New Niche Indignation
Come, let us dip a toe in the world of transgender Reddit – specifically, rFTMOver30 – where the sexually dysmorphic hunt for slips-ups, pronoun blunders, and tiny acts of transgression. As you might imagine, things can get quite competitive.
First, a little background on the author of this particular woe:
The struggle involves a devilish innovation in the world of “transphobia”:
This inadvertent favouring of factual accuracy is, it turns out, only the appetiser. The main basis for umbrage is about to become clear.
And so,
There we go. New ground broken. Drinks all round.
After the gathering, when the guests had left, apologies were of course extracted from the author’s partner, along with confessions of wrongdoing, for daring to suggest that no harm was intended. Needless to say, and despite the lengthy confession and profuse apologies, and despite promises to “sit down” with Alison and correct her, the author of the piece is, we’re told, “having trouble moving on.”
You see, if friends come over for a pleasant evening and they don’t immediately consider you a potential mugger of women, or rapist of women, this is oppressive, “invalidating,” and “transphobic.” Such that it feels like “a punch in the gut.” It’s perhaps not the most obvious basis for invoking the unfairness of the world and one’s own endless suffering, but hey. In this competition, contrivance equals bonus points.
Quite what the author’s partner makes of this news – that in order to avoid being “transphobic,” she must consider her transgender lover a potential rapist – is, alas, not divulged.
Readers are invited to ponder the prospect of a dinner party at which, in order to be polite and suitably affirming, you’re obliged to insinuate that the host is rapist material. And to do it convincingly. Rather than, say, compliment the cooking or the décor.
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Via Eliza Mondegreen.
Update, via the comments:
Several commenters note the implied, rather unhappy, domestic dynamic, in which the role of the author’s partner is seemingly to be scolded and deferential, forever affirming, regardless of how bizarre the situation becomes. Such that, a failure by one’s friends to regard one’s own lover as a potential mugger and rapist results in said lover becoming “hurt and surprised” and “pretty upset,” and subsequently demanding apologies.
Regarding the author’s annoyance at not being considered a danger to women in darkened car parks – by her own houseguests – Steve E adds,
An irony being that, as a group, the sexually dysmorphic, and certainly dysmorphic men, are much more likely than the wider population to be sex offenders. So, our indignant author may have a basis for feeling excluded. Though perhaps not quite for the reasons she had in mind.
Commenter Cheeflo observes that trans activists complain of “being erased, misgendered, or otherwise triggered,” but are not discernibly concerned by “the insult and humiliation imposed on the rest of us when they demand we deny reality to assuage their feelings.”
And regarding such demands, Abby adds,
Indeed. And when you defer to the pretence, complications will likely ensue, along with quite a lot of dark farce. Best, I think, not to give away the store in the first place. To defer to the premise, if only to seem nice or polite, is to risk being fundamentally compromised, robbed of probity, and to be left in a very weak position, or no position at all, to resist further demands for distortion and unrealism – and demands that one participate in someone else’s psychodrama.
Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.
Update 2:
“The paradox of the transphobe.”
So ladies, how about letting him into your intimate spaces?
I bet.
I don’t think that relationship’s going to last.
Well, if you’re being scolded by your lover for knowing someone who doesn’t consider your lover a likely rapist, then this is… quite strange territory.
The hesitation.
These people are akin to the evil little boy in that Twilight Zone episode who could read people’s thoughts and wish them into the cornfield. Their partner is living in a domestic North Korea where now the author will be studying her constantly and watching for any sign of heterodoxy, a sin with which the author will swiftly deal and shriek about transphobia.
So while the writer was “identifying” (with extremely good reason) as a woman her partner must have been a lesbian of the female variety.
Identifying as a man means that partner has of necessity been re-categorised as a cis-woman. I doubt if partner had much of a say in the matter in the same way that children of such deranged relationships are expected to come to terms with calling daddy mummy.
Edit. On further reflection she could just as easily have chosen to re-define her partner as a gay trans-man so I guess the hapless creature got off lightly.
“There are four lights.”
…living in a domestic North Korea where now the author will be studying her constantly and watching for any sign of heterodoxy, a sin with which the author will swiftly deal and shriek about transphobia.
