Hollow Laughter

And then there’s this kind of crap, with thanks to ^[4] for digging it up so I don’t have to:

Victoria Smith @glosswitch · Jan 29
“You are always welcome in any space I am in” says woman who is not, and is very unlikely ever to be, in prison

Quote Tweet Patsy Stevenson @PatsyeStevenson · Jan 28
I’m sorry that it’s not my lane to talk about but I’m so tired of seeing cis white women spout harmful shit about trans rights. If you’re trans please know that it’s not all of us and I love you endlessly, you are always welcome in any space that I am in.

You are a sample size of one, twit. Who died and made you God, so that you can give away other women’s right to be safe from harm?

Which is just about the most basic right there is.

Hope you’re staying safe and reasonably dry there in NZ, Quixote.

“says woman who is not, and is very unlikely ever to be, in prison”.

This hits the nail right on the head. It’s very easy to look tolerant to one’s peer group when none of them is ever likely to suffer from it. The empathy that would make a person realize what living this would be like is harder.

I used to feel that things like the ‘bathroom bill’ in NC were nothing but bigotry, when all I knew of trans (or even transesque) people were a very decent man who enjoyed being innocently normal while wearing skirts in a job site overrun with fundamentalist Mormon women, and some celebrities who cross-dressed.

Then TRAs started shoving men into the spaces like sports, scholarships, Title 9, and shelters from male violence that women had fought so hard to create. It made me rethink what men routinely being in existing places where women are physically vulnerable would mean.

Much like religion, when race is substituted for sex, there’s nothing like the same acceptance for this kind of thing. I’d dearly love to know what the mechanism is that so easily turns a concept like tolerance on its head and causes people to be blind when the victims are women, but only women.

Re the mechanism. Yes, indeed. It’s puzzled the hell out of me, too.

The thing that makes it so difficult is this, in the inimitable words of ^[5], asking all the way back in 2012 whether women are people:

All my adult life, I’ve been pretty sure I’m a sentient, even semi-competent human being. I have a job and an apartment; I know how to read and vote; I make regular, mostly autonomous decisions about what to eat for lunch and which cat videos I will watch whilst eating my lunch. But in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude.

(It’s really worth going to read the whole hilarious/raging piece.)

So anyway, what with all the ability to make cat video choices, it’s hard to take on board that we’re not people in so many men’s and women’s minds. Not actually human, with real feelings like men have.

But that’s what the evidence from the transactivists’ fiasco says: It is inconceivable to them — meaning literally, they can’t even imagine — that women have the same feelings they would have in the same situation. Women are some kind of furniture or comfort animals or mini-me producers or something. If they fall short of their function, it’s purely due to the cussedness of the universe picking on the person who needed it. Like when people kick chairs that broke under them.

I mean, can you imagine saying transwomen must use women’s toilets because they (the transwomen) are in danger of assault in the men’s rooms? Without hearing what you just said? Women have to simply not exist in their world for them to be able to say crap like that.

Which makes the reason clear why no other group is so invisible. Those groups have real people in them, aka men.

Oh, and, yes, thanks for asking!, I’m fine. Unbelievably tired of the rain, but nothing worse than that. I’m up on a hill in a solidly anchored house, creating the runoff for the poor blighters below :/

They can’t provide proof fast enough.

Do not underestimate the depth and breadth of the policy capture here. Two years ago Kirsty Blackman, formerly deputy head of the SNP at Westminster, expressed the view it would be a mistake to proceed with legislation before “ensuring that groups advocating for trans rights agree with the form of words that is put into legislation”. Organisations such as the Equality Network and Stonewall should have an effective veto on “the exact wording” to be used. Asked if this should extend to women’s groups, Blackman replied, “Why?”

“Why?” she, she, asks why? Misogyny is a hell of a drug.

(That’s from ^[6], “Trans prisoner fiasco is down to Sturgeon — there’s no one else to blame”. He’s one of the breath-of-fresh-air good guys.)

Is there such a thing as ‘uphill guilt’? Good to know you’re okay with all that surfeit of H2O (obligatory Avengers reference)

I had a too long reply I didn’t post but the gist was that it’s way too easy to be a tourist in other demographics when your own is -just- comfortable enough and fighting for your own rights would upset that. It’s scary, infuriating and debilitating when women in positions with enough power to affect women’s lives take that tack.

Also, I’ll keep posting “Oafkeepers” until someone adopts that term for those renegade boys – or at least, as Archie said “Groan once or I’ll go mad”.

‘uphill guilt’ 😆

I’m not good at guilt so I can’t say I feel that. Besides, I did what I could! Permeable driveway! It’s not my fault! I found it that way! 😆

I *love* Oafkeepers. I’m going to use that term whenever I have to mention them. True on so many levels.

The sad thing about women in power is they usually get there by using sexism, not fighting it. So by the time they’re there (in power) it’s too late for them to learn a new approach.

It looks like the transphiliacs are lying low until the images fade of the thug being foisted into a women’s jail. But even now I’ve seen some cultists intoning about the transphobia of caring for women’s safety.

The part they refuse to understand is that allowing any man to say he’s trans invites in perverts. It’s not about trans-identified males (unless they’re also sexual assaulters). It’s about the danger for WOMEN. Of course, women have to be visible, they have to actually exist, to be able to see that.

Instead, they say we need to stop being drama queens. It never happens. And if it could, ^[7]. And if it does, It’s only a few.

So, ^[8]?

There have been some already, so that’s obviously not enough to care. Dozens? Hundreds?

Reality always wins. The laughter just gets hollower. And louder.

The incomparable ^[9]

Nicola Sturgeon apparently has some special dispensation to cast doubt on “anyone is whoever they say they are” that trans widows and rape survivors lack. Because unlike sexual trauma, political embarrassment is *serious*.

^[10]

In other words, when her political career is at stake, the first minister is a TERF. Like everyone else, really

Quote Tweet
Mark McLaughlin @mark_mclaughlin

Pressed on whether she believes Bryson is a woman, @NicolaSturgeon replied: “This individual claims to be a woman.

“I don’t have information about whether those claims have validity.”

Isn’t that point of *self-declaration*?

Someone declares they’re a woman, so they’re a woman

2:12 AM · Feb 3, 2023

Thanks for the grin, Q!

The quote was from Archie & Mehitabel (went with the illustration of him chucking a brick at the cricket) but with most of my books still boxed up an and the search engines getting dumber all the time, I can’t find the original. Oh, well, one of the less pressing problems of the day.

It’s really frustrating that the countries women in America might have counted on as being a bit saner, with fewer violent right wing nuts in power, are doing this kind of ridiculous harmful bending over backwards.

Oregon’s going through the same idiocy at the same speed – they still haven’t passed any kind of hate speech or hate crimes protections for women, but religions that are undeniably bigoted against women, that consider women so horrible God won’t even talk to us, that still consider women’s bodies to be men’s property -are- protected, as are men who pose as women. The only women the most recent 2019 hate crime laws cover are those who identify as men!

Oh, dear, I just realized that the brick-chucking reference might be misread as advocating violence towards pun ignorers.

Archie originally meant the too-cheerful cricket with his incessant ‘cheerup’ to show a little pessimism, but punsters take groans as complements. We do go mad if everyone ignores us but rarely throw bricks!

As far as I’m concerned, the way people get the vapors over allusions to violence, even in slapstick comedy, is insane. I mean, a cockroach throwing bricks? If that needs a /joke!/ tag it’s time to go back to grade school and learn to read all over again.

Meanwhile, rape “jokes” are hilarious, and people throw “fuck it” around like bird seed because what could be pithier and cooler than saying sex is the worst curse.

Anyway, point being, anything that really is funny is fine. It’s the other stuff I object to.

You’re right, of course. I think I’ve been in this ‘sensitivity as a weapon’ environment much too long.

Hi Quixote! We had our first bizarre TW encounter tonight & I’m dying to tell someone about it. So my son had foot & leg surgery 3 months ago & is at the point where he can finally go workout at the gym, which he has been dying to do. So I drove him to our gym (in the area where I think you used to live) and asked him to take Lyft home as I was making a nice dinner. He did, & the first weird thing was that the guy was driving a black car instead of white, which was his posted car. My kid thought nothing of it & got in. The whole way home the guy smoked cigarettes, rambled incessantly to my poor son, he “identifies as a trans woman,” “wants to date Japanese g I r l s, but they won’t date him,” he’s “banned from Tinder,” and more unnerving things, he also asked for a tip, which they’re not supposed to do (we always tip though). He drops my kid off, I saw the headlights & went to the door & opened it to let him in, heard my kid say thank you & saw the headlights drive off. My kid went in & immediately began telling me how weird the ride was when the doorbell rang. I answered it & there was a man I’d never seen before, smoking, he put his cigarette out with his shoe on our front porch & told me he had just dropped our son off and he “had to pee” and could he use our bathroom? At that point my son walked up & said Hi, was there a problem? The guy repeated his request & since Hubs was in the next room & the bathroom was right by the door, & we’re normally polite people, said ok. He goes in, we didn’t hear anything, hubs comes out wondering what is going on, we tell him & a couple of minutes later, he comes out, says thank you and my son opened the door for him and he goes. We didn’t hear the toilet flush or water turn on. I immediately went and cleaned the toilet with bleach cleaner and am cleaning the whole bathroom tonight.

I wanted to call LYFT & ask them to block him from our accounts, but you can’t call them. The only identifying info about him is his first name. Apparently you can report a driver for inappropriate behavior by filling out an online form, but I don’t want him to know since he has our address. I’m not going to be so casual about using LYFT & UBER in the future. Oh, almost forgot, this “trans woman” had short dark hair, beard scruff, & wore men’s clothes. There was nothing effeminate about him. I don’t know what or if I should do anything.

Bleurgh, Annie. How gross.

Thing is, he can be as trans as he wants. But why tell your son about it? A passenger has nothing to do with this impolite weirdo’s sex life!

Just gross. Reminds me of all the guys who always think women have to hear about their studliness.

Glad it ended okay, except for you having to clean the entire damn bathroom.

As for doing anything, as you say, the jerk knows where you live. If there’s any way to leave a totally confidential warning with Lyft, it’s worth doing. Otherwise? I don’t know. You didn’t sign up for harassment!