Listen up cis people! Educate yourselves!

[BettyBooper]

Read this and be told!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/sep/30/will-ferrell-harper-steele-netflix-documentary

I was struck by Steele’s account in the Guardian article of being distressed by watching MAS*H as a teenager:

[the interviewer asks] Steele if her transition has changed her irreverent approach to comedy writing. Does she still believe that anything goes? “Sure,” she says, “but not for me. I mean Netflix is airing our film, but also has comedians saying things that I wouldn’t say about trans people. I’m not a police person. I’m also not saying that I think comedy should be able to do all this stuff. But I’m not going to be able to stop it, and it’d be absurd to try.”
“I do know what laughter can do to harm people I knew,” she adds. “It harmed me. I watched the show MAS*H for my entire teenage life. I had to watch the character Klinger in a dress get a laugh every time he entered a room. That’s what I grew up with. So I know how damaging that can be.”

The whole point about Corporal Klinger was that he was desperate to get discharged from the army and would do anything that might work, notably being a cross dresser. Klinger went to huge lengths to maintain his ruse using elaborate costumes.

I wondered exactly why Steele said that laughter was damaging. He’s a comedy writer after all.

Because it exposed the reality? And so the whole premise Steele wanted that a man might believe he was a woman was doomed?

Because a man dressed as a woman was laughable in itself?

Because such behaviour was considered crazy and so would get you out of the army?

Are we supposed to censor “Some Like it Hot”, Monty Python, Les Dawson and of course the French and Saunders sketch where they dress as fat balding old men and hump the tv when a good looking woman is on screen? All because some people can't bear their belief to be questioned and to be the butt of humour?

Edited to say this is a rant about ‘cis’ and why it’s offensive…

Take Christianity as an example. I don’t believe in God. Not believing in God does not mean I believe in Satan (the opposite of God, but still part and parcel of the Christian faith). It also does not mean I am a heathen or an infidel.

It means that I don’t share your religious belief system. I respect your right and your freedom to believe in God, provided it doesn’t detrimentally affect me or anyone else. I respect and understand that you might want to pray, and that’s fine, but you can’t compel me to join in.

If you call me cis, you are trying to drag me into your church. You are insulting me and my right to not practise the belief system of gender identity. It’s okay if you have a gender identity, but I don’t. I am a woman due to my biology, not any inner feminine feelings or soul. Don’t call me cis.

As @Helleofabore says, that would, to many people, include the Paris boxers and Rio runners. It would include IW, who claims to have taken enough hormones to become a cis female. It would probably include a certain barrister of the board's acquaintance who claims to be 'somatically female'.

the default position for misogynist doctors who declared that the lack of a developed penis meant that the person was 'female'

Which goes right back to Aristotle, who thought females were malformed males who had deviated from the 'correct' body plan during embryonic development.

It's an interesting choice. Almost... almost as if in creating a completely revisionist history he's forgotten that the Klinger character was adamant that he wasn't trans, and was treated seriously and with sincere acceptance in the couple of times over that long episode arc when a supporting character assumed a genuine desire to transition.

Which goes right back to Aristotle, who thought females were malformed males who had deviated from the 'correct' body plan during embryonic development.

Such effing cheek, wasn't it?

Oi, Aristotle! How weird that this deviation keeps happening.
And how lucky for the continuation of the species that it does.

👏

Actually it was Klinger who came to mind when I watched the film. Which reminds me of a scene at the end where Steele says the something like, the prettier I get - the more I become aware of my imperfections. Something like that. Ferrell responds at the end with the earrings, saying you are allowed to feel/be beautiful.

It is very very telling. That both men regard femaleness as beauty. Hmmm........ It is the being looked at where it is self gaze in a mirror or by others in a society that matters in this analysis.

Very much so. TAs genuinely think that we don't accept males like Caster Semenya and the boxers Lin and Khelif as women because they don't conform to "cis-normative beauty standards" or some such. No matter how many times we say no, it's because they're male/men, all they hear is that we don't think they are attractive enough to be women.

The chapter on vaginoplasty in the book "Vagina Obscura" is entitled "Beauty". The chapter strangely contradicts the rest of the book and is based on interview(s) with gender surgeon (and transwoman) Marci Bowers. The standard for successful surgery is breathtakingly low - no visible scars and it doesn't gape open. Function - what are a vagina and a vulva for? - is not mentioned. The author questions none of it.

