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thefudge · 4 years

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Just out of curiosity, did you read JK's essay? I don't support everything in it but many parts resonated with me. Not to mention the horrific online abuse hurled at her, especially the countless, countless "choke on my dick" phrases thrown at her which are so violently misogynistic, it left me with a deep seated feeling of not only discomfort but fear as well. Idk I guess I just felt safe sending this because your blog seems more open to discussion from the other side instead of instant cancel.

i’m glad you think so about this blog and i hope that remains the case.

i didn’t have a chance to read JK’s essay until today (my previous ask about her was written before that) but here are some very, very imperfect thoughts on it:

the essay confirmed my previous take that she has inoculated herself against certain outside arguments but it’s also made me wonder about JK’s understanding of gender and sex. She is very attached to “natal women” and calling all people who menstruate “women” because of “common experiences”, despite the fact that her beloved de Beauvoir, whom she quotes in the essay extensively, acknowledged that “woman” is a social construct. JK herself at one point complains about having to comply with the rules of femininity while growing up and how it made her want to stop being female, so what is the truth? She argues that young girls shouldn’t be thinking about transitioning just because they are made to hate their femaleness but that’s!!! exactly what!!! pushing the term “woman” as sacrosanct does to girls!!! most of what JK felt in her childhood was the kind of misogyny which connects women strictly to their uterus. it made being male a better alternative precisely because of the gate-keeping of penis/vagina. a young girl who acted like a tomboy, for instance, would be criticized for trying to deny her sex, because deep down her biology still made her a “woman”. both sex and gender cannot be divorced from socio-cultural realities, because we act with our bodies and embody what we act. so, if we expand what it means to be a “man” and a “woman”, we liberate, not confine. JK wants young people to feel free to be whoever they want to be, but they must be called “women” when discussing menstruation or else (i won’t even go into the obvious addition that many cis and trans women exist who cannot or no longer menstruate).

Now, she does bring up some fair points about cancel culture and freedom of expression that I will level with, but the problem is that the nuancing she is trying to achieve also serves as weirdly specific dog-whistling. So let me address that:

(warning: spoilers for the Cormoran Strike series)

Right off the bat, we have this explanation added in her intro:

“On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself (...)”

and already, i’m asking questions. how is Robin Ellacott, one of the protagonists of the Strike series, “affected" by these issues, personally? she’s “of an age” to...what? be gender critical? there’s not a lot of that in the novels (unless you count Robin being tall and knowing how to drive well being framed as anti-girly...). How does crime relate to it? How is she connected to this really?

the real connection JK wants us to see because she’ll reveal it later in the essay is that Robin was r*ped in college. she’s a sexual assault survivor, which must make her critically engaged with the fate of trans women because....because underneath JK’s empty statement about her female detective....is the correlation that men “disguised” as trans women can perpetrate the same sort of horrific abuse. she keeps making this correlation throughout the essay.

Here she talks about various people who’ve reached out to her:

They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

And again here:

“So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

This one is my favorite because it’s so twisted (here she’s listing her charity work):

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

“safeguarding”

hmmmm

What JK wants to spell out with these “common sense” arguments is that she fears that trans women are predatory, and the most convincing argument she can bring, ultimately, is that she herself has been the victim of sexual abuse and therefore, that potential fear never goes away. That’s a very dangerous leap to make. The climate of “fear” she mentions is also connected to cancel culture, of course. She fears women won’t be able to express their opinions online without receiving various amounts of vitriol. But you see how she has merged all three issues together? So that if you agree with one, you must agree with the others. Because yes, cancel culture often goes too far, and yes it is a real issue, but to say that the trans community shutting her down foments the same atmosphere of “fear” as boogie trans women hurting children in bathrooms and her being abused by her cis husband… that’s a veeery slippery slope. Instead of sticking to “freedom of speech” and whatnot, she keeps correlating these issues that should not be correlated (some of them being false issues, as well).

Is there too much opprobrium around discussions of trans identity? Yes. Are there worthy discussions to be had about young women, homophobia and gender dysphoria? Absolutely. Can being trans become a fashionable trend/identity among kids, like the bygone goth and emo labels? Sure, but these discussions shouldn’t be had at the expense of trans people who have to constantly prove that they “mean” it. Because by stringing up all these issues together, JK is saying “the kids don’t know any better, and the adults are faking it”. Yes, cancel culture is impeding dialogue, yes, we shouldn’t shy away from discussing young teens’ identity problems, but if you pile up all of these things in a giant “trans women are the problem and they might be predatory too” milkshake, you won’t get anywhere.

I want to come back to this quote:

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

Beyond the (in my opinion) not very tasteful enumeration of things she’s done to help, JK’s mention of “education” there is veeery interesting. On the one hand, she probably feels that schools will try to censor “free speech”, but on the other hand, I bet she’s also concerned schools will not do enough censoring, so that impressionable kids become pressured into adopting a trans identity. You see how it flips on a dime? What does she ultimately want children to learn about this? Does she want them to be kept in the dark completely? Does she want them to be allowed to critique or invalidate trans identities without being censored? On this second point, things get complicated. Schools and institutions will naturally censor free speech. Kids are there to learn how to express that free speech; they will be told “hey, don’t say that to your colleague, it’s not very kind” or “you need to structure your argument appropriately instead of just saying “I don’t like it””. Is there room for criticism in how schools operate that benevolent censorship? Obviously. Hell, Foucault & co. have been talking about this for decades. So what does this argument about education ultimately mean? What are we protecting the kids from? Imo, it goes back to that covert argument about sexual violence.

