Still waiting for that bus (to fall under)

In October of last year, I wrote that metaphorically, I’m waiting for a bus to fall under. I made a few assertions that I honestly believe, but which have got other people – particularly women – in trouble when expressed.

By rights, at least by the standards of a lot of the discourse I’ve seen over the past couple of years, someone should have called me a transphobe, but nobody has. It’s not like I went out of my way to be inconspicuous either.

While I may have avoided inflammatory rhetoric, or strong claims that I’m not sure I can commit to, or statements that serve as answers to questions that I think are malformed, the post from last October was shared on social media by “known TERFs”. I saw the traffic come in, and yes, some of it may have been channeled via social media “bubbles”, but there was enough traffic from either open circulation or sources that have been ideologically policed, for me to be able to suspect an impending “TERFening”. And yet it didn’t occur.

I’m not actually intending to make a habit of harping on about transgender politics in future. This isn’t my gig. I’m not a stakeholder and I have other things I do want to write about. I’ve only got involved this far in because I think some of the elements that are pathological within trans-activism are generalizable, present in other forms of activism, and it’s these generalizable problems that I’m particularly interested in. While I’ll address these problems again in future, I can’t and won’t guarantee that it’ll be in reference to trans activism.

I’m nobody’s soldier in this, and all the blame here is my own, just so you know where to lay it.

However, because I didn’t get any tar, nor so much as a single feather the last time around, and because I want to be quite clear about where I stand for anyone who harbors any suspicions, I feel I should re-iterate. Allow me to repeat, re-phrase and add a few assertions more bluntly this time around:

Having an interest in dolls or the colour pink does not make a child a girl. Boys can and do like these things on occasion too, and would more often, only they’re discouraged from doing so.
It’s not bigotry for people to refuse to have sex with someone else, irrespective of whether or not that someone else is a member of an oppressed group. Sexual intercourse is not a part of the commons to be dolled out via social justice campaigns.
Nobody is obliged to find penises sexually attractive. Nobody.
“Women have a right to abortions” is a legitimate political statement.
The concept of the “cotton ceiling” may not have originally been intended as rape-cultured, but it’s at least acquired that status.
Telling women on social media to suck your cock because they disagree with you makes you a misogynist.
Without assuming gender essentialism, “cis” doesn’t mean anything.
Sexual discrimination, as distinct from gender discrimination, exists and is enforced by implicit and explicit gender roles, sexist laws and institutional biases.
Intersex people exist.
The violent individuals who bash trans people in public toilets are far more likely to be men who don’t read Germaine Greer or Julie Bindel than women who do. They’re far more likely to be men who are far more likely to pay attention to the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Sam Newman (i.e. not feminists).
Whatever their mistakes, laying blame upon radical feminists for the actions of violent men they have no influence over is disingenuous at best.

Each of the above statements has met at least two of three selection criteria to be listed, the first two criteria being necessary, and the third optional; I actually believe the statement; I have seen people castigated by purportedly liberal-left or radical-left individuals for expressing the statement , and that I have seen a good number of my reflexively GLBT-supporting friends essentially making the same statement themselves.

If the above really does make me a transphobe, and you happen to be one of my lefty friends reading it, the odds are that you’re a transphobe too and I’ve seen you being it. Congratulations. Although I suspect the odds are that you’re less likely to be called on it if you’re a man, you never know. I’ll leave you to ponder what you’ve done wrong, because obviously I’m not going to be able to enlighten you, what with thinking all of the above is just lemon-peachy.

Trans acquaintances reading this will likely already know about this far better than I could articulate, possibly having been told that they’re self-loathing transphobes for expressing similarly verboten sentiments. (From where I’m sitting, this kind of condemnation looks an awful lot like calling vanilla-gendered men “misandrist beta cuck mangina” just because they happen to believe in enthusiastic consent, personal boundaries and so-on.)

