently want transvestites to not exist in front of their family because it’s too scary. So why do some of us disagree with this? Why is Trans GENDER Erasure a terrible evil thing, but Trans VESTITE Erasure is being proposed as the way to keep the schoolkids safe?
I’m not being sarcastic on these questions. I want a real answer because i personally believed that transgender and transvestite people could both exist in the same world, but every time i make the proposal, i’m told the matter and antimatter will somehow explode. So who gets to stay and who gets to go? The transgender nine-year-old gets our sympathy and we let them stay? But the nine-year-old in the wrong gender’s clothing is forbidden to get in front of the whole school where everybody will laugh at their wrong dress?
If they’re both supposed to be equal, and respected as equals, then why are we accomodating the hypothetical feelings of one person (who didn’t actually say they were offended) while simultaneously demanding the erasure of the existence of the other persons (because everybody laughed at their gender mockery).
If we aren’t demanding the erasure of their existence, then when does the nine-year-old transvestite get to wear the “wrong” clothes, and when is it okay to laugh at the transvestite without being accused of harming the transgender child’s health and family?
Oh dear, i’m “dropping discourse to rock-bottom levels” because i mentioned concentration camps for the evil transvestites. Well, thank goodness the transgender child didn’t hear me. They have a forty-one percent rate of attempted suicide, so if they hear about how i was laughing at the transvestite comedy then they will probably do something rash and self-destructive. Everybody knows that drag performances in public school events is what causes minority children to have high suicide rates. And when men dress up as dames and run for charity, the wave of transgender child suicides is just astonishingly painful. I remember when i was nine years old and my family was abusing me for not conforming to gender expectations: i chose to live my life and decided not to kill myself, because i knew if i waited long enough, some day, somebody who really truly cares about children would make sure that no drag acts were ever allowed at my public school. And now that the day is getting closer, i’m so much safer. I might be able to go on living. Not sure, because i’m at rock-bottom levels, but maybe i can pull through. Save The Children.
Kevin H,
One point that seems to be tripping you up: there is a difference between
1) A school administrator deeming a specific performance to be inappropriate for a school-sponsored event
and
2) A specific performance being deemed a crime.
If nothing else gets through, can you at least affirm that you understand these two things are different; that, for instance, a 2-hour sermon “How To Find Jesus” might be inappropriate for a school-sponsored event, yet not a crime?
Another thing I’ve posted many times: I have no problems with transvestites or cross-dressing; nor any individual dressing in drag while performing for an audience. If a comedian feels most at peace performing their comedy while dressed in any non-conventional manner, that’s A-Ok. In fact, I’d go one further: I would openly encourage anyone to dress however they’d like; expressing themselves in accordance with whatever gender-conventional (or utterly non-conventional) attire they are most happy to do so. If one or more boys felt most comfortable performing a particular dance number in ballet leggings and frilly tutus, NO PROBLEM, so long as it’s a ballet performance presented and received as a demonstration of those kids’ skills and talents for performing ballet.
What I do not support is the message: “There is something inherently funny about a male-bodied person dressed in (or otherwise presenting with) conventionally female attire. As such, if you see a person engaged in such absurd behavior, it is right and good to point and laugh at them.” I don’t think any child – whether transgender, transvestite, or otherwise gender non-conforming – who feels compelled to dress outside of gender conventions should need worry that other kids, backed by teachers and administrators, will feel it’s acceptable to mock their choice to do so. And I think performances such as the one I found so objectionable lend exactly that backing. “But Mrs. Johnson, why shouldn’t I laugh at Marcy for wearing boy swim trunks? I mean, you were laughing like crazy when I wore that girl’s cheer-leading outfit at the variety show! How is this any different? How is it any less funny?”
As the parent of a transgender child, I’m dealing with the fact that I’m raising my son in a world that drives over 40% of transgender individuals to contemplate suicide, and more than 1 in 10 to attempt to end their lives. My sole expressed desire is that administrators of his school nix performances which reinforce transphobic sentiments (to wit, “that it is FUNNY to see a female-bodied child dressed in conventionally male attire; and it is OK to laugh at such a spectacle”), no different than I’d expect them to nix racist, sexist, homophobic, or other such performances.