Change “transphobia” to “fill in the blank” for what ever the rage du jour is and you have described leftisim in general.
I wonder if the whole world isn’t just being trolled with these stories. I feel like there’s a room full of frat boy lit majors having a great time out-doing each other.
The author quoted above is a regular of said Reddit, a prodigious contributor, and has over time accrued a fair amount of in-group kudos.
So she is offended because they know she was born female and factor it into their assessment of whether she fits the profile of a dangerous man.
What’s more, she almost certainly does not have anything near the muscularity of a moderately fit man.
[ Shakes head. ]
I am currently being told (by liberals, of course) that being kind to crazy people necessitates validating their delusions.
The author makes claims of passing as the opposite sex –
Which, frankly, seems unlikely. It’s certainly very rare. Unlike dysmorphics’ fantasies and delusions on the subject, which are very, very common, often to the point of farce. Likewise, the author’s claim, in subsequent comments, that the guest, Alison, had no idea of the author’s transgender status and had “only known me as a man.”
Again, it suggests a self-flattering conceit. A denial of the obvious.
Call me pedantic but this sort of thing makes my internal statistician twitch.
My guess, albeit from limited observations in the flesh as there are obviously far fewer of these people than we are required to believe, is that 90% of the time it is glaringly obvious when one is dealing with counterfeit.
If someone was taking me to their friend’s house, I think they’d mention beforehand that the friend’s partner was trans. Just so no one put their foot in it.
Well, yes.
What’s more, she was writing about friends who presumably knew her history.
It is quite unlikely that a FtM trans could ever become suitably scary to women, no matter how long they took testosterone.
Women may not quite grasp this, but in not so nice areas of town, I am also concerned at night going to my car and I am an average size and reasonably athletic male. Because muggers rove in groups and are armed (duh).
Some part of sexual attraction is odor and other subtle signals. Also no doubt lesbians like boobs. For a lesbian to remain with a FtM trans who has had top surgery and is on testosterone stretches the limits of what they (the lesbian) will find attractive and sexy. Loyalty only goes so far. Is the trans person now smelling like a man? Growing a beard? At some point well before getting a fake penis this trans person will no longer be a good sexual partner (besides all the crazy and obsessing).
I think this has a lot to do with how the Left views men and masculinity. The author takes the standard leftwing stance that men are, by their inherent nature, a threat to others. Whereas the correct, not-leftwing, traditional view is that men, in order to be “a man”, must protect others from threats, including mentally ill, non-binary cis trans-thingies.
That, or suddenly start having a malaria relapse or passing a kidney stone.
Band name.
I read as much of that article as I could before nausea set in. I started to feel my mind slipping away just reading that garbage. This is nothing short of madness,
Will testosterone make a female voice deeper? A male voice higher pitched? Seems to me voice deepness is the result of anatomy. Not sure T can change that so much. Age stiffens the vocal cords a little, making the voice a little deeper, as does smoking. Older men with low T do not develop high pitched voices.
It makes for a nice little Somerset Maugham type short story about a striver being snubbed.
Walls of text in the reddit thread about what Alison might have had in mind about gender socialization of “assigned” male/female at birth people. Most likely, and the real reason it was hurtful, is that Alison was playing out a conventional dinner party script of having a few glasses of wine and nagging the men in the room, and by the time she was at “oh, but you’re one of the good ones, John, and aren’t you so lucky to be vouchsafed the frank confidences of women”, it had slipped her awareness completely that there was another “man” present.
If the author had authentically been socialized as a man and had the correct intuitions for “his” role as the “male host”, that would have been the moment for “him” to suggest to the “other” man that they go and have a whisky on the patio and let the women talk among themselves.
The goal is to infect everyone with it, I’m sure.
As Mr. Potato Head, it seems.
It strikes me from this story, and all the massive blokes in frocks beating up TERFS and winning women’s sporting events stories that no matter how much chemistry, paint, or butchery they apply, the very activist ones anyways act out the absolute worst traits of their birth sex. The men pretending to be women acting like giant bullies, the women pretending to be men obsessively fault-finding, picking arguments, holding grudges, just channeling their inner bitch. That whole article in this post screams bitch-wife. I feel bad for the poor lesbian partner who’s stuck with this boobless seething harridan – the worst of both worlds.
