Oh, how like a slimer I am in aspect and in character! How viscous my thoughts, how stalker-like my attempts at forming them in context of evidence! I have committed a grievous sin, which I will admit here and hope for papal dispensation from the gatekeepers of intersectionality: I have looked at the Likes on a post on Facebook, on a post that I felt aggrieved people with whom I feel the need to side with in a particular fight.
Ophelia Benson, with whom I have stood shoulder and shoulder in a great many fights against awful human beings bent on destroying feminists for being feminists on the internet, has decreed that I am anathema, that I am like a slimepitter; I am a terrible person and very much creepy and stalkerish for my actions in deciding to disagree with her that the question of whether trans women are women is not an easy one and in my methodology in catching up in the matter. By my picking now, while she feels under assault, to disagree with her specific tack and her specific argumentation about trans women making awful terrible demands of her like asking yes/no questions for clarification, I am of course disingenuous, not legitimately asking but rather just trying to tear her down. I am “joining the mob”. And I am even indistinguishable — despite our history — from that mob.
Let’s get the housekeeping out of the way first — the backstory that moves me to post so floridly once more, despite my prolonged absence.
Ophelia has recently, ostensibly inadvertently, angered the online trans community, with whom FtB is generally friendly, after some rather tone-deaf commentary on the performance of beauty by Caitlyn Jenner. This brought to the minds of a number of trans folk hereabouts a post from a year ago about Hobby Lobby, when she both dismissed a request to acknowledge that Planned Parenthood actually also benefits trans men who still require OB/GYN services, and subsequently misgendered a trans person who claims to have given their preferred pronouns — they were understandably wary of her and evidently viewed Jenner post as trans-antagonistic. This sparked a large fight, during which time Ophelia acted as though — if you’ll pardon my interpreting her feelings here — that she was under siege by a number of dishonest interlocutors.
After this fight simmered for a month plus (while I’ve been preoccupied with my own life nonsense and could not be moved to post even silly videos about turtles or about the latest video game that I’m obsessed with), things came to a renewed head recently, when a trans person asked her point blank whether trans women are actually women, and demanded a yes or no answer.
Sensing this as a trap, she has posted about how awful this tactic is, how holding her hostage to a yes or no answer is abridging freethought and demanding dogmatic adherence to a specific ideology. The trans community was, in my estimation rightly, incensed by this refusal to acknowledge their requested validation of trans women’s womanhood.
Ophelia’s reaction seems odd to me because the question has a very obvious answer that, as long as you recognize gender for the social construct that it is and are not trying to police what “counts” as womanhood while also demanding that we be critical of the gender binary, works entirely logically and equally with every other adjective you might add to “woman”. The phrase “are trans women actually women”, when you replace the adjective with another like “white”, or when you remove it altogether, has an obvious answer.
“Are white women actually women?”
“Yes — the ‘white’ part is not a modifier per se of the word ‘woman’, thus you are asking ‘are women actually women’, and thus the answer is yes.”
“Are women actually women?”
“Of course they are. That’s a tautology.”*
It’s for that reason that I can without hesitation answer the question of ‘are trans women actually women’ with an unequivocal yes, with no qualifiers or asterisks.
Whether “womanhood” as a construct is valid is a separate question, and one I think Benson with her “gender-critical” views (as evidenced by her reaction to Caitlyn Jenner coming out as trans, and the backlash thereabouts) has been attempting to undertake herself, and she clearly sees being sideswiped by the question of whether or not a trans woman “counts” as a woman as a monkey wrench in the gears she’s trying to build to grind gender away into nothingness.
I’ll happily talk more about gender as a construct and a performance, and the nexus of the expected performance vs the actually performed one, at a later juncture if anyone’s interested, but it’s not particularly important here. The short form of my argument, though, is that since classification as “woman” has no bearing on whether you have certain physiological needs e.g. trans men also need OB/GYN services, what is left is the societal construct only, and thus denying the desired gender role of the trans person just because of physiological concerns like “has penis” is every bit as gatekeeping and gross and gender-prescriptive as denying womanhood because of somehow insufficiently womanly performance.
What’s important now, though, is that there was a conversation between some people I consider friends and allies on Twitter this morning, which I think was going in completely the wrong direction because of a certain specific recalcitrance to recognize that trans folk might actually have found Ophelia Benson’s arguing against the full womanhood of trans women to be damaging and might actually have been coming to that position through a rational examination of the evidence at hand. Even if that wasn’t her intent — even if her painting the entire exercise of asking for clarification because she’s been unclear to that point as pure McCarthyism (“Are you now or have you ever been”) was entirely out of fear of being painted into a binary yes/no question on a situation she thought was more complex, it’s clear that the correct answer was “yes” at the specific resolution in which it was being asked, and any “buts” actually come as nuance to the argument about the gender role, and not about the desire for that gender role by the trans person. Being unable to simply give the “yes” and then add whatever clarification was necessary, that act itself hurt those trans folks who posed the question.
