#leftwing sexism

[feministskeptic]

“Nobody is saying women HAVE to sleep with trans women, it’s just that if you don’t make yourself sexually available to us, then you’re a bad person. Stop oppressing us!”

#gender critical #cotton ceiling #homophobia #rape culture #leftwing sexism #male entitlement #radfem safe #radfems do interact #radfems do touch #terfs do touch #things I post

[onecornerface]

Are libertarian scholars shills and useful idiots for the rich?

Are libertarian scholars shills and useful idiots for the interests of the rich? Many people are saying this. My take:

Big financial interests, such as Koch funding, are responsible for some growing hazards to the integrity and quality of some academic professions such as philosophy. My own academic philosophy department (BGSU) received Koch funding several years ago, which has been a catalyst for endless insanely complex controversies.

There is some scholarly work which is bad or flawed, but which financial interests cause to either (A) wrongly come into existence in the first place, or (B) attain a degree of high status and influence disproportionate to its objective value.

This adds to an already considerable pile of non-value-tracking biases which wrongly influence the status of many scholarly works—such as the Matthew Effect, various careerist biases, barriers to access stemming from systemic oppressions such as classism, ableism, sexism, racism, and transphobia, as well as social trend feedback cycles (e.g. many philosophers write about X because a bunch of *other* philosophers are writing about it, even if X’s objective importance is questionable), and the fact that many philosophers believe X or work on X because their department mentors or peers do, etc.

As one possible example: Why are there so many capitalist libertarian philosophers? Sometimes philosophers disproportionately support a minority viewpoint because the viewpoint has serious intellectual merit which the general public irrationally fails to recognize. For instance, I think there are a lot of philosophers who support ethical vegetarianism because the arguments for ethical vegetarianism are objectively very strong-- despite widespread popular disagreement by people who irrationally fail to recognize the strength of the case for vegetarianism. Is libertarianism like this? No, I think it is questionable whether libertarianism is objectively strong enough to merit this degree of philosopher support on intellectual grounds.

On the one hand, I think a lot of libertarian scholars have done good work—often they have noticed many flaws in popular and scholarly pro-redistribution (and pro-regulation) arguments, and a lot of them have made important contributions to critiquing drug prohibition, immigration restrictions, and anti-sex-work laws, and they’ve advocated for Universal Basic Income. Sometimes they have noticed evidence for significant downsides to economic and business regulations, which progressives ignored. Robert Nozick, Michael Huemer, and other right-libertarians have shown that redistributionist arguments tend to be sloppy and badly oversimplified. Bleeding heart libertarians of the Steiner-Vallentyne school have made powerful contributions to the case for Universal Basic Income and other good ideas, and have built on the legacy of classical liberalism e.g. by exploring the implications of the "Lockean proviso" (which sets limits on traditional capitalist assumptions). Many progressives have failed to give credit to the diversity and sophistication of the capitalist libertarian tradition.

Rightwing and leftwing capitalist libertarians have also inspired progressive scholars such as GA Cohen (analytical Marxist) to develop improved arguments for redistribution. I want to give serious credit for this, similarly to how I give some gender critical feminists serious credit (despite the evils of their ideas) for inspiring trans rights advocates to improve their arguments for pro-trans advocacy.

On the other hand, libertarianism is a weird and sectarian school of thought, in some ways quite fringe, with a strong connection to insane beliefs like “taxation is wrongful theft.” In fact, it is very obvious that the horrors of poverty are much more severe and vastly more important than the mild badness of stealing from the rich.

...No, seriously, give me a break. Why does the stupid contrary view hold so much influence despite its being manifestly stupid? Overall, stealing from the rich to give to the poor is blatantly good, cool, and based. Who could disagree?

It is highly plausible that libertarianism is so high-profile in large part because a lot of rich people see it as supporting their interests.

Now, are all libertarian ideas pro-rich? Are they all anti-poor? No, that is a common uncharitable misperception. Some libertarian scholars, even some right-libertarians, have been at pains to show that many of their ideas would support the poor and not the rich. I think libertarians support a cluster of policies--some of which would benefit the rich, and some of which would harm the rich.

If libertarians were to win totally (i.e. make all their policy ideas into a reality), it might or might not overall benefit the rich, and it may even harm them—such as by allowing more small businesses to fairly compete in the market, and by ending government subsidies (corporate welfare) for (or deals with) vicious and mass murderous industries like coal companies, the war profiteering industry, the various prison profiteering industries, some surveillance industries, and animal factory farms.

Total libertarianism would also plausibly benefit the poor in many ways, such as by drastically curtailing the power of police over marginalized poor people, cutting off support to various prison industries, combating conservative and progressive forms of puritanism and paternalism, and ending the terror of deportation and associated abuses that hang over the heads of many migrants. It may also end some forms of day-to-day terror against homeless people, sex workers, and some other groups.

However, this may depend on how much power it hands to big business, and on how much of an interest big businesses have in screwing over marginalized people. Such matters could be highly context-sensitive. For instance, some "hostile architecture" (e.g anti-homeless spikes on places to potentially rest in public) are created by private industry, some by government. If libertarianism wins, will there be more or fewer anti-homeless spikes than before? Well, I don't know. Still, there is a good chance that libertarian polices would overall help the poor a lot.

There is also the problem of many, many high-profile libertarian crackpots—such as Walter Block (of the Mises Institute) who has argued in favor of legalizing workplace sexual assault, and Murray Rothbard who has argued in favor of legalizing the right of parents to starve their children to death (although his views on adoption rights may complicate this reading of his view).

Moreover, many lay non-scholarly libertarians are also insane crackpots, such as the “Mises Caucus” people who have apparently taken over the US Libertarian Party (although most libertarian scholars condemn them). The one anarcho-capitalist who has gained power, Javier Milei, is also probably a crackpot who seems on track to reinforce authoritarianism e.g. by strengthening the power of police to crack down on protestors (despite this move’s obvious incompatibility with libertarian principles). Such issues present a serious black mark on the record of libertarianism as a movement, and strengthen the case for thinking that libertarianism as a movement is unable to improve the world (despite the fact that many individual libertarians have good intentions and actively promote good ideas).

Nevertheless, many libertarians are immensely more principled and clear-cut in their stances on immigration, drugs, and sex work than are many liberals and progressives, and they should be praised for this. For instance, many libertarians explicitly support open borders, while many liberals waffle on whether to condemn the Biden administration’s treatment of immigrants. There may also be some underappreciated convergence between libertarians and leftists in critiquing the corporate capture of government. For instance, I wonder if there’s room for more cooperation between Marxian ideological critics and public choice theorists.

All that said, plausibly some rich people see the advocacy of libertarianism as overall beneficial to themselves and their financial interests in actual practice—perhaps because they think that libertarians tend to succeed in implementing their helpful-to-the-rich ideas but fail to implement their harmful-to-the-rich ideas. This may explain why rich people tend to support libertarianism. And there may be some evidence for this combination of trends.

For instance, over the last few decades, libertarians & libertarian-adjacent scholars (such as Milton Friedman) succeeded in advocating some kinds of big business deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and welfare-cuts (which helped the rich and hurt the poor), but failed in their advocacy of open immigration, medication patent reform (to lower drug prices), residential zoning reform (to lower housing prices), and the legalization of drugs and sex work—all of which would help the poor, and harm at least some of the rich, helping fewer of the rich. Much of this combination of libertarian success and libertarian failure constitutes what is commonly called "neoliberalism," which in practice consistently benefits (most of) the rich while hurting (at least many of) the poor.

Many of the global poor have also benefited from neoliberal globalization. If this is their best option, then it's a good thing overall, since we should aim to help the global poor the most. However, I wonder if better options (such as international unions, raising the floor of the race the bottom) may have been unduly closed off, to the benefit of the rich. Some comparatively good-for-the-poor deals may also have been implemented alongside bad-for-the-poor deal such as international debt traps. I'm not sure of the best empirical evidence on a lot of this and need to research it more.

I’m oversimplifying, but something like this overall view does seem likely to be a common pattern and plausible hypothesis. Libertarians have also failed in their mild advocacy for polyamorous marriage or civil unions (despite some version of this being obviously the correct position—anti-polyamory views are blatant bigotry), possibly because there aren't enough rich people who’d benefit from it.

Progressives have been uncharitable and mistaken in their view of libertarianism as a whole. However, progressives have been largely correct in their view of what effects libertarianism as a movement has caused. And, in some ways, this is more important than the nature of libertarianism as a whole. If libertarians resent being so negatively and unfairly judged, they should aim to improve the actual effects of their movement.

Here's what I suspect is really happening: Libertarians promote a combination of good ideas and bad ideas. In the real world, their bad ideas (the ones which only help the rich) are the ones that win—and the rich know this, and this is why the rich support libertarians. The rich have little to fear from libertarians’ harmful-to-the-rich ideas, because they can ensure these ideas won’t win. The rich can happily fund libertarian scholars to promote welfare cuts & deregulation and zoning reform & cutting subsidies to evil industries—perfectly content in the knowledge that the welfare cuts & deregulation will win, and that the zoning reforms & subsidy-cuts will lose.

(The zoning reforms, or immigration reforms, or whatever, may win if the economic situation changes so that these reforms will help the rich enough, but not otherwise—unless the poor can overcome their collective action problems and successfully fight for their interests and rights, which the rich want to use their power to prevent.)

In fairness, a similar pattern may apply elsewhere too. For instance, maybe bad (authoritarian) leftisms tend to win and defeat the good (non-authoritarian) leftisms, because e.g. (1) authoritarian leftists tend to be willing to screw over the non-authoritarian leftists (their former allies) after the Revolution (e.g. in the USSR), and (2) authoritarian leftist leaders may tend to more successfully prevent counterrevolution and/or imperialist regime-change, compared to non-authoritarian leftist leaders, via repression or suchlike. So maybe leftists, like libertarians, may also face a serious puzzle of how to raise the probability that their *good* versions, rather than *bad* versions, are the ones that will win—yet find that the bad versions have distinctive features which give them strategic advantages over the good versions.

I should also note that not all Koch-funded projects benefit the rich, some leftwing projects are also funded by billionaires (whether Koch or others, such as Soros), and it is disputable whether people should always turn down Koch or billionaire money when it is on offer, especially when other funding sources are scarce. Some people erroneously accuse Koch-funded projects of being objectionable even when they aren’t. For instance, Mich Ciurria insinuated that the Koch-funded project on “Grandstanding” (aka virtue-signaling) by Brandon Warmke and Justin Tosi was biased against leftwing radicals, and I argue she is badly mistaken. In several ways, Ciurria’s description of the “Grandstanding” book is misleading. I defend the Warmke-Tosi “Grandstanding” work as important, even valuable for progressive advocacy.

However, the broader system of funding by rich people in general is an enormous hazard. Rich people have the morally least important needs, and they are the fewest in number. For this reason, their interests are objectively the least important. But they are immensely more powerful than all the non-rich people combined, in most cases. This situation is egregiously unjust. The rich people fund scholarship, in philosophy and elsewhere, largely in order to serve their financial interests—even if not all these projects in fact serve their financial interests.

The rich diversify their investments, and presumably some of their investments don’t pay off for them. The rich may also finance some projects which aren't expected to serve their financial interests, for reasons such as to improve their public image. In light of such facts, I say not all recipients of rich people (e.g. Koch or Soros) funding should be assumed to be shills or useful idiots. Also, on the grounds of my actual engagement with the relevant scholarship, I assert that Brandon Warmke & Justin Tosi’s “Grandstanding” work will not likely function to discredit the viewpoints and advocacy of marginalized people or their allies (even though Brandon and Justin are conservatives), contrary to common allegations. Again, some leftwing scholarship is also funded by billionaires such as Soros, but this does not necessarily discredit it.

All that said, on the whole and in general, the rich are our enemy and we must fight against them. We should take a critical eye toward scholarship that they have an interest in funding.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Right, I'm going to weigh in on the Lisa Cameron MP situation and current media trends in the UK right now...

It feels like UK journalism has a real problem right now when public figures do something demonstrably bad, of instead of reporting that as news for the community to be aware of and informed by, journalists go directly to the public figure in question and let them mount a defence, defend, or otherwise excuse in advance their actions in the vein of putting across their side of the story... and thus in the process only platform that side of the story.

Enter Lisa Cameron, MP. Lisa was elected several years ago after standing to represent SNP, Scotland's prominent left-wing party. She's recently jumped ship to the Tories, who in Scotland are a party with minority support, and are strongly right-wing. Because of the law of the country, Lisa gets to keep her job representing the local community - although the party she now represents is diametrically opposed to the views of the party she was elected to stand for. She was elected in the first place because a majority of electors in her district wanted a leftwing party to represent them in government - and now that person that they elected will represent the minority of rightwingers in her district only, and is completely unashamed about this and unwilling to consider re-running an election or standing down.

How is the British media reporting this? Across the board, even in leftwing media...

"Poor Lisa, she's been getting threats and abuse from the nasty public. She has to go into hiding now because of all that abuse she's getting." (with of course no reference to why that is happening, leaving the implication it's because she's a powerful, successful woman, or independent minded etc.)

Making that focus so ridiculously overdramatic, as well as totally focused on the wrong aspect weakens the story, and detracts from what's real news - as well as, most importantly, also taking away the weight from real abuse and criticism that people who don't deserve it face; racism, ableism, sexism and other associated genuine discrimination based on prejudices, rather than angry words spoken as the result of actions someone has openly chosen in order to benefit themself and harm people in their community.

This kind of coverage has also arisen recently with the family of Captain Tom, another UK public figure who was a well-known charity fundraiser, whose family later claimed to continue his work after his death - but instead shifted quietly into for-profit work using his image and likeness, without drawing attention to this fact. Hannah Ingram-Moore, his daughter, was revealed to have personally profited from the sales of Captain Tom's autobiography, written with the aid of ghostwriters after he became a high-profile figure based on his charity endeavours, which strongly implied itself to be a book written and sold in order to raise more money for charity... but actually wasn't. Hannah and her family have been doing the media circuit in defence of this decision, pulling the 'my hero father just wanted to provide for his family' angle (who are all, may I add, working adults in their 50s)... and have been getting very little critical pushback for that! Despite the core story here being literally what seems to be a case of unscrupulous family members profiting off the charity work of a veteran.

Going back to Lisa, generally leftwing paper The Guardian just published a fawning article painting her as the victim - and carefully not asking her any hard questions that would go between the lines of the image she is deliberately crafting.