Then there’s the flip side, so to speak, of the equation.
It strikes me that these trans want to become something that they cannot understand. There is a long-standing joke about a book with all the wisdom of what men understand about women, but when you open the book, the pages are blank. The comments women make about men show that they likewise do not understand men very well. Yet the trans somehow think they have a unique insight into the opposite sex–so unique and so accurate that they can become that opposite sex accurately. As we see so often, they do not. Which gives us clownworld.
“I pass 90-100% of the time in person, 50/50 over the phone. “
“Sixty percent of the time it works every time”
The same reply applies to both: “That doesn’t make sense”
It is quite unlikely that a FtM trans could ever become suitably scary to women,
I don’t know, someone crazy enough to cut their tits off, slice flesh off their body, roll it into rouladen and sew it onto their crotch scares the hell out of me.
Aside: perhaps The Merchant of Venice is a story about sourcing flesh for a phalloplasty. Antonio is The Merchant of Penis, wishing to provide flesh for Portia for said procedure so that she can complete the transformation begun during the trial. Shylock is merely the honest middleman.
Band name.
Woke children’s toy, like my little pony with cult-like adult followers.
Indeed.
Even more clownworld: The non-trans people who buy into this delusion and call it #Science.
things can get quite competitive.
Original post has been deleted.
Sorry, I’m confused. What exactly is this person bitching about?
i explained why grouping trans men in a different category than cis men is problematic
Particularly since “cis men” are real.
People who identify as “trans” are mentally ill. 100% of them. They don’t need surgery, they need serious mental health interventions.
And the people who enable them are every bit as sick.
Sorry, I’m confused. What exactly is this person bitching about?
Life itself, I presume.
Remember Al Capp’s S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything)?
Everyone knows that neither she, nor her husband pose a threat to women. Anywhere. Ever.
But identifying the kind of people who ARE a threat to women in a dark parking lot requires acknowledging reality.
Which. CAN. NOT. HAPPEN. Because reality has a way of infecting the REST of your life. And we all know where that can lead: perspective and humility – the HORROR!!
A very strange phenomenon: Men who are enthralled fans of My Little Pony.
What a coincidence!
Just sprayed tea over my keyboard.
Unsurprisingly, I have questions.
What kind of dinner party is this where people “have a good time” discussing “being afraid to walk to their car”?
And who tacks “etc.” onto “women being afraid when walking to their cars at night” and assumes other people naturally know how that blank gets filled?
If it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure ‘John’ would have felt every bit as excluded and uncomfortable for being the butt of that particular ‘joke’ as rFTMOver30 feels excluded and uncomfortable for not being the butt of Alison’s barely concealed spitefulness.
Which, frankly, seems unlikely. It’s certainly very rare
I’ve known three FtM trans-whatever-the-hell, I’m not keeping up with the shibboleth du jour. All of them were indistinguishable from men until they started speaking. The reason she can say she passes 90-100% of the time in person but 50% on the phone is because it’s true. Remember Norah Vincent passed for a man in close contact for months at a time.
Presented with the visual evidence of an obvious man with an effeminate voice, your brain will assume it’s looking at a man with an effeminate voice. Presented with just an effeminate voice, your brain will assume it’s dealing with a woman.
It’s not the pitch, either. There are lots of men with higher-pitched voices. It’s the intonation, the occasional interrogative lilt, the submissiveness.
Also no doubt lesbians like boobs.
I’m not sure what porn you’ve been watching, but most lesbians look like Lea DeLaria. It’s one of the jokes you’re not allowed to tell that most lesbians seem to be trying very hard to look and act like men.
Alison was playing out a conventional dinner party script of having a few glasses of wine and nagging the men in the room
There are no women in this story who don’t come across as total bitches. I think the true moral of this story is “don’t socialize with bitches”. Which is, I suppose, a variant of David’s “do not date bedlamites” rule.