Well, I read (some of) the review and watched the trailer of the documentary... A couple of things jump to my mind:

• I'm so tired of Hollywood people. I think Hollywood actors are some of the most uninteresting people on earth, and I cringe whenever one of them wants the world to know his/her important opinion on anything.
• Also very tired of the very american style of film (sorry, don't want to offend american people, really 🙏): I mean the background "inspiring" music (that tells you what to feel), the "jokesy" dialogues, the cheap sentimentality and grandiose affectation. They are all the same, it doesn't matter the theme! So boring and unimaginative.
• The story per se, probably because of the above, seems to aim for tears. I don't doubt for a second that what this Harper has had to live, the conflicts, the journey and the changing in relationships, etc must have been at least very complicated. I'd be really courious to know the life experience of Harper, because I find it interesting: mind you, I would gladly view a documentary about it.
It doesn't mean Harper is a woman, though. And this level of intellectual dishonesty (again, coming from the dumbest people on earth) astonishes me.

So, I don't think I'll be watching this any time soon.

It will be influential on people who consider these subjects only at a superficial level. Its why I thought it was important to watch it. The fact that the men cry in it, is supposed to elicit tears from us all. Because "men don't cry" and therefore this is a massive and important thing. Mothers of sons, with men in our lives know that men DO cry in a sane society. I think sexism underlies the entire premise of the film actually, if one looks to critique it.

One MCW told us on this board: "I've got tits and a hole, which is basically what a woman is".

@Snowypeaks 😩ew!! Such charm and grace eh?

Just in case this was aimed at me rather than the article - I completely agree with you! I'm definitely not calling anyone cis!

I will be more obvious with my sarcasm in future... 😆

Well, that's a satisfied customer then. Not exactly a woman though.

Fear not, Betty, I did pick up on the sarcasm! 😆 Just fancied ranting as the term ‘cis’ really riles me!

Some posters do insist on using though. (not you OP!)

Phew!

I very much liked your rant!

TAs genuinely think that we don't accept males like Caster Semenya and the boxers Lin and Khelif as women because they don't conform to "cis-normative beauty standards" or some such.

I'd very much question the 'genuinely'. I just don't see good faith here at all. I would say only a vanishingly small proportion genuinely think it's about cis-normative, or indeed Western, standards of beauty. And anyway, what matters is that they're on the right team. 🙄

Thanks! 😄 Pity that some people simply refuse to get why it’s offensive.

They know it's offensive, that's why they keep using it.

Quite.

The game is 'I'm saying word you don't like me using!'

Others: Politely explain for eleventy millionth time the issues.

Name caller: Ner ner, I can call you what I want and you caaaan't stop me!

Others: Go on meeting the needs of the one busy looking for attention, annoying women and breaking their boundaries.

Frankly, why bother?

duc748

Tribalism is of course an issue, some are on a wind-up and it's a handy off-the-shelf retort. But given their newfound inability to understand what sex is, I think what I said is true of many TAs.

To TAs, masculine and male are the same. They can't explain why it's these particular masculine-looking types that we're "picking on" as opposed to all the other ones, but that's because the whole system of thinking is full of dead-ends and no entry signs - "Stop here", "Explaining is dangerous - stick to the script", etc.

Examples:
"How could you expect this woman to use the men's facilities", they say of a Blaire White type.
They try to insult women on Twitter by telling them anyone would think they are men because they are ugly.
When we laugh at MCW's photos posted on Twitter, they say we are laughing at a "woman" for not being pretty and rejecting "her" for that reason.
(Yes, of I know it's illogical of them, but since when did logic come into it?)

The reasoning goes like this:
Because male women are a thing (or as they would say, masculine-looking people who identify as women), it's cruel (and racist if the individual is not white) to even notice that a "woman" looks very masculine (or as we would say "this person is obviously a man") because that is holding "her" to said cis-normative Western beauty standards. Which they, as a meninist feminist, reject blah-de-blah-de-blah.

I just thought that I would add there is a Reddit (r/FTMfemininity) that TofuTart might enjoy having a look at.

PS. Tooting. I've come to the conclusion that progress just means 'change' when you look at it rationally and that the change can be for the better, for the worse or kind of on a level (neither better or worse, just different). Therefore, Progress isn't always a good thing.

GC posters are honest. Transwomen are men. It's a fact. 'Cis' has no meaning when applied to sex, just like the equally offensive 'assigned female at birth' - which turns up on Ancestry of all places, where sex really matters if you are tracing a family tree!