Quoting below, Lisa - who was elected in no uncertain terms to represent a particular political position and set of policies, supported by her voters, defends herself thus:

In the interview, Cameron said that because she repeatedly opposed the SNP’s “progressive” political positions, she had been blanked by party colleagues in the Commons’ tea room and corridors and was forced to seek help from a counsellor and her GP after experiencing panic attacks and loneliness. “I found it to be quite a psychologically coercive situation,” Cameron told the Times. “They are always right. If you question things you are wrong and you’re isolated.

But Lisa, if you don't agree with any of the SNP's positions on anything and disagree with all of your colleagues on every subject, then it begs the question of why you are actually standing as an SNP MP in the first place. And I suspect based on what she isn't saying here, that the 'isolation' and 'loneliness' she felt here came because people legitimately put this question to her.

Is it psychologically coercive to actually represent the people and political positions that you were elected to, folks? Are your colleagues bullying you when they ask why you aren't doing the job that you applied for and are getting paid circa 100k a year to carry out? Why isn't that the story here? Why are we being asked to feel sympathy for people who break the social contract in order to personally profit?

#lisa cameron #scottish politics #uk politics #captain tom #text post #original writing #uk news #journalism #oligarchy #hannah ingram-moore #snp #tories #politics

[mightyflamethrower]

We know the multifaceted strategy of the monstrous Hamas operation of Oct. 7

In precivilizational fashion it wished to kill and mutilate the most vulnerable of all Israeli civilians and thus to shock the world that it was capable of—and proud about— anything, from decapitation to necrophilia. Such animalistic savagery, in the reckoning of Western therapeutic society, was supposedly to be seen as forced upon Hamas murderers by the “occupation.”

The killers felt they would shock the Israelis into concessions given their eagerness to commit the unspeakable. They took captives for tripartite reasons: to barter children and the elderly for their kindred terrorist murderers in Israeli jails; to use captives to force the Israelis to grant cease-fires and pauses in their retaliation; and to bank them as shields to protect Hamas kingpins from retaliation.

Hamas invaded during a holiday in the early hours, in a time of peace, and on the iconic 50th-annivesary of the Yom Kippur surprise Arab attack. Their aim was to prove that  Israeli soil was for the first time porous and 2,000 killers could enter sacred Israeli ground with impunity and kill in one day more Jews civilians than at any day since the Holocaust.

The terrorists shot thousands of rockets into Israel to overwhelm Iron Dome and terrify the entire civilian population.

All these tactics was aimed at long-term strategic goals: stop the Abraham Accords; obey the directives of Hamas’s Iranian terrorist masters as payment for their arms; discredit the radical Palestine Authority and Arab moderate nations as anemic in their opposition to the supposedly shared hated Zionist entity; and prompt an Israeli response that by necessity would involve collateral damage to human shields, and schools, mosques, and hospitals atop subterranean Hamas headquarters.

Yet if we know their despicable methods, aims, and strategies, why did they think the civilized world would support their barbarity or at least excuse it?

One, Hamas assumed anti-Semitism was prevalent throughout the West and was canonical in the Middle East. Palestinian authorities count on the fact that being an enemy of the Jews of Israel wins them empathy of the world and creating their own unique rules of passive-aggressive victimhood.

So Palestinians demand to be the only “refugees” in the world—not Greek Cypriots, Eastern European Germans, and Prussians, Kurds, Armenians, and certainly not a million Jews cleansed from the Arab Middle East.

Israelis are to be “settlers,” not millions of Middle Easterners who surge and settle into the West, form resistance communities, sneer at integration and assimilation, and use Western liberality to protect and project their own illiberality.

Second, Hamas relies on useful Western idiots. It understands its terrorists repel the majority of Americans. But it figures Western and globalist institutions—academia, the media, popular culture—in their wealth, ignorance, and self-importance, alleviate guilt and find resonance by mouthing the shibboleths of the “underdog.”

In particular, Hamas understands that the Palestinian cause has fused with the leftwing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry. Thus Hamas becomes the Middle-East counterpart to BLM, aggrieved minorities, and, more preposterously, the trans/gay/feminist movement. Meanwhile, Israelis are recalibrated as the demonized Western “colonialist” white supremacists.

Third, the Islamic expatriate populations of Europe and the U.S. have soared. In the strange logic of the Middle Easterner in the West—on a green card, or a student visa, or either as an illegal alien or a first-generation immigrant—he will envision the magnanimity of Americans and Europeans who offered him refuge from the violence, hatred, tyranny, racism, sexism, terrorism, and violence of his homeland all too often as weakness to be manipulated, not as generosity to be appreciated much less reciprocated.

Middle Eastern expatriates brag of their growing numbers and the political clout that Islam accrues in liberal democracies, without a clue of their hypocrisy of supporting illiberal tyrannies whose violence drove them out to the West in the first place.

So, we watch Middle Easterners in the U.S. trying to ruin iconic events such as crashing “Black Friday” shopping, disrupting the New York Thanksgiving parade, or tearing down American flags on Veterans’ Day.

Only in America would the Iranian terrorist theocracy’s ex-ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, be accorded a professorship at Oberlin or a former top diplomat for the Iranian regime Seyed Hossein Mousavian land a coveted billet at Princeton.

From such perches these expatriates are free to promote pro-Hamas, Iranian, anti-Semitic—and Anti-American—agendas. They consider their hosts not so much tolerant as stupid, in the sense that any American expatriate in Iran who whispered criticism of the theocratic regime would either be hanged or used as a barter hostage. Why would those whose careers were devoted to demonizing and harming the United States from their coveted billets in Iran even wish to move to the Great Satan, while keeping warm relations with their theocratic kingpins in Tehran?

Four, behind all these considerations, is the reality of terrorism and the fear it instills in the West, given the 21st century history of Middle Easterners slaughtering thousands of Americans and Europeans. In crude terms, Hamas and its terrorist affiliates signal us, “damn Israel or be prepared for another 9/11.”

Five, Hamas is a death cult, an updated terrorist version of the more organized SS—with the qualifier it broadcasts rather than hides its savagery.

Radical Palestinians brag that they love death more than Israel loves life. So they count on Israel giving up three convicted terrorists to get back one elderly or young Israeli captive, on targeting civilians with rockets while Israelis drops leaflets warning of their bombing attacks, on coercing human shields that they assume Israel will avoid, on sanctioning raping, mutilating, and beheading in a way Israel would never conceive of reciprocating in kind, and on and on.

So will all these tactical and strategic methods work? For all the UN, media, and globalist support for Hamas, still perhaps not.

October 7 was a declaration by Hamas that all barbarity imaginable was now fair game. Yet its sheer evil has unleashed the IDF that perhaps not even Joe Biden, hostages, and “world opinion” can permanently stop.

For all the boasts about loving death, it was Hamas who cowardly murdered the unarmed, scampered back to the safety of their tunnels, and used their own kindred Gazans to shield them from death—delivered to them by supposed nerds who love life too much.

Europeans also have had it with unlimited immigration from the Middle East. Restrictionist politicians throughout Europe are ascending as never before, in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Sweden.

They all reflect growing public anger that Europeans are hated by the very people who seek them out and wish to destroy their Enlightenment institutions by manipulating and discrediting them.  The thousands who hit the streets to cheer on October 7 and damn their hosts only confirm a growing global consensus—in the West, Latin America, Asia, and even throughout the Middle East—that admitting migrants from Palestine or Gaza, or their supporters, is a veritable death wish.

Pro-Hamas protestors calling Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” and boasting about the Arab or Muslim vote in Michigan is incoherent. Not only do harassing Thanksgiving shoppers and parades, disrupting iconic American holidays and events, swarming highways and bridges, and preying on Jews alienate Americans. But also taking credit for ensuring Biden’s defeat will only distance the Democratic establishment, such as it is, from its embarrassing, loud, but ultimately relatively impotent Islamic constituency.

Shouting for mass death “From the River to the Sea” does not endear the pro-Hamas crowd to half of their fellow Democrats, much less unabashedly strutting their anti-Semitism. The current overt support for Hamas, in other words, has revealed to the nation the bankruptcy of the entire pro-Hamas/DEI base of the Democratic Party and will do much to ensure a conservative president in 2024.

And that president will likely deport anyone on a green card or student visa promoting Hamas terrorism, or violating U.S. law, while ensuring a travel ban from terrorist supporting regimes in the Middle East. Such measures will win overwhelming public support, despite media and academic outrage.

Strategically, Iran, Hamas, and the Palestinians may seem to have flummoxed Israel into endless concessions by metering out hostages for serial pauses. But again, no Israel government can retain power by allowing the mass murdering Hamas to survive and so it will not.

Despite all the blood-curdling rhetoric of Hezbollah and Iran, neither will attack Israel or U.S. assets in force, given no American president could afford not to retaliate disproportionately. And “disproportionately” would mean rendering Iran’s military and Hezbollah to something akin to the current status of Hamas.

So for now, Hamas and its American-residing apologists are full of themselves and feel they are leveraging and manipulating the West. But such haughtiness may be a delusion. Hamas in the Middle East and its enablers in Europe and America have done more to harm the Palestinian cause and the idea of Middle Eastern immigration to the West than at any time since 9/11.

It is hard to anger Westerners, but continue the death chants, the violent demonstrations, the creepy anti-Semitism, and the proud support for the Hamas bloodwork of October 7, and they will be surprised at the growing anger of otherwise postmodern Europeans and distracted Americans.

Just as Israel realizes that there is no living with Hamas killers, so the West is learning that it can no longer sustain universities that despise the culture that nourishes it or Middle Eastern immigrants, visiting students, and residents that use the gift of freedom and tolerance to promote their abhorrent anti-Semitism, violence, intolerance—and, yes, hatred of their generous hosts.

We said never again. Did we mean it???

[bordeauxlips]

ohh you got radicalised by the leftwing propaganda

no honey I've been radicalised by the rightwing conservatives and their racism, sexism, libertarianism, homophobia and straight up bigotry and stupidity

like if you somehow consider yourself right on that political spectrum I will consider you my enemy

#centrists are close #but almost equally bad since they enable the right #so yea #Conservative #libertarian #leftwing #propaganda #bordeauxlips

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil TV drama about slain politician Marielle Franco sparks racism row

Series’ creator, director and head writer are all white

Days before Brazilians mark the second anniversary of the unsolved murder of the black politician Marielle Franco, a racism row is raging over a planned television drama about her life.

Leading black voices are incensed that the creator Antonia Pellegrino, director José Padilha – creator of the Netflix series Narcos – and chief scriptwriter George Moura are all white.

Raised in Rio’s Maré favela complex, Franco was an outspoken critic of racism, sexism and police violence.

“It is irresponsible. Marielle would never agree,” said Sabrina Fidalgo, 38, a black film-maker in Rio de Janeiro, where Franco was a city councillor and rising star of leftwing politics. “Her main agenda was the inclusion of black women in all sectors of society.”

Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes were killed in a drive-by shooting on 14 March 2018. Two former police officers have been accused of her killing but are yet to stand trial. Nobody has been charged with ordering her murder. 

Continue reading.

#brazil #brazilian politics #racism #feminism #politics #marielle franco #anderson gomes #jose padilha #antonia pellegrino #george moura #mod nise da silveira

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I’ve been thinking lately about the issues that Centre-Left and Leftwing parties in Canada have with being elected.

I don’t think it has that much to do with what they’re proposing as most of the policies established by these parties exist in many other countries with progressive governments (particularly in Northern Europe).

I don’t even think the issue is of myths spread about these parties about supposed fiscal mismanagement (even though most of these points are outright lies created by the Right and gleefully shared by Centrists).

I think the main issue is that in order for these parties to gain support, the people must be convinced that Canada has major systematic problems surrounding social issues.

And frankly I don’t think many Canadians are comfortable believing that there are major issues of poverty, racism, income inequality and sexism in our society. Heck Canada has one of the worst universal healthcare systems in the world, but we’re fine with that because at least we’re not the USA.

In Canada Liberals at best are just trying to stick with the status quo or make tiny tweaks here and there, as we’re facing crises of poverty and anti-native racism. Conservatives on the other hand are pretending there are no systematic issues in Canada and if we just killed ‘big government’ and got rid of the Liberals and their ‘bad policies’ that we’d be in a utopia. Its a huge joke.

It shows that many in the USA are having a more adult conversation around race, income inequality and social disparities than Canada despite the USA’s politics being shifted so far to the right in comparison. Many of the Democratic Socialist candidates in the USA are being more widely accepted than even slightly left policies in Canada. The NDP is accused of being a communist and creating a class war for daring to propose taxes on unused luxury mansions, and for raising the minimum wage to $15/hour (that’s only $11.71 in US Dollars!)

I’m just really getting sick of Canadians and their smugness, when they point fingers at the USA and not even blinking as we’re getting screwed left and right by Centrists and Conservatives, and our only option to make things better languish in a permanent 3rd place, discounted for being too ‘radical’.

These same people who are blaming the NDP or Quebec Solidaire for being too radical, are completely open to electing the Doug Ford’s of this country who have been gutting climate change policies, overriding the constitution, imposing austerity, cutting sex education back decades and appointing insiders to government positions. But of courses that’s not radical, that’s just Conservatism. =/

#leftism #uspoli #Canada #cdnpoli #Canadian Politics #Canadian News #Canadian

[thisislizheather]

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West - A Review

I’ve been waiting for this book of essays to come out for months and it was so, so worth the the wait. I know it’s asking a lot, but can this woman please just write a book every year? Or every six months? That’d be great, thanks. Favourite parts ahead!

“This moment in history is about more than individual interactions between individual people. Those matter, too - it matters how you made your subordinate feel with that comment, and it matters quite a lot that the woman on the bus went home and sobbed after you groped her - but, as Rebecca Traister wrote in December 2017 on The Cut: “This moment isn’t just about sex. It’s about work.” It’s about who feels at home in the workplace and who feels like an outsider - which, by extension, dictates who gets to thrive and ascend, who gets to hire their replacements, who gets to set their children up for success, who gets credit and glory, and who gets forgotten. It’s about who feels safe in public spaces and who doesn’t. Which is to say, it’s about everything.”

“We gobble up cable news’ insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park’s insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stance on anything opens us up to criticism.”

“We kept letting Adam Sandler make more movies after Little Nicky, because white men are allowed to fail spectacularly and keep their jobs.”

There’s literally an entire chapter on Adam Sandler movies that is perfection. You have to read it. Seriously, just pick this up at a bookstore and read that one chapter, if nothing else.

I loved all of her points about how there was endless discussion about The Ted Bundy Tapes when it came out earlier this year and how we debated whether this murdering monster was handsome or not. And how that same type of debate is somehow in the same arena as when people debate whether Elizabeth Warren is “likable” or not.

