How About We Treat Transpeople Like People?

Important Note: Since I am not a transman and I do not wish to speak on a subject of which I know little, I cannot speak to their difficulties within society. My silence does not mean I think they have no problems.


OK gentlefolks, let's gather 'round and talk about this "Transwomen are Women/Transwomen are Men" argument that's been going on for ages.

On the one hand, we have the inclusionary position of "Transwomen are Women". While I cannot speak for everyone who says this, I believe that this is not meant as a literal statement of fact -- as in, they do not literally believe that transwomen are truly women in every sense of the word, including genetics and biology -- but rather as a statement of support. They are saying, "You are female in the ways that matter, and therefore I will support you by affirming your identity."

In other words, it's not denial of biology but rather affirmation of psychology and an assertion of acceptance, which is something that is really freaking important when you've spent decades hating yourself because your body doesn't match who your brain says you are, and so you take a big, scary step in an attempt to find some peace between body and mind... only to have people yelling in your face that you're sick and disgusting and deviant.

Let me share something with you: all but the most self-assured transwomen will, in their heart of hearts, sadly agree with the people shouting "Transwomen are men!" because that's how we still feel. We know that insecurity, and we crave acceptance from others because we hate what we see when we look in the mirror; and deep down, we think we're doing a terrible job of looking like women and because we'll never fit in no matter how hard we try, maybe we ought to just do what the screaming voices want and kill ourselves.

Because that's what the "Transwomen are Men" crowd wants: for our identities to die. They probably don't mean it as "kill your physical form"; however, most of the time it's not in the hurtful-but-well-meaning manner of "You have a delusion, let me help you stop being deluded and happy" but rather in the far more visceral "You are disgusting and vile and perverse, remove yourself from my world".

Let me tell you this: when someone who has been unhappy inside their skin all their lives finds happiness in transition, only to be told that they must destroy that part of themselves before they can be accepted by society, a lot of them feel that they're being told to destroy what makes them them. A suicide of soul, if not of body.

It's because of this that I get very, very upset with the "transwomen are men!" shouters, because in their shouts I hear them calling for my death, for the death of the person who is Erin. It's beyond rude; it's cruel and disgusting and not at all what any loving God would want from believers.

Here's what I suggest: Let's be courteous and treat transgender people like people instead of broken things. Yes, that means using their preferred pronouns and speaking/acting/reacting to them in the ways that make them feel comfortable. The first rule of getting along in society is "Be Polite"; or, put another way, "Don't Be Rude." Why is it so hard for so many people to understand this concept?

"But they were born -" I'm going to have to stop you there. If you want to claim that you are somehow serving an absolute truth that is immutable based upon birth, I have some questions that you need to answer first:

1. Do you still call married women by their maiden names? After all, that's how they were born. 
2. Do you still call degreed professionals Mr. or Ms. instead of "doctor" or "professor"? After all, they weren't born with those titles. 
3. If you're in the military, do you still call your superiors "sir/ma'am" or whatever their rank is? 
4. How about the police? When you're stopped for a ticket, do you call the cop by the name on their uniform, or do you call them "officer"?
5. How about calling judges "Your Honor?" How about any number of other situations like these?

If you can call a stranger by a noun which they weren't born with, then you can grant a transgender person a pronoun. If you can call a married woman a name she wasn't born with, then you can call a transgender person the name they've chosen for themselves. If you can do all the things listed above without violating your "sense of truth", then you can be kind to someone who just wants to feel normal.

And if you won't, then don't claim some moral high ground. Just admit that you're afraid of the severe social consequences for being disrespectful those you see as your equals or superiors, but that transgender people are below you and therefore you can get away with being rude to them. After all, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, what injury does it do you to say that a transwoman is a woman? How does it pick your pocket or break your leg?

Please, be kind. Don't be rude or callous or cruel, especially in the name of "the truth" or your religion. Understand that we're all trying to find our way through this world in the manner that hurts us the least. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

Ideological Whiplash and the Treatment For It

Siddown, kiddos. Uncle Salem's got the whiskey back, and the white collar's going back on. The Reverend is in. 

I have been asked a few times my thoughts regarding the recent noises that President Trump has made regarding violence and video games.

I am, frankly, unconcerned. This is hardly the first time that video games have been put through the government ringer. I'm old enough to remember the Family Entertainment Protection Act and its sponsor. I've heard the tales of Tipper Gore and the PMRC.

I'm only surprised that it took this long for Trump and Hillary Clinton to align on an issue. I'm also aware that, after analyzing (that's not something that you pay Stormy Daniels not to talk about, in case you need it pointed out) the situation, that it's more than likely this is a giant cloud of hot air that Trump is pushing to distract from the NRA.

What perturbs me about the situation is the moral vanguard of defenders that have arisen to defend the poor, defenseless art form against the big scary cheeto man.

Such as Polygon.

 
Or Feminist Frequency.


Or Vice's Motherboard.


Or any number of examples that I could dig up with a marginal effort.

See, there's something you should realize as you pull an ideological 180 so quickly that your scraggly beards crawl up to cover your prematurely-balding heads: that you're no longer welcome to defend an art form after you spend the better part of the decade bashing it.

You don't get spend five years vacillating between implying and outright declaring that video games will turn you into anything from a rapist to a murderer because the pretty Armenian girl with the teleseminar background bats her eyelashes approvingly at you, then turn around and pretend to be strident defenders of artistic freedom when the mean man in the big house on the hill says the same things she did, albeit not nearly as artistically.

It rings incredibly hollow and lends an inordinate amount of credence to the Trump Derangement Syndrome theory. You truly are pivoting on a position just because he said something you agreed with 10 minutes ago.