My interjection into the Twitter conversation was explicitly about the potential of interpreting Benson’s response of the “trans women are women” question as having a qualifier that makes the womanhood of these trans women somehow questionable, that the use of the adjective somehow changed “women” in a way that “white” does not, and how her liking the responses that evinced that position might lead someone outside the argument to genuinely interpret Benson’s position as anti-trans. My argument was that judging Benson’s position as being anti-trans was actually fairly reasonable based on the evidence at hand.
I will note now that it is well possible to hold a nuanced view about gender as being a malleable and mostly-societally-prescribed construct without denying access to the desired gender role to the person who feels, thanks to nature or nurture, more comfortable in one over another. Given that we all get boxed into specific roles, and those specific roles might chafe (as I’m sure the specific roles Benson is saddled with chafe her in myriad ways, as she’s railed against them severally over the years), especially in context of society mistaking physical sex organs for appropriate classifying criteria for the otherwise malleable gender roles. It therefore seems only just and right to rally to assist those of us who would be more comfortable in another role, especially where our support of them comes at absolutely zero cost to us except to our own prior unexamined programming with regard to gender roles.
In fact, if the goal is the deconstruction of gender, it seems apposite to cause people to rethink how others might like to perform gender in their own ways regardless of the apparent discrepancies in their physiology, seeing as how the correlation between said physiology and their desired gender is entirely a shim between a fact and a societal construct. So, calling trans women women, saying yes to the dread question — if indeed “trans” alters the fact of “woman” in any way more proximately than “white” might, which I actually expressly deny — would thus aid in the deconstruction of the gender binary that so chafes at Benson and, frankly, us all.
Strangely enough, when I felt the need to catch up on this specific fight and interject in a conversation between these friends and allies on Twitter, apparently my simple act of reading a public Facebook thread where Benson asked for support against these arguments that were being made against her, and noticing that she’d liked some comments that apparently interpreted her position as something approximating “trans women shouldn’t need the adjective if they were actual full-stop women” (comments that I found particularly repulsive and moved me to see who liked them), was somehow creepy and stalkerish and Slimepitter-like. While this strikes me as a particularly vast overreach by someone who feels themselves under siege, I empathize with the thought processes that led to it, even if I disagree strenuously.
Being pointed to a thread, seeing who agreed with a repulsive comment, and noting that Benson herself did so, is not in fact equivalent to following her around social media for years and itemizing and indexing her every comment, like, edit, and all the rest of the social media equivalent of rifling through her garbage. Noting her public endorsement of a repugnant thing is not, actually, somehow thought-policing her. I have lost a number of friends — Benson included — over daring to suggest that Benson’s actions in this regard are actually relevant in determining Benson’s own views on trans folk, despite the fact that this collecting and parsing of evidence is only necessary since she’s so recalcitrant to give a simple yes or no when asked. Make no mistake that I have been burned for making this stand. But, I do not claim the victim mantle for that; anyone who’d burn me for these actions isn’t someone I’m wont to associate with anyway. I prefer people who can take a complicated and close topic like this and give it the nuanced treatment it deserves.
To be honest, I could not give you a link to the specific Facebook post now (since I’m not, you know, actually stalking her, committing URLs to my eidetic memory or copying them to my How-To-Burn-Ophelia file), nor do I care to put the full scope of how she’s behaved on trial (since I’m not trying to have her excommunicated or drummed out of anything or set on fire as a witch, despite her protestations). I am speaking only for myself, how I reacted to how I saw her behave and what I saw her endorse, and I am merely disagreeing with the whole vector this conversation and her repeated doubling-down against what should be a simple concession, much as she once disagreed with Michael Shermer for atheism being “kind of a guy thing” over his and fanboys’ howls of being witch-hunted. If you consider me a dishonest narrator, so be it. Since I can’t offer proof of what I saw or how I reacted, that’s your call.
I sincerely doubt that the mere action of looking at the Likes on a particularly gross post on Facebook and discovering the person you’re in the process of collecting data on is anything approaching the years-long, patently unfair and grossly fixated harassment campaign she amongst others hereabouts has endured at the hands of the numerous antifeminist atheists who inhabit the slime pit. And yet, a number of long-term commenters at Freethought Blogs, who should know who I am and what I’m about, evidently feel strongly enough that my noticing her liking comments that I find repugnant is somehow a literal witch-hunt that, despite the innumerable fights we’ve had over criticism vs McCarthyism, they agree that I am somehow dredging the annals of Benson’s history of associations to find some few words to hang her by like some Cardinal Richelieu.
Except, that is patently not my intent here. I disagree with the specifics of why Benson refused the yes or no question. I do not think she should be excommunicated or excoriated or burned at the stake or drummed out of the movement or drummed out of the blog network or defriended or block-botted or what-have-you, except I do not deny that people who’ve been hurt might feel otherwise. That people have reacted genuinely to being hurt and feeling betrayed by her is not particularly invalid, nor am I one to judge those cries and those blocks and those friendships thrown on the pyre. But in the meantime, I absolutely refuse to believe — despite her feeling under siege presently — that anyone should hold off on nuanced criticism.