Since I’m a teacher too, I’ll talk about my own experience: I brought some texts to my undergrad class about the trans experience with the goal of 1) building empathy, because literature is the grand unifier of experience and 2) showing different literary perspectives which i also included within literary theory. ultimately, the trans experience is about being human. we were learning about being human, nothing more, nothing less. if younger kids end up treating it as a fad it means that a) they need more, not less education, b) parents and schools should work together to make them understand that being trans is not the same as being “emo”, for instance. this partially resembles the trend of white kids adopting black culture just because it’s cool, but not actually engaging with the black experience. who do you sanction for this? black people? because in this analogy, the trans community should be responsible for children not benefiting from education and parental support.

oh, I know what JK is saying. the trans community is responsible for shutting down conversations about this. it’s part of the general climate of tiptoeing around trans issues. yes, here I can agree with her that Twitter discourse either helps build sympathy or loathing for the “cancelled” person instead of seriously grappling with what that person has done. it’s the nature of Twitter and I hate it, but to go from that to saying women and young girls are in danger from other “fake” women really undermines her own argument. There are normal pitfalls as we try to incrementally do some good in this world. Cancel culture and the deplatforming and ruining of lives of certain individuals will not promote the cause and is certainly to be frowned upon, but JK will be absolutely fine. there are hashtags right now like “istandwithJK” and there’s a slew of people who support her. the misogyny she faces is deplorable, but we shouldn’t conflate valid criticism with trollish vulgarities. I don’t want to minimize the dangers of online culture; I know people have lost jobs and livelihood, but that is a discussion to be had under different parameters, admitting the responsibility of both parties (for example, maya forstater realizing that maybe saying some hurtful things about public figures and proudly talking about the “delusion” of transwomen will come back to bite her in the ass) and the fact that under capitalism, your job is always at the whim of appearances and simulacrums. essentially, you are the job. this is a state of things that deserves a larger discussion not on the back of the trans community. should we live in a world where you are allowed to say anything, free of consequences? some of us do, because we can say whatever we want in our head, in our room, in our house (other ppl aren’t so lucky), but the trouble starts in the public sphere. even if we wanted to build a public sphere where everything goes, we’d be at each other’s throats in five seconds anyway because we’re human. the most we can do is educate and correct where we can. “facts don’t care about your feelings” discourse is often not informed by facts at all and forgets the vital importance of feelings.

anyway, that’s my incomplete take. still lots to think about and debate. ultimately, i think any fair points JK brought up were tainted by other bad-faith arguments and i wish she’d use this time to self-reflect because this isn’t a topic that should be breezed past in 3k words. nor should young trans ppl be called “adorable” (facepalm). i myself have many questions and constantly grapple with all of this, but since she’s a writer (and for better or worse, i still like her books), she is in a perfect position to investigate the matter with kindness and stop giving ultimatums. and i hope this post fosters discussion and doesn’t shut anyone down.

( forgot to mention that other nifty subplot in the Strike series about these really unlikable kids who are transabled and experience BID ( Body integrity dysphoria) and want to have a disability. Strike is super-offended by them since he’s genuinely disabled and we as readers are meant to think they’re real pieces of shit, and while transableism is suuuuper complicated and my thoughts on it vary wildly, i do think those BID kids also stand in for other folks in her mind..again, food for thought.)

#jk rowling #j.k. rowling #tw transphobia #replies #tw r*pe

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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In the mid-2010s, a curious new vocabulary began to unspool itself in our media. A data site, storywrangling.org, which measures the frequency of words in news stories, revealed some remarkable shifts. Terms that had previously been almost entirely obscure suddenly became ubiquitous—and an analysis of the New York Times, using these tools, is a useful example. Looking at stories from 1970 to 2018, several terms came out of nowhere in the past few years to reach sudden new heights of repetition and frequency. Here’s a list of the most successful neologisms: non-binary, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, traumatizing, queer, transphobia, whiteness, mansplaining. And here are a few that were rising in frequency in the last decade but only took off in the last few years: triggering, hurtful, gender, stereotypes.

Language changes, and we shouldn’t worry about that. Maybe some of these terms will stick around. But the linguistic changes have occurred so rapidly, and touched so many topics, that it has all the appearance of a top-down re-ordering of language, rather than a slow, organic evolution from below. While the New York Times once had a reputation for being a bit stodgy on linguistic matters, pedantic, precise and slow-to-change, as any paper of record might be, in the last few years, its pages have been flushed with so many neologisms that a reader from, say, a decade ago would have a hard time understanding large swathes of it. And for many of us regular readers, we’ve just gotten used to brand new words popping up suddenly to re-describe something we thought we knew already. We notice a new word, make a brief mental check, and move on with our lives.

But we need to do more than that. We need to understand that all these words have one thing in common: they are products of an esoteric, academic discipline called critical theory, which has gained extraordinary popularity in elite education in the past few decades, and appears to have reached a cultural tipping point in the middle of the 2010s. Most normal people have never heard of this theory—or rather an interlocking web of theories—that is nonetheless changing the very words we speak and write and the very rationale of the institutions integral to liberal democracy.

What we have long needed is an intelligible, intelligent description of this theory which most people can grasp. And we’ve just gotten one: “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity,” by former math prof James Lindsay and British academic, Helen Pluckrose. It’s as deep a dive into this often impenetrable philosophy as anyone would want to attempt. But it’s well worth grappling with.

…

During the 1980s and 1990s, this somewhat aimless critique of everything hardened into a plan for action. Analyzing how truth was a mere function of power, and then seeing that power used against distinct and oppressed identity groups, led to an understandable desire to do something about it, and to turn this critique into a form of activism. Lindsay and Pluckrose call this “applied postmodernism”, which, in turn, hardened into what we now know as Social Justice.

You can see the rationale. After all, the core truth of our condition, this theory argues, is that we live in a system of interlocking oppressions that penalize various identity groups in a society. And all power is zero-sum: you either have power over others or they have power over you. To the extent that men exercise power, for example, women don’t; in so far as straight people wield power, gays don’t; and so on. There is no mutually beneficial, non-zero-sum advancement in this worldview. All power is gained only through some other group’s loss. And so the point became not simply to interpret the world, but to change it, to coin a phrase, an imperative which explains why some critics call this theory a form of neo-Marxism.

