Or ‘transphobe’.
What’s the point of identifying as bisexual if you’ve never had non-hetero sex and never intend to? It either seems to be a way to make yourself look more interesting or else you’re gay and just haven’t admitted it yet.
My whole point is that she’s not redefining anything. Almost every one of her supposedly “outre” demands are points of view that already exist in the queer community.
Well, the major difference would be between the generic and the specific. I’m not saying YWTF is ignorant of queer culture because she’s a straight woman. I’m saying that she’s ignorant of queer culture because of specific things she’s said that indicate she doesn’t know what major topics of conversation among queer people actually are.
I dunno, maybe I’m just projecting. I know I’d feel like a fraud if I identified as some kind of LGTB++ having had none of the associated struggles in my life.
There’s a pretty serious distinction here. When a homophobe calls a gay man “queer,” he’s saying, “You like to have sex with other men!” Which is factually true. When the gay man reclaims that word, he’s saying, "Yes, I do like to have sex with other men, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
When a gender-critical feminist gets called a transphobe, what’s being said is, “You hate and discriminate against trans people.” By trying to “reclaim” the word by using it as a self descriptor, the gender-critical feminist is saying, “Yes, I do hate and discriminate against trans people, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Because orientation isn’t behavior. A straight man doesn’t only become officially heterosexual when he successfully places his dick inside a vagina. A gay person living in Iran doesn’t stop being gay just because they decide it’s not worth the risk to their lives to have gay sex. A bisexual woman doesn’t stop being bisexual if they end up marrying their high school boyfriend.
As @iiandyiiiii so loves to tell us, language evolves. When someone calls a gay man gay, they aren’t saying he’s ever so happy and cheerful. If being attracted to people on the basis of biological sex and not gender is transphobic, or not believing that trans women are women and trans men are men is transphobic, or talking about how trans rights might impact women’s rights is transphobic, then guess what? Transphobic no longer means someone who hates and discriminates against trans people, it means the things I just listed. And calling yourself transphobic says that those are your beliefs and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’m not sure that’s the way that transphobe is always used though. Certainly it gets aimed at people who make statements like “sex is real” and other such non-hateful statements. In those cricumstances I can well imagine someone saying “well if that is what you consider a transphobe, then fine…I’ll call myself a transphobe and own it”
How much struggle is a person required to experience before they can identify as queer? I’ve personally been super lucky in that regard - I’ve never been physically assaulted for my sexuality. I’ve never been fired from a job, or kicked out of my home. Nobody in my family disowned me when I came out. None of my friends abandoned me. I’ve only once ever been called a gay slur by someone who knew my sexuality and was expressly trying to attack me over it. (I have been called lots of gay slurs by the sort of people who use gay slurs as generic insults, but it’s not exactly the same thing.)
Does that mean I’m not queer?
I hope this isn’t too off-topic, but I’m curious how you feel about asexuals identifying as “queer”, @Miller.
If your life would not have been noticeably different if you were straight, that would be my bar. I’ve known people who basically pretended to be bi for attention, so maybe that makes me a bit cynical.
It also gets aimed at people who deny employment to trans people, who refuse to cater to them in public establishments, and who physically attack them. It seems to me that, if you want to make sure that saying “sex is real” is treated as a legitimate, acceptable viewpoint, you’d want to put a lot of effort into maintaining and highlighting the difference between merely being gender critical, and beating a woman to death in the street.
(Parody hat back on)
So what? Logic isn’t behind any of my objections. Only my feelings are relevant. “Sodomizers” strikes me as more inclusive than “gay men” because the latter presumes there is such thing as gay men. And everyone knows this concept totally excludes members of the queer community (like myself) who think concepts like “gay” and “men” are offensively cishet-cishom-transhet-transhom normative.
So rather than National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I am demanding that it be termed National Sodomizers HIV Day. You’re saying there is a tradition of taking back slurs, so let’s make this happen then. Just skip the unnecessary humanizing language of “gay men” and reduce them to what they really are. In the meantime, we can tell ourselves that all the non-gay non-men out there having sex with each other’s penises will now be reached by our awareness campaign when previously they were shut out.
Erasing gay men from HIV awareness literature sounds like it could be a mistake of epic proportion, but it really isn’t when you think about it. I mean, Ireland is doing the same thing with women and cervical cancer guidance, but you don’t see any outbreaks of “anyone with cervixes” dying, do you? Nope.
Yes but when women point out that transwomen aren’t socialized as female—and very often are obvious in this lack of socialization—we are told we are transphobic.
This article reads like nothing a woman would write, for instance.
Here are the 5 demands of Woman’s Place UK, which all but one of the Labour leadership candidates signed a statement calling a transphobic hate group:
- Respectful and evidence-based discussion about the impact of the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act to be allowed to take place and for women’s voices to be heard.
- The principle of women-only spaces to be upheld – and where necessary extended.
- A review of how the exemptions in the Equality Act (which allow for single sex services, or requirements that only a woman can apply for a job such as in a domestic violence refuge) are being applied in practice.
- Government to consult with women’s organisations on how self-declaration would impact on women-only services and spaces.
- Government to consult on how self-declaration will impact upon data gathering – such as crime, employment, pay and health statistics – and monitoring of sex-based discrimination such as the gender pay gap.
That’s what ‘transphobic’ means today.
It’s the elephant in the room. We must accept whatever anyone says about themselves without question, and ignore our own perceptions and understanding of the world.
It doesn’t bother me.
How so, exactly?
Which is where the term properly sits.
The person saying “sex is real” can honestly point to the fact they are doing none of the true transphobic stuff. Yet they still get the label.
That’s not true. Not always true, not even close to it… especially when the target is a woman. monstro and YWTF do not hate and discriminate against trans people, but I’ve no doubt many would call them transphobes. I say that anyone who calls either of them a transphobe is a liar. What such a person is REALLY saying is “you are a woman who won’t shut up and do as you’re told.” It very often just means “person who will not say that transwomen are literally women” or some variant of that. In many cases - not here, but it’s sadly not uncommon elsewhere - “TERF” and “transphobe” are used to mean “a person (most often a lesbian) who won’t have sex with transwomen.”
…here’s how Planned Parenthood defines transphobia.
I’m not lying when I say that I believe you and monstro and YWTF hold negative beliefs and attitudes towards transgender people, that you and monstro and YWTF have an aversion and a prejudice against transgender people, that you all display irrational fear and misunderstanding towards transgender people, that (you especially) disbelieve and discount preferred pronouns or gender identity (unless forced into it when performing official duties as a moderator).
So I’m not entirely sure that the label “transphobic” is inappropriate here, and I don’t think that being a woman makes any difference. The definition looks pretty straight forward to me.
Unfortunately, you are extremely misguided.