As for those who I’m not acquainted with, I suspect either you’ve got enough here to judge me by, or you’re not inclined to judge. If you are inclined to judge, but can’t find anything objectionable, I’m sure you can copy and paste something from somewhere that makes you feel suitably righteous. Either way, it’s your call, and I can leave things at this point knowing that I’ve been forthright and open.

If it comes to it, please be decent to one another in the comments. I’ve seen this stuff get nasty before. Now if you’ll excuse me, a bus has got me to catch.

~ Bruce

Waiting for a bus (to be thrown under)

Okay, so I do have a low profile in the remnants of the Oz blogosphere these days, and I’ve got a block list on Facebook that’s over a hundred-and-fifty-strong. Still, it’s not as if a few people of (largely self-constructed) virtuous standing don’t know who I am, or how to find me.

And it’s not as if I haven’t made comments that should rile these people. Yet, I’ve been left alone. People haven’t got the message that I’m persona non grata. Allow me to make a few more inflammatory comments that I regard as true, in one convenient place so as to incriminate myself. As I’m not trying to convince anyone, but rather trying to get them to condemn me, I’m not going to put too much effort into justifying myself.

***

Not all oppression is based on identity. Do you think the oppression suffered by pigs entails their identity as porcine? An organism doesn’t need to be self-regarding in order to be oppressed – it doesn’t require an ego, just nerve endings and oppressive surroundings. Oppression can be and often is arbitrary and indifferent to people’s inner states. Sure, the likes of fascists can and do attempt to author the identities of the people they oppress, and it’s even possible to harmfully foist an identity on another inadvertently, but while often relevant, identity isn’t a necessary criteria of oppression. The humans who oppress pigs aren’t trying to get the pigs to identify as tasty, they’re just trying to eat them, and indifferently going about a lot of cruelty in the process.

Women have a right to abortions. Among atheists who still read anything I publish, and wonky sorts from the Australian blogosphere of ten years ago, this statement probably reads as a repudiation of right-wing misogyny and/or religious fundamentalism. But if you think this is all a-okay, and that’s all there is to it, then congratulations, you’re probably a bigot like me too. The transgression here is that the statement says “women”. If you don’t make like Planned Parenthood and erase the mention of “women” from your references to abortion, then you’re probably a “TERF”.

Oppressed people can still be bad people, and their oppression doesn’t justify it. There are a hundred and one reasons why this is true; even in Nazi concentration camps, some Jews turned on their fellow oppressed, and collaborated with the guards; some politically motivated workers treat other workers like useful idiots, while yet other oppressed workers willfully scab off of the labour of the rest of their class. Some folks go further. Some canny members of oppressed classes realize that Good Sheltered People have a propensity to downplay the bad behaviour of members of oppressed classes, and exploit this failing to help prey on their own. Keep your eye out for this latter variety when dealing with spokespersons who provide a few too many bromides for their benefactors, but little in the way of benefit for the groups they’re speaking for; they’re a dime a dozen at some arts festivals.

And then there’s vengeance; a fantasy in the hearts of some that after liberation, a whole new category of oppressed people will be manufactured for the delectation of hungry sadists, often involving walls folks will be up against after a good scapegoating, Animal Farm style.

If your purported sympathies for trans women go so far as to be even equivocal in your condemnation of the concept of the “cotton ceiling”, then you’re fundamentally not competent to protect anyone from rape culture; trans or otherwise. I’ll just let you Google “cotton ceiling” (warning: probably NSFW).

Everyday Feminism is a pseudo-leftist publication. Really, the tip-off for anyone politically-minded, over 40, and hailing from countries further left than the US, should be terms like “social entrepreneur”. The editorial direction is also loose to the point of being unprincipled, and enables some of the worst navel-gazing solipsism to ever be dressed up as social justice activism. And how do you work against rape culture while also trying to create an accepting and nurturing climate for apaths and cluster-B personalities, un-partitioned, in the very same sphere?

The Huffington Post can climb into the same bin, on account of its habit of not paying interns and writers. Sharing “progressive” articles from these sites is like sharing “science” articles from The Mind Unleashed.

