When the going gets weird, my Twitter timeline gets interesting. It is perhaps unnecessary to remind readers of these recent items:
To summarize briefly, radical lesbian feminists reject the claims of “trans women” to inclusion, and this rejection is denounced by “trans women” as hate. This bizarre controversy is occurring on the extreme fringe of the culture wars, which doesn’t mean that the conflict isn’t taken seriously by the participants. At a radical progressive conference last May in Portland, Oregon, transgender activists attacked two women “in a coordinated assault as they sat at a table which sold feminist books and literature.” Obviously, I have no (heteronormative patriarchal) dog in this fight, but as the first conservative to pay much attention to this intramural left-wing scrimmage, I felt it might be helpful to translate terms into the vernacular:
You’ll notice here that I used the colloquial synonym “shemale” because the word “transphobic” was already in the headline, and the vivid slang term is also an eye-catcher. It’s click-bait. The object of a headline is to get the reader’s attention, which is why the New York Post often uses words “thug” or “perv” in headlines of stories about perpetrators of violence or sexual deviance. At any rate, a certain troll decided that I should be exposed as a hatemonger:
The person who got trolled up then decided to hector me at some length, as if I’ve got nothing else to worry about except being sensitive to the feelings of the transgender community.
OK, if East Tennessee’s Most Famous Transgender Feminist™ wants widespread attention, how about this fascinating “When Did You Know You Were Trans” video, huh?
I knew when I would play with the other girls, when I had a desire to be like them, a feeling that I should be like them, a feeling that I should not be like this — and them telling me that that feeling was wrong.
I knew that night they made fun of me in the parking lot of the mall when we were walking back to the car. They made fun of me for being “effeminate”. I knew when they used to punish me for crying and call me a pussy and tell me to “man up”. . . .
I knew when I would go to school only to be called a “faggot” by the boys they forced me to be around when, try as I might, I couldn’t fit in with them or feel comfortable around them. I knew when those boys told me to cut my hair and tried to hit me and called me a girl like it was an insult. The boys that they said were like me, that they wanted me to be like, the boys that I didn’t want to be.
I knew when they would toss around transphobic slurs like it was nothing. I knew when they called them “shemales” and “trannies” and “it” and no one batted an eye — but I did. . . .
I knew when my dysphoria got worse and despite all that I wasn’t sure that what I was feeling was legitimate because I didn’t want to be a 1950?s housewife, that I didn’t know if my sexual attraction to men was legitimate because I didn’t want to have sex with anyone as a man and I had never been with a man, that maybe I was just an “autogynephile” because the thought of having sex as a woman (god forbid!) turned me on. . . .
You can read the whole weird thing, and sympathize or not, but the point is that you have a right to think what you want, no matter how much the Eternally Victimized insist they are entitled to your sympathy.
You can never pity the Eternally Victimized as much as they pity themselves, but failing to RSVP an invitation to their pity party? That’s hate! How dare you withhold your approval!
As to the controversy between radical feminists and “trans women,” permit me to predict that the radical feminists will ultimately lose that battle, which is not to say they should lose. The experience and goals of radical feminists — i.e., man-hating Marxist lesbians — are different from and essentially at odds with the experience and goals of transgenders. On the one hand, radical feminists deserve credit for being honest about what they want and why they want it, but on the other hand, @papierhache is ultimately less dangerous, if only because the whole ridiculous Helpless Tranny Victim trip is so pathetic.
Inadequacy doesn’t really rate as a militant cause.