I absolutely empathise with her reaction, though. It’s surely difficult to recognize valid criticism when you feel you’re under siege from all parties. I’ve seen so many of us go siege mentality. I’ve done it myself. I get what it feels like to be attacked, and for such a length of time. I’ve seen it in others where no valid criticism ever gets through to you, being drowned out by the rage and the howling. I’ve even seen how she’s reacted to others acting exactly as she’s doing now — when others deny there’s anything valid there, she holds them to account even despite the defense and the protests of witch-hunts.
Except honestly, much — maybe even most — of the criticism she’s receiving is, indeed, valid. What I’m seeing is a lot of valid, stretched out over time, peppered with a little overreach. Admittedly, I’m not the locus, but I’m certainly seeing a good deal of legitimate criticism of the calibre that you didn’t see with Rebecca Watson or Anita Sarkeesian.
Even if you CAN find me tons of examples of overreach, of attacking her directly, of attacking her for specious connections and tenuous arguments bolstered only by rumours and insinuation (none of which I can deny because it is in the very nature of a dogpile to contain overreach like this), a good deal of the criticism she is facing is actually valid. There are honest interlocutors genuinely hurt by things she’s said and done, that they can point to, that are still extant on the internet and not grossly misinterpreted; and these honest interlocutors are demanding a genuine and contrite apology and improvement in behaviour in the future. That is to say, nothing that would cost her a damn thing except a moment’s introspection.
When she’s ready to hear these requests, they’ll still be said. These people will still be here. The arguments will continue to exist, despite their various handwaving dismissals by Benson and supporters. And they’ll be provided by the people whose axe to grind is against their own oppression, not against Benson as a person, not against dishonest pilers-on from places slimey and antifeminist and only interested in taking down another strong feminist to the end of their holy war against feminists on the internet. Mind you, the longer she grabs at the victim mantle and paints all criticism equally, the more likely she’s doing damage to herself, and the more exasperated the honest interlocutors will get. The more likely it is, over time, that many of these people will have left, tired of waiting for Benson to catch up.
In the meantime, I side unequivocally with the trans folks who are hurt by this whole incident. Not out of spite of Benson, nor malice, nor attempting to drive traffic or steal traffic or popularity or “drama blogging” or whatever other excuse one might pull from the Grab Bag of I Don’t Wanna Deal With My Criticism. Let’s be honest — I barely blog any more. I can barely find it in me to do any sort of activism, given how high a price you pay when you dare disagree with people within your own community. I am only moved to fight the most proximate of injustices, and I harbor no pretenses that I’ll actually impact on them. Given I have two orders of magnitude lower traffic than Benson at the moment, I suspect only she will really see this (and only then thanks to the two links back to her posts in this one, thus the trackbacks). I further suspect only a select few very close to this issue or motivated to defend her against all attacks might comment. But if she does see this, and makes it to the end of this post without ragequitting half way through, good on her. She should hopefully know I have no “grudge” against her, no “beef”. Maybe the whole story laid out like this will bring her to realize this isn’t an attack, it’s a genuine request for dialogue.
I’m not kidding myself, though. Probably not.
—
*”Are blue candies actually candies?”
“OBVIOUSLY NOT. YOU WOULDN’T NEED TO QUALIFY THEM AS BLUE UNLESS THAT MEANT SOMETHING SPECIAL IN TERMS OF THE CANDY LABEL.”
I don’t normally read Benson’s blog, and have not been reading Pharyngula much for a couple of weeks, so I’ve missed this drama until today. I don’t yet have a settled opinion on the main point at issue – and since I’m neither trans nor a reader of Benson’s blog, it would have little weight if I did – but the accusations of witch-hunting, McCarthyism, stalking etc. being made are both absurd, and offensive to the real victims of those things.
You explicitly advocated genocide against Muslims: that is the moment when things got very ugly, very fast. I’m very glad you’ve apologised and stopped doing so, but after that you don’t get to accuse people of “demonising” you.
I’m with Giliell @94, FWIW.
Congratulations, you’re on the same team that has been tearing Pharyngula and much of FTB apart.
abear, I’ve refrained from linking to INXS.
(I’m a veteran, I can tell when the pot is being stirred)
PSA. I’m pretty sure that abear is a pitter.
@99. Nick Gotts : You are wrong in fact. Not a surprise coming from you.
^ PSA. For those who don’t already Nick Gotts was one of those who most demonised and attacked me back in the Pharyungula days. I will and have already admitted I went too far in some of what I said and apologise for that but Nick Gotts is NOT an impartial observer and not correct.
I think it is also telling that Nick Gotts believes demonising people is ever okay.
@87. oolon :
When the cis woman in question is Ophelia Benson and the subject of the discussion here and the cis man is PZ Myers who part runs withEd Brayton the whole FTB blogplex and is oneof thsoe most responsible for establishing who belongs here then yes, it clearly matters.
Context. Also if I may point out dishonest phrasing on your part. I notice you have failed to actually answer the questions.
Are you calling Ophelia Benson and PZ Myers liars here? (Dare I ask ‘yes or no’ maybe?)