It’s another marker along the way towards proving out my theories on this issue, which boil down to “Some people are way, way too obsessed with their sexual affairs…”
Average person, at some point around adolescence, has a look in their underwear, realizes the implications of an innie or an outie, and then just goes “Huh. Well, that’s the set of cards I was dealt, those are the ones I’m playing…” and gets on with life.
Others? Oh, holy crap… The mental gyrations they go through. I’ve an acquaintance from late adolescence that I’m reasonably sure talked himself into “the gay” based on one shared moment of confusion. See, we’d both been admiring a certain jeans-clad ass on a slim figure, with alluringly long blond hair. Right up until dude turned around and actually presented a bearded mien akin to most depictions of Jesus…
Me? I’m like “Wow, I need to get my eyes checked…”, while his response was to start questioning his sexuality “Oh, my Gawd… I liked that ass, and it was on a guy!!!! I have to be gay… I must prefer men…”
He expressed his angst to me over the course of the following weeks after that incident, and eventually… Came out as gay. Didn’t hurt that he liked being transgressive and pissing people off, especially his extremely devout parents who he resented because they’d given him everything.
In later life, that guy was all over the map. Bisexual, gay, promiscuous straight, Born-again Christian, and I eventually grew jaded and neglected to keep track of him. No idea what he’s doing now, but I’d wager that whatever it is revolves around his pee-pee.
I remain convinced that there are all too many people out there who over-think and seriously over-emphasize their sex lives. Frankly, it just ain’t all that much of a big deal, and if you find yourself centering your life and your identity on the sexual aspects and implications of it all, you’ve got a damn problem. And, it’s not a sexual one, either–Pure mental health issue.
That’s faintly irritating. I may have to start screen-grabbing everything.
Are you sure? Back in the 60’s and earlier the stereotype was chunky short-haired women with hard faces wearing jeans and boots. But sometime in the 70’s a fight began between those lesbians and younger “lipstick lesbians” who wanted to wear dresses and makeup and so on. (A related fight was over whether it was a betrayal of lesbianism to use dildos. Really.) A large fraction of the lesbians that I knew back then were young women from average to very pretty.
There were however a few who conformed to the old stereotype, and their mannerisms tended to be amusing in a way similar to how trans women are amusing in their caricatured mimicry of real women.
I’ve noticed that rather often when revisiting the archives.
…but most lesbians look like Lea DeLaria
I should have known better than to have looked that up.
I grew up in Philadelphia. My family suffered more crimes than I can now recall, so I understand about walking in fear to your car, etc. I moved to an Appalachian county in central Pennsylvania forty years ago. 75% Republican. Got a job as deputy sheriff. My advice to those people, regardless of gender, is to get the hell out of there. No woman – even one who plans to get a fake dick later – fears walking to her car around here. A woman could get drunk here, fall asleep naked on the hood of her car, and wake up with her virtue intact and a free blanket. I say again to all 32 genders get the hell out of those dangerous Democratic shitholes. Get to a rural Republican County. Simply put, we’re better human beings. Leave your politics behind.
As I post this fun and games are taking place at the Oxford university union where a feminist speaker has been allowed to literally genocide trans people by speaking.
The bbc, true to form, rises to the occasion with this little grammatical beauty:-
“Another protester appeared to have glued themselves to the floor”.
For the most part, the trans people themselves, aside from the outright sociopaths…and maybe even them, I can have sympathy for. Because to some degree they are sick. The oceans of people who at varying degrees enable, encourage, tolerate their behavior, I have zero sympathy for. Some on the milder side of the BS are even people I once valued and trusted.
Define ‘lesbian’. Asking for a friend of course.
Frank Sutton’s daughter?
The trick isn’t to pry the obnoxious gits from the floor but to employ stronger adhesives.
were forced/coerced/encouraged by the required literature of a liberal arts or high school LA-wannabe education to get really, really deeply in touch with themselves, to question every aspect of their being, every fiber, every atom, every thought in the hope that they might find something ever-so-special about themselves such that Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone or something similar might pay attention to them. I mean sure, you can become an engineer or a plumber or something like that but best you dwell on your navel first.
WTP: “best you dwell on your navel first.”–The problem for these twits, as WTP implies, is that as a teen if you look deeply inside…there is not much there. One must build oneself via effort and experiences. Not “find” oneself. Hence the fervor with which teens and college students latch onto fads and politics and being trans or being a hippie or being goth.