There’s a part in the Ted Bundy special where the judge sympathizes with Bundy and goes on a ridiculous tangent about how it’s “such a shame” that he turned out that way when he had so much potential, it’s truly disgusting to see a judge commiserate with a rapist and murderer, but it happened and it’s wild to see. “That anecdote is often held up as evidence of Bundy’s charisma - even the judge sentencing him to death was seduced by that smirk, that finger wave. But it is the most blatant, overwhelming evidence we have for the opposite. Men don’t need charisma to succeed. It doesn’t matter if men are likable, because men are people who do things, who don’t have to ask first, whose potential has value even after it is squandered.”

“Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.”

Absolutely in love with the fact that she loves the movie Clue as much as I do.

I really liked the chapter that she discussed Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, even if I did wish that she went in on her/the brand harder.

So in love with the chapter where she talks about South Park and its creators. I’ve always hated that show, it’s never been good, and I can’t understand who the hell would be into it. It’s never been funny, edgy, smart. Insane that it’s still on.

Maybe I’m really reading into it, but there’s a tiny part where she mentions that PETA sucks and I can’t stop all my little inside screams - it’s hard to find somewhere who dislikes all the same stuff as you.

“Men think that misogyny is a women’s issue; women’s to endure and women’s to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the white working class. Rape is a rape victim’s problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?“

“Whenever talk turned toward solutions, the panel came back to mentorship: women lifting up other women. Assertiveness and leaning in and ironclad portfolios and marching into that interview and taking the space you deserve and changing the ratio and not letting Steve from accounting talk over you in the morning. During the closing question-and-answer period, a young woman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice electric with anger, “but all I’ve heard tonight are a bunch of things women can do to fight sexism. Why is that our job? We didn’t build the system. This audience should be full of men.”

“Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well intentioned by floundering, as though they are not the experts. You are the experts. Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install that glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”

When talking about what men can actually do to help women: ”“Do you ever stick up for me?” sounds childish, but I don’t know that gussying up the sentiment in more sophisticated language would enhance its meaning. It isn’t fun to be the one who speaks up. Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian. A result is that, for the most part, the only people weathering those consequences are the ones who don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. Women, already impeded and imperiled by sexism, also have to carry the social stigma of being feminist buzzkills if they call attention to it. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting. What we could use is some loud, unequivocal backup.”

“I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the boys’ club; if you seem too opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that, too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.”

The entire chapter about the complications with Joan Rivers is such a great one.

“You can hate someone and love them at the same time. Maybe that’s a natural side effect of searching for heroes in a world not built for you.”

Okay, so the only thing that we strongly disagree on is her previous love for Adam Carolla. Always hated that man.

““Common sense’” without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness.”

“There are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get older. Then there are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get better.”

“Art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores. They are letting obsolescence devour them, voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable.”

Talking about Ricky Gervais:” “People see something they don’t like, and they expect it to stop,” he said. “The world is getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, I think I lived through the best fifty years of humanity, 1960 through 2015, the peak of civilization for everything. For tolerances, for freedoms, for communication, for medicine! And now it’s going the other way a little bit.” “Dumpster fire” has emerged as the favorite emblem of our present sociopolitical moment, but that Gervais quote feels more apt and more tragic as a metaphor: the Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”

“Adam Carolla isn’t angry because he’s being silenced; he’s angry because he’s being challenged. He’s been shown the road map to continued relevance, and it doesn’t lead back to his mansion. He’s angry because he’s being asked to do the basic work of maintaining a shared humanity or else be left behind. He’s choosing the past. Gervais and Carolla are not alone in presenting themselves as noble bulwarks against a wave of supposed leftwing censorship. (A Netflix special, for the record, is not what “silencing” looks like.)”

Talking Louis CK: “Less than a year after his vow to retreat and listen, CK made the laziest and most cowardly choice possible: to turn away from the difficult, necessary work of self-reflection, growth, and reparation, and run into the comforting arms of people who don’t think it’s that big a deal to show your penis to female subordinates. Conservatives adore a disgraced liberal who’s willing to pander to them because he’s too weak to grow. How pathetic to take them up on it.”

“Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.” - This is probably my most favourite line in the entire book

“Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”

“I’d been taught that when ordinary people try to do activism, they look stupid. Of course now I know that there is no effective activism without the passion and commitment of ordinary people and it is a basic duty of the privileged to show up and fight for issues that don’t affect us directly. But maintaining that separation has served the status quo well. It keeps good people always just shy of taking action. It’s tone policing. It’s the white moderate. But it’s changing.”

“Diet culture is a coercive, misogynist pyramid scheme that saps women’s economic and political power.”

Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year. GO BUY!

#The Witches Are Coming #Lindy West #this is liz heather #Liz Heather #book review #great book 2019 #great book fall 2019 #feminist #feminism book #feminism

[generalpirategentlemen]

To be clear, the ideas that Bernie Sanders supports (Universal healthcare, $15 minimum wage) I support them, but I cannot support him, for a lot of reasons;

Sexism - He brushed off sexual harassment in his 2016 campaign by saying that he was "Too busy running for President". He once wrote that a lack of orgasms caused cervical cancer (Yes, seriously). And despite supporting Universal healthcare, he attacked Planned Parenthood as 'The Establishment'

He has a long record of saying one thing and doing another. He said that he supports gun control but voted against the Brady Bill five times, voted to allow guns on Amtrak and in national parks, and he even attacked the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims when they tried to sue gun manufacturers. He may have marched with MLK, but didn't treat the black leaders in his state with respect, they said they "felt invisible" to him.

I see him as an Independent, leftwing Donald Trump; he'll say things to get support, and barely follows through with it. He came out of nowhere with grand ideas and little details about doing it. He attacked the other nominee he was running against in an attempt to get the nomination, difference is, Donald Trump actually won the nomination.

Russia - There is a reason Bernie seems hesitant to discuss the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in 2016, because it also helped him and Jill Stein in order to stop Hillary getting elected. He also has never voted to sanction Russia for its actions including election meddling and even when it invade the Ukraine and annexed Crimea).

My last reason is probably the best - he's only the progressive frontrunner because he ran in 2016 as the only progressive in the race. But the 2020 race already has candidates more progressive than he is, such as Senators Warren, Harris and Gillibrand, Congresswomen Gabbard, Mayor Pete. I don't think he can stand out in that crowd of progressives the same way he did in 2016.

If Bernie Sanders ends up the nominee, I'll support him, but through gritted teeth.

Being completely honest, I'd love Warren to be nominee (I've written a post on why) and any of the other Senators running would be amazing running mates. Is Warren perfect? Of course not, no politician is, but she's one of the best politicians in recent American politics and the republican party is fucking terrified of her.

#2020 election #2020 candidates #democrats #bernie sanders

[breakingthenarrative]

“The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) found more than 700 allegations of s*xual abuse against hundreds of staff and individuals connected with just three homes in the borough. The true scale of abuse was likely to be far higher, it said.

It said Lambeth council had allowed violence and s*xual assault to flourish in its children’s residential homes, had failed to act against known abusers, or tackle the brutal, harsh and punitive culture of its homes – with devastating consequences for many children in its care.“

“Although most of the children had been taken into care after suffering violence and neglect at the hands of family members, the report noted that for some “the experience they had [in the residential homes] was worse than living at home with their birth families”.

The council failed on multiple occasions to protect children, including employing staff who it knew posed a risk to children, failing to investigate employees suspected of s*xual abuse, and exposing children to situations where it knew they were at risk of abuse.

The effect on many children in Lambeth’s care was devastating, the report says. As one witness, known as LA-A309, put it: “I felt from an early age that my feelings were inconsequential or of little value and that my pain didn’t matter. It was clear from an early age that no one really cared about me.””

“The report is scathing of what it calls the “progressive” leftwing culture of the council in the 1980s. “Many councillors and staff purported to hold principled and beliefs about tackling racism and promoting equality but in reality they failed to apply these principles to children in their care.”

It notes that the overwhelming majority of children in its homes were black. At Shirley Oaks in 1980 57% of the children in care were black; at South Vale home children a decade later 85% of the children were black. “Racism was evident in the hostile and abusive treatment towards them by some staff.”

The chair of the inquiry, Prof Alexis Jay, said the children in care were pawns in a “toxic power game” within the council in the 1980s and 90s, which was characterised over many years by bullying, racism, nepotism and sexism, against a backdrop of political chaos, corruption and financial mismanagement.

She added: “This all contributed to allowing children in their care to suffer the most horrendous s*xual abuse, with just one senior council employee disciplined for their part in it. We hope this report and our recommendations will ensure abuse on this scale never happens again.””

#lamberth council #lamberth #london #abuse #uk child abuse inquiry #racism #children #leftism #foster children #foster home #grooming #news #anti grooming

[orbitofdesire]

A bitter row over the difficulties of debating racism in France has erupted after a high-profile feminist and anti-racism campaigner was forced off a government advisory body, prompting the resignation of the director and most of its members.

Journalist Rokhaya Diallo has repeatedly spoken out against what she calls institutional racism in France, notably police stop and search practices against non-white young men.

Diallo, 39, was one of 30 people appointed last week to France’s national digital council, the CNNum, an independent commission of digital experts. The voluntary panel was to advise the centrist president Emmanuel Macron’s government on a new, more inclusive digital policy.

The appointments were approved by the digital minister Mounir Mahjoubi – one of the few faces of ethnic diversity in government – as well as the prime minister. But the government then bowed to complaints about Diallo’s presence.

Far-right commentators on social media attacked Diallo, then the mainstream rightwing party Les Républicains wrote an open letter to the government to complain that Diallo had in the past been outspoken on “institutional racism” in France and had supported feminist movements where black women had attended closed meetings to speak among themselves about racism and sexism. The party also slammed the appointment of the rapper, Axiom, criticising his lyrics. Some in the leftwing Socialists – as well as the former prime minister Manuel Valls, who now sits with Macron’s La République En Marche party in parliament — supported evicting Diallo.

The government swiftly appeared to kick out Diallo, promising a reshuffle in order for the body to work more “calmly”.

The French Human Rights League slammed the government’s “worrying” decision, saying: “In a democracy, the state must respect the pluralism of opinions to inform public action and enrich it.”

#france #rokhaya diallo #in case you missed it #there's no hope for this country especially not with such a rightist government but who's surprised #this is the only country where a minister can take legal action against a teachers union for the sole reason of using the words #'institutional racism' like idk if people realise what this truly implies... #everything in france is made to discourage people of color from addressing race issues

[feministskeptic]

Cotton Ceiling Receipts

Trans activists misrepresent what the “cotton ceiling” is, so I decided to compile a list of descriptions given by pro-trans sources. There are lists compiling receipts from anonymous social media accounts (for example), but I haven’t seen lists compiling more reputable sources on it on it.

As I was putting this together, one thing that struck me was how important it is to distinguish between traditional homophobia, which pressures homosexual people be heterosexual, and a different type of homophobia which pressures homosexual people to be bisexual. Condemning a gay person for not experiencing opposite-sex attraction is homophobic; redefining “homosexuality” and “same-sex” to include attraction to the opposite sex so that you can claim to support homosexuality (but only as long as it also includes opposite-sex attraction) is homophobic.

I stopped at about 31 reputable sources and then about 9 of a more casual blogging variety. I’ve tried to limit my commentary on what I quote.

Cotton Ceiling From Reputable Sources

Article from Curve Magazine (2020) by a male trans person. Curve Magazine is a lesbian magazine dating back to 1991.

The term “cotton ceiling” has been viewed as quite the incendiary phrase. It was coined by porn actress and trans activist Drew DeVeaux in 2015. It’s been used to refer to the tendency by cisgender lesbians to outwardly include and support trans women, but draw the line at considering ever having sex with them.

[…]

The point of such discussion is not, EVER, to exhort anyone to have grudging sex without enthusiastic consent. The point of such discussion is to exhort folks to examine their inherent bigotry. We change, we grow, we learn through familiarity and exposure. We can challenge and re-examine our prejudices and fixed ideas.

Here a lesbian magazine exhorts lesbians that being friendly with male trans people isn’t sufficient, lesbians should “examine” and “change” their “inherent bigotry” (the absence of opposite sex attraction) to learn how to be both-sexes attracted (the correct orientation).

It pays lip service to consent (we would never want anyone to have unwanted sex!) while arguing that not wanting straight sex is bad and you should fix that about yourself. If you don’t want lesbians to have unwanted sex, then you should support and encourage them to double down and defend their boundaries when those boundaries are challenged or undermined—not instruct them that they have a responsibility to "grow” their boundaries.

The author also links to Riley Dennis’s “genital preferences are unfair discrimination” video, which appears further down this list.

Article from The TransAdvocate (2013) by a same-sex attracted woman. The TransAdvocate is an independent nonprofit that was selected by the US Library of Congress to be in its collection of LGBTQ+ writing in 2019.

The question of whether or not to include trans women in women’s sexuality-based events is old and tiresome, but it still comes up with some regularity. I recently responded to a discussion on this topic and I realized that it might be useful to post my thoughts here, as I don’t know that I’ve ever done so in full.

[…]

Assumption 9. The “cotton ceiling” is a way for trans women to bully cis women into having sex with them.

The idea of the “cotton ceiling” is intended to draw attention to how even in spaces that are politically and socially welcoming of trans women, transphobia often retains its influence on how we understand who is sexually desirable and who isn’t. It’s no different from other politicized criteria for desirability—people who are, for instance, fat or disabled are also often welcomed into queer women’s space but not seen as desirable compared to those hot slim, muscular, able-bodied sorts. This isn’t our fault—our entire culture tells us what’s sexy and what’s not, 24 hours a day, and that definition is terribly narrow. But it is really easy to forget how much influence advertising propaganda and social pressure can exert on what gets us wet and hard, and to let the mainstream’s terms dictate our desires.

It is possible to read the idea of the cotton ceiling as being about pressuring people to change who and what they desire. And that pressure can feel unwelcome. With that in mind, I would challenge those who feel it that way to look very carefully at the message that’s being delivered. Is it actually about you being told you need to go out and fuck people you’re not attracted to? Or is it about someone asking you to think about how much of your attractions are based on an underlying assumption of cissexism?

