A Failure To Affirm
From the Reddit forum r/mypartneristrans, a tale of romantic complication:
The feeling of being, shall we say, misled can do that, I suppose.
Twist incoming.
Oh my, a spotlight shared. Awkward. Or, “Woman who wants to pretend she’s a gay man is thwarted by male partner now wanting to pretend he’s a woman, resulting in something not unlike straightness, albeit with extra steps.”
As I said, complications.
Readers are welcome to speculate as to whose feelings are more, er, valid in the scenario above.
And before you ask, the outlook isn’t great:
Update, via the comments:
Regarding this,
Mags adds,
Indeed. A notable omission. One that results in finger-wagging from fellow forum regulars:
It’s a bold claim. And despite which, the person being scolded, a woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man, can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.
Readers who poke through the subsequent replies will note how almost any kind of questioning – even expressions of surprise and concern from an intimate partner – is promptly dismissed as “hurtful,” “transphobic,” and “pretty shitty,” something to apologise for. As if anything short of immediate and gushing affirmation – pretty much any hesitation at all – were an act of wickedness.
Also, this caught my eye:
Which is something of a drawback, given the odds on that matter.
One of the commenters then replies that “drag queen is a look,” by which they mean valid, a possible aspiration, and that one should “interrogate those feelings” that looking like a drag queen is probably not ideal.
Via Rafi.
In other, happier news, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
I didn’t see that coming, as our host would say.
I mean, what’s really the difference? At least, when it comes to the actual sexual act. He is going to peg her assuming they both still have their working parts.
If they don’t, well, I guess that’s that.
I’ve prepared graph paper and coloured pencils, in case anyone is confused.
Also, I read some of the comments on Reddit. Basically, “you’re a shit person for reacting the way you did but your feelings are invalid, here, let us persuade you to keep the trans flag flying.”
Related, the artist formerly known as The Human Ken Doll™ has issues with J K Rowling and tells us he has never felt like a man and is therefore a woman.
I mean his passport says so, so it must be true.
I’m unhappy: I have nothing to share and nothing to bicker about.
Too kind.
Every woman I’ve known with large breasts suffers back pain or has had reduction surgery.
I learn so much from our little chats.
Roughly between the 1960s and the early 2000s, progressive society generally agreed that one is sexually attracted to whoever one is attracted to, and that’s not to be questioned (pedos excepted).
But now, apparently, one is politically OBLIGED to be attracted to certain groups. Otherwise you’re a bigot.
It just seems a lot easier to leave right now because things are already rocky
It’s almost like the deeply traumatized and mentally ill struggle to maintain healthy relationships. Or relationships at all, for that matter.
And before you ask, the outlook isn’t great
Ya think?
It’s funny how those that demand acceptance and celebration from everyone else are so hesitant to reciprocate when it’s their turn.
It’s not very much unlike the case of Dylan Mulvaney bemoaning his lack of romantic partners. I can’t imagine very many gay men (or gay women) being interested in a gay man who pretends he’s a woman, nor do I see many straight men jumping on board either.
Heshe didn’t usehisher pronouns.No wait.
Heshe didn’t useherhis pronouns.[ Looks at Mags. Passes graph paper, coloured pencils. ]
LOL
Guy tries to be a woman:
gay men–you look too much like a woman for me to be interested.
guy: “but I’m a lesbian”
lesbians: not with that dick you don’t
straight women: ewwww
guy: “I can’t get a date!”
I have known precisely one woman who uses a spatula to put on makeup: she is overweight and not attractive but very much wants to be attractive. In spite of the garish makeup, she acts female, has a feminine voice, etc. Humans are very sensitive to the sexuality of those around them. For example, a study found that strippers when at peak fertility made twice as much in tips as when on the rag. The guys did not know but responded to physical cues. People can see if someone is not well (medically but also mentally) and will avoid them without knowing they do so. Even social animals will avoid a herd member who is infected. When my daughter was little she could detect people who had a screw loose and would ask us about them. She had 100% accuracy. No amount of political pressure will get people to date or affirm those who do not turn them on or who seem nuts. Sorry.
He is going to peg her assuming they both still have their working parts.
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the one with the penis is pegging anybody. I’m willing to bet he’s a catcher not a pitcher.