Solidarity matters. Apparently solidarity entails telling people to suppress their interests to better serve the alliance. Call me odd, but I don’t think you have to break solidarity in order to combat things like racism and sexism within the left. Rather, combatting things like racism and sexism in the left actually buttresses solidarity, because racism and sexism are some of the most effective means of divide and conquer tactics ever deployed against oppressed populations.

If you’re a Vegan because of the way the dairy industry handles bobby calves, but you embrace the sex industry despite its involvement in human trafficking, you’ve got one hell of a blind spot. I can’t believe how often I’ve seen Vegans failing to generalize this kind of analysis, all while managing to be condescending to people who do. (Disclosure: I don’t eat meat or dairy).

“Not In My Name” is a shitty slogan used by self-absorbed people. I thought the purpose of opposing things like offshore detention was the welfare of refugees, not the status of sheltered white people’s reputations. The self-focus is caustic to solidarity, if not annoyingly vain, and centers discussion away from the purported cause. Apparently holding this view about the phrase makes you a right-wing hawk, so be careful not to sympathize too much, here.

Pole Dancing Doesn’t Seem Very Feminist. Just because it’s athletic, and you have a right to it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cater to the male gaze by design. Maybe feminists will devise a new form that’s more feminist, and it may even turn out to be an erotic performance of sorts, but it won’t be without the kind of subversion that does away with catering to the male gaze (and a whole lot less “#SundayBumday”). Call me an obtuse “whorephobe”, but I can’t help but think that a pole dance, or any expressive dance that aims to be feminist, would not render women as objects, but instead express their subjectivity in some manner.

Validation isn’t respect. How many women have failed in their attempts to leave an abusive relationship, at least in-part because their partner has psychologically whittled them down to the point of becoming dependent on a drip-fed supply of validation? If something is truly liberatory, in respect of validation, then it’ll let you validate yourself. It won’t get you hooked on affirmations, click-bait memes, shallow compliments, crappy products, feel-good subscriptions, quick-fix “self-help” gimmickry, and the phony respect people get out of things like “#SundayBumday”.

A lot of the affirmation given by, and on occasion expected from “good allies”, is validation dressed up as respect. Be wary of it.

“Brand-conscious narcissism” is a thing. This is a part of the supererogated “identifying” that’s a problem for the left, above and beyond the whole becoming-yourself egoist shtick better suited to fans of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand; it’s great for selling values in the marketplace. Selling them after watering them down, that is, and packaging them with other superfluous, or even pathological commodities. “Here, buy some pole wear and show everyone just how validated you are on #SundayBumday by thinly veiling your sphincter for the boys on Instagram. #SexPositive #Feminist”. If you want to see where the narcissism comes into it, just point out to these people – especially the guys on the sidelines – that “sex-positivity” is just a brand, whereby people get to perform the ordinary as if worthy of attention and praise.

People like sex. Look at the human population of Earth. Yes, some folks are sexually repressed, and that’s bad, but it’s telling just how often you run into the slur of “sex-negative” being fired off at people who aren’t at all ashamed of their sexuality. If you’re a narcissist surrounded by people who like to fuck and are unashamed of it, and you need to stand out, then you need to brand yourself better; you’ll need to identify; “Sex Positive!” Never mind the similarities to calling women “prude” for not fucking you.

The commodification and debasement of left-wing values doesn’t require a conspiracy of capitalists, although people in advertising very well do take advantage (e.g. Greenwashing, Whole Foods, etc.) All it requires is the appearance of a progressivism desirable to people with egos, money and a willingness to publicly identify with the product, and the market will do the rest. Resemblance to actual left-wing values is only necessary in as far as required to sell shit, and beyond that, is purely coincidental.

There aren’t “boy brains” and “girl brains”. There isn’t a sex-based preference for blue or pink. That’s neurosexism. More on that here. (Warning: Watching the linked video may make you a “TERF”).