The “neo” comes from switching out Marxism’s focus on materialism and class in favor of various oppressed group identities, who are constantly in conflict the way classes were always in conflict. And in this worldview, individuals only exist at all as a place where these group identities intersect. You have no independent existence outside these power dynamics. I am never just me. I’m a point where the intersecting identities of white, gay, male, Catholic, immigrant, HIV-positive, cis, and English all somehow collide. You can hear this echoed in the famous words of Ayanna Pressley: “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.” An assertion of individuality is, in fact, an attack upon the group and an enabling of oppression.

…

There is no such thing as persuasion in this paradigm, because persuasion assumes an equal relationship between two people based on reason. And there is no reason and no equality. There is only power. This is the point of telling students, for example, to “check their privilege” before opening their mouths on campus. You have to measure the power dynamic between you and the other person first of all; you do this by quickly noting your interlocutor’s place in the system of oppression, and your own, before any dialogue can occur. And if your interlocutor is lower down in the matrix of identity, your job is to defer and to listen. That’s partly why diversity at the New York Times, say, has nothing to do with a diversity of ideas. Within critical theory, the very concept of a “diversity of ideas” is a function of oppression. What matters is a diversity of identities that can all express the same idea: that liberalism is a con-job. Which is why almost every NYT op-ed now and almost every left-leaning magazine reads exactly alike.

Language is vital for critical theory—not as a means of persuasion but of resistance to oppressive discourses. So take the words I started with. “Non-binary” is a term for someone who subjectively feels neither male nor female. Since there is no objective truth, and since any criticism of that person’s “lived experience” is a form of traumatizing violence, that individual’s feelings are the actual fact. To subject such an idea to, say, the scrutiny of science is therefore a denial of that person’s humanity and existence. To inquire what it means to “feel like a man,” is also unacceptable. An oppressed person’s word is always the last one. To question this reality, even to ask questions about it, is a form of oppression itself. In the rhetoric of social justice, it is a form of linguistic violence. Whereas using the term nonbinary is a form of resistance to cis heteronormativity. One is evil; the other good.

Becoming “woke” to these power dynamics alters your perspective of reality. And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for “white supremacy.” This is the reality of our world, the critical theorists argue, even if we cannot see it. A gay person is not an individual who makes her own mind up about the world and can have any politics or religion she wants; she is “queer,” part of an identity that interrogates and subverts heteronormativity. A man explaining something is actually “mansplaining” it—because his authority is entirely wrapped up in his toxic identity. Questioning whether a trans woman is entirely interchangeable with a woman—or bringing up biology to distinguish between men and women—is not a mode of inquiry. It is itself a form of “transphobia”, of fear and loathing of an entire group of people and a desire to exterminate them. It’s an assault.

My view is that there is nothing wrong with exploring these ideas. They’re almost interesting if you can get past the hideous prose. And I can say this because liberalism can include critical theory as one view of the world worth interrogating. But critical theory cannot include liberalism, because it views liberalism itself as a mode of white supremacy that acts against the imperative of social and racial justice. That’s why liberalism is supple enough to sustain countless theories and ideas and arguments, and is always widening the field of debate; and why institutions under the sway of Social Justice necessarily must constrain avenues of thought and ideas. That’s why liberalism is dedicated to allowing Ibram X. Kendi to speak and write, but Ibram X. Kendi would create an unelected tribunal to police anyone and any institution from perpetuating what he regards as white supremacy—which is any racial balance not exactly representative of the population as a whole.

#andrew sullivan #substack #read the whole thing

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queermediastudies · 5 years

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Identity, Infidelity, and iPhones: A Critique of “Tangerine”

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Tangerine, set in Los Angeles in 2015, follows the journey of two black transgender women through the streets of West Hollywood the day that one of them is released from jail. The main character, Sin-Dee Rella, learns from her friend Alexandra that her fiance, Chester, has been cheating on her while she was in jail for a month. Sin-Dee sets off to seek revenge on Chester and the “other woman”. The film, which takes place over the course of Christmas Eve, depicts sex work, infidelity, drug use, singing performances, transphobic violence, and more. The plot comes to a peak with all the main characters in one donut shop, where the biggest secret of the film is revealed. Part drama and part comedy, Tangerine is a story of revenge, friendship, identity, sexuality, and love.

The reception of Tangerine was rather mixed. The film was highly acclaimed for its methods of production, as it was shot entirely from three iPhone 5s smartphones. It was also praised for its casting: the two main characters, Sin-Dee and Alexandra, are played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, two openly transgender actresses. Taylor won several independent film awards for her role (Shawan, 2015). Today, the film has a score of 96 on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film has also received criticism about its portrayals of trans characters.

While Tangerine exhibits themes that align with aspects of queer theory, it also has some problematic elements within its production and content. As a viewer, my personal subject positionality impacts my interpretations and criticisms of the film, and my identity informs how my reading of the film differs from others’. Overall, Tangerine is a complex text that requires many different perspectives to dissect.

One of the major themes evident in Tangerine is intersectionality. This film follows the lives of two transgender black women who are also sex workers. This represents an intersection of marginalized gender identity, race, and class, all of which overlap and inform each other to create experiences unique to these particular positions in society. The intersection of these many marginalized identities is not often represented on screen, and this film was made in the 2015, pre Pose era.

Other apparent themes in the film include trans identity and gender performativity. In one scene, Sin-Dee drags Dinah, the “other woman” to Alexandra’s performance where she sings Doris Day’s Toyland in a club. Dinah later refers to the performance as a “drag show”, to which Alexandra sternly replies “I am not a drag queen”. This exchange challenges Dinah, who, rather than deconstructing her ideas of gender, still thinks of Alexandra as a man performing as a woman. Although Tangerine includes trans characters, the film does not give Sin-Dee or Alexandra much more background or storyline other than their trans identity, a critique that will be explored more in later sections.

One of the most common praises for Tangerine is for its method of filming: the entire film was shot using iPhones and a four dollar editing app. This cheap, user-friendly technology exhibits a queer approach to production. As Scott & Fawaz point out in Queer About Comics, “low-tech quality makes comics either fundamentally democratic or especially available to democratic practices” (Scott & Fawaz, 2018, p 201). This idea is reflected in Tangerine, as the groundbreaking use of iPhones showed audiences the endless opportunities available with more readily accessible technology. The editing of the film also exemplified some nontraditional techniques. The footage was edited to be quite oversaturated, giving it a slight orange hue, thus the name Tangerine. These film choices deliberately broke cinematic norms.