This came to mind:
Seemed apt.
Why do all these people, regardless of gender, sound like whiny little bitches?
Per David’s “this came to mind”–I had a room mate in college who was a satyr. He was all about the conquests and had a whole schtick worked out. He was not about having a girlfriend, like my other room mate. A little sad. I heard that at 30 he had just been chased out of a house at knife-point by an angry husband. Now not just sad, but pitiful. Note that he did not view himself as “oppressed” or “marginalized” but was rather captive to his sickness.
I can’t figure out what the frame of reference is for a tranz to claim affinity for the opposite sex … how does anyone know what it means to be something other than who and what he or she is? You may as well say I feel like a dog or a cat, or any other sentient being. Heck, why not plants or inanimate objects?
Feminism once decried reducing women to their lady parts, yet here they are doing exactly that on the one hand, celebrating women based merely on anatomy (which is definitive from a biological standpoint), and on the other hand, accepting the notion that putting on lipstick, a dress, and affecting feminine mannerisms qualifies as womanhood. Because identity politics are the same no matter what form they take, feminists can’t really prop up their argument if they reject the same argument from a different identity group.
Both negate women’s unique and essential capacities in the big scheme of things. By devaluing their own womanhood and framing their aspirations in terms of men’s identity, feminists are in the awkward position of getting what they wished for.
While the tranz community kvetches incessantly about being erased, misgendered, or otherwise triggered, they never even consider the insult and humiliation imposed on the rest of us when they demand we deny reality to assuage their feelings. If this is their authentic self, why do they need validation from others?
Ran into a useful little term… Performative activism.
“Performative activism is activism done to increase one’s social capital rather than because of one’s devotion to a cause.”
At least, that’s how Wikipedia defines it.
This is precisely what I feel like most of the LGBTWTFBBQ community is up to: It’s all performative, done to demonstrate transgression and solely because they’re mentally aberrant in entirely another direction from confusion over sexual identity and roles; they do what they do because they want the outrage, the rancor, the hatred… The more they can evince, the happier they are. The worst thing you can do with most of these people is be accepting; they have to piss you off, and if they’re not doing that, then they have to escalate the behavior.
When you get down to it, they’re not gay because they like other men, they’re gay because it’s way more important than anything else to outrage everyone around them. They’re mostly spoiled children, acting out, seeking response and retribution from Mommy and Daddy, who they hate.
By contrast, the people I’d classify as “actual homosexuals”, who’re genuinely attracted to other men, as opposed to being attracted to the role-playing opportunities inherent to the sexual identity, are left watching these types and going “WTF? Was it all about pissing people off, and you were never into me?”
I don’t know what the ratio is, but I suspect that the performative types vastly outnumber the actual folks who’re genuinely of that persuasion. It’s a distinction that won’t be made, however, once the performative activists get done poisoning the well with all of their massive stupidity, and we’re likely to go through a period of utter outright anti-hedonism that’ll make the Victorians look like pikers. I have the distinct feeling that there will be a bunch of people thrust back into the closet, with the door being nailed shut behind them. If they’re lucky, there won’t be any new walls built to conceal said metaphoric door, but… Man, is it likely to get ugly.
“Loyalty only goes so far. Is the trans person now smelling like a man?”
Well, yes, but they can always use the secret male method. Roll in a compost heap at every opportunity and likewise on dead animals (where available). Also, never wash unless you can substitute beer for water.
Because humiliating other people is a big part of their authentic self.
But to be fair, it’s a big part of the authentic self of all “woke” people.
I notice weirdness almost immediately on TV.
In real life you have height, the way they walk, the way they simply hold their bodies.
20 years ago, I would have assumed a very effiminate man. Now I would assume trans as the default. (Partly because gay equality seems to have meant fewer gay men present effiminately.)
MtoF are very hard to disguise properly. Nothing like a 6 foot hulk with a massive adam’s apple to say “male”.
That’s faintly irritating. I may have to start screen-grabbing everything.
Someone was evidently suspicious of possible memory-holing and archived the post.