I notice you avoided responding to the part in my #69 where Ipointed out why fb “likes’ are atbest ambigius evdinece tahat isn’t conclusive or good evdience particularly to start absuviely labellingand slandering peopel fro things theyand thsoe who know them well say they are not.
It appears that you, Oolon (PSA ex-pitter, present Horde member) are insisting that a looking at a certain Fb group &”liking” certain comments is conclusive proof and I have explaining why that is not good evidence and not something i buy or think others should buy. What exactly about that am I misunderstanding in your view?
Can we please get rid of this ^ link bit automatic appearing on every cut and paste from comments /posts here? Happy to add it as a link to things where needed – annoying having to constantly delete it where it isn’t.
abear
That’s the worst “guilt by association” I’ve seen in a while. I hope nobody likes chocolate, ’cause then you’re doomed.
Just in general, I’m not interested in airing anybody’s dirty laundry.
StevoR@103,104
No, I am not wrong in fact, liar: you did indeed explicitly call for genocide against Muslims.
Nor did I say demonising people was ever OK: I said you do not get to accuse people of demonising you, because you were not demonised. People reacting strongly to your disgusting remarks is not demonising.
@StevoR, yes OB and PZ are transphobic, as am I, as are you … This whole conversation is so contrary to SJ101 it hurts. We are all racist, sexist, transphobic, we have that bias. Acknowledging that is important. Citation –
https://twitter.com/infurioustoo/status/625238586221314048
Now you are demanding evidence that meets your cis-standards of transphobia before you’ll agree that specific things OB has done are beyond the usual background level of transphobia. Who do you think is qualified to answer that question? Trans people, obviously.
Literally every trans person I know well, low double digits, and a lot more besides heading to the trans people century are saying that OB has been trans antagonistic at best. What happened to believe women when they tell you X is sexist, or PoC when they tell you Y is racist? Does this just not apply to trans people at all? Hyperskepticism needs to be applied! I pointed this out to one of OBs defenders, his response was to say “Well not ALL trans people, just a self selected group at that”. (Paraphrased from Twitter)
So just having all the trans people I know tell me something a cis person has been doing is off is not enough. I need to poll all trans people everywhere and get consensus before this cis ally will believe them.
Personally I’m more horrified at the cis allies and their dismissal of valid concerns at the moment, Ophelia is under attack so she has an excuse for being defensive. What is PZ Myers excuse, what is Chris Clarkes excuse? Haughtily announcing the whole thing is an attack on a “designated woman” by men (Dangerously close to a transphobic dogwhistle there). Or that all the criticism is lack of charity or misunderstanding and rumour. Do they think trans people are fucking ignorant dipshits who go around accusing cis women of transphobia for shits and giggles? Or just the “self selected” group who hang out at FTB?
Ophelia and her defenders should be ignoring what I and the other cis people siding with trans people are saying. NOT creating post after post on how meanie X said something hyperbolic about me!
Y’all should be thinking about this series of tweets … https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/625360815500173317 (Unfortunately not all in that thread, check out her timeline for the full set)
@ Nick Gotts : Notice the word Jihadists – Not Muslims.
Notice the absence of the word “genocide” and a specific call for that.
I’m not proud of that comment, I’ll admit it looks bad and was bad. I was drunk at the time as well as tired and emotional and I apologised for it, pretty much the next day if memory serves. I was wrong to say it.
But even still it doesn’t actually amount to what you say it does.
And, gee, I bet you’ve never ever said stuff in your life that you later regretted saying and don’t want to get dragged out against you either eh?
Also, Nick Gotts, people demonising me is just that people demonising me.
(The Taliban , Jihadist, Islamist aren’t all Muslims – I’d have thought that’d be clear to you and that’d be clear that they not everyMuslimonErath wa swhat iwas talking about here -and those who are fighting against us were being referred to not those whoare NOt douing so,.
Again, reading comprehension fail on your part. And also again, not my finest moment or best comment by light-years I’ll admit – and have already apologised for and repeatedly and years ago.
Sheesh and this is coming from a perspective that supposedly believes in rehabilitation?!
For clarity typos dammit! :
The Taliban, Jihadists, Islamists are NOT all Muslims – nor is defeating them a call for genocide. I’d have thought that’d be clear to you and that’d be clear that they not every Muslim on Earth was what I was clearly talking about there – and those who are fighting against us were being referred to not those who are NOT doing so.
Those who have kept on demonising me after one or two such extreme comments after I already apologised and admitted I went too far saying them, yeah I do think that gets to count as demonisation and unwillingness to accept someone saying they were wrong afterwards when they did and changing views accordingly. Just because I said some OTT stuff once or twice does not make me a demon or forever wrong and you right.
Especially when you extrapolated a hell of a lot more into those old dumb drunk comments than was ever actually there. Even then I was talking warfare against a particularly nasty enemy not genocide. Your comment is sorta like saying thinking every Nazi soldier should have been wiped out in WWII is exactly like calling for genocide against all Germans whether nazi or not – simply false on your part.
Also it seems you lack the ability to understand hyperbole when you read it too Nick Gotts.
So this thread is now all about StevoR’s feels over being banned on Pharyngula. Clearly the most important issue.