You ask, “I want to know if it’s ever going to be okay– EVER– for nine-year-olds to do a drag act in front of the whole school?”
I’d answer: when it’s an act that either
1) does not reinforce the aforementioned transphobic sentiment or
2) is not performed in a context which conveys tacit approval from the school of said message
Anyway, in our long set of exchanges, it’s become quite evident that I’ve essentially been typecast in your mind as a monster; some god-awful mix of Fred Phelps and Hitler. To your eyes, my requesting that the school-wide variety show not include any transphobic, racist, homophobic, or sexist performances has become indistinguishable from the Nazi’s sending the Jews to the gas chambers.
It’s become equally evident that the words I write are not the words you see. You have repeatedly “paraphrased” my stance as the exact opposite of what I’ve written, e.g.
* your continuous, BLATANT misrepresentation of my stance on ‘hate crime’;
* you continue to misrepresent my son’s non-response to the performance; and to act as if my only concern is on the effect of the show on *him*; not the effect of the performance showing other kids that it’s okay to mock transgender kids.
* in post #93, your assertion that I don’t “want transvestite performances in front of [my] nine-year-old”, which directly contradicts my actual words, “In contrast, I would have no problem if the variety show were *filled* with boys dressing in conventionally-feminine attire, or vice-versa, so long as the acts lacked the comedic undertone of, “Look everyone, this boy is wearing a SKIRT! And that girl is wearing A TIE! Isn’t that RICH? Have you ever seen anything so RIDICULOUS??””
In short, I’m not even sure you’re conversing with me at all, so much as a evil caricature of me that you’ve built up in your mind. Your inability to craft responses that address points even resembling what I’ve written leaves me convinced that this dialog is never going to move forward.
With you, on this topic, I’m done.
Last word is yours.
Okay. Let me know when the kids have all finished committing suicide. Then when my drag queen friends and i finish our evil cackling we will move on to our next objective: drag performance in church. If drag acts get laughed at in school, and that causes the transgender children to commit suicide, then maybe drag acts in church will cause the Christian children to commit suicide. That was our ACTUAL objective all along, your transgender child’s suicide was just collateral damage. What? They didn’t commit suicide yet? Well then i guess we aren’t transvestiting aggressively enough against your family. I’ll go find some mascara in a color which is sure to make everybody laugh, and then the wave of suicides will be the biggest ever. Because if there’s one thing i really want, it’s for your child to kill himself after hearing my drag queen friends laugh at how horribly ridiculous that dress looks on that guy with the hairy legs. We’re laughing really loudly, and somebody is wearing the wrong clothes, so it’s clearly a hate crime, call the Lancashire Police. Open and shut case, obviously guilty. Save The Children.
It’s a good thing transgender children never commit suicide because of authoritarian parents. We all know that the high suicide rates of transgender children are because of people laughing at bad drag queens. The authoritarian parents are blameless. As long as we prevent mockery of bad drag, the children will be safe. The authoritarian parents are doing a good job when they forbid the laughter at bad drag acts. It’s the evil aggressive drag queens who are transvestiting so hurtfully against the transgender children which causes all of the high suicide rates. Authoritarian parents know this, and that’s why it’s their duty to stop people from laughing at bad drag acts. To Save The Children.
Kevin K:
I think you have made a bunch of very reasonable points, and I commend your patience. I think it’s clear your are distinguishing drag performances where the use of drag is simply a costume, where the focus is on comedy or art or whatever, and drag performances where the entirety of the humor is seeing boys dressed as girls (or girls dressed as boys). I think that’s a reasonable distinction to make and to discuss.
I was involved in the production of one of the latter shows as a teen. Yes, the entirety of the humor was watching boys pretend to be girls; they weren’t mocking girls, they were not even trying to be funny in an absolute sense, they were just acting as they perceived girls to act, and it was funny because they weren’t girls. I can see now how that would be a problem. I can also see how it is quite distinct from something like Monty Python actors portraying female characters, although there are other issues there.