But how much will that increase your hosting costs? If you and all your commenters do it?
In real life you have height, the way they walk, the way they simply hold their bodies.
Indeed. Actual women walk differently from men because of their hips. They are also far more likely, for the same reason, to have their knees knock together. Taking T does not change your hips, so FtM will still walk like a woman. For the same reason, MtF will still walk like a man.
“performative activism”–notice that it is quite common for conservatives to do good deeds and never mention it because doing it was important but not the talking about it. Studies show in fact that conservatives give much more to charity (including church). “good deeds” by the woke, in contrast, always involve screaming or breaking things.
But how much will that increase your hosting costs? If you and all your commenters do it?
It would just be easier to archive the url and then use the archive snapshot.
in-group kudos
Band name.
once the performative activists get done poisoning the well with all of their massive stupidity, and we’re likely to go through a period of utter outright anti-hedonism that’ll make the Victorians look like pikers.
[ laughs in Weimar Republic ]
Done. Link updated. Thanks, Darleen.
The “phobia” of *not* being afraid of someone.
As a supposed moral lesson, it’s not exactly displaying womanhood at it’s best.
Heh. It does, I find, spare one a lot of aggravation.
If someone asked me what being female is like, subjectively, I could only guess and attempt to extrapolate from what I’ve seen. As I don’t have the appropriate neural wiring, or the appropriate physiology, or the – dare I say it – lived experience of being a girl and then a woman, I suspect my guesses would be fairly limited and basic, and sometimes hilariously wrong.
An irony being that, as a group, the sexually dysmorphic, and certainly dysmorphic men, are much more likely than the wider population to be sex offenders. So, our indignant author, quoted above, may have a basis for feeling excluded. Though perhaps not quite for the reasons she had in mind.
Now that you have re-posted this unattractive photo I cannot help noticing the similarity between his bear-paw and the equally hirsute crotch-adjacent meathook (band name?) which graced another recent article.
Could hand reduction be the next big thing in gender-affirming surgery? It would certainly be a damned sight less harmful that anything happening at present. However as it lacks the fetishising sexual connotation of BDF (Breast, dick and fanny) procedures I can’t see it catching on and therefore the monster-mitt gals are probably here to stay.
astonishing so much of this is all in their transbrains
Is that a photo of the “It’s ma’am!” man?
I have more.
Now that you have re-posted this unattractive photo…
You are just a transmisogynist, nothing says feminine like “I haven’t washed my hair or hands since the 1970s”.
“There are a zillion ways to be a lesbian…”
“I have more”.
Orson Welles, the early years.
I have more.
Do tell…
Orson Welles, the early years.
I thought it was Brando, later years.
“I have more.”
Sorry to hear that…
Yet the trans somehow think they have a unique insight into the opposite sex–so unique and so accurate that they can become that opposite sex accurately. As we see so often, they do not.
Per ccscientist et al, I’ve wondered why these beings with clear insight into both sexes/genders/whatever aren’t in demand as marriage counselors. Should be simple to explain one to the other!
OT but a classic BBC headline
Al Pacino: The Godfather star expecting fourth child, aged 83
A hell of a long pregnancy.
OT but a classic BBC headline
Speaking of state television and niche indignation, our friends in the Antipodes bring us some classy viewing. (Language and general WTF)
“A searing monologue on racism.”
Seems that children scared of clowns were…right.
We’ve gone from “men and women are identical” (thinks feminists) including for fighting fires or being cops to “they are so different that if you think you are in the wrong body you need surgery and hormones” in a heartbeat. WTF
“A searing monologue on racism.”
“..the most soaring 30 minutes of Australian TV ever produced…”
Meanwhile, completely unrelated, up in The Great White North the Brit TikToker Missy, Misty, Mingey, whatever his name is, seems to have some competition. What zany hijinks!
…you need surgery and hormones” in a heartbeat…
Nope.
[T]he definition is “non-men who are attracted to and love other non-men.”
l knew it. My cats a lesbian.
Band name.
Touché.
Chase has uncovered our secret.
This applies to more than cheese-rolling:
So someone in the audience had called a journalist and misreported me. Amazingly none of the British media called to check.