Trying to understand

[Tiredof]

So I like to try and understand. I really do. So I sometimes delve into the Twitter accounts of women who champion the idea that TWAW, TMAM etc... especially ones that can say with sincerity that penises can be female, vaginas can be Male. Because I really do want to understand and on some days when I’m feeling particularly depressed and ground down I almost want to be converted to this type of thinking because it would make my life so much fucking easier in the here and now.

Anyway I found the following thread by a woman who writes ‘Romance’ novels. It’s not a genre I read myself and I’m not about to start. I’ve blocked out her identity because I don’t want to single her out as an individual, I’m just interested in her absolute, passionate belief in what she believes in and trying to fathom out where it comes from. Because the more I read it, the less I understand it. And it goes without saying that I’m not up for any members of society being singled out for persecution, oppression, cruelty etc... but apparently that’s what I’m advocating by not sharing her belief system and being gender critical.

I just want to ‘discuss’ this with someone and I’m hoping it won’t get deleted. I’m a serial namechanger BTW. My anonymity is important to me. I’m going to have to add the images of the tweets in 2 lots - hopefully they’ll be in the right order.

Next tweets in the thread..,

Try that again..,

Living up to my name and off to bed now but will engage with this again tomorrow if anyone responds

I think that’s just a big whole mess of dick pandering. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So adult males are "the most vulnerable women who face the most misogynist violence"

Fuck right off. As entitled males they are the fucking patriarchy. Absolutely fucking oblivious to the actual violence faced by females every single day.

The romance-writer world is nearly as crazy as the children's/YA one.

People can say 'women have penises' all they like but they still need to understand that those women still have the same rate of assaulting and attacking women (cervix owners?) as the men with penises. It may feel 'reductive' to categorise all 'people with penises' together as a particular group, but they're categorised together as a way of calculating risk.

For anyone forcibly penetrated by someone with a penis, the gender identity of their assailant is far less relevant than the hurt and trauma they're going through, and to make it an issue is distasteful and callous at best.

Why are you still having these thoughts?

At this point, when you write the above - in caps no less - to someone other than yourself, you've gone wrong somewhere.

I'd suggest temporarily swapping the romance novels for 1984. Because that's where thinking you can attack someone for their (assumed) thoughts belongs. And this is all she has - assumptions about the thoughts of another person. It's all they can ever be.

Also - From Romancelandia. How fucking twee! It's been decades since I researched the genre properly and back then at least its authors weren't half as ludicrous despite the bodice rippers. But I guess this community is as bonkers as every other one today.

There is something hilarious about a writer whose livelihood depends on writing fantasies designed to appeal to her reader base's sexuality denying the importance of sexed bodies.

Unless she discreetly closes the bedroom door after the first passionate but clothed kiss, I'd put money on her livelihood depending on being "inclusionary in the tweets, exclusionary in the sheets." Because no het woman (the main market for romances) wants that tall dark handsome stranger to turn out to have a surprise vulva.

Bonkers. And more than a tad hypocritical.

Some people get high on their own virtue.

Marry that to ignorance - the most vulnerable 'women'? C'mon - and you get a passionate scold.

What pisses me off about this sort of tweet is that it does nothing more than follow the usual boring pattern, and says nothing that anyone hasn’t heard a million times before. I notice the word empathy is used, you’d think it was worn out by now.

@CaraDuneRedux

There is something hilarious about a writer whose livelihood depends on writing fantasies designed to appeal to her reader base's sexuality denying the importance of sexed bodies.

Unless she discreetly closes the bedroom door after the first passionate but clothed kiss, I'd put money on her livelihood depending on being "inclusionary in the tweets, exclusionary in the sheets." Because no het woman (the main market for romances) wants that tall dark handsome stranger to turn out to have a surprise vulva.

Bonkers. And more than a tad hypocritical.

Excellent point!

@CaraDuneRedux

There is something hilarious about a writer whose livelihood depends on writing fantasies designed to appeal to her reader base's sexuality denying the importance of sexed bodies.

Unless she discreetly closes the bedroom door after the first passionate but clothed kiss, I'd put money on her livelihood depending on being "inclusionary in the tweets, exclusionary in the sheets." Because no het woman (the main market for romances) wants that tall dark handsome stranger to turn out to have a surprise vulva.

Bonkers. And more than a tad hypocritical.

It’s possible she’s furthering trans acceptance by having her heroines have male bodies- I don't read romance I have no idea if writers are doing this.

But I guess it’s unlikely. So maybe she should think about why that is and how much she’s contributing to trans exclusion by not having transmen sweeping transwomen off their feet (or whatever happens in romance novels?) because not challenging the idea of what makes a romantic hero/heroine is pretty transphobic. Maybe the whole genre is? In which case why is she writing for Romancelandia?

Although it’s possibly just one long “please don’t cancel me, I’m not one of them feminists and I have bills to pay!” which I totally understand but on past evidence, won’t save this writer unless she’s cantering trans characters (which she may be).

I would like to know:

1. Can she provide a definition of the word woman
2. Does she acknowledge a difference between sex and gender
3. What is 'medical violence'

But you can't have a discussion with these people as they are too evangelical to apply logic and respond appropriately. That's why you can't understand - you have to just believe. You have to have faith and accept their words, even if they can't define their own words.

Anyone who uses the term "biological essentialism" is 100% to be avoided at all costs. Guaranteed ✊🍆💦

She seems quite angry, maybe with herself for not entirely getting it? She explains that she hasn't been good enough at believing - it is very quasi religious all this stuff isn't it? What does she think the patriarchy is? How does she think it came about?

”dicks are evil bc I’m a feminist”, said no feminist, ever

I don’t think dicks are evil, I just know that they’re a male body part.

WHY ARE YOU STILL HAVING THOSE THOUGHTS is chilling. No wonder she’s angry if her rebellious brain just won’t stop the cognitive dissonance between the thoughts she does have and the ones she is desperately trying to train her brain to shy away from.

Look, love, it’s Ok. Just let your brain have its thoughts, write your books, and don’t be a dick to anyone, trans or otherwise. It’ll all be fine.

She's not strong on logic. But the psychology behind it, I don't know. I think some women get very excited at the thought of protecting the vulnerable. They love babies and they love kittens. I sometimes wonder if the same impulse is at work in their insistence that trans people are the most oppressed group ever and they get a kick out of the idea of protecting the poor trans people against the meanie feminists.

Penises don't thrill or threaten anyone all by themselves, do they? The complications begin because they're always attached to a person with a head full of ideas. If they've become detached from a person, they're really of no further interest except perhaps to forensic investigators.

I think the tweeter is being disingenuous in misunderstanding that the part stands for the whole: penis means man and if it means anything else there needs to be an explanation,even in 2020.

Synecdoche. Factory or field hands. Head count. Footfall. Bums on seats.

Morning. Yes, I am intrigued by her stance. And confused. She is actually offended by women who have the sheer audacity to believe that having a vagina means you are woman. As if that’s the most ridiculous thing she has ever heard. Ever.

I wonder if you had got a crystal ball out 6,7,8 years ago, and shown her these tweets she’s made, whether she would have believed herself capable of stating such things. But she’ll put that down to not being educated, or not having grown enough as a person. Because now you HAVE to believe this to be considered a truly kind and human individual. And yet again (because I find you have to spell these things out) I don’t mean the part where you sympathise with someone who is having a hard time and being abused. It’s like if you don’t believe what she believes, you automatically fall into the camp that goes around pointing and name-calling or physically assaulting people and making their life a misery as a sport. And you become that by ‘having these thoughts’. That’s utterly terrifying.

It’s the nub of the argument though isn’t it. Have those ‘thoughts’ and you are evil, bigoted and nasty - capable of violence and responsible for the murder of prostitutes in Brazil.

And the bit ‘but penises have characteristics now?’. How can you listen to the gender critical stance and think that’s what we mean. I’m sorry, how hard is it to understand that what we mean by that is that, having a penis means you are of the male sex and that because of male socialisation, typical physique, build etc... you are statistically more likely to cause a woman violence and harm than vice versa. That doesn’t mean that all men are like that, just that statistically that’s the case and women have to do certain things in certain circumstances to mitigate the risk of this, ergo female only spaces. I find the inability to see this or accept this baffling.

I am a woman. I have a vagina. I’m not bragging about it or implying it tells me how to think or behave (now there’s an image!) But by having a vagina, society has assumed a whole heap of shit about me and by having a vagina it puts me in that group of humans that has the potential to gestate babies and I’m both devalued and valued for this and sometimes the biological parts associated with my sex don’t function - that don’t matter, still a woman. And when I’m past child bearing age, still a woman. And when my womb or breasts are removed for whatever reason, still a woman.

I totally realise I am not saying something that hasn’t been said a million times on here already. I know I’m using a royal ‘we’ and that some women on here share Romance writer’s view. I’m just stating this from my gender critical standpoint.

It's a simple misunderstanding. She thinks that 'recognising that nearly all rape and violence is perpetrated by one of the two sex classes' means 'demonising a body part'.
It does not.
As always, she is either lying or dim to conflate the two.

The last couple of years have shocked me with respect to how poorly people understand the concept of 'risk'. There is a poster on here who frequently makes a similar argument despite being repeatedly told that 'most rapes are caused by men' and 'most men rape' are not the same concept, and most of us here are arguing the first and not the second, which they refused to believe.

I got told it was 'patronising' to suggest they learn more about it, so I don't read their posts any more as they are nearly all made from the stance of this fundamental misunderstanding.

There is a poster on here who frequently makes a similar argument despite being repeatedly told that 'most rapes are caused by men' and 'most men rape' are not the same concept, and most of us here are arguing the first and not the second, which they refused to believe.

It almost makes me wonder whether there's a considerable overlap between these online SJW and people who've been badly failed by the education system and thus have no grasp on maths or logic (and/or through no fault of their own suffer from dyscalculia).

They certainly appear for the most part to have been badly failed by their school biology teachers.

My initial thought is that she'd be far better educated through reading "Combating Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan.

OP, in this video Helen Joyce (academic mathematician, economist and journalist) makes the point that in maths if you make a mistake somewhere in your equation then anything that comes after it is wrong. It's a great video, watch it:

In your first screenshot the author says women have penises. Anything she says after that is bound to be nonsense because that is a false and demonstrably untrue statement. People with penises are XY=male. That's it. Nothing she says after that has to be read or pondered over. She's talking nonsense. Disengage and walk away or you'll go mad.

Do watch the Helen Joyce video. She is wonderfully, calm rational and logical. We are right on this issue.