Regarding the comparison to blackface: blackface was used as part of a practice of mocking black people, and it has become a thing unto itself, rejected regardless of how it is used or done. Any attempt to darken skin gets called blackface and is criticized. (I’ve noticed that words get shut down that way, too; when a word becomes commonly used in a derogatory manner, it gets declared a slur and proscribed, and bigots pick another word, rinse and repeat.) I think people are concerned about this happening for drag, that the medium gets proscribed because the message is (often? sometimes?) mocking cross dressing or mocking the affected gender. It is, after all, easier to reject the form than to wait around to find out if the substance matches expectations.
There are a bunch of issues here, and I hope we can discuss them well, without unfounded accusations. You provide an important perspective.
Sackbut said: “I think it’s clear your are distinguishing drag performances where the use of drag is simply a costume, where the focus is on comedy or art or whatever, and drag performances where the entirety of the humor is seeing boys dressed as girls (or girls dressed as boys). I think that’s a reasonable distinction to make and to discuss.”
So the Dames On The Run are not very good comedy or art or whatever, they are only “drag performances where the entirety of the humor is seeing boys dressed as girls”. Does that mean they are harming transgender children and causing gay kids to commit suicide? And if so, after we ban the Dames On The Run charity race, do we start examining all other drag to make sure it’s good art and not some kind of horrible aggression against The Children?
This is so confusing, and i know we need to Save The Children, because they have such a high suicide rate compared to their peers. So does the solution come from making the distinction between good drag and bad drag? How bad does the drag have to be in order for it to be considered just “entirely humor seeing boys dressed as girls”? What if they tell a few really good jokes, will they get a Bad Drag Exemption?
And since the drag queens and laughter at bad drag are causing all of the GLBTQA+ kids to commit suicide, why don’t we just ban drag performances at schools and churches in order to solve the problem. The (utterly blameless) authoritarian parents don’t usually appreciate bad drag performances, so we can make two groups of people happy at the same time. Three groups, if you count the religious people who despise bad drag performances.
If i learned anything from watching all of the videos by Zinnia on ZJEmptv, it’s that religious authoritarian parents are blameless, and it’s laughter at bad drag performance which causes young LGBTQA+ people to commit suicide.
My friend in the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence showed me a photo of himself, wearing really awful nun drag and weird makeup. We all laughed, but he wasn’t telling any really good jokes. Should i call the Lancashire Police and report the hate crime? The hate crime you walk past is the hate crime you tacitly approve, and i’m so afraid that the transgender children will all commit suicide now. So do we get the police involved? Or is to going to be all right if we just make sure he never ever ever wears the bad nun drag near a school with Children who must be Saved?
My wife and i were watching our kids’ school performance, and there was an act which consisted of boys dancing while dressed as girls, and everybody laughed because that was the whole point, mocking boys in dresses in order to make fun of transgender children the wrong clothes. My wife and i were so horrified, for the sake of Saving our transgender Children, so we called the Lancashire Police to report a hate crime. Did we overreact? Do you think our transgender son will commit suicide if we don’t stop the bad drag acts from ever happening at their school again?
What if they try it again next year, but during the dance routine they also tell some jokes? Are they still transvestiting aggressively against my suicidal transgender son, or is the bad drag act acceptable now that they have raised other issues besides the laughter at gender transgression?
Laughing at the ridiculous drag act in front of the whole school is very dehumanizing to my transgender child. The hatecrime must be stopped.
Still not “off the cliff”? What if we permit the boys to dress as girls in front of the whole school, but we don’t laugh at them? What if we all compliment them on their “flawless” feminine beauty, and don’t ever laugh? Are they still hatecriming against my suicidal transgender Child who must be Saved? Is the problem with the boys in dresses, or is the problem with the audience daring to laugh at the boys’ dresses? Or is the problem with sissyfags not sufficiently conforming to authoritarian expectations?
I’m only a sissyfag effeminate queer, so my opinion doesn’t count as much as a manly Father who is capable of Sacred Reproduction. You shouldn’t even listen to my opinion because i got AIDS all over it– avert your eyes, children! Listen only to the people who reproduce. After all, we know that nothing makes your opinion (and your HORRIFIED DISCOMFORT at people laughing at boys in dresses in front of the whole school) more valid than your ability to make some babies be born (without their consent, in a world which mistreats people for not conforming to gender role stereotypes) so it’s important to get the opinion of a good parent here. Ignore the sissyfag opinions because they are dehumanizing, shut up and listen to what the sacred reproducers are telling us?
