gender fuck or gender fucked (the politics of trans)

The thing about humans is that their reality can pretty much always evade any categories you might want to impose upon them, including (see Macbeth) "of woman born".

always thought it was silly that c-section = not woman born

in terms of dramatic prophetic twists, i much prefer LOTR's "no man can kill me" "i am no man" bit

gonna take a wild guess here that everybody itt who was unhappy with my response is thoroughly hetero as well as male.

I'm with elmo, that shit hit me personally and it hurt. A nuanced response can be difficult when somebody's busy spitting on your life and ignoring every well-meaning attempt at dialogue. And yes, it was Lorax. I should have known better.

Mordy if we ever meet irl I will happily buy you a beer and smoke you out. You are obviously a good parent and teacher, we have some serious political/philosophical disagreements that get magnified in writing but I can live with that if you can.

This is a great example of why I try my best to stay away from ILE these days. I have no tolerance left for things that offend me, and it shows.

fair enough and very kind of u to say

sorry sleeve.

Sleeve, I don't think you should have to apologise for anything.

I mean, that freedom to *not* have an emotional to this shit, that, that thing there, that is Privilege.

IMHO people should never have to apologise for not having Privilege.

I mean, that freedom to *not* have an emotional to this shit, that, that thing there, that is Privilege.

this is exactly right

WCC, I tried sending you an ILXmail but I don't think it worked.

for some reason I can't see Lorax without trolling him with hypotheticals, sorry y'all

i guess it's possible that someone who is genderfluid wrt identity and bisexual wrt orientation might have different gender experiences depending upon the gender of the person or people with whom they're interacting romantically (or even socially} at any particular time? in this case gender identity would be a dependent variable but it wouldn't necessarily be oppositional or hetero oriented, i.e. you could be a sexual zelig and seek out one particular gender or the other in order to become more like that which you desire.

this is just a particular case tho and i don't know if instances of this even exist but i assume genderfluidity involves factors other than sexuality anyway if it even involves that at all.

nb i don't think this is what lorax was referring to. he was positing a situation in which a gender neutral or bigender person necessarily must experience a gender shift in relation to the gender of the person they're sexually or romantically attracted to. like there's always some kind of anima/ animus projection always in play wrt sexual desire, so if one prefers the feminine that's a result of anima projection and therefore one's gender must be more male since the anima and animus are contrasexual.

there's this notion that romantic attachments are a way of seeking out the other in a "you complete me" kind of way which is where i think he's getting this but you can't extrapolate from popular literary conceits. it's not some immutable law of sexual attraction if you want hard scientific data points to back this up go compile craigslist ads.

WCC referenced the "CaptainLorax debacle" on another thread, so I decided I'd look into it. What a depressing read, though I found crut to be pretty OTM throughout. Also weird how everyone assumes that the Captain is this ultra-hegemonic straight dude -- I assumed that his half-baked musings on gender had at least something to do with his documented attraction to androgynous women.

noted, I did not have that in my .xls

sexual attraction to a v specific type doesn't make someone less likely to be shitty just more likely to be creepy abt it

'i can't be ____ist i watch ________ porn all the time'

if there's any opportunity to give Lorax the benefit of the doubt, I try... until he stomps on it

i'm not a furry i just like drawing animal dicks

I didn't say that he wasn't being creepy or offensive, but I didn't read his posts as being aggressively assertive of straight male privilege. I think he was genuinely trying to ~figure stuff out~, he just did it in kind of a boneheaded way.

jesus zachlyon.

Wait, what? I thought what he said was reasonable...?

i kinda miss these anthony threads.

Cosign with Laurel.

Fetishes on that kinda level are too often an extension of privilege rather than a negation thereof.

what debacle, what happened

Wait, what? I thought what he said was reasonable...?

thank god for defenders of the innocent against the likes of cpt lorax + frogbs

nm i just looked upthread

Fetishes on that kinda level are too often an extension of privilege rather than a negation thereof.

I think it's v. fair to suggest that privilege is a factor in how he framed his thoughts, but I also think it's probable that he's coming at the subject from a more-personal perspective than what seemed to be acknowledged.

i'm never gonna make the finals if i keep posting like this

Mordy, do you think their arguably um misguided opinions are harmless because they're not rhetorical heavy-weights? Or...?

Also trans and genderqueer people (in particular, since we're in that thread) aren't just "the innocent" in some ironic, dismissible way, they're seriously discriminated against in...housing, employment, uh...almost everything?, and are frequently victims of shockingly violent attacks. This isn't really news? I don't grok why you think we should be all "lol ilx" about it and let shit go.

i think there was plenty of push back on cpt lorax when it first happened. no one defended his point of view and only a couple ppl defended his right to speak it at all. i think that crusading around ilx looking for wrongs to right becomes very tedious very quickly. if u see something that bothers u, speak up but maybe in this thread it looked like the posters got it. just like every time i've ever seen frogbs say something on ilx offensive, ppl were not shy about calling him on it.

ts: endlessly being offensive vs endlessly being otm

I think that the real "privilege" at play here was people's privilege to deride Lorax's inquiries as "101 stuff".

