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PT6A posted:If you are a woman, and you enjoy being a woman, surely you would understand what drives other people to also feel like a woman and to prefer being a woman, unless of course you derive your feeling of gender identity exclusively from your gentalia, which seems bizarre and sad to say the least. I don't really see it that way, personally, at least for some of the classic writers like Raymond. One of the key tenants of second wave radical feminism is that gender exists as a system to opress females and elevate males. There are some biological differences he patriarchy uses to rationalize the system, but gender is first and foremost a form of social control. Women are socially conditioned to be subservient and secondary to men, and this weird caste system is assigned at birth. In such a reality, being a woman/female is a pretty lovely thing! There may be solidarity and sisterhood and power amongst women, but it is in many ways a balm to ease the sting of oppression. When radical feminists talk about "gender abolition," it's generally understood to mean that the goal of feminist activity is to undermine and destroy this system of oppression. The framework can get a little bit out of whack when you try to wrestle with how trans people fit into this, and this is where TERFs get crazy. Since gender is a caste that you're brought up with from birth, and men/males get all the good stuff, transitioning from female to male really makes sense for social mobility-- if you can't beat them, join them. It's a pretty rank betrayal! This person is effectively abandoning the struggle to become an oppressor! Now trans women, that's another story entirely. What possible reason would someone have for wanting to be a woman? Being a woman is poo poo! You spend your entire life being dismissed, belittled, having your portions and mobility limited, and historically shackled to your reproductive system. There must be an ulterior motive! Following this thought, things get pretty hateful pretty quickly. Regardless though, this kind of ideology sees gender identity as inherently a poisonous thing, particularly for people assigned female at birth, and rather than breaking down the system, to them, gender transition upholds it. IMO it's the great irony of a lot of feminist praxis, including modern trans inclusive/driven ones that we end up constantly recreating the gender binary in our quests to free ourselves from it, exchanging social position for hormonal status or, birth assignment, or some related intangible. IMO it's a mistake to center your analysis around birth sex assignment or internal gender identity when they're effectively invisible things, but that's another can of worms. Frankly, there's just a lot of pain that trans people go through, are put through, and try to manage. It'd be better to just be compassionate and work on helping people actually live as comfortable and fulfilling lives as they can. Using people's existences as thought experiments leads to ugly places. Octatonic fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 18:20
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This is a thing that keeps happening to white second wavers for some reason, like when they allied with Jerry Falwell against porn, or when they worked to create exceptions to trans coverage in medicare and insurance back in the eighties.
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May 23, 2016 01:31
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Keeshhound posted:
This is the most cishet thing I've seen posted in this thread so far, congratulations! The problem with thought experiments like this is that they completely gloss over communities, histories, and cultures of groups they're directed for, in favor of theoretically "normalizing" them, when the biggest problems are social. We used to hear the same "if you could take a pill would you" thing all the time about sexual attraction. IMO it's kind of hosed up that over over we ask minorities if they'd like to give up major parts of their lives so that they can be "normal". In practice, even if such a theoretical solution were available, that they'd be controversial, expensive, and difficult decisions to make. The Deaf community actively struggles with this, for instance. Coclear implants are to some degree effective in children, but hearing parents may then have a tendency to focus their attention on "curing/have cured" their child's deafness, ignoring other entire modalities of life, and the differences in experience their child may have. As a result, these kids are not exposed to other potentially helpful means of navigating the world, or perhaps not able to form bonds with other members of their community at all. Moreover, an emphasis on "curing" deafnessserves serves to isolate further pre-lingually deaf people, and others on whom these treatments are less effective or ineffective. Obviously, you're talking in some kind of bullshit perfect hypothetical, but come on. We know how this would work out. At the first sign of deviance, we search to erase it, and ignore the fallout that comes from said repression. You can look to surgical assignment of intersex infants as a case study of what goes wrong when we attempt to normalize bodies and minds as a matter of course. LGBT people, (and trans people in particular) are actively fighting to survive in society right now, and I hope that it makes sense that you might face some resistance to the suggestion that they might be annihilated to "fix" them Octatonic fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 21:00
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Keeshhound posted:I can own that, but to clarify; the reason I asked is that people say that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder a lot, and I can see the reasons for that, but it never really felt right to me as a classification. The responses I've gotten so far confirm that; if it really is just a disorder, then like depression you'd expect to be able to alleviate it somewhat by treating an underlying cause. That people reject the idea of "antidysphoria" drugs implies to me that calling it a mental disorder is too shallow a reading of the problem, and that it probably gives people the wrong idea about trans issues as a whole. I'd say your on the right track about this, but I'd like to reemphasize that regardless of the "how" or "what" of transness and queerness, one of the more exhausting struggles is the constant demand that you validate and justify your own existence to those around you. Like, consider giving a thought about what phrasing the question "what if they could fix you" rather than "how would you classify your experiences" (since that was the question that actually interests you) says about your own ideology. e: sharkie beat me to the punch. I'm not trying to dogpile or fuckbarrel no one 
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Jun 6, 2016 21:42
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Actually, basically all of those "juvenile rehab" places are just as creepy and should largely be burnt to the ground, even if not degayification is an advertised service.