I’m sure the parents of transgender children are never ever ever “off the cliff” with their HORRIFIED DISCOMFORT so it’s important to figure out when i’m committing hatecrimes by transvesting aggressively against their families.
Kevin H,
Do you really not understand the difference between saying
“people should not do X in this particular context, because [it’s hurtful behavior, it’s inappropriate to that context, it’s in poor taste]”
and
“X is a crime and we must call the police and have anyone who does X hauled off in chains to be beaten into submission.”
Kevin K has patiently pointed out this difference to you on multiple occasions, and I can’t figure out whether you’re just too thick to grasp it, or willfully ignoring it because you can’t resist the cheap rhetorical trick of invoking images of the police hauling people away.
Seriously, you’re acting like those Christians who whine about the War of Christmas and fretting that Obama will lock them up for praying. You have some worthwhile points on what place drag performances should have in our culture, but you’ve managed to derail your own argument with your hyperbole.
By my count, you’ve authored 18 of the last 22 posts in this thread. Maybe it’s time to chill out for a bit?
Well of course i’ll chill out. My sissyfag opinions don’t matter, only the opinions of people who perform Sacred Reproduction are what counts.
I do understand the difference between your two examples, and of course your two examples explain that is why a good parent should justifiably be HORRIFIED WITH DISCOMFORT because of the laughter at the bad drag act which is so dehumanizing. But my sissyfag life experience hasn’t blessed me with any children of my own, so i don’t understand why the Lancashire Police weren’t called in to investigate the hatecrime when everybody laughed at the nine-year-old boys in dresses.
“fretting that Obama will lock them up for praying”
That’s way better than fretting that the Lancashire Police will be called to the charity Dames On The Run race.
Of course, the Obama thing never happened.
Perhaps the Dames On The Run never happened either?
So then your comparison would be fair. Oh wait, the Dames On The Run did get investigated as a hatecrime, but Obama didn’t lock anybody up for praying. Is your comparison still fair? Am i overreacting with HORRIFIED DISCOMFORT? You know how we sissyfags can be too melodramatic.
It’s not like the police find excuses to abuse drag queens and sissies. The police are there strictly to protect and serve. Transvestites have nothing to fear from the police, ever; and if queers fret, we are like people who are afraid that “Obama will lock them up for praying”. Our fears are unfounded and melodramatic, and nobody ever called the police in for frivolous reasons to harass the transvestite activities.
Calling the police to investigate Dames On The Run charity race as a dehumanizing hatecrime is a really silly thing.
Calling the police to investigate the kids’ school performance where everybody laughed at the boys in dresses strictly for the sake of mocking boys in dresses– on the other hand– is totally not a silly thing. It should be done every time, in order to spare the parents of transgender children any horrified discomfort because of the aggressive transvestiting.
I’m not a comedian, but i bet some funny drag performer like Eddie Izzard could find endless material here. Not one of those awful UNfunny drag performers, though; THEY should be investigated for hatecrimes.
Oh, for fuck’s sakes.
First of all, the Lancashire Police haven’t done fuck all to anyone yet. They received a complaint.
Second, nobody here is defending that complaint, or suggesting that “hate crimes” is an appropriate way to deal with this issue. Keep flailing away at that strawman, though.
Third, you spent about half of this thread bickering with Kevin K over a different incident, as to which Kevin K made it perfectly clear on multiple occasions that he did not view it as a “hate crime” and was not calling for police involvement. But you were so anxious to fight with someone about hate crimes and compare them to Anita Bryant that you ignored it and dishonestly kept claiming otherwise.
So now it’s clear that you do understand the difference, you were just arguing in bad faith in the believe that it would score you some Internet Points.
Anyway, I’m done with you, as you’re obviously not someone worth engaging with, and I trust anyone else who’s actually still reading this thread will draw that conclusion, too. Feel free to report me to the Internet Police for hate crimes.