Tangerine mirrors Pose when it comes to some of its criticism. Because of the casting of two trans women of color, the film was able to deflect a lot of criticism. Dr. Martin makes this argument with Pose, saying that “These gay and trans actors of color function as a shield for Pose’s problematic representational politics” (Martin, 2018). While the casting of these two actresses seems groundbreaking, the film itself was created and written by two straight, white, cisgender men, Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. These two men received the praise and profits from Tangerine even though there were many problematic layers within the casting, production, content, and intended audience of the film.

For one, although Baker and Bergoch may have had good intentions by trying to cast black trans actors, their methods for finding actors were questionable. Their desire to create this film came from Baker’s “fascination” with a particular Los Angeles intersection that was known for sex work. “As straight, white, cisgender men, he and frequent writing partner Chris Bergoch knew they needed a collaborator familiar with the area’s culture. Approaching people on the street proved futile, so they wandered over to a nearby LGBT center. There, Baker instantly “gravitated” toward a transgender woman named Mya Taylor, an aspiring entertainer who had never acted before, but was game for whatever Baker and Bergoch wanted” (Jacobs, 2015). The intense interest in a community that Baker is not a part of seems voyeuristic if not intrusive. Also, the way that Baker found Mya Taylor shows a situation where Taylor has very little power in the creation of this film. While Baker did intend to get an “inside perspective” of the area’s culture rather than relying on his own perspective, his casting of Taylor seems to be solely based on the fact that she is a black trans woman and was willing to participate. This has some connotations of tokenism and performativity that must be looked at more closely.

Secondly, the film itself has many issues of representation of trans lives. Overall, Sin-Dee and Alexandra have been propped up as “window dressings” of the film. As Rich Juzwiak states in a critique of the film, “We get virtually no sense of Sin-Dee’s interior life, and the sense we get of Alexandra’s is eye-rollingly trite (she wants to be a singer)” (Juzwiak, 2015). We do not get much of a sense of these characters’ lives outside of sex work, such as their backgrounds or even where they live when they are not on the streets. Instead, Baker and Bergoch rely heavily on tropes and stereotypes of black trans women as well as sex workers. On the other hand, they show the family and home life of Razmik, a cab driver who is a regular customer of Sin-Dee and Alexandras. This makes sense with the later plot, but the stark distinctions between these characters are clear.

The obsession with anatomy in Tangerine presents another layer of concern. For one, the fetishization of trans women was a major component of the film. Razmik consistently objectifies and fetishizes trans women. We see this when he unknowingly picks up a cis woman, then proceeds to kick her out of his car when he realizes she is not trans. This fetishization is dehumanizing, as it portrays trans women as objects of a straight male’s gaze rather than people with complex identities. Cavalcante (2017) criticizes films such as Boys Don’t Cry and TransAmerica for “scenes in both films that fetishized genitalia” (Cavalcante, 2017). This obsession with the anatomy of trans bodies is also shown when Dinah calls Chester “homo” for wanting to marry Sin-Dee. Selena, the woman that Razmik picked up, also called him “homo” when she realized he was looking for a trans woman. This implies that Sin-Dee and other trans women are men, invalidating their female identity. There are also consistent references to Dinah as a “real” woman or a “fish”. This reference implies that, as a cisgender woman, Dinah’s biology is what makes her a woman, and that trans women are not real women. While the trans characters use this reference themselves, it is still problematic to use biology as the determining factor for womanhood. Rather than challenging this implication, Tangerine consistently perpetuates transphobic language and ideas.

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As viewers, it is important to recognize our own subject positionality when critiquing films. Personally, as a young queer woman of color in college, I often tend to have a critical, almost cynical lens with many texts. For one, as a mixed-race person, I rarely see images of myself in the media, so I understand the importance of representation. When I do come across characters that I identify with, I often will fall prey to the trap of representation without considering larger structures within media.

Because of my subjective experiences as a queer woman, I would say I am also sex-positive and sex work positive. I had trouble with some criticisms of Tangerine that I found online because many people took issue with the portrayal of Sin-Dee and Alexandra as sex workers. The particular editorials I came across used a lot of anti-sex worker language. While I agree that “trans women as sex workers” is a trope that must be challenged, my own positionality tells me that there is nothing inherently wrong with sex work. Sex workers deserve to have their stories told and they deserve respect and dignity. While there is a lot of questionable material in Tangerine, I don’t think the presence of sex work alone is inherently problematic. However, the portrayal of sex work as indecent, as it was sometimes portrayed in Tangerine, contributes to the stigma against it. My personal experiences and views further complicated my reading of this film.

At first glance, Tangerine seems indisputably groundbreaking based on its cast and the characters it is representing. However, a closer look behind the scenes reveals that the features praised in the film are a veil for some questionable processes. A close examination of the text recalls Tourmaline’s Teen Vogue piece: “Too often, people with resources who already have a platform become the ones to tell the stories of those at the margins rather than people who themselves belong to these communities. The process ends up extracting from people who are taking the most risks just to live our lives and connect with our histories…” (Tourmaline, 2017). If we truly want a raw, real look at the lives of trans people of color and sex workers, we must leave the storytelling up to them, rather than approaching these communities with nosy voyeurism as Baker did. However, Tangerine revealed the possibility of a full-length film created with very limited technology. Perhaps the next breakout film will be a story created by trans women of color using nothing but iPhones.

Works Cited

Critique by Lucy Briggs

Jacobs, M. (2015, July 9). Tangerine may have had a tiny budget, but the film's heart is bigger because of it. Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tangerine-movie-transgender_n_559bc990e4b05d7587e22881.

Juzwiak, R. (2015, October 17). Trans sex work comedy Tangerine is the most overrated movie of the year. Gawker. Retrieved from http://defamer.gawker.com/trans-sex-work-comedy-tangerine-is-the-most-overrated-m-1717662910.