See, this was IMO a very good function that Thunderdome served: You could take off-topic discussions and move them away from the main thread. It allowed a compromise between derailing a thread and letting statements you disagree with go unanswered (and potentially becoming part of a future narrative).
As it stands, I’d really like to respond to StevoR because I frankly think his presentation is biased to the point of being downright revisionist. However, I see no way of doing that without derailing the thread. Arguable, even this comment is a derail.
What’s the proper way of handling such things?
@ ^ LykeX : How about by not lying about or misreading things? Also maybe you might want to blame Nick Gotts here for attacking the messenger not the message and note that there’s an analogy and a pattern established here in terms of misinterpreting people in the worst possible light rather than listening to what they actually say? Demonstrated by personal experiential anecdote but also corroborative evidence of a tendency here. I’m certainly not the only one to have been put through the wronger and wrongly attacked and misjudged by the horde.
Which brings us back to, well, the topic of Ophelia Benson and the piling on against and misunderstanding of her position here. who woulda guessed?
@Oolon : Still no substantive response merely an attack on me then I see. Not willing to offer a well-merited apology for you being a total douchecanoe against Ophelia Benson yet, eh?
@oolon, 108:
Charitably, they’re perhaps not focussing on trans people primarily if at all. What they’re seeing and reacting to is a bunch of people, most of whom identify as trans allies, accusing a cis woman of transphobia – and perhaps understandably making the assumption that a fair proportion of those people are not, in fact, acting in good faith, but are rather slimepitters and similar who see an opportunity to pile on at a moment of perceived conflict. The only way to avoid this impression is for good-faith allies to entirely shut up and let trans people speak for themselves, but then how is that being an ally? What’s a good ally to do here, if the sheer volume of their support is drowning out the people they’re supporting? If the fact of their support is an argument used against them?
Again, charitably, that would be hard to do, as there’s so much of it. But yes.
What would take to smooth this over now? No cis male should be involved. Perhaps a suitably prominent trans person could be persuaded to make a joint statement with OB about how allies can’t agree on everything but disagreement should be managed ethically like reasonable adults. Any takers?
Right. So, StevoR’s suggestion is that we all just agree with him, thus ending any disagreement. Any other suggestions?
Seriously, for a moment. Jason, this is your house. What do you prefer?
StevoR@various,
You’re a self-obsessed liar. The fact that you didn’t use the word “genocide” does not mean you did not advocate it; AFAIK, Hitler never used that word. The attempt to pretend you were just talkiing about jihadists is transparently dishonest: “de-Islamicise the fucken planet… Nuke’em”. As I noted at the time, one would only need to substitute “Judeo” for “Islami” for the last few lines to be a perfect Stormfront comment.
My comment@99 was in response to your derail@69 into whining about how you were treated at Pharyngula. If you don’t want your advocacy of genocide brought up, then cut that out. I’d be very surprised if Ophelia Benson appreciated the parallel you attempted to draw between the current controversy, and the response at Pharyngula to your advocacy of genocide.
Now I’ve no doubt this comment will be followed by more self-justifying lies and whining from you. I’m quite prepared at this point to leave it to others to decide whether you advocated genocide or not.
LykeX
I’d say in this particular case: let it be. Everybody can read what StevoR wrote and draw their own conclusions.
sonofrojblake
I think you’re onto something, and I think it’s problematic. What I find really horrible in this whole affair isn’t even the positions expressed, but the arguments presented.
To ignore trans* people for the sake of focussing on cis allies erases them.
And yes, I get the “not in good faith” problem, there are people in this discussion who haven’t gotten along well in a long time, me included, but it’s also horribly problematic because the person who asked the initial question is a trans woman. How can she be simply dismissed as not “arguing in good faith”?
Why should a trans person do so? I really recommend reading Zinnia’s tweets as linked above.
The criticisms of Ophelia Benson started with trans women. It feels really dishonest to make this about how “it’s the noisy cis allies that are the problem! If only trans women had been the ones criticizing her in the first place!”
Ophelia kinda had the chance to be receptive to trans women, and she made some of them feel so unwelcome that they only spoke about it in confidence (which, funny enough, is good enough for Ophelia when it’s a cis woman coming to a cis man. But I guess trans women don’t get that luxury).
@118.Nick Gotts : Fact is I did NOT do so. You want to ignore facts and reality ,well I cant stop you but you are ignoring facts and reality.
Nick. StevoR. Do not do this here. I do not have the time or energy to dig through old Pharyngula threads to take sides in a commenter fight that is wholly irrelevant to the original post.
@119
You’d have to pose that question to those doing the dismissing. Except you’d obviously risk the exact same dismissal.
Did read some of Zinnia’s tweets before previous posting. Wasn’t hinting at her or anyone in particular. The suggestion was in any case an only semi-facetious reference to the Benson/Dawkins joint statement. Why should a trans person do so? I couldn’t say. They might if they think OB still has something positive to offer and should be given a chance to clarify her position and not be thrown under a bus. It appears to be something of an issue currently that OB’s prominent support (PZM, CC, others) is distractingly cis/white/male, which just gives detractors another stick to beat with.
abear @101,
Where as you are on the team that is trying to mend Pharungula and FTB back together? Yeah right, I’m sure you are.