Yes, Screechty Monkey, the parent who performed the Sacred Reproduction has an important opinion. We should honor and respect their feelings because they are afraid that hypothetically their transgender child will suffer from some nebulous harm in the future.
On the other hand, i am only a person who was actually phsycially, mentally, and emotionally abused for reasons of gender conformity. My opinions don’t count as much as the Sacred Reproducer with hypothetical worries. My comments are just strawmen and bad faith. My decades of ACTUAL (not hypothetical) physical assaults, emotional abuse, suffering at home and at school and at work, none of that counts as much as the hypothetical worries of the Sacred Parent because oh god won’t somebody please think of the children.
Not the people who were abused when they were children. Not the people who were abused when they went from childhood to adulthood. They don’t count. We should only care about people who reproduce and become Sacred Parents with hypothetical worries and horrifying discomfort; THEIR opinions are all that matters here.
It’s not like authoritarian parents are ever to blame for any of the problems discussed here. It’s not like “the herd” gets their attitudes from authoritarian parenting. It’s all the fault of people like me who just use strawmen and bad faith when talking about our physical and emotional abuse. Sacred Parents are always blameless, but effeminate sissyfags are a reason to call the police and investigage.
I guess i’m angry because hatecrimes– real actual hatecrimes– were committed against me repeatedly for decades, and you’re telling me to shut up and listen. But Kevin Kirkpatrick is a parent who is afraid of hypothetical harm that might occur against their child, and listening to their horrified discomfort is more important and deserving of sympathy than listening to or sympathizing with my actual (not hypothetical) experience. The parent who chose to reproduce in a world where people are abused for nonconformity, the parent who chose to cause a child to come into existence without any way to obtain consent to that existence, the parent who causes that child to exist and suffer a lifetime of consequenses: that parent gets sympathy. But the sissy effeminate queer who was actually abused and suffered from hatecrimes, they don’t get to receive that sympathy here.
Do you understand my feelings now, and can you see now why i am so belligerent and loquacious on these issues?
Kevin H you’ve made your point now.
And it isn’t true that the sissy effeminate queer who was actually abused and suffered from hatecrimes doesn’t get sympathy here.
Okay. I’m sorry for the profusion of comments. I wish i had known there was sympathy in both directions, i was only interpreting it in the other direction, but if you say so, i believe you. I’ve made some mistakes here and wound up not really helping, my escalation of arguments just wasn’t working out the way i wanted. I guess i have to go back to the quiet lurking that i’d been sticking to until this week, instead of trying to argue from my position of anger and frustration.
I thought your early comments were very valuable. I hope you don’t stop commenting. But once you’re doing nearly all the commenting on a particular thread it’s time to pause and take a deep breath. The chances are excellent that there will be another post on a related subject sooner or later.
Don’t worry, mate, it’s only the Internet, electrons are cheap, and when people have argued themselves into a corner they can pull back. take a break and start again.
What Mark said.
@Kevin H.,
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry as well. A little time/distance from thread, and re-reading it – in the heat of our disagreement, I treated your lived experiences dismissively. I am truly sorry to hear about the suffering you’ve endured. I would not want to contribute to an atmosphere which perpetuates that suffering for you or anyone else.
I’ll work to keep my empathy/sympathy more engaged in future exchanges.
@Sackbut,
Thanks for the considerate words; I agree there’s still a lot to explore here. Unfortunately, I’ve gone way over-budget in time spent on this comment thread (and a couple others elsewhere) as it is, and really do need to shift focus from “correcting the Internet” :-) to some work/home matters over the next few days.
Thank you, Kevin Kirkpatrick, i am truly very sorry for behaving poorly towards you. People were telling you to take your concerns to the school administration if necessary, and that seemed a small step away from taking concerns to the police, and that seemed a small step away from the police finding frivolous reasons to harass the parts of the community who are involved in crossdressing. So i jumped all over you, and you weren’t doing anything to hurt me, you were only thinking about trying to protect your child. We were both getting defensive about things that truly mattered to us. I’m sorry i was so awful about all of it.
Thanks Kevins.
I’m glad this ended with reconciliations.