Laurel, Lorax is Chinatown. Some things you're never gonna change.

Again with the "u just lookin' for stuff to get offended by" vs "this is the stuff that materially affects the quality and shape of our lives" narrative which gets old v v fast.

Yes ppl on ILX have the right to say what they like, in theory. They also have the right to face the consequences of what they say when those things affect others.

Also fucking LOL at the idea of "having experienced oppression" = somehow "Privileged to be beyond 101" - you really don't get the concept of how this works, do you?

I mean, whatevs. It's ok if you don't grok how it works. Believe it or not ppl itt were not giving Lorax grief for being at 101 but for his blatant refusal to research, look up, learn, listen. For being disparaging of the idea of even looking at this stuff on a wiki - let alone listening to ppl who have actually experienced it.

Everyone has the right to be ignorant on first encountering something new or different. What we don't have is the right to be ignorant while still insisting that we know more or our purely theoretical ~theories~ have more relevance or right-to-be-taken-seriously than those who have actually lived through some of these experiences.

Lorax wasn't given a beatdown for being ignorant, he was given a beatdown for refusing to listen, learn or even engage.

I have got to stop typing complex stuff on an iPhone but this makes me too angry to wait to get to work.

here's the closest thing I've found to a decent source yet.

http://www.apa.org/topics/sexuality/transgender.aspx

They don't break things down into numbers and percentages in the way that would be preferable, but at least it's the American Psychological Association. I feel that you can make a pretty safe assumption that as a prominent scientific organization they have the numbers to back themselves up.

oh yeah WCC, you are never trawling/trolling ilx looking for things to get offended by

this is a good example tho.

i wrote: "no one defended his point of view and only a couple ppl defended his right to speak it at all."

you wrote: "Again with the 'u just lookin' for stuff to get offended by' vs 'this is the stuff that materially affects the quality and shape of our lives' narrative which gets old v v fast."

u know what tho? no one's quality of life was materially affected by what cpt lorax wrote on ilx. you could argue that what he wrote was symptomatic of things that do affect your life materially. or that people have said similar things that did materially affect your life. but the posts on this thread did not materially affect anyone except for cpt lorax.

turning this 9/11 truther - who is routinely mocked by all sorts of ilxers - into the ENEMY cheapens everyone here. he said something offensive, you got to do your bit at him at the time, everyone moved on. i know it makes your blood hot to see the opportunity to go round 2 but he's not even here and you've already put your boxing gloves on. maybe take a deep breath and find something new to talk about. and if there's nothing on gender fuck or gender fucked (the politics of trans) you want to discuss, maybe find a new thread. there are plenty of them.

Please do not presume to tell me how you think that *I* read or relate to ILX. Or how I should read or relate to ILX.

Thanks. The end.

Um, no. Request denied.

Thanks. The beginning??!?!

Srsly, you think you're the one human being to get the Get Out of Being Judged Free card? Give me a break.

I, for one, am interested in what kind of nuanced read Lorax would have on gender after research. His well-researched 9/11 ideas are definitely worth pondering.

Believe it or not ppl itt were not giving Lorax grief for being at 101 but for his blatant refusal to research, look up, learn, listen.

I think Lorax was dismissive because, in his mind, the problem wasn't that his premises were misguided (as others tried in vain to indicate to him) but that he hadn't explained himself well enough. His evident frustration made me feel bad for him, even if the intellectual content of his argument was worth rebutting.

it is nice to picture lorax's points being made by the actual lorax

http://kidfriendlyva.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/lorax1.jpg

I think Lorax was dismissive because, in his mind, the problem wasn't that his premises were misguided (as others tried in vain to indicate to him) but that he hadn't explained himself well enough. His evident frustration made me feel bad for him, even if the intellectual content of his argument was worth rebutting.

dude spent several posts championing the primacy of SCIENCE! and then busted out with:

I think I'm only prejudiced in that the reason that I first entertained this theory of mine is because I was thinking about sexual norms. I have a theory and no answer; so I'm not gonna proclaim that gender and sexual orientation are NOT mutually exclusive. But I will lean towards NOT mutually exclusive because i feel like it

He was not interested in "explaining himself", he was interested in everyone going "omg you are brilliant, what a remarkable breakthrough in scientific thought on bisexuality", as is common with every other argument he puts out there. He is not interested in anything but self-aggrandizement and deserves every bit of mocking and ridicule he gets.

tbf, dude doesn't get out much and is attention-farming the best he can

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xuvfYwzKp7g/TFkHG8cfjfI/AAAAAAAAAl4/a0aCFj99vMo/s1600/Mass+Effect+2+-+Mordin+Solus+LOL.jpg

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3435/images/3435_MEDIUM.jpg