The fraction of the population that are sociopaths is usually estimated to be 3 percent. But given how many people protect these scum, I’d boost it to 10 percent.
He is going to peg her assuming they both still have their working parts.
No worries Starbucks can sort this!
“asylum seeker”
“I do not agree with your narrow view of what 2 + 2 is”
I’d boost it to 10 percent
I’ve seen credible estimates that the proportion of benign sociopathy is as high as 20% of the population, although I tend to think that’s stretching the defintion so far as to be unhelpful.
I love happy endings.
Cluster Bs (narcissists, histrionics, borderlines) seem to be functional sociopaths. They’re capable of feeling remorse sometimes, but they do such horrible stuff while believing they’re just defending themselves that they’re as dangerous as the sociopaths.
It’s not just social media that’s causing Cluster B traits to be tolerated and even celebrated, is it?
When does this end?
From the finger-wagging replies:
A bold claim. And despite which, the person being scolded, the woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man, can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.
One of those cases where you can genuinely say ‘At least, they are only making themselves unhappy, and not two other people’.
[ Post updated. ]
Gavin Newsom’s California again.
Heshe is “taking a break”… from reality?Readers will note how almost any kind of questioning – even expressions of surprise and concern from an intimate partner – is immediately dismissed as “hurtful,” “transphobic,” and “pretty shitty,” something to apologise for. As if anything short of immediate and gushing affirmation – pretty much any hesitation at all – were an act of wickedness.
Also, this caught my eye:
Which is something of a drawback, given the odds on that matter.
One of the commenters then adds that “drag queen is a look,” by which they mean valid, a possible aspiration, and that one should “interrogate those feelings” that looking like a drag queen is probably not ideal.
[ Post updated again. ]
Never met an actual woman who wanted to look like a drag queen.
It would seem to be a niche ambition.
What?
Somewhat related:
You have your orders, people.
I have known precisely one woman who uses a spatula to put on makeup: she is overweight and not attractive but very much wants to be attractive.
Precisely why I don’t wear makeup. With my lack of skills, I don’t trust myself to do the job properly.
“asylum seeker”
Welcome to the Dew Drop Inn.
[ Radiates natural beauty. ]
Speaking of affirmation…
Right, complete except for “two perfectly healthy fingers”.
Indeed: The left encourages and cultivates it.
[ Hastily checks dosimeter. ]
They should “interrogate” why a man wants to walk around every day looking like Widow Twankey.
It would seem to be a more fruitful line of enquiry. More to work with. I mean, a drag queen is a garish and ludicrous parody of a woman, a grotesque. Which is an odd ambition, a curious thing to aim for, round the clock, as a persona.
But hey, contact with such grotesque and sexualised caricatures – of a woman as some bizarrely made-up hag – is now deemed suitable, even necessary, for groups of small children. As if these spectacles were somehow affirming and representative, and offered said children unassailable role models.
I mentioned earlier how sensitive people are to sexual cues. You can tell almost 100% just from a pic of the hands if a person is male or female. The hands. Or feet. Facial structure another give away along with broad shoulders. No amount of makeup will hide these.
There is a runner from South Africa, black, who has won all sorts of medals. From the first look I knew that this was a man with an abnormality–someone finally pushed the issue and yes, XY with undeveloped testes which means the body develops as female, but only sort-of because no ovaries. No fault of his own of course but it just shows how you can’t fool people.
In other news, Maxine Waters’ daughter knows exactly what mental illness looks like. She knows it from the inside, but I don’t think she knows that.
I love a happy ending.
Edit: I put this up immediately after seeing the clip & before I saw Darleen’s comment. There being no delete option I apologise for the repetition.
So . . . they’re polite about it?
In other news, Maxine Waters’ daughter…shows that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
You have to wonder, though, if these bozos actually believe that nonsense, or are just playing to their stupider and more ovine followers.
The link with the referring junk trimmed off if anyone else gets a “page not found”.
Well, that’s amazing. But I honestly don’t know what’s real any more. Is she?
After all, Vox assures me that “Angry Black Woman” is just a trope.
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” — Arnaud Amalric
“occupet extremum scabies; mihi turpe relinqui est et, quod non didici” – Horace
So there!
