It was on Facebook. I knew it would be insulting, but I had to take a picture.
No hyperbole: I just saw the worst-passing transsexual I’ve ever seen in the lounge here. It was so disruptive that I am forced to believe it was an intentional way to protest against rigid gender binaries. Or so I’d like to think.
Just beware, transsexuals: you must meet DJ Grothe’s high standards before appearing in public. You will be judged.
Isn’t it sweet that 12 people like his comment?
It would seem that D.J. doesn’t know how not to be an asshole.
One of those twelve was DJ himself. It takes a real narcissistic asshole to be so pleased with their own bigotry that they would do such a thing.
What a doucheweasel.
Caine @ 1
I think it’s more like he just doesn’t care not to be. And why should he? He’s Teflon D.J. He can say the vilest bullshit imaginable and nothing will happen to him thanks to his rabid “friends.”
Fuck, what is wrong this with guy? It is clear that he has learned absolutely nothing from all of his previous screw-ups.
What a fucking dildo.
It never rains but it pours.
Why is it that these people can never fail lightly? They have to go whole hog.
I wouldn’t be too quick even assuming his read of a TS woman is even correct. Cis woman get read masculine or trans occasionally, and some of them get harassed in the same ways that some trans woman do.
Thanks transmisogyny!
Ugh.
Hey! Dildos understand consent.
Unknown Eric:
Well, yes. It’s rather obvious he revels in being an ass, but beyond that, I’m not sure he’s capable of being a decent human being. In this case, all that was required was to keep his mouth shut, and even that’s beyond him. “Oh, it’s all about looks, man! Who cares about the actual trans*person?” Blecch.
Comment of the week. :)
Ugh. Asshole.
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Also, no, I wouldn’t be comfortable being in the same room as him. I’d be worried there’d be a scene, people talking behind my back, etc.
In my day to day, I intentionally avoid places that are likely to give me hassles(and I’m not even out yet). Bar got a confederate flag? Not going in. Fellow got a GOP sticker on his truck? Not gonna stick around. Are you enthusiastic about JREF and TAM? Hasta nunca, hombre.
I used to admire James Randi immensely. Now, not so much.
You aren’t missing much. The commentary is mostly the usual suspects making excuses.
There’s Barbara Drescher: “It’s a pretty sad world we live in when nobody is allowed to comment at all about someone’s appearance without being accused of bigotry” and ” I want the 1980s back. Yes, it was a bit oppressive, but people laughed at such over-the-top PCness. Today, we aren’t even allowed to be direct or honest without being accused of bigotry and “privilege”. Frankly, I don’t think most people would recognize real bigotry if it bit them in the ass.” It’s so PC! He’s merely commenting on someone’s appearance!
And Ryan Grant Long reminds us all again that he’s gay and he’s got a certificate in LGBT studies and he has trans friends, therefore he is the arbiter of what can be said about everyone else.
Fuck ’em all.
Interesting™ comments at the link.
What a bigoted ass.
This very afternoon, as I ambled through town, I saw several people who I found somewhat unattractive
I have failed.
I am sorry.
I didn’t realise there was a duty to report such occurrences.
It baffles me that a gay atheist — in other words, a man who’s no doubt encountered his fair share of discrimination — can be so completely fucking callous about the discrimination he perpetuates. What a sad little man he is.
Might I remind you that dildos are quite pleasing when one is interacting with them?
Heh. There is a reason why many of us hate these HRC style gays and lesbians.
Sili @9: touche!
Crip Dyke @21: assholes can be, too!
@Daz:
the only sexually unattractive people with whom I have interacted today are my kids. Of course, the only person other than my kids with whom I have interacted today is Ms Crip Dyke, so I may not be an indiscriminate slut.* But if I do happen across someone unattractive today, perhaps we could exchange reports?
*operant word: may.
Daz:
You misunderstand the rules. You report unattractive trans*people only, because of the huge distraction they cause, I mean it ripples reality itself, can’t miss it.
I do feel that some of the comments on Facebook are relevant. DJ Grothe says he was trying to make an approving comment about someone who looked like they were genderfucking.
These comments are relevant, because DJ’s good intentions are fucking magic, and magically cure him of being a jerk.
Translation: I demand to be able to use “trannies” as both a punchline and a punching bag.
There have been plenty of people I’ve met in in my life who I have not liked the look of, but I know damn well that those gut assessments have been outliers of my cultural bias. Subsequent events have suggested that my bias is not a true predictor of someone else’s nature and capability.