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Jun 12, 2016 06:11
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That was a weird post that I don't understand, so I'd instead like to thank you for talking about DADT. It was good to read about, and I would enjoy hearing you expand more if you feel like it. The Clintons fill me with mixed emotions for a lot of reasons, but in terms of LGBT stuff they seem to generally on the right side of history. Sometimes though, one of the other will make bafflingly tone-deaf statements. That thing where Hilary suggested that Nancy Reagan was involved in changing the conversation about AIDS at her funeral this spring really pissed me right the gently caress off. She later recanted, and I suppose it comes with the territory of being a minority, but it is incredibly frustrating nonetheless. also this https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/742238554093281280 Octatonic fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 05:39
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Paul Babeau is a really amazingly lovely person, and the accusations do correspond to some legitimately awful things that he's unquestionably done. However, this ad is certainly homophobic, and I'm not willing to give the benefit of the doubt here. 1) This would have been couched in gender-neutral language, or more distant language if he were straight. "ex-lover" or "ex-mistress" rather than "ex-boyfriend". 2) There's plausible deniability that this could just be regular political prudery, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The operating words here are that the photos were sent to a man, online. If they wanted to make it about consent, they could have. Instead, it's about gay sex pictures being icky. 3) Here's where it gets really dogwhistley. Some of you might call it an overreach, but I'm really really suspicious of placing this in context with the first two accusations. The reader has been primed to view things in sexual terms already, and combined with the attitudes towards gay sexuality they've already invoked, it really doesn't feel too farfetched to me that they're hoping to activate the latent "gays as pedophiles" association as a bonus, in addition to calling him the sociopath that he is.
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Sep 8, 2016 23:18
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I don't really disagree with you, spotlessd, but you're an rear end in a top hat. While you have a somewhat nuanced argument, the fact of the matter is that when someone (queer, non-white, female, etc) hears the ubiquitous leftist complaint that "identity politics are a distraction" what you're communicating to them is generally the same thing as the "all lives matter" dumbfucks. It's not redbaiting to say that standing on the sidelines complaining about people trying to survive capitalist is useless cynicism. Politics is often about self-interest (including leftist class politics!) and the left is just straight up not offering a viable alternative right now. As piecemeal and insufficient as this reform bullshit is, it's demonstratively improving lives. I helped at occupy, before it was utterly crushed in my city. It was lovely and ineffectual too. If the revolution manages to come, I'll be on the street to throw bricks, but that's not where we are as a society right now. Unless you're sociopathic enough to be an accelerationist, your time would be better done working on building solidarity and reforming the system until you can actually reach some sort of tipping point.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:16
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Anyway, it's not a surprise that people see the democrats as being a preferable outcome when their opponents are promising to increase our suffering rather than merely maintain it.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:43
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BigRed0427 posted:*sigh* someone help me out here. He's saying that big money interests push gay marriage as an issue to distract from the REAL issues plaguing the LGBT community, meanwhile no one cares about housing and employment discrimination? I think that the cogent part of the argument is more "marriage equality" is easier to sell and raise money for, because it helps middle class and rich gays, who have some degree of access to power, and not just the (disproportionately LGBT) poor, and working on housing and employment discrimination should be a higher priority, as it effects a broader group of people who are more in need. I agree that the HRC and such are still around, but "employment nondiscrimination" is just not as sexy, to pardon the phrase, and there isn't the same amount of energy working toward it, and we can't afford to wait for the consensus to build again. But, if spotlessd is as young as a lot of the rest of us in this thread, I imagine that he only saw the tail end of the push for marriage equality, when things had already reached a fever pitch. (also ignoring that iirc the push for marriage equality was started in the wake of the AIDS crisis because of little things like "health insurance" and "being able to see your partner in the hospital" and "not dying alone".) Fundamentally, though, the problem with reform is that it's slow, incomplete, and vulnerable to reaction. Selling something like civil rights or women's liberation or gay rights as a fight to reform the system makes it pretty easy to say "hey look the law has passed, problem solved, we can all go home now". This line of complaint is about the (legitimate) fear or frustration that the momentum has all been spent on something incomplete and insufficient to really solve the problem. None of us want to be hearing "you can get married now, homophobia is over" years down the line, and effectively have to to do it all over again, like what's happening with Black Lives Matter and police reform. And I think all of us ITT share this fear, but we filter it through different ideologies. I think ardently supporting the Democrats of the Republicans is very much a reaction to the same fear. Whether or not that's pragmatic or a product of false consciousness is I'm sure open for a very tedious debate that I don't really care to have.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:26
