I just cannot believe the self-centredness of this gay girl in damascus hoaxer

[HerBeX]

story here

When I heard it on PM, I assumed he was about 18 or 19 because obviously, only a child would be that self-obsessed that he would do something as irresponsible and egotistical as this, use someone else's photo without her permission, put other people's lives at risk... But no, he is a grown up 40 ish man with a wife, if you please.

I felt it deserved a feminist respons...

Good article on the ethics of it here.

Who says "mansplaining" doesn't exist?

appparently the Lez get real site is a translesbian site.!!
somehow lez get real and translesbian just dont seem to go together does it.
you couldnt make this up could you.
im concerned though that real lesbians could be getting duped on there.

That article, about privileged individuals co-opting the voices of under-privileged groups in this dishonest way, is spot on.

Here is Julie Bindel's very funny guide to men on how to be a lesbian

I haven't caught up on the rest of this thread yet (shh, I am Barbara under a name change), but I've just seen another interesting article which places this in a cultural context as well as a feminist one. Well, both, I guess. It's not clear-cut, but life isn't.

BifOfFun, Thanks for that article, it is spot on and captures the cultural context really well. If you are not a white feminist, that intersection between race/culture and gender is always there and she described how that impacts very well.

Someone upthread wondered if by making the 'Amina' character mixed race it would deflect inconsistencies, and it looks like that is what happened, which for several reasons makes the red mist of rage descend on me again about this story.

Great article, thanks for linking BoF.

How on earth does 'Oh it's art' operate as any kind of defence to the sheer irresponsibility of this enterprise? Of all the lesbian hoaxes he could have perpetrated, why pick this one? A bloody and tragic attempt at revolution registers with him as not much more than a colourful backdrop to a prank.

He seems typical of the kind of entitled, privileged white man who seems to think the experiences of women and/or people of other races have no validity until someone like him endorses or co-opts or interprets them.

I've met these blokes-they think themselves impeccably liberal. They ask you questions about your experience of racism or sexism then talk over the answer. Generally they are very concerned to decide whether what little they heard of what you have to say qualifies you as 'authentic' within your minority culture.

Oh yes!
From the article BoF linked to:

"Accustomed to having my own experience and knowledge doubted and questioned on a regular basis by self-proclaimed ?western,? ?liberal,? generally white and male experts of India, and especially as I do not fit their accepted colonially-rooted stereotypes of a woman of colour" and

"Arab bloggers and tweeple who were the first to express their doubts were shouted down by ?Amina? supporters from Europe and north America. Those doubting her accounts, despite their greater knowledge of the Syrian culture and politics (and great potential risk to themselves as they looked for this fictional heroine in Assad?s prisons) were branded ?homophobic? by primarily white liberal supporters from Europe and America. Ugly prejudices of race trumped any kinship on sexuality, just as feminism(s) of women of colour has been clipped by white middle-class female condescension for decades past!"

So hideously familiar...

"I've met these blokes-they think themselves impeccably liberal. They ask you questions about your experience of racism or sexism then talk over the answer. Generally they are very concerned to decide whether what little they heard of what you have to say qualifies you as 'authentic' within your minority culture."

I seriously need a 'Like' button for this post !! I tried to add to this point but could not come up anything vaguely worksafe, so will have to suffice with - Agreed.

Saw a Tweet which asked "I wonder if there are any middle aged women pretending to be gay men" ?

It was the day after a funeral and I really needed to laugh too.

Girlbomb wrote a post about five years back called "Feminist Men": Oxymorons or Simply Morons?

"... most of the men I?ve personally known who have made a huge hairy point of identifying as feminists have been either date rapists, mom fetishists, porn addicts, or bear daddies inflicting their frustrated pseudopaternal tendencies on women. They are some of the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, out-dishing without it-taking twerps on the planet, and they are poisoning the women?s movement from the inside by sapping the hell out of everyone?s goddamn energy."

She is critiquing pro-feminist men who post on internet feminist sites, but I'd say it is true to the power of a million for the men who actually pretend to be women.

Why couldn't the silly tossers have stuck to indulging their fake-lesbo fantasies in the time honoured way of running a personal ad along the lines of 'Lesbian seeks other lesbians for correspondence'? Back in the days of magazine contact ads, there used to be a load of these, placed by men-pretending-to-be-lesbians. Which were usually replied to by MPTBL. They would happily correspond for years without ever twigging that the other correspondent was another MPTBL. And they weren't actually hurting or endangering anyone else, unlike these two wretched men.

Mind you, just as an aside in reply to Ryoko's post, some women do get off on the man-on-man scenario, it only takes a very quick dabble through a slash=fiction site to find shedloads of stories along those lines written by women.

I wonder about that aspect of it. When men impersonate women on the Internet or anywhere, and they encounter another woman or "woman", do they fall for the trick, or are they likely to be on their guard? Maybe they carefully size up whatever clues they're getting, to try and figure out if this one might just possibly be real. Or perhaps they're cynical but there's honour among thieves, and they just leave each other to get on the best they can.

Logically a hetero male's attitude to lesbians ought to be to hope the idea doesn't spread, and apart from that, move on to more hopeful prospects.

If you check out the first comment here: muslimahmediawatch.org/2011/06/the-medias-chickens-come-home-to-roost-with-the-amina-hoax/

He still doesn't see what he did as really wrong and is love with his own perceived 'cleverness'.

He is such a patronizing indulgent knob, it is unbelievable....his "otherwise great work" comment explaining why he is still right is beyond belief.

The inability to accept what a dumbass he is, is unbelievable.

loads of men want to dress as a woman, and there usually not gay, they still like girls , it's just they also want to be one, it's a desire to be desierd, sad i know , but there's alot of it about.
in the virtual world 'second life' it's amazing how many lesbiens there are , far more than in RL, for some of these guys , being female in second life is possibly the best thing that happend to them, fortunatly, all the lesbiens that refuse to voice chat( dog ate my mic and so on) end up romancing each other.
but also here, here in mumsnet, none of you know who is really a woman and who is a sad bald man with a dress fixation, or a spotty teenage boy who likes to swear alot, i have my suspicious about a few who post here , this sort of gender-bending is prevelent all over bthe web, why wouldnt it be here.

Perhaps you may want to reflect on how a group of men playing 'lesbian' on second life may be different from misrepresenting a marginalised group in a conflict zone.

Similarly, if there were men pretending to be women on Mumsnet, who gives a shit....what would their impact in the greater scheme of things and represention of women the UK, even if they got away with it over a period of time.

it's totaly different but i never said is was the same
the lesbein blogger from damascus cause great hurt and put pepple in danger, he was terribly irrisponsable.
men playing women here could skew the genreal idea of what womens opinions are, not as serious as amena granted, but if i were a women i wouldnt want a spotty teenage boy representing womens views, and sounding like a trooper.