If I’d failed to recognise and adapt to this, I’d consider myself an utter arsehole. Over to you, DJ…
Caine & Crip Dyke
I assure you I’m a past-master at being a distraction. I know my subject. :-)
A atheist cis gay skeptic making trans misogynistic remarks? *yawn* This is just all too common, Grothe just adds the extra ‘fun’ of making his comments to a larger then usual and very approving audience.
Grothe and his ilk and their followers are why I want nothing to do with organized skepticism or atheism. I know atheism + is trying to improve things but there are far too many wastes of protoplasm like Grothe and his followers out there I just can’t deal with them any more, I don’t have the spoons
Can we finally as a community write Grothe off as a loss? Dude has far more interest in saying hurtful things that marginalize people unlike him than he does in learning or being better. There is SO much wrong with that statement: it presupposes ‘passing’ as a goal, it comments on medical interventions of which Grothe (presumably) has no direct knowledge, it holds up a trans person as somehow worth of commentary as opposed to everyone else Grothe encountered, it holds a trans person up as particularly worthy of WIDESPREAD, PUBLIC scrutiny by way of the comment being sent to all of Gothe’s Twits (that’s the right term for Twitter users, right?), it’s victim-blaming a trans person for Grothe’s (and others’) anti-trans bigotry by essentializing hir as “disruptive”* by virtue of hir existence, it’s smirking at attempts to dismantle our absurd gender binary… That’s just off the top of my head. DJ Grothe is a Bad Person™ who should be roundly condemned as such.
*I should note that the very existence of trans people DOES disrupt any claim to an essentialist gender binary, but not much else. Others’ REACTIONS to seeing a trans person, on the other hand, can be wildly disruptive.
DJ’s Theme Song:
Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don’t you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Baby, sometimes I’m so carefree
With a joy that’s hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that, all I have to do is worry
And then you’re bound to see my other side
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
If I seem edgy, I want you to know,
That I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems, and I get my share,
And that’s one thing I never mean to do
Cause I love you,
Oh,
Oh, oh, oh, baby – don’t you know I’m human
I have thoughts like any other one
Sometimes I find myself, Lord, regretting
Some foolish thing, some little simple thing I’ve done
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Yes, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Yes, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Yes, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
He thought it was important enough to post the same thing on twitter, also. (Unless he has a program that auto-posts to both). That one should be completely public and accessible to see.
You know, it just hit me why all the asshats in that comment section who are bitching about tone-police and PC this and PC that piss me off so much. What the hell would they like society to become? Should we all walk around looking each other up and down and giving an honest critique? It IS possible to have an opinion and keep the stupid thing to yourself, and keeping the stupid thing to yourself is probably the only thing that keeps our murder rate from actually being higher than it is. Most adults can handle this concept. Sadly, apparently some still can’t.
Carlie
It’s probably an auto-post from Fb to twitter or vice versa. WordPress does the same.
Caine, Animals or Elvis Costello?
Jesus fuck…the FB thread already reads like a ‘who’ who of shitbags.
Miranda Celeste Hale, for example, weighted in, and says the following unironically:
Would she say the same thing about the pope? About fanatical Muslims? About televangelists? Of course not, because those don’t belong to her ‘tribe’.
A said it before and I’ll say it again, this is what I left religion for? Burn the whole movement to the ground, it’s salvageable at this point.
I see miller beat me to it – I was also going to say that DJ is saying he meant it as a compliment. It seems to my privileged-ass self that even if he had said it differently to make it clearly complimentary, trying to judge whether someone else is demonstrating “I’m going to fuck with your notions of gender” or is just not passing successfully is a mental exercise that
cannot end wellis not your place to sayis a really douchey move.Also, did you know we should refrain from being offended until the time a trans*person weighted in and actually confirmed that xe is offended?
I learned so much today.
Next time someone uses an anti-guy slur, I’ll refrain from commenting, because I’m not gay so I don’t know what’s ‘really’ offensive.
Next time someone tells a racist joke, I’ll politely but quietly laugh and keep my mouth shut, because I don’t belong to a minority, so I can’t really comment.
And now I’m going to vomit a bit…
Hmm, my #36 contains some stupid errors, probably brought on by the rising red mist in my brains.
‘who’ who of shitbags => ‘who-is-who’ of shitbags
it’s salvageable at this point => it’s not salvageable at this point.
Janine:
Animals. And Nina Simone.
Helen Keller jokes.
Heh. Bloody stupid *dw*rd G*mm*r makes an appearance there.
I will not quote it but he remains an inane as you remember him being.
Al Stephanelli has weighed in with support, also, and Emery Emery… I’m surprised Sara Mayhew isn’t there yet.
Yeah, that Helen Keller poster was oh so fucking clever.
Also playing with the cis bigotry of not being able to tell the difference between a transvestite and trans woman.