Martin, A. L. (2018, August 2). Pose(r): Ryan Murphy, trans and queer of color labor, and the politics of representation. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/poser-ryan-murphy-trans-queer-color-labor-politics-representation/.

Scott, D. & Fawaz, R. (2018) Queer about comics. American Literature, Volume 90, Number 2, June 2018, pp 197-219. Doi: 10.1215/00029831-4564274

Shawhan, J. (2015, August 6). Beyond using progressive filming techniques and casting, Tangerine is expressive and warm. Nashville Scene. Retrieved from https://www.nashvillescene.com/arts-culture/film/article/13060247/beyond-using-progressive-filming-techniques-and-casting-tangerine-is-expressive-and-warm.

#tangerine #queer media studies #pose #qtpoc #iphone #queer reading #intersectionality

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trans-fax · 7 years

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hey, you! show me the trans fax!

are you confused about trans stuff? it’s so complicated even some trans people don’t fully understand all the nuance. wild, right? never fear, because this is a new series of basic trans info that will hopefully help everyone on and off the LGBTQIA+ spectrum understand a little better. onward to the basics!

CISgender = someone whose gender corresponds with their assigned sex at birth TRANSgender = someone whose gender does not correspond with their assigned sex at birth

someone's Assigned Sex At Birth (ASAB) is determined by a) visual genital examination, b) surgical genital alteration.

visual sex assignment is not a scientifically or medically accurate way of determining someone's biology, much less their gender. sex assignment does not include any medical tests such as: karyotype (chromosomes), hormone panel, ultrasound or physical examination (to identify internal intersex conditions).

the most common sex assignments are Assigned MALE At Birth (penis, scrotum, no vaginal opening) or Assigned FEMALE At Birth (vulva + vaginal opening + small phallus. this phallus can be naturally small or surgically altered to be so). on rare occasions, an intersex child - or, a child with genitals that have a combination of the above features - will not be forcibly assigned male or female, but they're usually still assigned a gender.

your ASAB has very little to do with your actual bodily functions, and NOTHING to do with your gender!

[ vocab to remember: trans, cis, ASAB / AMAB / AFAB, intersex ]

what is gender? some people think it is a literal extension of your genitals, but that's extremely far from the truth.

gender is hard to explain. it is a feeling that usually has very little to do with your biology (that is, your actual factual biology, not your ASAB). some people think gender is neurological, some think it is spiritual, but here's one thing it isn't: tethered to your genital appearance or reproductive abilities.

did you know that intersex people make up the same percentage of the population as redheads? that's a lot of people who have genitals that can't be described as a simple 'penis' or 'vagina!' there's also sex chromosome abnormalities - some people go their entire lives not knowing that their chromosomes are not a simple XX or XY figuration!

[ vocab note: the scientifically false assumption that (man = male = XY = penis) & (woman = female = XX = vagina) is called the gender and sexual BINARY ]

both intersex people and people with sex chromosome abnormalities can have ANY gender. a man who finds out he has Klinefelter's syndrome (two or more X chromosomes in addition to a Y) is not suddenly a woman, right? of course not!

apply this same principle to all people of all biological realities. you don't have to have a fertile uterus or two X chromosomes to be a woman. you don't have to have a functioning penis or a flat chest to be a man.

beyond that, you don't have to identify as a man OR a woman at all! many more people than you realize, historically and in modern society, exemplify gender diversity. judaism, for example, has six genders. six! indigenous americans can have two (or more) spirits in one body, which result in a person with no gender, or multiple genders that may or may not include man/woman. some people simply do not feel they have a gender.

anyone who is transgender but does not identify as solely a man or a woman is NON-BINARY.

you shouldn't tell someone that they have to identify as a man or a woman based on their ASAB, and you also shouldn't force them to pick one or the other. to do so ignores biological fact, cultural and spiritual history, and individual autonomy.

think about the people around you and the assumptions you make about them. did your nana really feel like a woman? did you ever ASK?

[ review & thought experiment: intersex people cannot be tied to a binary sex assignment. is it okay to tell people with in-between biology that they can't have an in-between gender experience? ]

okay, so now... what about sexuality?

this one's easy. anyone can be attracted to the same gender or multiple genders. it doesn't matter what your gender is, or your chromosomes, or your hormone levels and what kind of puberty you went through, or if you're sterile or reproductively capable.

if you are a man with a penis, you can want to sleep with a man. if you are a man with a vulvovagina, you can want to sleep with a man, as well, and still be a man! a gay cis man and a gay trans man are both gay men.

meanwhile, a trans person who has an interest in multiple genders isn't confused. their gender is not related to the scope of people they find attractive.

here are some sexuality terms you might recognize from the LGBTQIA+ acronym. (it's a great idea to look up the rest of them on your own.)

gay, lesbian = a person who is attracted exclusively to their own GENDER (not sex!) bisexual, pansexual = a person who is attracted to MULTIPLE genders. remember that since "man" and "woman" aren't the only gender options, people with multiple gender attraction (MGA) can experience a LOT of personal nuance - try not to make assumptions.

[ vocab to remember: binary & nonbinary, gay & lesbian, bisexual / pansexual / MGA ]

before we go, how about reproduction?

that, too, is a simple answer. every couple on this earth will at some point face the question of whether or not they're going to have kids, whether that be through natural pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, a surrogate, fostering, or adoption. if you don't want children, that's an easy answer! if you do, it's not.