Video games survived government overreach once before, and yes, you played a part in that. You're not needed anymore. The internet exists, and gives a voice to each and every person that chooses to use that voice. Even people you don't like. Especially people you've spent the last 5 or so years painting as the most dangerous villains on the planet.

There is the road. Those are some rocks. Kick the rocks. At least the rocks won't kick back.

He Will Not Divide Us REEEE He Will Not Divide Us REEEE He Will Not Divide Us REEEE

Two great disappointments happened to me recently.

Disappointment the first: Shia LeBouf's planned four-year "art" installation #HeWillNotDivideUs relocated to Albuquerque after the Museum of the Moving Image kicked him out when he was arrested for assaulting fellow protesters. Disappointment the second: he was gone from Albuquerque inside of a week and I missed it entirely.

I had a week's vacation earlier in February, as you may have noticed from my absence, and I had meant to go see the installation, if only to have a laugh at his expense. I'm all for public protest, as long as it's peaceful protest (see my recent rants on Antifa), and if Shia wants to spend the next four years cosplaying as a homeless person in downtown Albuquerque then by god I want to witness it in person when our own union of homeless people find him.

Trolls flooded his original installation at the museum in NYC, as expected. For a city with over eight million people, you've got to have at least a few tens of thousands of trolls, and even Twitch streamer Brittany Venti got in on the act. But the breaking blow came when Shia mistook one of his supporters for a troll and assaulted him, resulting in his arrest.

Seriously normies, get off Brittany's stream.

Please keep in mind that I cannot stand Shia LeBouf. His role in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull put a damper on a movie that was already completely unnecessary, and my love of the sentient robots of the Transformers franchise was insulted with Michael Bay's movies. Moreso even than the humping dogs, annoying parents, robots peeing on people, and racial stereotypes was Shia LeBouf, with his smug stupid face overacting his pants off shrieking incoherently and bashing things at every opportunity. My distaste of him was so much so that I considered the last Transformers movie, Age of Extinction, to be the best of a bad franchise (which runs contrary to popular opinion) if only because the main human protagonist was replaced by a bland Mark Wahlberg. Aside from these I have never seen Shia in anything else, save an extremely strange and slight discomforting music video where he rather aggressively dances in a cage with a prepubescent girl.

So yeah, when the trolls came for him, I was not disappointed. Please see reference material below, and a fair warning of people acting the fool.

So Shia upped roots and moved to Albuquerque, the biggest city in a rather sparse Blue state, where he thought he'd be safe and welcome. I'd made plans to visit the installation on a Wednesday during my vacation, but it turns out that there'd been gunshots in the vicinity (just off of 7th and Central, off of old Route 66) just days prior. The local news reported on it, and their statement was that he left after gunshots were reported in the area.

Welcome to the ABQ, Shia; didn't you see Breaking Bad? Gunshots are kinda the norm here. If you can't take a little small arms fire, you won't last long in Albuquerque. Honestly, I'm surprised we're not more progressive. Our cops shoot everyone, not just the brown people.

Shia's Homeless Person Cosplay

So I'm genuinely disappointed. I wanted to see the #HeWillNotDivideUs installation in person. I wanted to laugh at homeless-cosplaying Shia. But I missed my chance by mere days. And I think that makes me dislike Shia even more: more than being the stain on two beloved franchises and an all-around annoying human being, his cowardice at a normal occurrence in flyover country deprived me of a good laugh. I can only imagine that, somewhere right now, Shia is walking down a lonely highway with the closing theme of the old Hulk TV show playing into the wireless earbuds of his latest model of iPhone, having utterly failed to connect to the common person.

Update: /pol/ has found it. Shia moved the livestream to an undisclosed location and, using the position of the stars and the flight paths of three planes, /pol/ has discovered that what remains of #HeWillNotDivideUs is a white flag with the slogan on it and a camera pointed at it, somewhere southeast of Greeneville, TN. This was discovered in less than 24 hours, and the results posted less than 4 hours ago. The proof is in the pudding. I have to wonder if the white flag is symbolic of anything. 

San Bernadino: Same Old Song And Dance

Breathe in, breathe out.
Breathe in, breathe out. 

I had a piece in my mind that was going to involve willfully misinterpreting Jessica Jones through a critical theory lens, but then two things happened. Anita Sarkeesian actually beat me to it (with a great deal more sincerity than mine was going to involve, or at least I think so -- one can never be sure) so due to some similarities I'm going to have to rework some of my ideas, and some assholes shot some people in San Bernadino.

When it first happened, and I first read about it, I was fine. I could still do this. In fact, until I opened the window to write this, I still had every intention of writing that Jessica Jones piece. The event itself wasn't the issue; it was watching my social media feeds last night, as every person who posted it with the intention of pushing an agenda -- some people I knew, some people I only knew in passing, and some people just internet randos or minor celebrities -- used it as an opportunity for gravestanding.

Actually, gravestanding is too dignified at this point. I'm going to refer to it as gravesquatting from now on.

Every post that was an argument to take away guns, or to get rid of the Muslims, chipped away at my ideas for a darkly sardonic piece about how Jessica Jones was really a harmful and problematic depiction of women and people of colour that propped up a white supremacist patriarchy. Chipped them away to the point where those ideas are scattered on the floor of my mind right now and need time to re-form.

So I'm writing this instead. I'm going to take every opportunity to ignore what happened and, more importantly, people's reactions to it, on my social media feed and instead just play more Fallout for the next three days or so until some other piece of annoying news catches the interest of the Internet at large. It's times like these that I think maybe I should have more friends out in the world instead of online, but I imagine they'd probably just do the same thing.

Every time. I'm getting so very tired.