If your feminism “will be intersectional or it will be bullshit”, and you haven’t read Crenshaw and/or Dorothy E. Smith, then you’ve admitted your feminism is bullshit (and probably culturally appropriated). I’m just going to leave this one here for the irony. No analysis. Sorry (not sorry). Google is your friend.

***

Normally I wouldn’t be so ‘splainy, but for quite some time now I’ve been waiting for the bus I’m supposed to have been thrown under and it still hasn’t arrived. I belong under that bus. I’ve said The Things.

So go ahead and call me a “TERF” or a “whorephobe” or a “shitlord”, just don’t address me personally if that’s your take; I don’t owe you that. Shun me if that’s the case. Add me to your block-lists. Unfriend or unfollow me on social media. Dis-approve of my person. Don’t put me on your Christmas list. I’m not “woke” or “with it” or one of the cool kids, and I don’t care to be. I will insist though, if you’re going to consider me at all, that you give me the same degree of smear you’d give to women for writing what I have. I’m rather over this particular form of special treatment I seem to be getting.

If on the other hand, you think any of what I’ve written above is even defensible, but you still treat claims of “TERF” status, “whorephobia” and crypto-right-wingedness as self-evident, semantically obvious and unchallengeably evil, well, you may want to consider the possibility of contradictions in your political view, or that there are definitions of “TERF”, “whorephobe” and “right-wing” in circulation that you don’t actually agree with. I’ll leave dealing with that up to you.

Honestly though, I have no idea just how representative these people are. I don’t know how they poll in their constituent groups; I don’t know how common their views are, statistically speaking. They could be a loud minority within their respective populations, or they could very well be the majority. I’ve seen dissenters within these groups get abused and dehumanized on the basis of having said some pretty anodyne stuff, but I don’t know what proportion of their community these dissenters make up. Maybe the dissenters are a silent majority.

My beef is with the people adopting these contortions and absurdities, whatever their number, not with their communities as a whole. If you don’t like that, well, you don’t like it. I’m not here to be liked, I’m not obliged to be, and I’d rather that we not waste each other’s time pretending otherwise. Now please do throw me under that bus.

~ Bruce

“Vanilla-gendered”

I’m not going to claim any kind of ownership of the term, as it’s sort of evolved out of a discussion where the component terms were uttered by someone other than myself. I put forward a notion, briefly, which appeared to resonate, so I’m fleshing it out here without the flippancy.

Some folks don’t like being referred to as “cis-gendered”, and also aren’t particularly inclined to want to identify as anything, gender-wise. Gender labels come with gender expectations, and these constitute impostures of one form or another.

The objection is more than simply wanting not to be pigeon-holed (as the trope goes), or otherwise classified without consultation for the purposes of political engagement. “Cis-gendered” does come with more connotations than just “not-trans”, and these connotations don’t always gel well with what purportedly “cis” people actually think about gender, or with how they experience it.

The definition of “cis-gendered” that asserts that “cis” is simply not “trans”, doesn’t often stay simple for very long under any degree of scrutiny. Further discussion will often end up with the explanation being delivered that while trans-gender folks have an internal experience of gender identity that doesn’t line up with their physical sex, the internal experience of gender identity experienced by “cis-gendered” people does. This presupposes at least two things that are contentious; that you can just assume that “cis-gendered” people have an internal, intrinsic experience of gender identity at all, and that this gender identity can line-up with their physical sex.

The first of these two assumptions will present itself as a problem to you if you try to reconcile it with the convention of not telling people what their internal experience of gender is like. While this convention shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule, and while there certainly should be discussion of what gender is, and is like, generally, it’s another prospect entirely to address an individual directly to declare to them what their personal experience of gender is. I’ll leave the discussion of the epistemology of this kind of thing aside – but given the pretty standard objections to calling people things they don’t self-identify as, there’s potentially quite a few people flinging “cis” around who’ve adopted an inconsistent standard somewhere along the line. (And don’t get me started on the self-identified “cis-men” who’ve broken their own “shut-up and listen” rule to tell “cis-women” what’s what).

This however, isn’t necessarily the biggest, or at least, deepest-rooted problem.

The second of the two assumptions – that internal experiences of gender can line up with biological sex at all – raises questions. Particularly, by what criteria does a person measure how gender lines up with sex? Where do these criteria come from and are they arbitrary? Are they reasonable? Are they sexist and are they harmful? To the point; how does one assume that gender can line up with sex without also assuming gender essentialism?

This is to say nothing of who and what powers are deciding upon these criteria – media concerns and other vested interests come to mind. If gender is innate, and personal and important for some people, do they really want to have a taxonomy imposed upon them by clickbait media outlets or the sex industry?

(I’m not going to go into DiQuinzio’s 1993 criticism of how non-intersectionalist feminism uses essentialism to exclude transgender women – I’ll spare both you and I that – other than to say that it makes pop-intersectionalist forays into essentialism seem ironic).

I’ve not seen anyone answer this. Maybe someone has, and maybe I’ve missed an implication in the bits and pieces of theory I’ve skimmed over. It all seems like warring essentialisms to me (pop-intersectionalism included).

At any rate, here’s why this pans out as a problem; the people in my circles who’ve been objecting to the label “cis-gendered”, who are happy to say they’re aren’t trans, don’t exhibit an affinity for any brand of gender essentialism – broadly they’re either explicitly against essentialist gender politics, or they express sentiments in that direction. Without forethought, and without serious modification of the connotations of the term, expecting people to happily accept that they are “cis” is also to expect them to implicitly accept the term’s inherent gender essentialism.

In practice, what I’m seeing is people who’d either never admit to being gender essentialist, or who’ve never shown any visible signs of giving the problems of essentialism a single thought, expecting anti-essentialists to adopt an ill-defined form of gender essentialism, all without further discussion. This is, in addition to a bunch of other things, incredibly absurd.

“I don’t even know if I accept the idea, but you must!”

I really didn’t have a problem with the term and used it amply myself until this particular penny dropped, and it’s not as if I’ve ever really given a shit about whether or not it’s a slur (one of the perks of male privilege, I guess). It’s just that I can’t affirm the assumptions it comes bundled with. I’d be lying if I did. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this last respect.

Maybe folks should just learn to love gender essentialism, or at least accept it as inevitable. Maybe this can all be settled. I doubt it, but if it can it won’t be before a lot of open, intelligent and honest discussion. Until then we could insist that people use “not-trans-gendered” instead, but to the credit of “cis-gendered”, “not-trans-gendered” is as clunky and unusable as all fuck. Go down that road and you may as well demand people only address you when they have a mouth full of marbles.

Enter “vanilla-gendered”; so bland you can’t fucking taste it. Not a default; just tasteless.

If ever there’s a t-shirt of “this is what vanilla-gender looks like”, the text will be in the same colour as the shirt. It’s not meant to stand out.

Identifying as “agendered”? Too outré. Identifying? Missing the point.

Vanilla-gendered people won’t put “vanilla-gendered” on their profiles except when being ironic, and then only as a response to questions or assertions they’d rather not have been bothered with in the first place. It’s gender ambiguity, but not in a David Bowie kind of way because that stuff’s exhausting to pull off – it’s more of a “you can’t tell because I’m hiding behind the curtains doing something else I actually care about” kind of ambiguity.

But most importantly, “vanilla-gendered” doesn’t assume the need for essential gender criteria. “My what lines up with my biological sex?”

Zero. Gender. Expectations.

I’m not going to aspire to identify as either “vanilla” or “cis”, but if there has to be one or the other, it’ll be the former – I’d prefer to be called that, if either. I have to say though, I’m growing increasingly inclined towards avoiding conversations where I’d have to choose at all.

Increasingly. Fucking. Tedious.

~ Bruce