Gee this doesn’t sound like you trying to tear anything apart, not in the least. Nope. Not you. You are on the “mending things back together” team, you are. And you are fighting the good fight by pointing out all us baddies who are on the opposing team.
sonofrojblake
I’m pretty sure I really shouldn’t pose the question. I completely accept that I’m not on Ophelia’s christmas card list. Right now it seems like communication has really broken down. I don’t know if there’s anything still going on in the backchannel. I’m not asking about this either.
Their call, obviously. BUt it was your proposal.
@Oolon #108:
This is what stood out most to me. When people identify and express a gender that’s in-line with the one they were assigned at birth, we rarely see these interrogative posts asking what makes them think they’re that gender or how they’re supporting the gender binary or whatever. How many Vanity Fair covers featured Sophia Vergaras and Robin Wrights, drawing comments about how good they looked, before Caitlyn Jenner showed up and it became relevant for comment? How many infertile women sought pregnancy surrogates this year without notice before Jazz Jennings mentioned it in a Cosmo interview and was pilloried for “shockingly” suggesting that (cis) women are “walking vag incubators”? (I’ll leave you to guess what two of those three words she didn’t actually use, and who shared that article on Facebook)
When trans women present in a stereotypically feminine way, they’re accused of (at best) reinforcing the gender binary. When they don’t, like Alex Drummond, they’re called “men” or treated as freaks (or ignored entirely). I’ll leave you to guess who also shared that article (along with someone else’s attached dismissive misgendering comment) on Facebook.
It’s hyperskepticism, of the same sort we see from every shitbag misogynist with “innocent until proven guilty” nonsense regarding rape and harassment claims. Sadly, this just shows how blind you can be to that sort of thing when it’s coming from people in your “tribe” or from a position you agree with.
@sonofrojblake, Ironically in a display of how much of a “douchecanoe” (As StevoR puts it) I have been to Ophelia, I suggested this to her in my mansplaining email that she blogged about. Because I thought it would help make her position clear and stop the shit storm. Not so sure now.
@StevoR, you are not getting this are you. What part of “listen to trans people”, means sit back while one of their cis allies explains all the years of instances of trans antagonism while you hyperskeptically dismiss them all? All the evidence is out there for you to educate yourself. But when it comes down to it your position is either believe what trans people are saying or construct some elaborate conspiracy theory to explain why they are universally saying she’s in the wrong here.
As to me, what have I done to Ophelia that makes me a douche? I defended her as not a TERF and assumed all her missteps over the last year+ were mistakes and she’d catch up and get it. I still don’t think she is an out and out TERF, although thanking Cathy Brennan and agreeing the fake comments must be an “SJW” plot on Twitter is a little strange. However I also think it is no co-incidence TERFs like Brennan, and the other “gender critical” feminists are currently love-bombing her. They smell a fresh convert to the joys of TERFism, I still have hope they are wrong.
QFT from Tom
FYI, if an Ophelia defender is reading this and wants to pass evidence of a fake comment back to her, the proprietress of one blog posted the fake comment she got. Strangely there are some people *cough*pitters*cough* who don’t believe a woman when she says someone is harassing her. They hyperskeptically need evidence. Hm. So, here it is …
https://twitter.com/diagonal_mambo/status/625615578363924480
Dunno if it will stop Brennan and Ophelia claiming it is “SJWs” making these fake comments however, hope so as it looks a cargo-cult SJ faker to me.
oolon:
Why do you imagine that’s significant?
Were it so, the simplest explanation would be that the social media commotion about her purported position (of which this post is one element) has drawn them to it, in the hope her accusers’ suspicions are right.
Nice use of abbr to say the same thing twice in the span of a single sentence, John.
Also, if this post explaining why Ophelia’s throwing everyone into a pyre defending her actions despite them actually hurting trans folk, is enough to make TERFs sit up and take notice? Maybe it’s because they DO think they can turn her, the cis “moderate” feminist otherwise inclined to trans rights who said damaging and insensitive things and JUST. WON’T. BACK. DOWN.
Jason, it was a clumsy editing error leading to premature publication — the markup was intended to replace the parenthetical.
But the point is that if so, it’s an effect, not a cause. Right?
So I think that the phrasing (my emphasis, context included) can be read two ways: “As to me, what have I done to Ophelia that makes me a douche? I defended her as not a TERF and assumed all her missteps over the last year+ were mistakes and she’d catch up and get it. […] However I also think it is no co-incidence TERFs like Brennan, and the other “gender critical” feminists are currently love-bombing her. They smell a fresh convert to the joys of TERFism, I still have hope they are wrong.”
What other people do cannot be a misstep by Ophelia, and it therefore should not be read that way.
John Morales @132,
Is this your characterization of the situation, or Lousy Canuck’s? I’m not seeing where he claimed that “what other people [did]” is “a misstep by Ophelia.
CuriousOnLooker, it’s not a characterisation of a situation.
It’s the last paragraph of a response to Jason, in relation to his response to me.