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spotlessd posted:Marxism provides a much better explanation as to how they won that particular argument than liberal Right Side of History progressivism, I promise you that. I don't disagree with you! I just think you're an rear end in a top hat! I'll cop to posting sloppily, but you're also trying to have a different conversation than the one that this thread wants to have, and it's not going to win you any hearts and minds. Maybe my lovely approach using their language rather than yours is just as useless I'll accept that! Maybe that's not your goal, and if this is how you want to cope that's fine, but do recognize you're tilting at windmills. Octatonic fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 20:04
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Aleph Null posted:If you want to pay for it, all you have to do is find a doctor. But this is insurance. People would abuse any system that didn't require proof. Hell, they abuse it now with fake proof. I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I'd argue that it's more that it's in the interest of insurers to not pay for anything, regardless, because it cuts into their bottom line. The problem isn't fraud, it's capitalism. Health care should never be comodified.
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Jan 14, 2017 19:32
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Aleph Null posted:I agree. But it is. And if the incoming administration is any indication, it will get so much worse before it gets better.  
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Jan 14, 2017 19:52
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MaxxBot posted:Why does the "woke" left have such a hateboner for white gay men? I don't see this level of vitriol from these people aimed at any other subset of any minority group, white or not. Firstly, I'm sorry, but being gay doesn't prevent you from being racist and sexist as any other white guy, duder. I've been groped by more gay guys than straight guys, and I've heard just as much racist bullshit out of white gay people as any other category of white person. Secondly, "I assume you're probably racist" is not hate. It's exhaustion. It's maybe pre-emptive self defense. No one is owed the benefit of the doubt, though. When we talk about racism/sexism/opression/etc we're talking about power, and frankly, white men, gay or straight, still have way better access to it than the rest of us do. I don't think we give white lesbians enough flack for our racism and transphobia either. e: I do imagine that this is more true in urban areas, than say, your town of 4,000, an hour from a major city, where cultural christian values have a lot more sway. Octatonic fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 22:55
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MaxxBot posted:So if someone tweeted "I assume white Jews are problematic and/or racist/transphobic/biphobic until they prove otherwise" that would be OK too? I don't see that getting the same level of acceptance from other leftists, or any other minority inserted in there. There seems to be an underlying assumption that somehow white gay men are singularly bad. I think it's a pretty big misstep to compare homophobia to antisemitism! There are completely different histories here, particularly in a time when there's been a big uptick of threats directed at jewish cultural and religious centers! Moreover, there's been plenty of ink spilled over sexism and racism in hasidic communities. I think that white people are white people, and men are men, and your sexuality doesn't influence it that much. I have known so many gay dudes who say they can't be sexist because they're gay, and in the same breath have really inappropriate, unwanted, contact with their female friends, or say really misogynist things about female genitals. You've got to have seen the legions of shirtless torsos on grindr going "no fats no fems no asns." Gay men and women have a gently caress ton of unexamined privilege. If you'd like us to start calling out white lesbians our terrifying amount of biphobia and transphobia and racism too, I'm down, though I see a decent bit of it in my social media circles. Octatonic fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 23:09
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MaxxBot, you are succumbing hardcore to some hardcore masculine/white fragility right now, and I think you should take a step back and really examine why you feel singled out. Have a coffee, go for a walk in the snow.
Octatonic fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 23:24
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