Continuously willing to discuss in good faith: part 3

This looks like a thread I'd like to contribute to. Can someone please post links to the earlier parts? I tried to UTFS but MN search is not the greatest!

I have not read the thread. I think gender non-conformity is entirely positive.

Gender is a system of oppressive imposition of sex-role appearance and behavior. Normal humans do not subscribe to it, they get on with life wearing what is comfortable and becoming, doing the things they like doing, following fashion or not as personal tastes suggest.

Genderists insist that normal humans MUST conform to the stereotypes, 'transing' their 'gender' if necessary. Trans Rights Advocates are oppressive and conformist and should not have been handed the ability to bamboozle vulnerable adolescents.

No, but I do think that much about campness seems to resides in negative feminine type presentations - of the sort on which 'drag' is also based: Moody, narcissistic, bitchy.....and the very idea of " camping it up" is about performance. A sort of exaggerated overtly, and stereotypically, 'feminine' performance.

I don't think it is necessarily 'gender non conforming' to be camp either.......It could be said it is actually conforming to negative feminine gendered stereotypes and presentations.( rather than masculine ones).

Which may suggest 'gender' itself is conformist and something of a caricature. Drag , again, a perfect example. I think this may well reside in psychology rather than biology..... an early and primal imprinting on archetypal content.

It's a bit like being a rebellious teenager, I think. There are good and bad ways of doing it.

You play the Rolling Stones at a reasonable volume in your bedroom, to your parents' annoyance, because you love the Rolling Stones. That's being yourself. Healthy self assertion.

Or you can do the same thing, but do it because the Rolling Stones are currently the 'in' way to rebel. If the fashion changed, 'your' tastes would follow it. You're pushing against your parents, but only by buying in to another lot of conventions.

Or you can do the same thing, merely because the Rolling Stones annoy your parents. You don't even particularly like the Stones; anything your parents really really hate would do the job; and of course you play it at full blast every time. You are using your right to self assertion as an excuse to be a jerk.

Sorry, I know this a v old thread but I wanted to pick up on your point as I think it's interesting. Do you think that this gender non-conformity is always very negative? ⁷

I've recently become interested in Jung but was disappointed that the reddit board discussing him had a lot of posters, mainly men, saying that homosexuality was rooted in problematic psychological developement, not biology, & they seemed to discard the many recent studies that indicate its biological origin, ignoring that Jung's perspective was necessarily limited by his time, as ours is, so can't be relied on 100%. Some of their usernames had words like 'Chad' in so I suspect some were Jordan Peterson followers who had negatively interpreted his message.

I can see that extreme gender non-conformity can be negative if it shades into body-hatred or emulating negative traits, eg. camp gay men acting spiteful & oversensitive or butch lesbians acting aggressive or domineering. I'm lesbian myself, slightly on the tomboyish side, & my experience is that people who veer into being v non-conforming can develop these traits for good or ill, they can be v positive for the individual & those around them, or the opposite.

Yes. Hence the often really outlandish clothing. Levels of magnitude above mere fishnets and PVC skirts.

And, according to a woman who is married to such a fetishist, you can't even tell them they look ridiculous to get them to stop, because it feeds the humiliation part...which is a turn on.

Thank you for the apology @BonfireLady it is genuinely appreciated.

And I also realise I'm sounding like I really don't like fireworks - to try to shut down some poor random's sparky birthday celebration would be impressively killjoy 😂. But you know what I mean... Maybe! (Going to stop re-reading my own posts now).

(Quote-fail, a fair few typos and the possible mis-use of proscribed, there.)

@MargotBamborough, your breakdown of different perspectives on / approaches to feminism (and, also, "feminism"!) was really interesting.

You also got me thinking re: "Where I think the analogy falls short is that in the former case, the war veteran should be offered support and counselling to help them learn to live in a world with fireworks and backfiring cars in it, without having that trauma response. Literally, we hope that they would in time learn to "reframe their trauma", as Mridul Wadhwa put it. I do not think that female rape survivors, or female prisoners who have suffered male violence, or female athletes, or practising Muslim women, should have to reprogramme themselves to not have a problem with trans women in their spaces."

Obviously agree with your point that follows, that this shouldn't need rationalising or justifying anyway, but, as an intellectual exercise, reflecting on how I'd defend the analogy as standing in the face of that...

I know what you mean in your ironic echo of Mridul Wadhwa, but both the shellshocked soldier and traumatised rape victim alike would, I hope, receive support to overcome, or manage, their trauma* to be able to live as normal and fulfilled a life as possible, in the knowledge that (subsequent sex-stereotyped masculine pronoun chosen purely for simplicity!) he could never be fully protected from unexpected loud noises for the rest of the life, any more than she could hope for a guarantee of no unexpected close encounters with strange males in enclosed spaces.