The author argues it’s a problem for women to be “welcoming” of male trans people while drawing the line at sleeping with them. She goes on to compare homosexuality to refusing to sleep with overweight people, arguing that lacking opposite-sex attraction is not a natural sexual orientation, it’s actually just a product of society’s prejudices:

“transphobia often retains its influence on how we understand who is sexually desirable”

Comparing people who aren’t attracted to the opposite sex to people who aren’t attracted to overweight people or disabled people to make homosexuality seem unnatural

“our entire culture tells us what’s sexy and what’s not”

“how much influence advertising propaganda and social pressure can exert on what gets us wet and hard”

“how much of your attractions are based on an underlying assumption of cissexism”

So: lesbians are brainwashed by society into being gay. Got it.

The kicker is when she compares the discomfort a homosexual woman feels from being shamed for being homosexual and from being pressured into being bisexual, to the discomfort a person with privilege feels when confronted with their privilege. It should suffice to say that lesbians don’t lightly come to the conclusion that they lack opposite sex attraction, and no lesbian benefits from being lectured about how she needs to reflect more and think more on her sexuality until she reaches the “correct” conclusion of opposite-sex attraction. By the time she comes out of the closet and is rejecting male trans people, she’s already reflected and thought on her sexuality.

This is trans-typical conversion therapy rhetoric, which a lesbian debunked well in this unconnected screenshot:

Because though the author tries to obscure it, there is a causal link between attraction and sexual relations, and when male trans people criticize lesbians for not being attracted to male trans people, they’re upset about lesbians rejecting sexual relations.

No matter how friendly, how "welcoming,” of male trans people a woman is, if that welcome doesn't extend into her bedroom, she’s a transphobe.

Article from PinkNews (2022). Wikipedia says PinkNews is a British LGBT news outlet founded in 2005.

The “cotton ceiling” is a concept coined by porn star and trans activist Drew DeVeaux, and describes the inherent prejudice that many cisgender lesbians have against trans women, reducing them to their genitals, even if they are outwardly accepting. It is not about an individual’s sexual decisions, which should only ever be made freely and with full, enthusiastic consent.

It’s pointless to include a disclaimer about consent when you’ve just argued it’s not enough for lesbians to be “outwardly accepting,” that lesbians HAVE to be open to sleeping with male trans people in order to truly respect them. The “cotton ceiling” is the transgender version of men complaining about being friendzoned by lesbians.

Scholarly book Does anyone have the right to sex? (2018) by Amia Srinivasan, London Review of Books

The difficulties I have been discussing are currently posed in the most vexed form within feminism by the experience of trans women. Trans women often face sexual exclusion from lesbian cis women who at the same time claim to take them seriously as women. This phenomenon was named the ‘cotton ceiling’ – ‘cotton’ as in underwear – by the trans porn actress and activist Drew DeVeaux. The phenomenon is real, but, as many trans women have noted, the phrase itself is unfortunate. While the ‘glass ceiling’ implies the violation of a woman’s right to advance on the basis of her work, the ‘cotton ceiling’ describes a lack of access to what no one is obligated to give (though DeVeaux has since claimed that the ‘cotton’ refers to the trans woman’s underwear, not the underwear of the cis lesbian who doesn’t want to have sex with her). Yet simply to say to a trans woman, or a disabled woman, or an Asian man, ‘No one is required to have sex with you,’ is to skate over something crucial. There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – no dicks, no fems, no fats, no blacks, no arabs, no rice no spice, masc-for-masc – are never just personal.

[…]

…a feminism that totally abjures the political critique of desire is a feminism with little to say about the injustices of exclusion and misrecognition suffered by the women who arguably need feminism the most.

Another author who argues lesbians need to be willing to have sex with male trans people in order to take them seriously as women. Having sex with someone is not evidence you respect them “as women” or otherwise, and refusing sex with someone is not evidence you disrespect them.

Notice that the author’s compared homosexuality to refusing to sleep with disabled people or people of certain races. The goal of the comparison is to argue homosexuality is an unnatural orientation: nobody is biologically wired to be exclusively attracted to people of certain ability or skin color the way gay people are biologically wired to experience exclusively same-sex attraction. It’s not the same thing, and it’s homophobic (and scientifically inaccurate) to argue homosexuality is unnatural.

Also notice that she listed “no dicks” as if it’s analogous to “no blacks.” Rejecting sexual relations with someone because he has a penis is not remotely the same as rejecting someone for their skin color.

During court case, British lawyer compares cotton ceiling workshop to racially integrating South Africa after Apartheid (2021)

During the Allison Bailey trial, a lawyer from the law group Garden Court Chambers compared Planned Parenthood’s cotton ceiling workshop to South Africa’s workshops to racially integrate in order to argue Planned Parenthood’s workshop was good. This lawyer compared lesbians who won’t let male trans people get in their pants to white supremacists enforcing society-wide apartheid.

Here is a more detailed description of this moment in the trial.

If you’ve never read about the OG Planned Parenthood workshop (2012) by Morgan Page and Sarah Hobbs in Toronto…

Planned Parenthood gives a full-throated defense for hosting a workshop called “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women,” stating that trans women “are denied full participation in queer women’s communities.” But what do they mean by “full participation”? It was a workshop by male trans people upset that they couldn’t get laid with lesbians and bisexual women.

That passive construction, “trans women are denied full participation,” is a euphemism for sexual relations. When Planned Parenthood says “we strongly stand behind queer trans women’ right to participate as full members of LGBTQ communities,” the ~right to participation~ they reference is sexual relations with women who don’t want to sleep with them (if these women wanted to sleep with them, there would be no workshop).

No cookie-cutter disclaimer about oooh consent is so important can change the fact that the core principle underlying this workshop (and the cotton ceiling in general) was that female homosexuality is unfair and oppressive to the male sex.

Planned Parenthood also couldn’t help but imply that the reason lesbians aren’t interested in male trans people is because of how “transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire.” They do not view lesbians’ rejection of male trans people as a natural consequence of their natural sexual orientation. They view lesbians’ homosexuality as a “sexual barrier” to “inclusion” that should be overcome.

Tweets from Drew DeVeaux, male trans person.

I’ve included him in the “reputable” sources section because DeVeaux is widely credited with coining the term “cotton ceiling,” so what he says about it has particular weight.

Excerpt from 2014 speech

These threads are read from the bottom up:

Thread 2:

Thread 3:

Email from Morgan Page (2012), who organized the Planned Parenthood workshop and is currently employed by the British LGBT organization Stonewall (as far as I know)

Article in AutoStraddle (2013) by a male trans person. AutoStraddle is a lesbian publication.

I have written previously about some of the alienation I have experienced as a trans woman dating in the queer women’s community. Now, I want to emphasize here again that no one is obligated to touch a woman’s penis if they aren’t into that. However it’s also important to emphasize:

1) Not every trans woman has a penis. 2) No general means exist to distinguish trans women from cis women.

The implications of these two points together are that statements such as “I am attracted to cis women but not trans women” simply do not make sense and are rooted in social prejudice.

(As a side comment, before moving on let me briefly address something that appears in the previous piece that I linked above. My article from about a year ago contains a reference to the concept of the so-called “cotton ceiling,” which deserves a brief comment here. While several trans woman-hating “radical feminists” have intentionally misconstrued this concept in rather bizarre ways, there are also a few trans people who have made statements in relation to this idea that I think are problematic. Hence, after having some time to reflect on the previous debates about this I have come to the conclusion that the “cotton ceiling” should be considered an unhelpful concept for this type of discussion and should be set aside by trans activists moving forward.)

Sexual attraction is heavily dependent on being compatible in the bedroom. For example: remember a time where you were interested in someone, got with them, it was bad, and you lost all attraction.

Gay people are incompatible in the bedroom with the opposite sex. They might think opposite-sex trans people look good and fantasize about what the bedroom might be like if they were same-sex, but that sexual attraction evaporates when you realize real life sex with this person would suck. Because of your aforementioned incompatibility with the opposite sex.

Notice he specifically suggests strategically setting aside the term cotton ceiling while continuing the same homophobic tripe, so, changing the dressing without changing the content. The term cotton ceiling is unhelpful to the cause of getting more lesbians to learn opposite sex attraction.

I address the “you don’t know who’s trans so how can you be attracted to only women” argument further under the Katy Montgomerie tweets.

A second article from TransAdvocate (2014)

If a small group wanted to talk about how ableism affected cultural notions of beauty and/or desirability, would feminist circles tolerate TERFs going on a yearlong campaign, claiming that those who aren’t able-bodied want to force lesbians to have sex with them?

In a culture that devalues and oppresses trans people, why is it not appropriate to discuss how these cisnormative beauty standards impact notions of desirability, how these biases relate to the fetishization of trans people and how all of this impacts the perception of trans people in queer spaces?

The main point of this article is that the cotton ceiling is a conspiracy cooked up by transphobes: male trans people never promote homophobia towards lesbians and anyone who says so is either stupid or scheming. This article is soundly debunked by looking at this list, or looking at any of the collections of social media receipts (for example), or just plain looking at what the article eventually settles on for the definition of the cotton ceiling (seen above: defining homosexuality as “cisnormative beauty standards” 🤔 gee, what cisnormative beauty standards could trick lesbians into finding the opposite sex undesirable? What cisnormative beauty standards could brainwash lesbians into finding only their same sex attractive?).

It’s written almost entirely using rhetorical questions in order to avoid taking responsibility for anything it proposes.

This article also contains rude and profane receipts from radfems to try to make the fuss about those nasty women who aren’t being good women, instead of tackling the homophobic rape culture inherent in insisting that it’s oppressive and abusive for female homosexuality to draw a boundary excluding the male sex (and for female homosexuality to have a name to use to describe that boundary).

Article from QueerFeminism.com (2012) by a bisexual female trans person. This article was endorsed by an MSNBC journalist (homosexual male trans person) who was recently nominated by GLAAD for an award. It was also linked in the Curve Magazine article cited first on this list.

The blogosphere is fired up over the cotton ceiling today, a term porn actress Drew DeVaux and other queer trans women are using to challenge cis lesbians’ tendency to support trans causes generally but draw the line at sleeping with trans women or including trans lesbians in their sexual communities.

[…]

The narcissism in the radfem community is somewhat hilarious.  Why would a trans woman WANT to sleep with you?  How boring it must be to have sex with someone who reduces your body, your sexual creativity, and your capacity to a penis.

[…]

Radfems, you’re not just missing out on great sex.  You’re confused about what it means to be a lesbian, or a woman.  I don’t care what your physical preferences are or what gender identity you prefer. I do care that you confuse those two things, and thereby insult trans women.  I care that you don’t bother to interrogate the origins of your phallus-based distaste for trans women, and think about whether it’s actually a dislike of the organ that’s happening here or whether transphobia and a refusal to view trans women as women is involved.  I care that you assume describing yourself as a lesbian tells others that you prefer what you call a pussy, as if everyone has the same definition of lesbian, woman, or pussy.

THAT is privilege.  Assuming that you speak the same language, rather than consensually sharing vocabulary.  Using lesbian as a proxy term that tells a whole group of women that they are not real, and not seeing anything wrong with that.  I find your appropriation of the language of oppression disgusting.

Another author who helpfully specifies that the cotton ceiling is about “lesbians’ tendency to support trans causes generally but draw the line at sleeping with trans women.” As I said earlier, no matter how welcoming of male trans people lesbians are, if that welcome doesn’t extend into the bedroom, it’s not enough.

The author here spends a good portion of the post writing about how a lack of willingness to engage in opposite-sex relations makes a person’s sex life deficient. She contradicts herself a couple times—she makes an unusually sincere-sounding disclaimer at the beginning about how not wanting to touch a penis is a valid sexual “preference,” and later says she doesn’t care what women’s “physical preferences” are, but also she mocks women who don’t want to have sexual relations with the opposite sex and says she hopes women come to feel shame for not “examining” their disinterest in sexual relations with the opposite sex.

My impression reading it was that since sexual relations don’t need to involve touching your partner’s penis, the author believes that even if you have an aversion to touching penises, that’s not a “good enough” reason to refuse sex with male trans people because sexual relations doesn’t necessitate penis contact. In the end, as we all know, there is no “good enough” reason for lesbians to lack interest in the opposite sex.

Blog post (2012) by Roz Kaveney, a male trans writer with his own Wikipedia page. He has 22.8K twitter followers. I wasn’t going to include him, but he’s cited by the next source, so here’s the full quote:

Essentially, the Cotton Ceiling - with reference to knickers - is the term parts of the trans community have inventively adopted for the way that, however theoretically accepting of trans people a lot of progressives may be, when it comes to actually having sex with us, they vote with their ...um...feet.

This is not - to jump straight in and answer a crude debating point that has been made by the usual 'radfem' suspects - a matter of the trans community demanding access to cis people's vulnerable and reluctant bodies. It's a matter of asking the question 'how can you say you accept us and still have - as many people do - a blanket assumption that you would never ever sleep with someone trans?' I say 'people' in that sentence because the assumptions that create the cotton ceiling are not peculiar to cis, or if you prefer 'non-trans', people. It's an issue to do with internalised transphobia as well, and something that a lot of trans people have to face up to in themselves. I've not always been as good on this as I might have been.

[…]

So, in the end, my substantive point is this - the cotton ceiling exists and it's an issue for all trans people, women, men and non-binary. It's a matter of transpobia, including internalized transphobia. Given the fact that access to surgery or even HRT is already in the US, and may become in the UK, an economic issue and quite often a racial one too.

To pretend the cotton ceiling does not exist is to deny an important component in transphobia.

Wanting to bang people is respect and not wanting to bang people is an important component of disrespect! Stop disrespecting us, which means, stop being so gay and start banging us!

Notice he employs the common conflation between using “trans” as a euphemism for a certain sex (typically, the male sex, such as by accusing feminists of being “trans-exclusive” if they include female trans people but not male trans people) with the use of trans to describe trans people of both sexes.

Kaveney and DeVeaux were both cited by the scholarly book Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality (2017)

A major step forward came when Drew Deveaux, a model and porn actress, won the Feminist Porn Awards ‘Heartthrob of 2011’. Deveaux, an androgynous trans woman from Toronto, writes that ‘Through performing in porn, I’ve been able to take the world’s fucked up notions about trans women and fuck them into blissful oblivion’ (Deveaux, 2010). She nevertheless experienced feeling isolated in queer sex culture as a trans woman with a vagina. In 2012 she coined the term ‘the cotton ceiling’ to describe the feeling of being invisible as a sexual, queer woman. The cotton ceiling, like the glass ceiling for women in the workplace, is a barrier that limits access to power, recognition and respect. It refers literally to the panties of (cisgender) dykes, suggesting a social barrier to being recognised in queer sex cultures by cisdykes. As trans writer and activist Roz Kaveney sees it, this obstacle is present because, ‘however theoretically accepting of trans people a lot of progressives may be, when it comes to actually having sex with us, they vote with their … um … feet’ (2012).