Carlie, give it time. I am sure this must have blown up in her TL. Wonder if she will tie in Ophelia Benson in this.
Janine:
I suspect I should be very happy I missed this.
Caine, you are right. I would rather not share it.
Caine @25
Yesss. Foolish cismen fear the reality-warping portal emanating from my body. Twisting your very mind to the non-douchebag Other Silent Hill.
Gaze not upon my frame of you might find yourself not being a constant and unending douchenozzle on the internet. Oooooh.
Is that the same DJ Grothe who’s been holding up the Women Thinking Inc vaccine report because he’s feeling disgruntled about Sasha Pixlee not appreciating a rape joke Grothe told him? Just when I thought I couldn’t think less of Grothe, he shows he can be a bigger asshole than I previously knew him to be.
Oh, DJ meant it as a compliement?
What a lousy communicator. It sure didn’t come across as a compliment.
Isn’t he, like, supposed to communicate for a living? Like, people pay him to communicate with other people?
Yeah.
miller @26
Because, when I’m approving of a genderfuck-identified person, I totally use mocking language about how they pass terribly.
Cause apparently the words. “Dudes, I saw this awesome genderfuck person today. Way to stick it to traditional gender norms” are just too fucking difficult to say when you’ve got your head stuck all the way up your colon.
The level of straw-grabbing apologia on that Fb thread is a sight to behold.
And now I need a shower.
Truth in typos.
That’s typical #bravehero waffling. He didn’t mean it as any fucking compliment: he and his pals are just a bunch of conservative wankers who haven’t the fucking spine to own their dogwhistles.
Rhetoricians: doesn’t the “Or so I’d like to think” at the end negate the entire construction of it as a possible compliment? That is the kind of phrase that is an “or I could be wrong, but if I am then the world is a much worse place than I think it should be”, making it even more of an insult. Am I right on this?
Cerberus:
Now that’s a super power worth having.
What is this fucking high school? What adult cares about a stranger’s looks? If you’re hiring a spokesmodel or whatever I guess it matters but not someone you just pass by. There was some article out there exploring the relationship between gay culture and fascism, apparently some gay men take the fascination with manliness to the extreme. It seems relevant here. This includes being a beauty-Nazi too I guess. The fascist placed a lot of emphasis on beauty
Carlie @ 54:
That’s the way it read to me.
#54: Yes.
(IANAR)
About the FTBullies?
Natalie Reed send a blog post worth of tweets his way in response to this. He answered one of them to say that he wasn’t complaining, but celebrating. When your celebration is pissing of the people you’re throwing the party for, you’re doing it very wrong. Even if this had been his intent (and I’m not going to give the guy enough credit to believe that it was) it should’ve become clear to him very quickly that the post had the opposite effect and he should’ve corrected for it and apologized. That also means acknowledging he was wrong, so that’ll never happen. Wby do people care about this guy again?
I’d call him a tool, but he’s the whole goddamn SHED!
Hey, look at that, I was at Chris Rodda’s Sunday Funnies thread today, and a familar name popped up, Paul Loebe. Seems only too fitting that he’d be defending DJ Grothe’s comments as well.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/rodda/2013/11/03/sunday-funnies-83/
From the headline, I expected this post to contain an xtreme fart joke.
Perhaps one could make a case for that, but right now it looks like wishful thinking.
Besides DJ being awful at communicating what he meant, a lot of people are filling hi page with transphobic shit. Meanwhile, in DJ’s words, we are the R*sh L*mb**ghs of the atheist world.
I wonder if that was meant as a compliment.
Paul Loebe has been particularly transphobic.
I suspect that being a white cis- male helps, here. Some vectors of oppression are directed against groups that are visibly identifiable, others are pointed at groups that must first self-identify. “Gay” and “atheist” have no visual cues outside of deliberate ones. D.J. doesn’t have to worry about some homophobic trucker deciding he needs a corrective fist, nor that his barista will spit into his coffee for his lack of faith, because those people don’t automatically know he belongs to those groups. His vulnerabilities are ones that are easier to control and protect if needed.
sharkjack @60
Deeje: Welcome to the party, everyone! I’m doing this all for you!
Partygoers: The floors and walls are caked 100% in human shit, the Pillsbury spinach puffs are all half frozen, and your bartender kicked me in the back when I asked for a glass of champagne.
Deeje: UGH, YOU GUYS I’M CELEBRATING YOU, JEEZE.
Blulanturn at #67 pretty much captures the experience of reading that page.
YOU R*SH L*MB**GHS MISUNDERSTAND! IT IS A COMPLIMENT!
The people praising DJ’s piece tosses around casual transphobia and DJ just calls out the homophobia.
WMDKitty:
Word.