But both traumatised individuals in this analogy could have a reasonable expectation of being able to plan their movements o minimise exposure to triggers. After all, there's a social contract about making loud noises in public spaces just as there is (or was...) one about men in women's private spaces - an unspoken consensus about what is and isn't reasonable in a civil society, in place to uphold each individual's right to access and use shared spaces. For example, it would be seen as fairly reasonable to challenge any group letting off fireworks outside the proscribe periods of New Year and Bonfire Night, 6pm to, say, 1am, for example, just as it used to be reasonable to challenge a man in the ladies'.

Is that all a bit too neat, though? What am I missing? 🤔

*The word "re-frame" was, in itself, concerning even when removed from the appalling context - its focus on the "expression of" said trauma as opposed to its treatment says everything about the utterly distorted priorities driving this suggestion...

I also have a natural aversion to right wing media. The trouble is, the left wing media has completely lost its marbles on this issue. So I guess now I have an aversion to all traditional media...

It's destabilising to see decent reporting in newspapers like the Mail, and misogynistic nonsense in the Guardian.

I really hate the fact that it gives the trans activists ammunition to spin gender critical feminism as a right wing position.

Yes, I agree, but I think my point was more in response to Bonfirelady's reported aversion to 'right wing media'.

Actually, @NotHavingIt, I would argue that sometimes you do need to read the Daily Mail because it is the only newspaper that has reported on something.

Google "Cheryle Kempton", the female prisoner assaulted by Karen White in prison and see what results you get.

You needn't read the Daily Mail or the Telegraph @ BonfireLady ( you can't without a subscription, anyway) in order to research more into the issue of transgender/identity (on behalf of your daughter); there are some excellent books that have been available for quite a while now. Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, Abigail Shrier, to name just a few.The Times, though, especially Janice Turner has been great on the issue.

You have said you have never really been interested in women's rights and was always very dismissive of JK Rowling.....yet you sound to me of a certain age and a certain education, so that I find this idea quite intriguing?

Exactly

But I was referring specifically to people who dislike trans people because they think that men wearing makeup and dresses is weird and gross, and that only women should do these things.

That's only one group of people.

Other options are available, such as not believing that trans women are women but that all cross-dressing is completely fine, or being OK with cross-dressing when it's for artistic/expression purposes, e.g. Dame Edna or David Bowie, but not when it is a fetish.

Comedy act? Funny.

Cross dressing fetishism? Weird and gross.

Two different things?

Not that difficult?

How does being a fan of Dame Edna square with believing it is weird and gross for a man to wear dresses and makeup?

“Brothers and sisters, the name of the game is power
If you ain’t playing power,
You’re in the wrong place”

And the power inversion comes from the social coding of the sexes - posits women as weaker and inferior, and/or sexually objectifies them.

So a male 'dressing as a woman' is deliberately debasing himself. It depends entirely on a struture that positions 'male' at the top of a hierarchy.

Just occurred to me that of course the reason that some people will fetishise 'cross dressing' is because of rigid gender stereotypes.

If there were less rigid 'rules' about what men and women wear/act, then there would be no thrill in breaking them. And no doubt fewer fetishistic acts aiming to transgress said 'rules'.

An obvious point, probably, but it only just occurred to me.

The charge/kick/thrill is about breaking social norms, it has f-all to do with the specific clothes involved.

People who just dislike trans people because they think it is weird and gross for a man to wear a dress and makeup and that only women should do these things are not gender critical either. They believe in upholding rigid gender norms which say that, in our culture, only women should wear dresses and makeup.

See, even here you have gone quite deeply into ascribing in absolute certainty the motivation of a group of people on the basis of nothing at all.

You go on to tell us that you know what they believe. Of course you don't know.

They believe in upholding rigid gender norms which say that, in our culture, only women should wear dresses and makeup.

They could just as likely be fans of Dame Edna Everage, as a comedy act, whilst at the same time knowing that cross dressing is often a paraphilia which is associated some types of sex offences.

The compulsion to set out what "people" believe in Ladybird book language is strong here.

For what it's worth, @TheKeatingFive, taking the side of trans women over natal women is a legitimate one.

But it is not legitimate to claim that you are being a feminist when you do so. No, what you are doing in that situation is not feminism, it is trans activism. It would be more honest to own that and just say you think trans people are more in need of your support.