The claim you aren’t seeing is not a claim I made.
John Morales @134,
You wrote:
Can you explain why you wrote that, then? If you didn’t mean to imply that Jason had suggested that what other people do can be a misstep by Ophelia, then why did you write this?
CuriousOnLooker:
Certainly. I refer you to my #132, wherein I do so.
Again, I refer you to my #132.
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Seriously, why is it so very important to you why I wrote it?
You certainly aren’t disputing the proposition itself.
John Morales @136,
I refer you back to @133 wherein I presented what I thought you meant, and @135 wherein I asked for clarification when you made clear that I was wrong.
If by “so very important” you mean that I asked you to clarify, then yeah I guess that makes it “so very important.” I certainly wouldn’t characterize it that way, but if you prefer to imagine that your words are “so very important” to me or anyone else, who am I to take that away from you, right?
I’m asking merely because it seemed to me that you were trying to imply that Jason had suggested that what others do can be a misstep by Ophelia. And as I pointed out I did not see such a suggestion from Jason, hence my initial comment @133 and my subsequent comment @135 asking for clarification.
I’m with Tom Foss and oolon in that some the arguments and tactics from OB/PZ et al. are the exact same arguments they would rip apart if they were from anyone else. Refusing to answer a question based on the format(you are free to add nuance on your own!), “Scalping” and “I know her, trust me she’s not that way”, I mean if Dawkins/Harris/Huckabee said that, they would tear it apart. A bit perplexing, but not totally surprising in the end.
CuriousOnLooker:
You haven’t asked me to clarify, you’ve asked me why I wrote what I wrote.
Your very perseverance indicates its importance to you, and I’m not imagining that.
Fine, I hereby appease your inquisitiveness: the reason why I commented is because (as I explicitly stated) it seemed to me that what I quoted might be–but should not be–misinterpreted.
(Consider its form)
@John Morales:
That’s true. How Ophelia responds to TERFs like Cathy Brennan and Gia Milinovich love-bombing her, however, can be her misstep. And when she thanks Cathy Brennan, agreeing about tactics used by “SJWs” without contradiction, when she says she’s read up on the “targeting” that happened to Gia Milinovich and says it was terrible, those are serious missteps on Ophelia’s part, at least in my mind. If Paul Elam or Elevatorgate popped into my mentions to offer support, however nice it may be, I’d be telling them to fuck off. Whomever else I may disagree with, those people are vile, toxic bigots, and I’d want nothing to do with them. Cathy Brennan is right at home in that list. Maybe Ophelia’s just being polite or figures she can’t afford to alienate any potential friends or allies, or maybe there’s another charitable interpretation, but it’s a weird choice for someone who so adamantly denies being a TERF. And it’s a weird choice for someone who would probably agree that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
John Morales @139,
Please accept my apologies, my command of language is not great, but I was trying to ask for clarification. I can use a dictionary to look up definitions of words if necessary, but accurately deciphering the ideas the words are meant to convey is a challenge sometimes. As are my attempts at communicating my intended meaning a challenge sometimes. The actual intended meaning behind words and the best way to phrase things can be elusive for me given the subtleties of language. So I try to ask a lot of questions rather than work off of dubious assumptions and interpretations. The way I often do that is to paraphrase back what I thought you meant (hence @133) and ask you to verify if my understanding is accurate (hence @133) or clarify what you really meant if not (hence @135). That’s one of my coping mechanisms. A way I try to avoid misinterpreting what other people really mean.
I noticed you switched it up from “so very important” to merely “its importance” (dropping the “so very”). Which is good. You are getting closer to reality. Also IMO you set the bar pretty low for “perseverance,” if you consider three short comments as evidence for that. But that’s just me, YMMV.
Thanks, I really appreciate you being so helpful in my endeavor not to misunderstand you or mischaracterize what you meant. It’s really nice of you to indulge me in such an exercise especially when you really gain nothing in return. And again I’m really sorry you had to put up with my imprecise language, but I have to play the hand I was dealt.
@Tom Foss, absolutely, Elam would get told to f-off if he even sincerely tried to commiserate with me. CB wouldn’t get that treatment as I’d end up with yet another page on nametheprob/lem juxtaposing me with rapists and murders. I can joke about that due to my privilege, CB appearing in trans peoples timelines is a cause for concern given she doxxes, threatens legal action and tries to get trans women sacked from their jobs with abandon.
I’d also point out that she thanked ClaireOT for her comments that transgender(ism? she just said TG in the tweet) is a cult and that they only attack “women”. ClaireOT being an erstwhile trans ally who went “gender critical” and started misgendering trans women on Twitter. OB specifically responded that she’s also reaaally noticed they only go for “women”. Backed up by Chris Clarkes tweet implying cis male allies are “white knighting” and using it as an excuse to attack “women”. Didn’t see the Gia thing, I assume it was on her FB page.
“women” = default women, i.e. short hand in a dogwhistle transphobic way for cis women.
So yeah, her response to being love bombed is yet another data point in the never ending parade of not quite enough evidence to believe trans people.