ALL couples face troubles with reproduction, not just members of the LGBTQIA+ community. you could have a straight couple who are both cisgender, but one or both partners could have a reproductive tract that does not function. one or both partners could be intersex, or have abnormal sex chromosomes, or have a hormonal disorder that affects sperm production or menstrual cycling.

when you look at it this way, the reproductive choices made by a couple where one or both are trans don't sound particularly strange, do they? people do what they must in order to have a child. for a cis woman - maybe she's a lesbian, maybe she is a single woman who wants to be a mother - that might be artificial insemination. for a trans man, the easiest option might be carrying his own child. a trans woman may choose to have sperm cryopreserved before she starts HRT and risks stopping sperm production.

no one's reproductive choices make them any more or less gay, cis, trans, or MGA.

do you have any more questions? i know this is a lot. we've been told so many things through our lives about sex, gender, and biology, but the more research is done, the less rigid the boundaries seem.

while it can be difficult to accept that the world is so much different from what you were told, the common ground uniting all of us should be mutual respect and kindness. please go forward in life keeping this in mind, and don't challenge people on their private biological reality, gender, or gender expression. also, respect people's pronouns!

you've reached the end of trans-fax basics. i hope it helped. :D

#trans-fax #basics #part I

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thesquidwizard · 3 years

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I was told reading Philosophical problems with blah blah blah would answer why making 500 genders would solve gender stereotypes I am petty and affable so I read it

If you want my opinions and my mind slowly melting i am kindly putting this under a read more cuz its fucking long as shit

the TLDR is : this drivel doesnt mention the problems of gender stereotypes or neogenders at all its just some guy wanking on why women need to give up their spaces because he thinks their wrong and annoying ( Kathleen Stock especially)

I’d love to @ you lake-lady, but you blocked me for thought crimes and im to lazy to try to get around that ( if you actually read this before recommending it to me, you are very very strong and very very brainwashed)

the first 14 paragraphs are circle talk "GC feminists are wrong, i will prove their wrong, they think "this" it is wrong ill prove its wrong etc etc etc" if you survive that that, They focus on Kathleen Stock in their words "Stock presents an articulate, relatively comprehensive, and moderate form of gender-critical feminism" first: If Margie’s self-diagnosis (“I’m a boy”) is questioned by the therapist, the therapist can be construed as . . . “converting” . . . a trans child to a “cis” one. If, on the other hand, Margie’s self-diagnosis is affirmed unquestioningly, the therapist is effectively failing to affirm Margie in a sexual orientation of lesbianism; something which also looks like conversion by omission. (Stock, 2018e) -They spend 5 paragraphs explaining why Stocks hypothetical girl^ isnt converted to male heterosexualness by transitioning, and not affirming Marges Gender identity is Dangerous They do not address Stocks ACTUAL concern that Gender Affirming Therapy without any kind of therapy and research on GNC and SSA children is conversion by omission because it doesnt take into account if these feelings stem from gender stereotypes and homophobia. Stocks is not concerned that you are converting this girl straight( sex is real she would be SSA either way) she is concerned your transitioning her without affirming her sexuality and giving her support in the knowledge that being a lesbian is okay and perfectly normal.-

Next: concern about female-only spaces is about legal self-identification without any period of “living as a woman,” prior male socialisation in a way which exacerbates the tendency to violence against female bodies, and the fact that many self-identifying trans women . . . retain both male genitalia and a sexual orientation towards females. (stock) If the evidence shows (as, in fact, it is already showing) that some males—whether genuinely “truly” trans or just pretending—turn out to pose a threat to females, and it’s really hard to tell in advance which ones will, can’t we then make a social norm and/or law to exclude all [natal] males from female-only spaces . . . ? (also stock)

-Quotes are separated by garbage but this whole section is what we have all seen before " why must trans woman suffer, just because cis men hurt woman" except its really long it acknowledges male violence rates but refuses to acknowledge we have already seen men (and identified transwoman) taking advantage to hurt woman. This whole chunk is just SOME woman must be sacrificed for Trans feelings-

They do put: Finally, we know that some men who come into contact with children in their work will offend against them. Yet we do not exclude all men from working with children, even if using gender as a watershed would prevent those offenses. Why does the good of minimizing child sexual abuse not lead us inexorably to the conclusion that we must outlaw all male teachers and coaches? Because our practical reason recognizes complexity: We readily see that even the most highly desirable states of affairs (minimizing abuse of children) do not have simple, quasi-mechanistic implications for policy or decision-making, and that they do not justify the indiscriminate suppression of other goods (even less important ones, such as professional vocations).

-And id like to add with the rise in pedo crimes I am 100% down with separating men from children because i do not think any child should be endangered just to keep men in jobs.-

They also put this quote in:

there is clearly a difference between the experience of a child who is treated by others in way that are characteristic of boys and also feels like a boy, and a child who is treated by others in ways that are characteristic of boys whilst feeling that they are really a girl. (Finlayson et al., 2018)

-And are you sure? are you really sure? I feel like there might be differences between social conditioning, experience and feelings. A boy treated like a boy and a boy(who feels like a girl) treated like a boy are still experiencing being treated and raised like a boy?? one just has emotional differences (is it internalized homophobia, Gender non conformity, a developed fetish?? who knows but they still experienced boyhood)-

-Next section says we cant make single stall or any other kind of netrual or trans bathrooms because its to hard? and it hurts trans feels reminding them that they have birth sexes because thats hate speech???-

also this: Our social world is arranged in a way that makes exclusion from the sex/gender they claim—on the basis of a lack of “authentic” belonging (Serano, 2007)—central to trans subordination. As with other forms of social subordination, trans exclusion has not only material dimensions (Blair & Hoskin, 2018; Hargie et al., 2017; Moolchaem et al., 2015; Movement Advancement Project and GLSEN, 2017; Rondón Garcia & Martin Romero, 2016; Serano, 2013; Stonewall, n.d.; Yona, 2015), but also discursive ones that work in accordance with the logic of so-called performatives. Performatives are utterances that do things with words: specifically, they accomplish something in the act of saying it (Austin, 1975). The classical example is marriage—in the act of declaring a couple married, a celebrant brings about a change in their normative status, provided the celebrant is the right person in the right circumstances. This presupposes a normative background (that is a set of laws, conventions, or other rules) governing all those matters: who qualifies as a legitimate celebrant, what the right circumstances are for the performative to do its work, what marriage status means in terms of spouses’ rights and obligations, etc.

-Celebrating a Marriage is celebrating a couples chosen form of representing their relationship publicly and adding each other to their legal family, how is that the same as letting men into woman's bathrooms because they have feelings??-

-Theres more babblery about subjugating trans people by not pretending biology is fake, and that saying they cant just taking womans rights and spaces is denying their reality and existence we find out the author is a gay(cis) man so why does he have opinions on womans spaces and issues who fucking knows ( he really likes the word unintelligible)-

-Im tired, Ive taken several breaks just to stay clear headed( mildly sane) and now we are onto why Trans inclusive practices dont threaten the concept of female, male, lesbian and gay. Okay buddy ole pal bring it on-

Stock (2018b) has also argued that trans inclusion on the ground of self-identification/declaration threatens “a secure understanding” of concepts intimately related to “woman”—namely, “female” and “lesbian.” It is hard to see this threat as a real one. After all, conceptually, “trans maleness” and “trans femaleness” presuppose “cis maleness” and “cis femaleness” as their other—namely, the case of female and male for which no transition, no reaching across, is required: the case of femaleness and maleness already on this side of (= “cis”) their sex.

-At some point i expect to find out Stock implied his dick is tiny or something " gender crit feminists are wrong im gonna argue with just this one" In this section he manages to be long winded and say nothing have a taste:

Stock (2019b) argues, correctly, that “sex [i.e., maleness and femaleness] is not determined by any single, unitary set of essential criteria,” and that “there is no single set of features a person must have in order to count as male or female.” She goes on to state that: (a) “you do still need to possess some” female (biological) sex characteristics to count as female; (b) that this is “a real, material condition upon sex-category-membership”; and (c) that “medical professionals [assigning sex]. . . rely upon an established methodology, aimed at capturing pre-existing biological facts” (Stock 2019b). Stock presents (a), (b), and (c) as if they were true without qualification. In fact, they only describe how, for very legitimate reasons, sex is understood and assigned within the discourses of biology and medicine; but our everyday usages of “male” and “female” may well be more capacious. It does not follow, of course, that there is no connection at all between these discursive domains—biology and the everyday. Rather, something like the biological meaning of “male” and “female” refer to the central cases of “male” and “female” as those terms feature in everyday usages. But those usages, if trans-inclusive (as they should be), will also cover, legitimately and usefully, noncentral cases of those selfsame terms.

-Yes you need to be female to be female, it doesnt matter what you look like how much you weigh your hobbies or tastes you just need to be female. Observed Biology is observed not assigned we dont pop out blank slates until someone says "ya this ones a girl"-

There really is no good reason to fear that such trans-inclusive practices will imperil “maleness” and “femaleness” as concepts. It is the very fact that those concepts have and will retain central cases that puts to rest any such fear. What makes something like the biological meanings of “male” and “female” the central cases of everyday usages of those words is “[o]rdinary-life truth seeking, a certain level of which is essential for survival”; this “involves a swift instinctive testing of innumerable kinds of coherence against innumerable kinds of extra-linguistic data” (Murdoch, 1992). Reproduction is a key aspect of human experience: The existence of each of us and the perpetuation of the human species presuppose it. The extra-linguistic reality of the dioecious configuration of human bodies, which is functional to human reproduction, means both that the concept of “female” and “male” are here to stay, and that their central cases will remain well-understood, even after we give up on trans-exclusionary attitudes, practices, and policies. To put it another way: trans-inclusive linguistic usages, policies, and so on, cannot threaten the distinction between the concepts of “male” and “female,” which hinges on the nondisposability of the central cases of those concepts.

For similar reasons, it is difficult to agree with Stock that characterizing as “gay” trans men attracted to men, and as “lesbian” trans women attracted to women, “leaves us with no linguistic resources to talk about that form of sexual orientation that continues to arouse the distinctive kind of bigotry known as homophobia” (Stock, 2019d). After all, our linguistic conventions make cissexual womanhood and manhood the central or paradigmatic cases of “womanhood” and “manhood”; cissexual (though not necessarily gender-conforming) lesbianism and male homosexuality the central or paradigmatic cases of “lesbianism” and “male homosexuality,” and so on. This will not change. First because of the prevalence of cissexual women/men and cissexual lesbians/gay men, in terms of sheer numbers, relative to trans women/men and trans lesbians/gay men. Second, because of the ways in which the concepts of “man,” “woman,” “gay,” “lesbian,” “cis,” and “trans” sit together with the concepts of “male” and “female,” which reference an extra-linguistic reality, of which, as we have already seen, we cannot but take notice. Given these linguistic and empirical facts, a trans-inclusive use of the terms “lesbian” and “gay” does not carry the dangers Stock (2019d) worries about.

-I keep going back and checking the date this was published in 2020 clearly this man has neither been online except to stalk Stock, nor talked to a human who actually believes what he is arguing against. No one is mad at transwoman for liking woman or vise versa its the kind of woman and men they go after and EXPECT romance and validation from ( ie lesbians and gay men, ie threatening what lesbian and gay mean in "inclusive" climates) fucking knob.-

I dunno if this is translated or the writer isnt english but he keeps using subordination where "opression" would be used and umm. anyway onto "Overemphasizing Sex-Based Subordination"

first he explains the difference between paranoid and paranoid structuralism there is so much fucking bullshit then we get to some quotes! that are bullshit-

Even assuming that the socialization of trans girls mirrors that of cis boys, the fact that trans girls do not identify with maleness can be expected to make a difference to the outcomes of such socialization (Finlayson et al., 2018).

-this guys back, love this guy doesnt know you dont fucking socialize yourself-

It is a mistake to treat “violence and discrimination against trans women . . . as if it were unconnected to that faced by cis women” (Finlayson et al., 2018).

-Finlayson marry me your so smart, that big brain of yours is sooo sexy. Anyway transwoman and "cis" woman face violence from the same people.. Men. but it is not for the same reasons and most transwoman who face violence are brown and black sex workers( if your gonna care go wholesys not halfseys). As opposed to woman who face violence no matter their class, race, nationality, age.. etc etc etc-

Saying “Not giving people everything they desire is not a denial of their humanity” (Allen et al., 2019) amounts to an insensitive dismissal of the serious argument that trans exclusion is ipso facto harmful.

-I want an affordable home and access to food and water whenever i am hungry, you want me to pretend reality doesnt exist so your feefees dont get hurt-

The claim that women “are a culturally subordinated group . . . [while] at best, trans women are a distinct subordinated group; at worst . . . members of the dominant group” entirely discounts the ways in which sex, gender, and cis/trans status intersect. These intersections produce more complex, shifting, and context-dependent power relationships than are captured by the M > F formula.

-Sex based oppression is actually like jello, sometimes woman are less oppressed or oppressed slightly more to the left, I too can just kinda say words-

A dubious assumption underlies this statement: “[T]he fact that our concept-application [of, e.g., ‘woman’] might indirectly convey disadvantage towards some social groups [e.g., trans women] is not itself a reason to criticise the concept use, because the concept use has a further valuable point” (such as “to pick out a distinctive group, relative to recognisably important interests”) (Stock, 2019e). The dubious assumption here is that the “valuable point” of a restrictive use of the concept will be lost if the concept is broadened. The assumption is dubious because even in its broad, inclusive use, the concept retains a readily identifiable central case.

-Yes you dunder head if we start calling lizards mammals we lose the point of what makes a mammal a mammal, which complicates and endangers our way of researching and understanding mammals by making woman "whoever the fucks wants to be one" we loss the ability to easily talk about things that are exclusive to woman the more female language is edified the harder it is for females to unite to talk about womans issues, womans health, girls puberty, womans oppression etc etc.-

-my fuck i dont even care to learn this mans name and i have a personal hatred just for him, i hope ya'll have noticed he uses several different "sources" for his arguments and yet pins GC feminism on Stock alone. Anyway here we go into Doing Philosophy and Debating Policy in the Age of Social Media and Digital Platforms ( i think this man nuts every time he types out philosophy)-

my god we have brough Plato into this, Stocks must stand alone but we are at fucking plato, anyway this section actually has some brains in it there drivel but also truth:

Needless to say, in real-world face-to-face exchanges, unalloyed communicative action is known only by approximation. But there are very good reasons to think that the distance between the ideal (namely, communicative action) and the real is especially wide in the context of the quasi-spoken digital media used to construct (and respond to) the gender-critical case against trans inclusion. Stock (2019f) herself, discussing the reception of her arguments, has complained about countless “half-arsed takedown attempts” by “online philosophers,” crediting, conversely, philosophers she meets offline with “interesting, constructive, and charitable” objections. She also notes that social media siphons “users into paranoid, angry silos” (Stock, 2019d), and that “when reading disembodied words on a screen” it is “easy enough” to engage in “projection” (Stock, 2019a). Why and how do social media and allied platforms have this potential for distorting genuine communicative action?

First, they enable new manipulative communication practices, such as flaming and trolling. The popular support base of gender-critical academics makes ample use of these, though gender-critical scholars are also at the receiving end. Rather than using the quasi-spoken features of social media and allied platforms with a view to genuinely advancing understanding, online activists may exploit these features for strategic aims. Common techniques include drowning a post or blog with irrelevant comments; exposing the blogger to ridicule; deflecting attention from the point she made; forcing her to address spurious objections; pretextually professing a failure to understand, demanding endless further explanations; and so on. Some of these techniques are available in spoken exchanges, but social media and allied platforms magnify their power by enabling “widely-distributed individuals to organize and galvanize around issues of common interest [or] political advocacy” (Stewart, 2016); and by facilitating the use of nonverbal or nonargument-based, but effective, communicative devices, such as memes, gifs, and emoticons.

Another way in which these digital media distort genuine communicative action is by affecting the motivations of the blogger, or micro-blogger, herself. Specifically, they facilitate the interference with genuinely communicative goals (reaching understanding) by noncommunicative, strategic aims. I will discuss three: acquiring influence, career progression, and venting.

In traditional academic communicative practice, one’s recognition as an expert is supposed to follow from the credit that accrues to one as a result of the soundness of one’s research methods and arguments, judged through peer-review processes. But “in the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scientist can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one” (Hall, 2014). Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) have found, by examining a large data set of education scholars’ participation on Twitter, that

being widely followed on social media is impacted by many factors that may have little to do with the quality of scholarly work . . . and . . . that participation and popularity may be impacted by a number of additional factors unrelated to scholarly merit (e.g., wit, controversy, longevity; p. 6).

-This section like every section goes on forever but we finally finally reach our conclusion-

Cooper (2019) has invoked a legal pluralist perspective to argue that it is possible, and may be desirable, for gender as conceived by gender-critical feminists (as “sex-based domination”) and gender as conceived in trans-affirming terms (as “identity diversity”) to coexist side-by-side in the law. Access to women’s spaces is just the kind of policy matter that need not choose between one conception of gender and the other: it can and should be granted on the basis of both. While a compelling feminist case has been made for inclusion (Finlayson et al., 2018), the best feminist case against inclusion suffers from a number of argumentative fallacies (Aristotle, n.d.), and is at odds with well-established and sound uses of practical reason. Many problems in gender-critical thought are consistent with the explanation that paranoid structuralism is too often presupposed in gender-critical work, rather than being treated, productively, as a hypothesis. The nature of the publication outlets favored by gender-critical feminists (social media, blogs, etc.) is also likely to be implicated in generating some of these problems.

I think one of the things i would like anyone who managed to read this entire thing to take away from this is that not ONCE were male bathrooms or male spaces mentioned, not once did this apparently "cis" gay man say that he welcomes and wants transmen in HIS spaces or that he has even thought about it

(((( also he didnt even mention neo genders so my original question 100% unanswered, even fuckface magee doesnt think demiboys are real. He doesnt want to or even mention solving sex based oppression he just wants woman to stop fighting to keep men out))))

#gender critical #gender critical feminism #GC #radfem #terf friendly #anyone with a strong brain try to read the original piece its contras brother i swear to fucking god #id say radfem friendly but he doesnt touch womans issues he doesnt care #trans exclusive

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