And once again, this place reeks of class.
occupet extremum scabies?
Ivermectin aut Permethrin!
“I have known precisely one woman who uses a spatula to put on makeup.”
Although I’ve been out of the dating pool for a long time, I’m getting a kick out of watching young women post their Ls on YT sites like Dating Delusions and Modern Women Archives Reviews. One in particular was arguing that men should always pay on the first date because she uses expensive makeup (like, 2K worth from Dior).
All that makeup, and her puffy lips keep her at a 5.
The more I watch these, I realize we all need a partner to restrain our worst impulses.
A whole new realm of compelling alien trash has just been opened up to me.
Makeup and hair are class markers. If a girl’s mother taught her how to dress classy, do her hair, and put on makeup, she can look elegant, well-off, and smart. If not, and she follows fads and her friends, she can look absurd and low-class.
For example, the phrase “ditsy” comes from a hair coloring “Ditz” that used to be popular because it was cheap, but it make your hair look….cheap. So “ditsy” to refer to a not too bright, not too classy girl trying too hard.
Apropos of nothing (although the person handing out the glasses could have qualified for that reddit board), I just scored a free pair of eclipse glasses from the Physics department and have my alarm set for 30 min or so from the max point of the thing as a reminder to emerge from my burrow and greet the (mostly) dark. Hey – 98% is close enough for guvmint work, and it doesn’t cost me a thing. Street corner sellers were out in force selling glasses yesterday – don’t think I’d trust them even if they were giving them away. Of course it’s cloudy right now, so there may be nothing to see.
Wiktionary disagrees, says it derives from German. Sorry. My OED and Webster’s New World dictionaries don’t even list it.
Live feed, currently from Mexico.
Heh.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
The sun is being eaten! More sacrifices are needed!
I saw a total eclipse in August 1999, in a garden in Oxford. It was pleasingly eerie. The birds fell silent and all the shadows briefly took on the shape of crescents.
Fenris swallowed the Sun.
Seems to have coughed it back up.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
98% is still pretty bright, as it turns out, coming as it did close to midday. Although there was a weird dimness to the light quality. The birds went silent, but they usually do around this time. The mockingbird is back singing lustily so I guess it’s over. My ancient phone camera wouldn’t show anything but a blob, but the leaf shadows were thin crescents, so that was pretty cool.
I have a vague memory of an eclipse while I was in grad school in the desert SW – seems as though it did get dark, but I could be mis-remembering. I’m sure the Interwebs know.
Just in time. We’ve run out of virgins.
But the Scottish Parliament is unworried: They have thousands of virgin sheep.
And no pesky zippers to startle them.
I’m guessing the oddly sharp crescents – mostly seen under trees, I think – are the result of some kind of pinhole-camera effect and a lack of ambient, scattering light. I remember enjoying the sense of Larger Forces At Work.
For those who may have missed it, very much Moon-related.
It not just what mom taught, but the continued expectations (& willingness to discipline) the young teen girl whose brain is wired during puberty to want to follow her friends and shove against parental control. You know, dad (and/or mom) standing at the bottom of the stairs ordering the youngling “back to your room and change those clothes! You are not going out of the house looking like that!”
As someone close to sliding into her 7th decade on this planet, I was first allowed minimal makeup (after lessons) in high school. Was there a few compromises based on fashion? A few — just enough to make me feel I won something from mom. Looking back (and having raised 4 daughters) I am both grateful to a mom who stayed mom rather than my “friend” and taught me to have a healthy attitude towards makeup (“if your makeup is noticed as makeup, you’re doing it wrong”) AND budget. There is no flippin’ reason (except bragging) to spending $2K on makeup especially when you’re under 30. Yikes.
That was indeed very nice. But I wouldn’t do that today without armed guards.
[ Fetches cushion, shawl. ]
Fetch . . . the comfy chair!
I’ll just leave this here.
[ Raises hand. ]
I’ll be sliding soon, too.
May I have a cup of tea, shawl, and comfy chair?
But sometimes I feel quite young at heart.
So, how about a gallon of massage oil and one of the girls next door?
Pipe and slippers can be rented at the bar.