First, I’d like to join others here and say that I appreciate what you do on your blog, and that I’m sorry you’re feeling discouraged.
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Second, I want to be clear that I’m not trying to argue against the claim that “trans women are women, period”. At most, I’m arguing against one of your arguments for that statement, not the statement itself.
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Maybe I’ll be able to write something more comprehensive in the future. For the moment, I want to make a limited point about:
– whether or not the “trans” in “trans woman” makes the womanhood of trans women questionable; and,
– whether or not the “trans” in “trans woman” should be seen as no different than the “white” in “white woman” or the “blue” in “blue candy”.
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(If anyone thinks I succeed or fail at making this point, please let me know).
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Thinking about statements using different words/categories is good. When someone asks: “how would that sound if you said the same thing but about (for example) Jews?”, they are asking a legitimate question. But just because two sentences look very similar doesn’t mean that they are very similar.
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The example John Morales gives us (“fake women are women”) is not at all like “trans women are women” or “white women are women” because, as you point out, the adjective questions the trueness of what follows.*
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I don’t think that the “trans” in “trans woman” calls the trueness of the “woman” in “trans woman” into question.
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But that doesn’t mean that the “trans” in “trans woman” works in the same way as the “white” in “white woman” or “blue” in “blue candies.”
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The “trans” in “trans woman” does something that the “white” in “white woman” doesn’t do. Yes, it modifies “woman”, but in a different way. The word “trans” refers to a movement or change. Like the word “transition”. If a trans woman talks about her “transition”, what is she talking about exactly? I don’t think she is talking about something that is conceptually separable from the “woman” part of “trans woman”.
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Am I wrong about that? (That’s a serious question. If I’m wrong I’d like to learn sooner rather than later).
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*Here are some examples of questions that look like “are blue candies candies?” They are not as tautological, nor are they like “are fake women women?”
Are pineapples apples?
Are hot dogs dogs?
Are candy corns corns?
Are boxing rings rings? (i.e., ring-shaped)?
Is a driveway used to drive somewhere? Does that mean that I shouldn’t have parked my car on the parkway?
Someone else had said “are sea cucumbers actual cucumbers” on Twitter and I dismissed it as being as ridiculous as the other compound words that are themselves nouns. The reason is, “hot dog” could actually refer to a husky in Texas, for instance. But it generally doesn’t, because of the shared understanding that “hot dog” is a thing, that can also be cold but still be a hot dog.
I think “trans” is a separate set and that “trans woman” and “trans man” is nothing like “hot dog”, because you can talk about trans people without referring to their gender, and still have a set of concerns that have to do with their assigned gender at birth and their not conforming with that ultimately. It IMPACTS gender, tangentially, but does not actually ALTER it. And “trans woman” is not itself a separate gender designation, but a venn intersection of two sets. “Woman” describes what gender they perform, “trans” describes the struggle of needing to perform gender in a way society frowns upon because they’ve already been pigeonholed into a different gender but feel that’s somehow wrong. And if you non-binarize the gender part, you absolutely could have trans agender folks, trans genderfluid, et cetera, et cetera, who might have been assigned male or female at birth (because we only assign those two), and these people might experience dysphoria being forced to perform a gender that their mental self-map doesn’t agree with. And that mental self-map might change over time, or it might be static from a very young age and these people might feel they’ve ALWAYS been a certain gender that they were never allowed to perform.
Beyond all this, I absolutely understand that the societal construct of gender — and the prescriptivism that goes into it — is chafing both against those who are gender-critical and those who believe they fit better performing gender a different way. I just wish that the gender-critical folks weren’t so obsessed with destroying gender per-se and thus attacking anyone who dares want to perform it, considering they perform gender a certain way themselves, and further considering they are themselves gatekeeping gender in an okay-for-me-but-not-for-thee way. Why not just attack the binary itself, and let people perform whatever gender they feel best suits them, and stop with recriminations against those who don’t match THEIR expectations of “don’t perform anything” (that they themselves fail to live within)?
(None of this is about Ophelia specifically. It’s only in response to anon1152.)
I think you know the answer when it comes to TERFs, the ‘biological’ binary is necessary for their class analysis to work. Under that perspective, dismantling the binary is analogous to calls for people to not see race. The sex binary will still exist even in their imagined gender free utopia.
Actually, that didn’t occur to me, qwints. That’s a damn good point. Without the bio binary, AND without gender, they’d have no cause to fight patriarchy because power would no longer have any lines to arrange itself around.
Not that there is a solid biological binary anyway. But I’d seriously just prefer any person of any biology perform whatever gender they want any way they want.
[…] Jason’s post from last Saturday, with 146 comments so far, most of them packed with falsehoods and wild conclusions derived from […]
Hi Jason,
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Thanks for responding.
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I agree completely that “‘trans woman’ and ‘trans man’ is nothing like hotdog”. My hope was to find examples that were somewhere in between “fake woman” and “white woman”. Also, I’m amused by the strange things that happen in the English language. Unfortunately, the more I think about it, the more amusing the example, the less helpful it is.
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My disagreement with your original post probably disappears after reading:
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I can also get on board with: