Emma Corrin and 'homophobia'

[IdgieThreadgoodeIsMyHeroine]

Emma Corrin claims to have experienced homophobia since 'coming out' as non-binary.

Emma Corrin is in a relationship with Rami Malek.

Make it make sense.

Does it not seem obvious to you that you are not vulnerable to giving into the thought that the person who wrote that is right to treat you with disdain?
Whereas a lesbian woman, who has been surrounded by voices all her life saying that lesbian desire is a sickness, and who experiences the first flutterings of lust alongside deep shame and fear that "this means I'm a freak" is going to expeience this graffiti as one more strike chipping away a her sense of worth, of her enjoyment and pride in her own sexuality.

Being sworn at because someone mistakes you for a homosexual person just doesn't rank alongside experiencing homophobic abuse.

I mean you are right to a degree.

By way of comparison, on this FWR board on Mumsnet there have been threads celebrating the defacement of rainbow flags, and giving advice to others about how to achieve this defacement more successfully. When I have pointed out to moderators that there are posts giving advice on how to commit illegal acts like this the moderators have told me they will not remove them, as this is about freedom of speech/ expression.

So yes if course, as a gay woman I am likely to find this more psychologically intimidating than straight people as that's points to a culture developing that is happy to attack those symbols that represent me. And quasi authority figures who are happy to support that process.

Those rainbow flags indicate to me and my friends that I am welcome and do not need to feel intimidated, and when I see them defaced and destroyed we all feel more unsafe and worry about what is around the corner. It feels like Putin's ideas are making their way over here. And, as you say, it chips away at our sense of worth, enjoyment of and pride in our own sexuality. Straight people are unlikely to experience this same psychological attack when they see the defacement of rainbow flags.

However, in another sense it doesn't matter if you are gay or straight if 'lesbian cunt' is graffitied on your wall...you still have the same cleaning / wall repair to do regardless of your actual sexuality. And you can still feel intimidated that you have been targeted and might be subject to escalating abuse at your home because of the perception that you are gay.

By way of comparison, on this FWR board on Mumsnet there have been threads celebrating the defacement of rainbow flags, and giving advice to others about how to achieve this defacement more successfully.

You keep saying this. Can you link to these posts?

It is homophobic abuse though. It would be recorded as a hate crime by the police (criminal damage + homophobic slur).

Why are you so keen to minimise homophobia?

Tell her a tale or two! Tell her about the real homophobia and lesbophobia you've experienced (I'm sorry 😞) Tell her some real "queer" history and how fun it was to be "queer" when it was an insult and a threat.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4826828-stickering-in-the-nam

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4867119-stickering

So, not defacing the Rainbow flag, but putting stickers on a Progress Pride poster then.

Why do the 'Progress Pride' people have a right to put their posters up, but women [who are also tax payers and entitled to have a say] not entitled to put stickers up? They aren't some sort of sacred caste are they?

How does putting a sticker onto a poster make gay people 'less safe'?

Guess who is actually who is less safe from the Progress Pride people?

Yes that's right - gay, lesbian and autistic kids.

Make it make sense...

It was the defacement of an ordinary pride poster, advertising Chippenham Pride.

And it is obviously illegal.

For eg.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12204057/Police-investigate-hateful-behaviour-Pride-flags-defaced-Gloucestershire.html

These actions make LGBTQ communities feel unwelcome and unsafe, it shouldn't need explaining.

I think by "rainbow flag" she means the representation of a flag, not the actual flag. A bit like when people got up in arms about how Nike treated the English Flag by colouring it differently - they weren't talking about actual flags.

Here you go:

Those rainbow flags indicate to me and my friends that I am welcome and do not need to feel intimidated, and when I see them defaced and destroyed we all feel more unsafe and worry about what is around the corner. It feels like Putin's ideas are making their way over here. And, as you say, it chips away at our sense of worth, enjoyment of and pride in our own sexuality.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Your response comes across to me quite homophobic - "sacred caste" is a particularly repugnant thing to say.

What evidence is there of any 'vitriol' at all? Since there is none, and since she said it had happened since she 'came out' as 'non-binary' I'm going to go with it being based on that and since there's no particular 'vitriol' that can be directed at someone who claims to be 'non-binary' I made the assumption that ppl have dared to tell her it's a load of bs. There you go.

I'm keen to minimise the badness of abuse that only meets the legal definition of homophobia in comparison to abuse that actually ruins the lives of gay men and lesbian women.
Yes, cleaning your fence is annoying, and, yes, the perpertrator's crime meets the police criteria for being listed as a hate crime, but I don't believe it comes close in the moral stakes to abuse that puts a person at risk of coming to believe that they are a lesser person, of lesser value that straight people (which is something that can only happen to a victim of homophobic abuse who is actually gay).
I'm not sure if it's a rhetorical device, or if you really do look to the law of the land to decide what is right and what is wrong, morally. It's a completely foreign way of looking at the world, to me. Legal definitions can say whatever they like, it doesn't have any bearing on the truth (for example, when I was born a husband forcing his wife to have sex with him was by legal definition not a rapist, but that doesn't make it true that such a man has never raped someone - just that legal definitions can be very losely connected to reality).

It's a common feature of misogyny to demand "proof" in order to believe women talking about their abuse.

EDIT - That was a reply to the poster saying there was no proof of homophobia

I think people sterilising gay, lesbian and autistic people is the repugnant thing but you do you honey.

Out of interest, why are you here on a feminist board trying to accuse women of misogyny?

I think that we are currently regressing to a culture that is damaging to minority groups.

Minimising homophobia by saying it can only happen to gay people, that it's about the experience of the victim rather than the intent of the perpetrator is the kind of thing that contributes to a hostile culture to gay people. Because it allows homophobes to say and do homophobic things, and tolerates homophobic sentiment as OK as long as it's not aimed directly at someone homosexual.

Minimising womens experiences by demanding proof before taking what they say seriously (I.e. the default is they are lying) makes a hostile environment for women as it means they can be abused with impunity. We are already seeing this with rape, I don't want to see that extend further into abuse and negative experiences more generally.

And this:
I'm not sure if it's a rhetorical device, or if you really do look to the law of the land to decide what is right and what is wrong, morally.
A society's laws tend to reflect the overarching morals of that society. I was using the law to show that my understanding of what homophobia is/means is the consensus view in the UK. Yours is a fringe view.

I'm a feminist. I call out misogyny where I see it. This is the Internet. There is no reason to think that all the anonymous posters on this board are women, in fact I know quite a lot of them are men who came here from another Internet forum. Even so, plenty of women have internalised misogyny. I'm trying to get people to reflect on the consequences and implications of some of the views being expressed on here. I'm well aware I'm unlikely to change your mind but other people reading can see both sides and decide for themselves.

Absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

Why do you use the term "sacred caste" to refer to gay people?

But you're not seeing it, you're pretending to see it so that you can scold women for having views you don't want them to have - that's an important difference.

Perhaps you'd like to tell everyone who the men are on here who came from 'another Internet Forum' - otherwise why should anyone believe what you claim?

I'm really sorry you've experienced that loss of a place of welcome and sense of being safe from intimidation as a result of the public disagreements among gay men and lesbian women around what liberation movements are consistent with vs radically opposed to the gay liberation movement.

I have gay male friends who use any perception of transphobia as a sign of homophobic abuse and violence to follow, as a direct result of their own experiences of violence and abuse at the hands of people who also say transphobic things. One of my best friends is very cynical about child safeguarding concerns that I and other people express around school pride groups, and the changes over the last decade to the contents of primary school sex ed classes. This butts up directly against my own experience of sexual violence in childhood and I sometimes feel really, really angry with her. But I know that she is not driven by a desire to see children come to harm, and I know that real harm was done to her, to her very sense of herself, by people who in the past have said things that are superficially similar to what I am saying now. I also think that part of what is going on for her is that she will stick with those that broader society considers "freaks" (the Jess Bradleys and Sophie Mollys and Sarah Jane Barkers of the world) because she has internalised the idea that she actually is, in her deepest core, a freak, because she is a lesbian. Which brings us back to my belief that homophobic abuse is always, and very much, more morally serious when it targets gay men and lesbian women, than when it is mis-directed towards straight people, because it can lead them to believe this about themselves.

From a different thread, but relevant here too:
'When precise terms change their meaning, we lose a tool for understanding and communicating about an idea or experience because the words that previously helped us to do this are no longer suitable. In my research, I call this process “hermeneutical disarmament”.'
https://academic.oup.com/pq/article/doi/10.1093/pq/pqae046/7676660

Yes I think feminists should support women

Honestly, that's weird and frankly sexist.

I think Feminists support women to be treated as fully actualised humans who are assumed to be equally compotent and capable as men, and have as much right and opportunity to live a free, self determined life as men do. That is not the same as supporting individual women to do whatever they want just because they are women.

I'm sure we are all aware that many harmful social practices and customs are enforced by women at least as much as by men. We can recognise that those women are acting for what they think is best in a system of patriarchal restrictions, and look for ways to change the dynamic which is driving them to act rather than supporting their actual acts.

Have you called out the misogyny of EC. Encouraging breast binding. Not calling out as sexism the age old criticism of women because of what they wear or what hair they choose to remove? Or does she get a free pass because she’s successful?

This is another rhetorical sleight of hand tactic.
Noone is denying that EC has been abused.

The motivation for that abuse it not homophobia, it's mysogyny. But EC can't talk about mysogyny because they believe they aren't a woman.
EC is famous and wealthy so she will be sheilded from the worst effects of mysogyny. But her refusal to name the sexism makes it much, much harder for women who don't have the protections that wealth and fame afford them to name the sexism in their own lives.
That's why it is particularly egregious for EC to publicize on her Instagram feed an article which claims she is a victim of homophobic abuse.

You're right there.
My morality is informed by radical feminism. It's so far from the consensus view I may as well be on the moon.