The eclipse thing that everyone was all juiced about..how it looked here. Yes, I actually looked..through the clouds…and I’m still here. If what does not kill you makes you stronger, I expect to develop some sort of superpowers. Will let y’all know what develops…
A nice animated map of the North American eclipse path.
However, this seems to be, by far, the most awesome view of the eclipse. (Sound on)
Eclipse crescents
“I just don’t have a lot of money at the moment.”
Didn’t see much of anything like that, not like the partial eclipse a few months back.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
I live on the fringe of the “totality” path. Started driving south into the totality about 20 minutes before the peak. It was freaky. The automatic headlights came on well before it was really dark. Was wondering if the colour of the light (K) affected the sensors. Still it was very eerie. A very dusky twilight. Didn’t last long though. Couldn’t take a picture, I was driving.
I’ll just leave this here.
Looks suspiciously like Hump Fat.
We had the totality, or whatever, pass directly over us in 2017*.It was a big deal. It was a very clear day. It got dark(er) but I was a bit disappointed, expecting it to be much darker. No roosters crowing or anything like that. More like a very dark cloud passing over. I almost missed the one today because I didn’t think it would be much of a thing here. Was working on my mother-in-law’s taxes when I needed to text a friend with a question and he…”reminded” me of the big event just about to happen. That’s when I went out to see pretty much exactly what I posted above (not my pic..mine weren’t so good).
I almost missed it because I was getting so very tired of so much of the hype that I started blocking it from my thoughts. Especially the women putting up posts warning people to bring their animals inside. I’m like…WTF? Our society needs to go one of two very hard ways. Either we get women on board with actual critical thinking or we stop taking them seriously about anything at all. The former is going to be much, much, much harder. Especially if the rest of the “men” are too chickensh*t to point out to them how oblivious to simple realities they are. I can’t do that job alone.
*There was a pretty good restaurant named after it that got killed by Covid but there are still a few other small commercial and otherwise references to it passing over here.
I wandered into my back yard to take photos of my blooming Phlox subulata, and my neighbor over the fence, a retired welder, offered me a look through his welder goggles.
I looked, and it was a cookie with a bite taken out. Not much in the way of dimming the light. Could have been the high clouds.
Then I turned on the TV and found live coverage, and as they went from one totality to the next, the hosts reacted as if Jesus had returned, weeping openly and exulting at the totality of it all.
I mean, yeah, a total eclipse is cool and stuff, but it doesn’t change anything. Peace and harmony don’t increase. It’s not even the solstice, which signals the return of the sun.
As for the man with the amputated fingers, he doesn’t actually “identify” as someone who’s missing fingers — his brain/body mapping is off, such that his brain hasn’t registered those regions of his fingers, so they seem alien to him. Unfortunately, the result is obsessive thoughts about the alien appendages, to the point of disrupting his life. He can’t ignore them because his brain is wigging out whether he likes it or not.
I almost am OK with him getting the unmapped flesh removed, IF it actually brings him relief. If after 6 months his brain finds something else to bitch about, maybe other remedies should be pursued.
I expect to develop some sort of superpowers
Something something cheerleader something world.
Either we get women on board with actual critical thinking or we stop taking them seriously about anything at all
Sooner or later…
Ooh, this. We just had an eclipse in 2017. It’s like no one remembers that? Even here people were a bit over-the-top about it. We had the 2017 one pass directly, 100% overhead vs. this 2024 one for which the totality was 500 miles away at its closest. Been there, done that, literally still have the t-shirt.
I noticed that too: Sensationalism is what they sell, which is bad. But as a bonus, why should I respect adults who behave like little children?
Yes, I remember that from a partial eclipse in my childhood. Our eyes automatically adjust to dimming light while even a largely obscured sun is very bright.=
Well, the winter solstice.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Given the daily servings of awful news (much of it in the U.S. due to the truly awful administration) the frenetic reactions of the orthodox media are understandable as an attempt at distraction.
Newsies: “Me! Me! Pay attention to me!”
Given the topic of this post, I was too afraid to open this at first…
BTW, I went to a show in London last night and spotted 3 MFT trannies, 2 in the gent’s toilets (so at least that’s something). One would fit right in with those featured here, middle-aged, balding but bright green hair, and a fancy dress it had to ask someone else for help with the catch!