The cotton ceiling … is a barrier that limits access to power, recognition, and respect. Nothing rape culture about that.

From the scholarly conference NWSA Feminist Transgressions: Too Damn Straight to Kick It with a Science Fiction Girlfriend: Dark Angel as a Symptom of the Feminist and LGBTQ Marginalization of Translesbianism (2014)

The television series Dark Angel is widely read as a cultural artifact of third-wave feminism. In the series, a cislesbian befriends a trans* heterosexual woman but derisively rejects a translesbian who sexually propositions her. This representation invokes feminist dialogue about translesbianism, such as the heated debate about whether the combination of ciswomen’s social acceptance and sexual rejection of transwomen constitutes a “cotton ceiling.” This paper argues that Dark Angel’s representation of trans lesbianism is symptomatic of the broader marginalization of the intersection of trans* identity and lesbianism within feminist and LGBTQ communities.

I couldn’t find more quotes from this source, but considering its argument is that “trans lesbians are marginalized by the LGBTQ community” I think we can safely conclude it comes down on the male sexual rights override female homosexuality side.

From the scholarly book Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing Global Heteropatriarchies (2019)

The sexuality of trans women is being policed to such a degree that any conversation that seeks to investigate their place in lesbian communities is twisted into an unpleasant caricature, unrecognizable as mature discourse. I’d like to think it would not be necessary for me to utterly condemn any form of sexual coercion between individuals based on any form of ideology whatsoever, but hey, this might be on the internet – and where the ‘cotton ceiling’ is concerned, woe betide anyone who enters the conversation who doesn’t want to be accused of being rapey’.

[…]

Fear is being used to convince us that the progression of trans rights threaten our safety. We are familiar with the old trope, of painting the ‘enemy’ as a threat of sexual violence against women – it is used to justify war, it is used to justify racism and it is being used here to justify transphobia.

The author compares lesbians who speak up against the pressure to “learn” opposite sex attraction to people who propagate racism to justify war. She avoids defining the cotton ceiling explicitly and just endorses the TransAdvocate article proclaiming that there is a conspiracy among lesbians to slander male trans people.

Excerpt from essay from scholarly book Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is The New Black (alternative link) (2016)

We can think of this as an example of what trans activist and porn star Drew DeVeaux has termed the “cotton ceiling.” Blogger and National Center for Transgender Equality staffer Natalie Reed (2012) provides a good synopsis of the term, writing that the “cotton ceiling” has to do with how trans women are perceived and represented. For example, trans men are often openly regarded as being sexy and hot within queer communities, being the subject of things like calendars and pin-ups and erotica. Trans women, on the other hand, are almost never permitted acknowledgment or representation in such communities as sexual beings. We carry a sort of image of being stuffy, boring, slightly icky, and ultimately eunuch-like things. We’re allowed into the parties, but we sit quiet and lonely in the corner. This ends up being a problem not in that we’re desperately eager to be sexually objectified (we get enough of that from the straight cis male world), but that this act of conceptualizing us as de-sexed and unfuckable is directly attached to larger systems of oppression, dehumanization and invalidation we face.

The “cotton ceiling”—referring to cotton underwear—is a way of shorthanding the phenomenon of desexualizing transwomen in queer spaces.

He’s complaining that lesbians will buy sexy calendars of female trans people but not male trans people because lesbians consider male trans people “unfuckable” because larger systems of oppression dehumanization invalidation. Not because of homosexuality? Could a natural lack of opposite-sex attraction be a significant variable here?

I’ve never seen Orange is the New Black, so I can’t really evaluate the analysis the author presents. But the author talks about how the trans character’s wife begged him not to get a penile inversion, because his wife is no longer sexually interested in him afterwards. The author also complains that the writers didn’t give the trans character any “lesbian” crushes/affairs, remaining loyal to his wife, and says that proves the bigotry of the writers.

I give the full quote from Natalie Reed further down the list.

Article from Hunger (2019), a fashion and culture magazine with 227K followers on instagram

As you may or may not know, lesbians have gathered a bit of a bad reputation in recent years. We’ve got TERFs uniting under the “lesbian” banner to hijack London Pride with their messed-up views; unchecked biphobia running rampant in our dating circles and convoluted in-fighting around the concept that butch people supposedly possess “masculine privilege” (btw, not a thing). As lesbianism increasingly becomes associated with transphobia and the “cotton ceiling” (the romantic and sexual exclusion of trans women and transfeminine people from lesbian circles) it’s a time when many of us are identifying with the wider, more inclusive “queer”.

Lesbians are so un-inclusive! Why should they have sexual boundaries against the opposite sex?

Cotton Ceiling By Any Other Name

As it dawns on trans rights activists what a sticky corner they’ve backed themselves into, they sometimes talk about the cotton ceiling without using the searchable term “cotton ceiling.” Here are some examples from reputable sources.

Quote from Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley to the BBC (2021)

Kelley gave this quote to BBC when they asked her for a comment on their article about male trans people pressuring lesbians for sex.

Given the subject matter, notice her strategic conflation between male trans people and female trans people, and her presumption that dating only one sex is unnatural, comparable to racism.

Tweet from Ash Sarkar, journalist responding to the BBC’s cotton ceiling article (linked above) (Wikipedia)

Nobody should be pressured into sex with anybody, for any reason.

I wouldn't want someone to feel they had to have sex with me out of social pressure, but it'd be fair to ask whether racism plays a part in announcing every 5mins that they'd never sleep with a woman of colour!

Homosexuality ≠ racism! Same sex attraction – opposite sex attraction = natural sexual orientation, not a conspiracy.

NBC article responds to the BBC cotton ceiling article.

BBC responds to complaints about its cotton ceiling article.

Article from VICE by a male trans person (2018). Wikipedia says VICE is a news outlet that’s won a number of prizes.

Let me repeat: I am not saying that it is imperative to be attracted to trans women. I am arguing that your attraction is shaped by preconceived notions and stereotypes of transgender folks. So, no, I am not shaming you because of your sexual orientation. I am merely asking you to critically reflect on the factors that might shape your attractions.

[…]

This doesn’t mean that you have individual control or agency over your sexuality or gender, but that the meanings and perceptions that inform our sexuality and gender are relative to your culture and history. This also doesn’t mean there’s no biological influence, but how we interpret our biological impulses do not exist in a vacuum empty of ideological takes on the world.

[…]

Sexuality and gender aren’t simply something that comes from some biological imperative. They are phenomena that are developed through a messy brew of social, cultural, historical, and psychological factors. They can also prove to be lightly malleable if we try to dig into the foundations of how those oppressive structures influence the ways we see and understand the world.

He spends most of the article detailing harassment against trans people, which is ipso facto horrid. The point of the article is to rebut and explain what’s wrong with gay people not dating opposite-sex trans people, which he flunks at. He argues that society brainwashed gay people into being gay, that sexual orientations are “lightly malleable” (meaning, the jump from homosexual to bisexual is possible for every gay person, yay!), and urging gay people to “critically reflect on” their orientation with the obvious goal of converting them to be both-sex attracted.

Julia Serano in The Daily Beast (2017). In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s a prominent transgender activist. Wikipedia

Sexual attraction is a complex phenomenon, and of course there is lots of individual variation. I certainly do not expect every cis queer woman to swoon over me. And if it were only a small percentage of cis dykes who were not interested in trans women at all, I would write it off as simply a matter of personal preference. But this not a minor problem—it is systemic; it is a predominant sentiment in queer women’s communities. And when the overwhelming majority of cis dykes date and fuck cis women, but are not open to, or are even turned off by, the idea of dating or fucking trans women, how is that not transphobic? And to those cis women who claim a dyke identity, yet consider trans men, but not trans women, to be a part of your dating pool, let me ask you this: How are you not a hypocrite?

The kicker here is that Serano isn’t responding to any individual, he’s just looking at the big picture and noticing that lesbians want to be in same-sex relationships…which is a problem for him. You can tell there’s transphobia afoot when not enough lesbians are having opposite-sex relations. Lesbians, be more equal! Have fewer same-sex relationships and more opposite-sex relationships!

Peer-reviewed scholarly paper Transgender exclusion from the world of dating (alternative link) (2018)

In an ideal world, free of cisgenderism and transprejudice, an individual’s gender identity (transgender vs. cisgender) would not factor into whether they were viewed as a viable dating partner. […] In other words, a heterosexual man or lesbian woman, usually attracted to women, would also indicate a willingness to date trans women.

Scholarly article casually says that in an ideal world, homosexuality and heterosexuality wouldn’t exist. Both-sex attraction only.

Tweets from Veronica Ivy, aka Rachel McKinnon, the male trans person who won the 2018 women’s world championships in cycling. Wikipedia says Ivy is also a tenured professor at a university in South Carolina, US.

Stop comparing homosexuality to something unnatural challenge.

Second transcript of video from EverydayFeminism.com by Riley Dennis (2017), a male trans person.

So what’s been happening is that some people are making the argument that it’s not cissexist at all to only be attracted to people with one kind of genitals. For example, these people might argue that being attracted to only women with vaginas in no way negatively affects trans people.

[…]

1. ‘You’re Being Homophobic!’

In this argument, I often get accused of homophobia, lesbophobia, or lesbian erasure by lesbians who believe that I’m trying to change their sexual orientation or identity. They say that my language sounds a lot like a dude who tried to turn them straight or like conversion therapy.

Those responses are rooted in cissexism.

This is because I’m not telling lesbians that they can’t be lesbians. If you’re a woman who only likes women, go ahead, identify as a lesbian! But some women have penises. And if the fact that some lesbians might be attracted to those women offends you, it’s because you don’t think trans women are real women.

That’s because these accusations of homophobia make it sound like I’m trying to convince lesbians to like men, but I’m not. I’m trying to show that preferences for women with vaginas over women with penises might be partially informed by the influence of a cissexist society.

[…]

2. ‘You’re Upholding Rape Culture’

[…] Suggesting that trans women are rapists for wanting to be fully recognized as women is extremely harmful.

And I should note that I’m not saying you have to do anything without consent. I’m a big of fan of affirmative consent, and you should never feel pressured to have sex with somebody. This isn’t about an individual.

This is not saying, “You have to have sex with a trans woman, or you’re cissexist.” It’s saying that you should examine the societal influences on your preferences. There’s a massive difference between honing in on individual scenarios and considering wider societal issues and attitudes.

[editor’s note: RD is using “fully recognized as women” as a euphemism for sexual relations. Believing that attraction to or sex with you is necessary for your “recognition” IS rape culture.]

3. ‘I’m Allowed to Have My Preferences!’

Technically, you’re right. […]

So if we look a little deeper into this issue, there’s the possibility of your genital preferences being at least somewhat partially informed by growing up in a cissexist society. There’s also the fact that a preference is different than saying you would never do something. [editor’s note: well spotted!]

Like, having a preference for tall girls is fine, but refusing to date anyone under 5’7″ is ridiculous. And obviously that’s not a perfect analogy because short girls as a group don’t face the societal marginalization that trans women do.

But I’m interested in having a conversation about labels and implicit bias and trans-inclusive language. Simply saying “It’s my preference, end of discussion” is a good way of sidelining all of those issues and, instead, centering the feelings of cis people in a discussion that’s about trans people. [editor’s note: dismissing the person who’s rejecting sexual activity and prioritizing the feelings of the person being rejected isn’t helping his argument re: not upholding rape culture]

[…]

And the last thing I want to say about this is that if you’d rather not have sex with a woman who has a penis, maybe just don’t make such a huge deal of it. Trans women are often afraid of not being found attractive or desirable after coming out, and you’re not helping.

If you really want to be an ally to trans people, you could just not talk about it. And by that, I’m not trying to censor you, okay, so don’t pretend this is censorship. You have the freedom to say whatever you want – I’m just asking you to consider if it’s necessary to say those things when they reflect harmful or violent rhetoric.

Because if you have an opinion that you know is only gonna make people feel bad about themselves, why constantly share it with the world?

It’s fine to not find people attractive, but it’s mean to constantly yell about how unattractive you find those people, especially when those people are oppressed. For another imperfect analogy, it’d be like if you weren’t attracted to girls with short hair.

That would fine, but you probably wouldn’t write articles and make videos defending why it’s okay for you to not like girls with short hair. You could do that, but sometimes it’s just best to be polite.

[editor’s note: so lesbians should shut up about being gay bc it hurts the opposite sex’s feelings.]

First transcript of video from EverdayFeminism.com by Riley Dennis (2016). Archive link.

I think the main concern that people have in regards to dating a trans person is that they won’t have the genitals that they expect. Because we associate penises with men and vaginas with women, some people think they could never date a trans man with a vagina or a trans woman with a penis.

But I think that people are more than their genitals. I think that you could feel attraction to someone without knowing what’s between their legs. And if you were to say that you’re only attracted to people with vaginas or people with penises, it really feels like you’re reducing people just to their genitals. You’re kind of objectifying them – but you’re thinking of them more as genitals than objects. So I guess you’re kinda genitalifying them?

Anyway, my point is, we have implicit biases that we were raised with or that we developed over time, and they can be hard to get rid of. And I think this can be especially prominent within the queer community.

Gay men often pride themselves on being disgusted by vaginas, and the same goes for lesbian women with penises. It’s difficult because some queer people have built their sexual identities on these repulsions, but I don’t think they’re innate at all. If you met someone who was extremely attractive, had a great personality, but didn’t have the genitals that you wanted, you might be surprised to find that it isn’t a dealbreaker.

[…]

But we know that sexual orientations are more innate than learned – they’re more nature and less nurture. Gay “conversion therapy” has been proven not to work. But you can unlearn your own prejudices; it just takes time and conscious effort.

Gee, arguing that a gay man’s disinterest in vaginas or a lesbian’s disinterest in penises is unnatural? Accusing gay people of being superficial perverts incapable of real love? Urging gay people to “unlearn” their "prejudice” to stop being gay? Who’da thunk?

A rant from the site Feministing.com (2012) from a male trans person (an Executive Director of the site). Co-founded by Jessica Valenti, Feministing.com merited attention from the New York Times when it shut down in 2019. It had more than a million unique monthly visitors at its peak.

“I date women and trans men” is the definition of cissexism. It’s basing your frame for sexuality on the gender coercively assigned to a person by their doctor at birth, not on that person’s actual identity. In this case, we’re talking about folks who were assigned female. Of course, “women” means cis women – trans women totally drop off the map.

[…]

It’s incredibly undermining to frame sexuality in a way that lumps these men in with all female assigned folks instead of with cis men. It’s a failure, in the realm of sexuality, to recognize that trans men’s male identities are just as legitimate as cis men’s. If you’re going to base sexuality on gender, better base it on people’s actual genders.

I get why a lot of female assigned folks exist in this frame for reasons that aren’t overtly about undermining trans identities. There’s a ton of gender based trauma out there, and I understand that folks associate this with cis men, and not with trans men. But that’s not a reality-based approach to gender. A lot of that trauma gets easily linked to genitals, but this isn’t about bodies, it’s about patriarchy. I think this sexuality frame is a big part of why so many trans men get away with (and are sometimes even encouraged to practice) unchecked misogyny and male privilege (remember, power is complicated. You can experience both male privilege and cissexist oppression).

My trans brothers deserve better than sex in a frame that undermines their identities. This doesn’t mean queer cis women and gender non-conforming female assigned folks can’t fuck trans men, but then they owe it to these guys to reframe their sexuality in a way that’s not undermining – to recognize that they sleep with men, and to question why they’re OK with sleeping with trans men and not cis men.

[…]

I do put a little more responsibility on trans men for letting this frame push their trans sisters out. This approach to sexuality totally erases trans women by excluding us from the group of sexually existing queer women. Yes, it’s also incredibly undermining of trans women’s identities by moving us out of the category “women” when it comes to sexuality. Ultimately, this frame goes back to the gender coercively assigned at birth for trans women as well. It’s a way for transmisogyny to advance unchecked, because trans women totally drop out of the conversation.

Obviously, claiming that people should be allowed to define their own sexualities without judgment goes out the window. Certain sexualities (*cough* homosexuality in particular *cough*) aren’t allowed.

Advice column from Xtra* Magazine responding to a question from a older woman who calls herself “Ornery Lesbian Dissident” (OLD) by a male trans person (2020)

But what about trans people like [Riley] Dennis and writer Brynne Tannehill, who suggest that it is transphobic for cis people to not want to date trans people?

First, I would suggest spending some time with Dennis and Tannehill’s work, because they present their perspectives with intelligence and nuance. They point out that all sexual and romantic preferences are in some way shaped by cultural and political forces. We are taught, for example, that thin is attractive and fat is ugly; that young people are deserving of sex while elders are not; that white skin is more beautiful than dark skin. While we shouldn’t let this observation dictate our sexual behaviour by immediately (and tokenistically) seeking out “diverse” sexual partners in the name of political correctness, it’s worth thinking about in the long term.

[…]

So when we talk about sexual preference, I believe that it is both possible and preferable to work towards healing our erotic selves by entering into a more mindful and intentional relationship with desire. This is decidedly not about forcing ourselves into sex with someone we aren’t attracted to, but rather about making empowered choices to experiment and expand our desire at a pace and direction that feels right.

You mention, OLD, that you are not attracted to penises or “the way that trans women look,” which I think is fair in the sense that you know your own feelings best. Yet I have to point out that not all trans women have penises, and not all trans women look the same. You also identify as someone who loves women, and I imagine that you love more than their genitalia and their outward appearance. So what does this mean for your assertion that you are not attracted to trans women?

Choosing to stay open to new possibilities while also staying grounded in empowered choice offers us a third way forward in a world where clashing ideals tell us that we can only have love for trans women or consent for cis women, not both. Yet of course, love and consent can only thrive in the presence of one another. Reclaiming control over our own bodies can sometimes open new pathways to erotic joy—throughout history, a great many cis people have discovered a deep and powerful attraction to trans people despite being taught to revile us.

I thought this author was pretty reasonable the first time I read the article; my second time through, I spotted the guilt-tripping and manipulative sexist tactics. He starts off by appealing to the desire to “just get along” (because of course lesbians getting along with male trans people has to include being closeted and/or open to sexual activity), he regurgitates the typical transgender homophobia by comparing it to unnatural things like racism etc, and implies lesbians are shallow genital-obsessed perverts who aren’t appreciating a person’s true self if they are homosexual. (“…I imagine you love more than their genitalia and their outward appearance. So what does this mean for your assertion that you are not attracted to [the opposite sex]?”)

Throughout he emphasizes over and over the idea of “choosing to stay open to the possibility,” “regarding each other through the eyes of possibility,” “it is possible and preferable to work towards […] making empowered choices to experiment and expand our desire at a pace and direction that feels right”—unless what feels right is being homosexual and rejecting the requirement to keep the door open to possibly someday be opposite-sex attracted.

Arguing that rejecting homosexuality “empowers” lesbian is pretty bad. Plus the “sex positive” conviction that sexual boundaries and limits are meant to be overcome, that they’re something to let go of or go beyond (and if you don’t want to go beyond them…you’re not getting along! Be nice!).

In a nutshell: “All” he’s asking for is for lesbians to get along with male trans people by holding onto the just the possibility that someday they’ll desire sexual activity with male trans people! Yet male trans people are not expected to make room for the possibility that female homosexuality is in fact natural, not an arbitrary construct they can identify into. Lesbians are expected to do the work of getting along.

Also the way he says this ~openness to the possibilities~ is the only way to avoid a world where “we can only have love for trans women or consent for lesbians”…as if male trans people can’t get love anywhere else except from lesbians? What?? It has a manipulative, abusive “nobody will love me if you don’t” vibe. Why is lesbians’ disinterest in the opposite sex a problem to solve?

Article from The Daily Beast (2021) by a male trans person, responding to the BBC’s article about the cotton ceiling

Through selective sourcing and questionable quotes, Lowbridge uses phrases like “biological female” and “biological male” to frame cisgender lesbians as defenseless maidens and equate trans women with aggressive, cisgender male sexual predators. Perhaps not so coincidentally.

Here are the basic points of Lowbridge’s 3,850-word screed, to which the BBC attached a warning to readers about “strong language”:

• Using anecdotal accounts of assholish behavior, the author reveals there are lesbians who don’t want to have sex with transgender women yet were “pressured,” “coerced” and at least one said they were raped.

That’s horrible, but as Canadian jurist and bioethicist Florence Ashley told The Daily Beast: “It’s absolutely insidious to transform discussions of how cisnormativity shapes desire into claims of ‘coercion’ which play into the long-standing demonization of trans women as ‘rapists’ and ‘perverts.’”

• Claiming an aversion to sex with a trans woman is “transphobic” and will result in loss of relationships, damage to reputation and in at least one case could potentially cost a lesbian her career.

The truth, cis bisexual and human resources director Jenn Kelley of Connecticut told The Daily Beast, is that people have preferences. “Some lesbians do not like penetration. And to some the mere idea of fellatio literally makes them gag. Therefore, they don’t have sex with people with penises,” Kelley said. “I honestly don’t think that makes them transphobic. They simply choose to engage in sex with persons without penises. Is that a fetish? No! It’s knowing what you like/don’t like and choosing that. It doesn’t diminish another because their gender or body parts aren’t what you prefer.” [Editor’s note: I wish the author had included more quotes from this source, because source doesn’t use the word “preference” to describe homosexuality ("preference” is inserted by the author), but it’s not clear what her opinion is of people being openly homosexual or declining to date post-op male trans people]

[…]

Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Although there are trans women, many of them who identify as lesbians, who undergo bottom surgery to transform male genitalia into a neovagina—which appears and functions in almost every way like female genitalia—this is barely referenced in favor of repeating the fallacy that all trans women have penises.

[…]

“This BBC article is just the latest biased and factually inaccurate story about transgender people to appear in British mainstream media,” a spokesperson for GLAAD told The Daily Beast. “It's frankly bad journalism to have a reporter and news outlet reinforce lies and spread hate about a group of people that is already profoundly marginalized. Mainstream media in the UK should immediately give transgender people and their allies platforms to share stories about what it really means to be a trans person in the UK today.”

“The idea that trans women need to pressure anyone into sex is so laughably absurd,” tweeted actor, producer and activist Jen Richards, who happens to be trans. “Don’t fall for stupid op-ed’s written with little to no basis in lived experience and by people who want to erase trans people from public life. If you don’t want us, we don’t want you either. All we ask is that you leave us and our partners the fuck alone.”

“I’m a proud woman, a proud trans person, and a proud lesbian,” writer and trans activist Charlotte Clymer told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know any trans or nonbinary person, let alone any activists, who would claim that cis lesbians are obligated to be attracted to trans women. I don’t know anyone in the trans community who would claim there’s an imperative for any person, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, to be attracted to someone because they’re trans or non-binary. No person is ever obligated to be attracted to another person. That completely goes against the concept of autonomy and consent that is so central to the trans and nonbinary community.” [editor’s note: lol]

This is not a new topic, and there are many great sources one could consult if only Lowbridge had tried: Ana Valens wrote a guide for queer women who want to have sex with trans women in Allure in 2019. She called communication “the lifeblood of good sex.” Mey Rude wrote “How to Have Lesbian Sex with a Trans Woman” for Autostraddle in 2018. In response to a cis lesbian backlash in the comments section, CEO and editor in chief Marie Lyn “Riese” Bernard wrote:

“There is nothing coercive in this post. It’s just information for people who want it. But it is mean that trans women can’t just talk about having sex without hundreds of people showing up to announce I’M NOT ATTRACTED TO YOU OR PEOPLE LIKE YOU! I don’t feel like that would happen on a post about fat women or masculine women or femme women or whatever type of woman if that happens to not be your thing, you know?”

Although Lowbridge wrote that she consulted trans women on both sides of this issue including YouTubers, she overlooked one trans lesbian YouTube personality who has tackled lesbian sex quite frequently: Melody Maia Monet.

“The goal seems to be to create an outsized moral panic over a ‘problem’ that even the anti-trans activists admit is marginal at best,” Monet told The Daily Beast. “Judging from how often I have been propositioned by lesbians who don’t care that I’m trans, framing cis and trans lesbian sexual relationships as forced does not reflect reality.”

Author and public speaker Stephanie Battaglino had this to say: “By focusing on one’s anatomy, the author is missing the bigger—and more inclusive—picture: my being trans is not the only way I present myself to the world. My personality, my interests, my sense of humor, my intelligence and a thousand other things, define who I am as a person. Unfortunately, there seems to be no mention of any of those qualities—that we all possess—in this piece. Do you think this was ghost written by JK Rowling?”

My reality: Since coming out 8 years ago I’ve been propositioned by both women and men. As a queer woman, I’ve been romantic with both women and men. And I don’t claim to be like every other woman, because no woman is. But listen to me, BBC: In publishing this drivel, you’re providing ammunition to those who want to see me excluded, oppressed, beaten, or worse, dead.

The bottom line: I am not my vagina. I was never my penis. But my body, as is every body, is worthy of love, and only from those with whom I consent to share it.

The author’s main argument is that This Doesn’t Happen and if it does happen, it’s not a big deal, and the women probably made up all up anyway. He cites one “expert” who euphemistically refers to homosexuality as “cisnormativity,” then quotes a woman who supports homosexuality as long as you Don’t Say Gay, and then follows up with a quote from GLAAD about how it’s “factually inaccurate” that some male trans people sexually harass lesbians.

He then quotes a ton of trans people, and ends with a dose of homophobia, using the modern politically correct terminology to accuse gay people of being shallow genital obsessed perverts who can’t love a person for who they are on account of their unfortunate homosexuality (the “too bad for you”/“I feel sorry for you”/“I’m so much better than you” refrain).

This article is an example of how transgender activists have zero interest in addressing sexual harassment committed by trans people when the option to condemn lesbian victims and publicly shame lesbians for being homosexual is on the table. Literally! There’s no point to making a cookie-cutter disclaimer about how you’re totally against rape culture, definitely, and then spend the rest of the article doing what he did.

Video of Owen Jones (2022), a same-sex attracted British journalist (Wikipedia)

Some random person on twitter accused Jones of being a hypocrite for only dating men while condoning the homophobia directed at lesbians and gay men for only dating their own sex. There’s no evidence Jones dates only his own sex…but Jones provided evidence of his own homophobia in the video he filmed in response.

The rando says that Jones can disprove his accusation by saying right now that he supports the right for women who are exclusively same-sex attracted to openly announce their orientation (as opposed to being closeted, pretending to be both-sex attracted). Jones says…

Skip to 2:20

“You can prove it if you unequivocally state that lesbians are not transphobic for being vocal or nice about exclusive attraction to the same sex.” You can see he’s shifted the goalposts here, he doesn’t have any evidence for his claim, so he’s abandoned that. And he doesn’t know anything about my own dating history, either, incidentally. The original hypocrisy as he claims I only dated people he considered to be men without me saying anything. [mumbles something in his British accent, saying that the goalposts have shifted].

2:49 But what does he even mean here? Well, he means the right of people to publicly say that trans women are men and trans men are women, just to rampantly misgender them, and the way I’ve put it there, frankly, is even more toned down than the way lots of them misgender trans people, which is just aggressive and hateful and all the rest of it. That’s got nothing to do with who you date, whatsoever, it’s completely irrelevant to that point.

3:13 My response was clear: why do you feel the need to tell the world that you think trans women are men and trans men are women? It objectively makes the lives of trans people harder and more miserable. The basis of hate crimes and violence and abuse and discrimination against trans people, is that they are impostors, that they’re not really who they say they are, that they’re either entitled and aggressive men or fallen women. That’s the basis of abuse. Going around misgendering them is just obviously just whipping up hatred and bigotry to them.

3:44 So you make their lives harder, but how does it make your life happier or contented to do that? What benefit is it to you?

Here’s the key: What does it mean to unequivocally state that lesbians are not transphobic for being vocal or (not) nice about exclusive attraction to the same sex? According to Jones, what it means is, the right of people to publicly say that male trans people are men. Aka, transphobia/bigotry. In other words, he says ok, FINE, if lesbians don’t want to sleep with male trans people they don’t have to, but they ought to be ashamed of their bigoted sexual orientation. No pride for them, only shame.

After all, if you announce you’re exclusively same-sex attracted, that means you’re telling the world you think male trans people are men! So shut up and keep it to yourself, because what reason could a lesbian ever have to want to be out of the closet? What benefit or happiness does it ever bring a gay person to be out of the closet? The only reason is to hurt the feelings of trans people, apparently.

And for bonus, he says they should be ashamed because lesbians are to blame for hate crimes and violence (note: there is no data to support the claim that trans people have an unusually high murder rate) against trans people. Yup.

Tweet by Ashton Pittman (2022), an award-winning same-sex attracted American journalist

The only women permitted at Pride are the ones who like dick. No out lesbians, especially not the ones who loudly and proudly proclaim their homosexuality.

Article from Slate (2015) by a female trans person and a male trans person about tensions between lesbians and male trans people

For cis lesbians, it can also be difficult to tell the difference between an honest lack of attraction and feelings of fear or disgust at the idea of a partner who they perceive as “really” a man—feelings that are rooted in transphobic cultural conditioning. While trans lesbians seeking romantic connections in the lesbian community are often frustrated by the knee-jerk resistance many cis lesbians have to dating trans women, hearing that one’s individual reluctance to date someone may be based in transphobia can feel unfair and accusatory.

Rumors of trans women who attempt to pressure lesbians to date them by insisting that it would be transphobic to do otherwise don’t help matters—these stories may be apocryphal, but the fear of being pressured into a romantic relationship is hardly conducive to relaxed getting-to-know-yous. Rumors of predatory or pressuring behavior by trans women have been fanned by TERFs in order to paint trans women as violent and coercive.

These two want a job as mindreaders: “you think you’re not attracted to the opposite sex, but you are! Because I say so!”

Literally the authors spend the whole article blaming lesbians for this or that and then squeeze in one paragraph at the end saying “and maybe trans people are mean to butches.”

Cotton Ceiling From Not-As Respectable Sources

Wiktionary

A social barrier to consideration (by cisgender women) of transgender women as viable sexual partners

How about, instead of a “social barrier,” a homosexual fact?

Article on Medium (2018) from smalltime male trans journalist who has been published in HuffPost, i News, and PinkNews one time each.

The author, who says he’s bisexual, has also outright stated he personally wouldn’t date a trans person. (He doesn’t say why.)

The cotton ceiling, in short, makes the point that there are certain cis lesbians who are using their sexuality as a way to deny trans women’s womanhood. It’s not about coercing them, it’s not about saying you can’t have sex with only people you want to have sex with, its not about corrective rape or conversion therapy. It’s literally just a name for the concept of using your sexuality as a way of denying trans women’s womanhood; ie “I would never have sex with a trans woman, I’m a lesbian and don’t like men”.

And this happens an awful lot in the anti-trans community. It’s their ultimate GOTCHA! because sexual preferences are kind of seen as a little sacred. I get why, LGB people have fought really bloody hard in our societies to get to where they are now and I don’t want to at all take that away from them. I get the fiery passion behind defending your right to love who you want to love — and as a bisexual woman in a lesbian relationship, I’m super down for that cause. (Yes, this does make me a BLT)

[…]

Like seriously… all trans people want in this regard is that if we’re going to use this straight/gay/bi system— that we get to decide which label to use ourselves and have that respected. Like that’s literally it. But every single time a trans woman calls herself lesbian you can guarantee an anti-trans activist will show up to disagree and shout her down and call her a heterosexual male.

Personally, I suggest dropping the idea of rigid and strict labels like lesbian, gay, bi and straight. You don’t need a label, just tell people what you’re into… ie “I like vaginas and/or dicks” if genitals are absolutely important to you, or in my case “I like it when you orgasm, I like it when I orgasm, I like orgasms.”

To summarise, the cotton ceiling isn’t about corrective rape or an entitlement to vaginas. It’s about the use of sexual preferences as a weapon against the womanhood of trans women.

So he says lesbians can refuse sex with male trans people as long as they don’t say WHY, or if they do say why, they shouldn’t use a label like “gay/bi/lesbian” #DontSayGay. If only there was a label that meant “I’m biologically female and I want someone who’s biologically female.”

Twitter activist Katy Montgomerie (2022), a same-sex attracted male trans person. Montgomerie has given at least one radio interview (2023) about transgender topics, and he gave a presentation at Edinburgh University where he called “same-sex attraction” a transphobic dogwhistle (while pretending the argument is over whether gay men are attracted to male trans people, instead of the real meat of the argument, which is the lack of sexual attraction that gay people have for the opposite sex and the lack of attraction straight people have for their same sex).

Montgomerie’s argument here is that homosexuality is a product of brainwashing—gay people only think they’re exclusively same-sex attracted, but actually some of the people you’re “attracted” to are the opposite sex mimicking your common sex traits to greater or lesser extents, which means Gotcha(TM). It’s a reference to the cotton ceiling because he’s saying lesbians are actually attracted to (some) male trans people, therefore lesbians are attracted to the male sex.

Contrary to his claim, it’s easy to correct.

A lesbian on reddit explained it this way: (VERY loosely from memory, ngl I made most of this up bc I couldn’t find it again) If you saw a cake and were like “that looks delicious! I want to eat this!” and then someone told you the cake is peanut butter flavored, and you said, “oh, I hate peanut butter, never mind!” and that person says “but you just said you wanted to eat this cake! obviously you like peanut butter cake! why are you pretending not to like peanut butter cake?” would you take that person seriously or are they a moron?

You can also compare his argument to this old meme:

According to Montgomerie’s TRA logic, this guy is sexually attracted to laundry machines. After all, it doesn’t matter he didn’t know the laundry machine was a laundry machine! He was turned on by it, which means he’s attracted to it.

In conclusion, if you have to woo someone by deceiving them about what’s in your pants, it doesn’t make homosexuality unnatural, and it doesn’t mean someone’s in denial that they’re attracted to you.

“But you were turned on when you thought the laundry machine was a person!” Yes…because some things are so intuitively fundamental to attraction that the attraction is founded on them. And if that foundation isn’t there, neither is the attraction.

“But you were interested when you thought the cake wasn’t peanut butter flavored!” Yes…because some people only like cakes that don’t have peanut butter.

In order to want something, you have to have an idea of what you want, and if that idea turns out to be mismatched with reality, it doesn’t mean you suddenly like peanut butter cakes just because you wanted a cake before you knew it had peanut butter.

FFS.

From the FreeThoughtBlog (2012) by Natalie Reed, a homosexual male trans person trashing on homosexual women. The author also wrote this post on EverydayFeminism.com, and apparently worked as a staffer for the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The term “Cotton Ceiling” was originally coined by the intensely awesome Canadian trans-activist and porn star Drew DeVeaux, in which she referred (quite specifically) to the tendency within feminist and queer women’s spaces for trans women to be, while nominally accepted as women and supported in their pursuit for rights and equality, regarded and treated as essentially de-sexed, unfuckable, and sometimes a bit repulsive, with this becoming highly politicized in regards to its implications for things like what a lesbian sexuality really means, how much  of sexuality is “orientation” and something we can’t be held accountable for and how much is mediated by our perceptions, how sexuality can reveal that biases and lack of respecting gender identity continue to exist on visceral levels despite being intellectually (or superficially) rejected, etc.

[…]

For example, the idea of us as de-sexed relates directly to the whole “cutting off your penis” myth through which transsexuality is often viewed. It imagines a male-to-female transition (but tellingly NOT a female-to-male transition) as being a loss, a reduction, giving something of oneself up and becoming a lesser being, [editor’s note: lmao is he literally claiming lesbians are more interested in male trans people who have dicks than who don’t?] rather than conceiving it (much more accurately), as a growth, a reconfiguration, an expansion of self and possibilities, gaining new confidence and sexuality and empowerment and self-realization. The idea of us as being fundamentally unattractive relates into the way that cisgender standards of beauty are positioned as the only possible standards, that “passability” and “beauty” are, for trans women, directly equated, and we can ONLY be seen as beautiful, attractive or sexy in so far as we do NOT appear to be trans and instead appear to be cis (which is, you know, really fucked up). The refusal of lesbians to consider us viable sexual partners, or their seeing intimacy with us as somehow a threat to their lesbian identification (I had a #FunWithSearchTerms the other day asking “what do you call a lesbian who’s attracted to both women and trans women?”) is to ultimately, when it comes to staking your own identification upon how you conceive of our gender, to walk your talk, assert that beneath whatever lip-service you’ve paid to the legitimacy of our identity you simply don’t really regard us as women. At least not fully so.

The trouble, though, is that in the painfully typical manner that cis people will consistently view trans issues primarily or only in relation to themselves, they see this notion that how trans women are sexualized (or more accurately, desexualized) within their community is somehow all about us trying to force our way into their pants, to trick our way past their “natural” disinclination to sleeping with our “naturally” less attractive selves. [editor’s note: natural disinclination to sleep with the opposite sex] The conversation was quickly twisted into being about how “nobody needs to be obliged to sleep with someone we don’t regard as attractive! It doesn’t make me a transphobe just because I’m not interested in sleeping with trans women!”

[…]

And to be honest, saying as a blanket statement that you have no interest in sleeping with any trans women ever IS a transphobic statement. As I’ve talked about before, there really isn’t any universal or consistent outward trait common to all trans women. Logically, one can’t possibly experience a basic sexual attraction to cis women but not trans women, at least not while claiming that supposed lack of attraction has anything to do with trans women and trans bodies. It’s about how you perceive trans women. What you’re “not attracted to” is women you KNOW are trans, the IDEA of trans women, the CONCEPT. Which is inherently tied into cultural perceptions. You’d have the same reaction to a cis woman claiming to be trans as you would to an actual trans woman. It’s about your perceptions, not our bodies.

[…]

Sexuality does not occur in a vacuum. Imagine a circumstance where an enormous number of people were saying that latina women just plain weren’t attractive or sexy, and that the only way they COULD be would be to look as little like latina women as possible. And let’s say when this issue is broached, the response is “I just don’t find latinas attractive. I’m not racist! It’s just my sexual interests, which I have a right to define. Trying to force me into having sex with latinas by guilt-tripping me is a form of rape”. Wouldn’t it be justified to explore how racism, and cultural attitudes towards hispanic people, are influencing those attitudes and sexuality? Wouldn’t the women so targeted as “innately” less attractive be justified in their anger and hurt?

[…]

Some aspects of sexuality probably are innate, “Born This Way”. But a whole lot more of it is socio-culturally mediated. How cultural attitudes play out in sexuality is not something that needs to be protected from discussion, and given the fact that this often has real, actual consequences (such as perpetuating the oppression, alienation and dehumanization of trans women), it is something that needs to discussed.

The fact that simply trying to broach the subject of “the cotton ceiling” is something met with such a considerable degree of hostility and opposition is itself pretty strong proof that it is in fact a real phenomenon that is actually limiting how trans women are conceived and talked about in the queer community. It makes sense, of course… there’s a whole lot of important things tied to these issues. The stability of gender, the stability (or even validity) of sexual orientations in a world where gender is not a stable, binary, fixed thing. The importance of what a lesbian identity is and means, where it begins and ends. How much of sexuality is fixed and how much is mutable. How much of our attractions, and sexual orientations, are connected to actual bodies and actual pleasure and how much is all just in our heads and how we think of those bodies and pleasures. The presence of trans women as sexual beings poses considerable threats to understandings of gender and sexuality, both of which are things that carry deeply personal significance to everyone, perhaps especially to queer women.

But this is a discussion that needs to happen. And needs to NOT be made all about cis people. It needs to be focused on us, on trans women, and our representation. To shut down this dialogue simply because it’s a bit scary is to forfeit the right to consider oneself trans-friendly or accepting. It’s to forfeit the right to claim membership in a unified queer community.

Something remarkable about this rant is that the author himself is gay, but he’s this riled up over imagining lesbians rejecting him if he were straight. During the article, he heavily implies that he would only sleep with “cisgender” men, and when someone in the comment section called it out, the author conceded that if he and a female trans person had chemistry…he would be able to make himself have sex with her. It reeked of hypocrisy.

It’s also remarkable that it’s evident he’s a thoughtful person. I thought it was interesting when he proposed the hypothetical of a woman posing as a male trans person. But he invests all of his thought into obsessing over how it’s unfair for lesbians to have a natural sexual orientation that doesn’t change to convenience heterosexual male trans people, without recognizing it takes two to tango, so this idea that the cotton ceiling could ever be about just trans people or trans representation, and not an attack on homosexuality, is a convenient falsehood.

Video from Ira Gray (2013), female trans person who was apparently big on Tumblr back in the day

This is mostly to the ones that identify as queer or lesbian, refusing to date trans women but being ok with dating trans men and cisgender women is super, super cissexist. And I know what you’re thinking, you’re probably thinking like well it’s just my preference, so you can’t tell me what to like or what I don’t like. No, I can’t tell you want to like or to not like, but I can implore you to question why you like those things in the first place. […]

You’re basically lumping people into their gender designation markers and segregating people over something they have no control over. So instead of being like, I like people with these features, you’re saying I like people who have these things on their birth certificate […] and that seems really weird to me. […] 

Basically what you’re saying is that trans men and cisgender women are alike. […] And likewise, saying you won’t date trans women and cisgender men basically lumps them into the same category as well […] basically it goes through the process of undermining someone’s identity. […] 

Just question why you’re into something, and then refusing to do so is really fucked up too. I’ll admit I used to be transmisogynistic in regard to my sexual attraction, I didn’t want to date trans women, because I didn’t want to date someone with a penis. […] 

Any form of logic you use to justify only dating trans men and not dating trans women and dating cisgender women and not dating cisgender men is going to be cissexist. Because you have to […] use super stereotypical arguments that are anti-trans in order to justify them.

This article on Medium (2020) from a straight British male trans person: its author argues that it’s not really a problem that lesbians are “transphobic” when choosing who to date. So, still homophobic, but he expends effort debunking some of your typical trans cotton ceiling arguments.

[…] To put it in a more direct way; is it transphobic that this woman did not want to go on a date with me? Is it transphobic that she didn’t want to sleep with me?

Not to sound like I am avoiding giving an answer to my own questions but, to both: yes, and no. The point where the transphobia was taking place was in the fact that she saw transness as a deal-breaker. [editor’s note: transness is a euphemism for being biologically male]

[…]

Where I might be saying something more contentious, however, is that her being transphobic does not mean she is wrong for not wanting to sleep with me (stick with me here, okay). There are all sorts of reasons that a cis lesbian may not wish to sleep with a trans woman. […] People can quite simply not be attracted to my body, to a penis and small breasts.

[…] They might just not want to sleep with us. It’s a transphobic prejudice, sure, but they are not necessarily a transphobe, and we cannot demand that someone sleep with us to prove they are not a transphobe. I do not think that many, if any at all, trans people would actually do that when it comes down to it.

[…]

I’m a big proponent of violent resistance to fascism, to racism, both institutional and personal. I am not a fan of violent resistance to transphobic feminists. I mean, there’s a reason I’m using that phrase, rather than TERF, even if I obviously think TERF is an accurate descriptor and not a slur. But when I see phrases like KILL ALL TERFS or similar, I can’t really relate to that mindset: a TERF is not a fascist, not exactly (I do think a lot of their thinking is fascist). And most TERFs are women. It’s not helpful for us to scream that we are going to kill them, because, more than anything else, it just fulfils what they already think about us: that we are violent males (even if the people shouting that are cis women). I get why we might jump to violent resistance to this problem, because it has been effective against other forms of bigotry, but different forms of bigotry function in different ways, come from different places, and so on.

Post on the blog Cuntext (2012)

Reframing a specific experience of cissexism and transphobia—not being considered datable or fuckable by the majority of one’s queer community—as simply women treating each other badly is not only delusional, it’s exclusive.

[…]

At risk of sounding repetitive, because this is becoming a bit of a catchphrase for me these days: QUESTION YOUR DESIRE. If you have spent any time thinking about how damaging and fucked up it is that every women’s magazine photoshops models to be skinnier, whiter, and less wrinkled, then you’ve already started. Standards of beauty, aesthetics of fuckability, are not created in a vacuum. They come out of real societies, and they are built on that society’s sexism and racism and ableism and fat negativity and, yes, cissexism and transphobia. Furthermore, desire is not static or permanent. Do you think the same things are hot now as you did when you were fourteen, or has your desire evolved and expanded?

Desire is malleable. Desire changes, and it changes based on many things, including our understandings of what’s hot, who’s a woman, and what lesbian and/or queer sex is. We become less transphobic by learning to see our cis privilege and recognizing instances of cissexism, transphobia, and transmisogyny when they occur. The more we do that, the more “real” trans women become to us, the more legitimately women they become to us—NOT that they need our approval. We do not do this because they need our approval as women; they are women whether we are able to see it and whether we act like it or not. We do this because we recognize that our perceptions are warped and incorrect, and because we want to see clearly. We do this because we are giant assholes when we can’t recognize all women as such, and we’d rather not be assholes. Therefore, what is being asked of us is that we take apart our desire, see its transphobia and transmisogyny, and then we remake it. For me, this is actually a core element of queerness, and don’t fucking tell me it’s impossible, because I do it all the time and so do tons of people out there. Once again: question your desire. Do more. See more. And hey, date more and fuck more, too.

More conversion therapy rhetoric about desire being malleable, asserting lesbians have a moral obligation to remake their sexual orientation to be both-sex attracted, and actually the gayest thing of them all is remaking yourself in order to stop being too gay.

Blog post (2015) on Transgender Forum by a male trans person in San Francisco.

Long, detailed reddit post (2013) about lesbians who won’t date male trans people.

Also, would you rule someone out because she had six toes? Whenever I hear a straight man ask how sex works in the absence of a penis, I feel sorry for his girlfriends/wife, because he clearly doesn't understand how sexytimes work; when I hear a lesbian rule out trans women because of the presence of a hidden penis I feel sorry for her partner, because how superficial is that?

BONUS: Occasionally a TRA recognizes the rape culture inherent in bashing people for not experiencing sexual attraction. (They almost never acknowledge the homophobia.) See:

Tumblr post “Should the cotton ceiling be overcome?”

Medium post “On Dating, Lesbians, Trans Women, and Gender Critical Feminism” (archive)

Changing the Definition to Win the Argument

Sometimes TRAs recognize the “cotton ceiling” is problematic and pretend it means something else in order to justify calling lesbians bigots. I’ve supplied abundant evidence here for what it means. Here are some sources that try to change the definition to win the argument:

SJ Wiki gives multiple “complementing” definitions, the primary definition being that male trans people are excluded from the “higher echelons” of same-sex attracted women (and then quoting multiple sources I already quoted here clarifying that “higher echelons” means sexual activities) (also claims the “cotton” in cotton ceiling refers to the underwear of male trans people, which…does not make it better)

In The Ugly Argument of the Cotton Ceiling the author claims it means men “pretending” to be male trans people to sleep with lesbians

Blog post arguing that cotton ceiling refers to how lesbians are scared of how people will react if they date male trans people (which ofc they’re dying to do!)

Blog post trotting out the claim that the cotton ceiling has nothing to do with banging lesbians or with lesbians at all and it’s all about male trans people’s feelings

Essay from a male trans person who appears to identify as a radical feminist, repeatedly cites Dworkin etc. He alludes to the cotton ceiling as a “privilege gradient” between lesbians and male trans people. His essay is only readable because women in the comments convinced him to change his wording to be less rapey. In the comments of a different essay, a commenter references the cotton ceiling by name.

I’ve also seen them use the terms “genital preference” or “sexual exclusion” to talk about the cotton ceiling without using the searchable term.

#cotton ceiling #homophobia #gender critical #rape culture #leftwing sexism #radfem safe #terfs do touch #things I post

[goldie-claws]

mittensmcgee

replied to your

post

:

So there’s this prick going around in one of the...

Some people can have both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ideals. Because things like sexism and gay rights aren’t intertwined. Trump supporters also don’t realize just how homophobic he is, hence the supporting gay marriage thing while supporting trump. One thing Tumblr as a whole needs to realize is that a person shouldn’t be judged by one thing they said. That person might be a good person overall but has a few sorta uncomfortable ideas.

OK so first off, I’m British, and where I live specifically, it is mainly leftwing. I am talking on my own behalf and what my thoughts are and what I feel in my gut, which to this day has never proven me wrong. If my gut says someone is a bad person, they are a bad person (to prove this, I know someone who gave me a bad gut feeling from day one. What happened later? He went to prison for punching someone. My gut knows what’s up.) This commentor also has a ‘subtle’ sexist vibe to them (especially if you comment ‘A girl playing Zelda?’ to like, five separate Deviations when comments of ‘wow love your art!’ or something similar would be far more appropriate (as an artist myself I can relate)), which we know is one of the many parts that make up the Orange man who calls himself president. Also, when you’re associated with someone who wants to shock the gay out of you and all other kinds of horrendous forms of torture (ie. Pence), then it raises a big fat red flag for me.

Finally, the main reason I use Tumblr is so I may talk to my mutuals and friends easily, since not everyone has facebook b/c honestly that site is also various degrees of nope in my eyes; so I have a public platform to post my art; and so I can look at photos of cute animals. I may have been on this site since roughly 2013 or so, but I won’t be losing my head to Tumblr’s insanity just yet, trust me.

#mittensmcgee #goldie speaks #my gut knows allll #idk how to spell commentor or commenter or what the heck it is #the former looks better #links #text post #and yes i did see the second part of your message #overall tho I made tumblr for something to post my art on #I didn't have a DA back then but I still like to post art here

[blogrags]

Never stop fighting nazis. (Link in profile) • • • • • #anti #racism #punch #nazi #tshirt #knockout #antinazi #shirt #sexism #kick #racist #propagandadept #girl #antifaschista #workingclass #tee #tshirts #punchmorenazis #leftwing #riot #antifashion #clothing #antiracism #antifascist #antifaschistischeaktion #action #tees #antifa https://ift.tt/2nFEuXd

#tshirts #graphic #design #rags #print

[morganbelarus]

The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray review a rightwing diatribe

Do racism and sexism really exist, or are they just the creation of angry lefties? The bizarre fantasies of a rightwing provocateur, blind to oppression

Being stuck in a culture war is a bit like being a driver stuck in a traffic jam. From within ones own car, the absurdity and injustice of the situation is abundantly plain. Other drivers can be seen cutting in, changing lanes excessively, and getting worked up. Roadworks appear needlessly restrictive. Why are there so many cars on the road anyway? Horns begin to honk. There is one question that few drivers ever consider: what is my own contribution to this quagmire?

Psychoanalysts refer to the process of splitting, where the self is unable to cope with its good and bad qualities simultaneously, and so splits the bad ones off and attributes them to other people. The result is an exaggerated sense of ones own virtue and innocence, but an equally exaggerated sense of the selfishness and corruption of others. We are all guilty of this from time to time, rarely more so than on social media, where the world can appear perfectly split into goodies and baddies. Populism and culture warriors exploit this aspect of human psychology, reinforcing the comforting (but ultimately harmful) feeling that any conflict in the world is their fault not ours.

The left is not averse to playing this game. Why did the financial crisis occur? Because bankers and Blairites are bad, selfish people. Apart from anything else, this makes for woeful social science. But the right plays it more dangerously. Where the left spies moral depravity in centres of wealth and power (which, as we know, can produce antisemitic conspiracy theories), the right sees it among newcomers, intellectuals and the already marginalised. The potential political implications of this dont need spelling out.

Douglas Murray. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

In The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray sets out to explain why societies are now so characterised by conflict. In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant. The daily news cycle is filled with the consequences. Yet while we see the symptoms everywhere, we do not see the causes.

Few would fail to recognise this as a starting point. MPs and journalists are being harassed and threatened simply for doing their jobs. A university was recently forced out of Hungary by the government. The Home Office is growing increasingly anxious about the threat of far-right extremists cooperating across Europe. But there is not so much as a sniff of these trends in The Madness of Crowds. Instead, Murray organises his material into four themes: Gay, Gender, Race and Trans. You can see where this is heading.

Murrays stock in trade is a tone of genteel civility. He writes gracefully and wittily, in keeping with his demeanour as a clubbable conservative, who simply wishes we could all just muddle through a little better. While never over-egging it, he proffers a kindly Christian gospel of love and forgiveness, which he believes might rid us of the political and cultural toxins that have so polluted our lives. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and his account of recent history is clear: authorised by leftwing academics, minority groups have been concocting conflict and hatred out of thin air, polluting an otherwise harmonious society, for their own gratification.

His narrative is roughly as follows. The decline of ideologies at the end of the 20th century created a vacuum of meaning, which was waiting to be filled. This coincided with the birth of a whole range of critical cultural theories, producing fields of gender studies, race studies and queer studies. Most damagingly of all, for Murray, was the rise of intersectional feminism, which assumes that different types of oppression (especially racial and patriarchal) tend to intersect and reinforce one another.

The bitter irony, as far as Murray is concerned, is that these new theories of oppression arose at the precise moment in human history when actual racism, sexism and homophobia had evaporated. Suddenly after most of us had hoped it had become a non-issue everything seemed to have become about race, he writes. This seems to bug him more than anything else: Among the many depressing aspects of recent years, the most troubling is the ease with which race has returned as an issue.

History, therefore, is much as his fellow neoconservative Francis Fukuyama brashly described it in 1989: ended. Or rather, it could have ended, if it werent for troublemaking intellectuals and activists. Murray is quick to celebrate past struggles for racial, sexual and gay equality, but he is adamant that they have now been settled. Questions persist regarding the nature of sex, sexuality and innate ability (what belongs to our physical hardware and what to our cultural software, as he puts it), but these are far better handled by biologists than political thinkers. The problem, as he sees it, is that malicious, fraudulent and resentful forces emerging from universities have refused to accept that justice has now been delivered.

The gender theorist Judith Butler Murray decries her as a fraud. Photograph: Target Presse Agentur Gmbh/Getty Images

The acclaimed gender theorist Judith Butler is held up as a malignant fraud who hides behind the complexity of her prose. The entire venture of social science is deemed corrupted by its insidious fixation on oppression. Murray turns to recent hoax articles that were published in the academic journal Cogent Social Sciences (a prank that he describes as one of the most beautiful things to happen in recent years) as evidence that social and cultural theory is all a sham. The reader is assured falsely that this is all a vast Marxist project, aimed at sowing dissatisfaction and discord.

Murray presumably knows that Michel Foucault was not a Marxist, but its important to his branch of conservatism that this is brushed over. The M word serves as a coded way of tying together the humanities, Marx himself and (with a small leap of imagination) the Gulag. The fact that it is now illegal to teach gender studies in Hungary, as decreed by Viktor Orbn (favourite intellectual: Douglas Murray), poses questions as to where the real threat to liberty is coming from. But you wont find any discussion of that in The Madness of Crowds.

We learn that the doctrine of intersectionality has now swept the world, even becoming embedded in the search algorithms written in Silicon Valley. Why? Because tech workers have decided to stick it to people towards whom they feel angry. Its for this reason, apparently, that Google image search throws up a disproportionate number of black faces. Intersectionality is being force-fed to people, encouraging them to seek revenge on white men, and that is why there is so much conflict.

Murray has no shortage of examples and anecdotes to back this up, many gleaned from the US. But its notable that they nearly all operate at the level of discourse, and mostly in the media and social media. Its not difficult to come up with absurd cases of social justice warriors saying stupid and hypocritical things online, especially when the Daily Mail appears to have an entire desk dedicated to unearthing them.

And there are plenty of well-known cases of people being shamed and sacked for things theyve said, many of which are unfair and sadistic. One critique of this would be that the logic of public relations and credit rating has now infiltrated every corner of our lives, such that we are constantly having to consider the effects of our words on our reputations. Another is that a global Marxist conspiracy has duped people into a fantasy of their own oppression. I know which I find more plausible.

Whenever Murray strays too close to any actual oppression (as opposed to the controversies surrounding it), he quickly veers away. His chapter on gender refers to the MeToo claims against Harvey Weinstein, but never to Weinstein or the power structures he built. His chapter on race (the longest in the book) makes no reference to one of the most controversial campaigns in recent US history, Black Lives Matter, presumably because its impossible to discuss without acknowledging what prompted it: black men being gunned down by police officers.

Anger is ultimately a mystery to Murray, seeming to emanate spontaneously from his political and ideological foes. He can come up with no better explanation for it than that bad people enjoy it, that their desire is not to heal but to divide, not to placate but to inflame. And yet when an author goes to such great lengths to assure you that others are degraded, and that we white, male conservatives simply want to live in harmony, you have to wonder whom much of this anger truly belongs to.

Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World by William Davies is out in paperback from Vintage. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity is published by Bloomsbury (20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

Original Article : HERE ;

The post The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray review a rightwing diatribe appeared first on MetNews.

The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray review a rightwing diatribe was originally posted by MetNews

#MetNews

[antigenitalistischeoffensive2013]

I neither like the concept of a "terf" because this suggests there would be any reason for accepting (bodyfashistic) cuntists in any emancipatoric or leftwing movement.  There is no need to think this is an option. You can´t ever give anyone support who is blaming others for the shape of their bodies and for being educated in a hostile and wrong way as a result. Only if you are a fashist yourself. But because people take this as a reason, I am disgusted by feminism in general and left all movements that give or gave these people´s phobias and hatred a support. This is the main reason why we, the girls attacked and excluded by these fashists, have to get an independent movement and groups, where we needn´t share anything with these people, our biggest and worst enemies who try to destroy our lives.

German Forum User, average translation

#statement #quote #feminism #terf #movement #exit #sexism #genitalism #leftwing #Emancipation #women