But I wasn’t even there!
Should I send him a photo? =^_^=
(Glad I only got to read the first few comments. Then my eyes rolled right out of my head and I had to go find them.)
I witnessed him making light of Pamela Gay’s complaints about sexism by playing the “Well, I’m gay, and I have to deal with some bigotry” card. Sorry, dude, that doesn’t give you a pass.
Honestly? I think it makes it worse.
What an assmartyr.
It is nice to see that he is getting called out on his douche-baggery at the Twitter. The irrepressible Lauren Zinnia Jones is letting him know just what kind of shithead she thinks he is. He’s getting no support over there.
The skeptic world needs Remedial Twitter 101: Ur doin it rong.
When DJ refers to someone as the “worst-passing transsexual”, it’s “consciousness raising”. When people tell him that this isn’t the right way to say it, they are “rage bloggers”.
I try not to say too much in these threads b/c I appreciate it when allies do heavy lifting and I also know that I can be a scene stealer.
But here’s the thing I just have to say:
DJ:
You see what you want to see, DJ, and like your earlier rape joke, have a tantrum over people not having a sense of humour. Still an asswipe, DJ, nothing more.
Oh Jebus, Cthulhu, and Dlamélish! Does this numbskull have ANY internal filters? Does he consider anything he writes before he commits it to the Internet for all to see?
The answer (e.g. ” No.”) is so fucking obvious it makes these questions rhetoical!
Every time DJ has comes to my attention the last couple of years, it make me glad I never got around to going to TAM. Years ago when I started following the movement I thought TAM would be a great time and told myself I’d go someday. Now I wouldn’t touch TAM of JREF with a 39 and a half foot pole.
EDIT: (i.e. “No.”)
Crip Dyke,
That was brilliant, thank you! =^_^=
*Applause*
And Sara Mayhew makes her appearance.
And she is just as Sara Mayhew as she could be.
HappyNat @ 80:
I disentangled myself from the JREF-forums after Jeff Wagg started pissing on atheists and Hal “I can be a Christian and the skeptic!” Bidlack asked TAM participants not to debate religion. It’s been downhill after that with the tremendous pile-up that was EG at the bottom.
Great news, Sara(h?) Mayhew has made a cartoon just for this occasion.
No “h”. And am I wrong that she is being as Sara Mayhew as she can be?
Crip Dyke (#77)
It’s just such a fucking self-centered position, starting from the underlying notion that non-binary-conforming people’s gender presentations are something they do primarily for onlookers rather than themselves. Like, shouldn’t people who pride themselves on their skepticism be better at realizing that just because they notice something, that doesn’t mean what drew their attention was done for their sake? The whole thing of seeing meaning or personal relevance where there is none underpins so much of what skeptics fight against. Yet, here we have DJ proud of doing that very thing. If he’s not going to be ashamed of his transphobia, he should at least be ashamed of that.
@Tigger, #82:
I hope the following does not sound ungracious. But I thought I’d share:
=====================
I dream of a day when I can make a comment whose substance is:
1. Passing is being seen as something one is not.
2. You don’t know what person X is.
3. So you don’t know what person X is not.
4. So how the hell do you know how passing applies?
and that comment is met with universal derision for being gratuitously obvious and insult to the intelligence of my readers.
Janine (#83)
Someone should point her to Miranda Celeste Hale’s comment about not obsessing over people you hate (quoted by zenlike in #36).
That would be awesome indeed.
Until that day, I will continue to respond to the occasional overheard remark along the lines of “Is that a man or a woman?” with a loud “Yes!”
=^_^=
Sorry, my last was a response to Crip Dyke at comment no. 88.
(quoted from Barbara Drescher at the fb page)
Funny, I was a straight-laced goody-two-shoes evangelical fundamentalist teenager in the 1980s, and even I remember it being a time when kids at school couldn’t say they were gay for knowing they’d get the shit beaten out of them for it, and the one kid who had gotten AIDS was exiled into a trailer in the parking lot and not even allowed in the gym for school assemblies, and my friend could never, never call that woman who lived in her house anything but her mom’s “friend who lives with them because it’s cheaper”. But, you know, you could toss slurs around without people criticizing you for it, so I guess that makes it the golden age.
@ SallyStrange:
Did you notice how she attacks Team Something-Gate for … wanting people to use blockquotes in comment threads? At least, that’s the only interpretation I can put on that sign.
I admit, a tear came to my eye from the laughing. Oh the laughing.
@Tigger, 90
Or, “Well, the odds are certainly in favor of that person fitting within those options.”
Unbelievable. For someone who’s in a group still reviled by much of society around the world, he sure can dish out the hatred. Shame DJ, shame. Oh, but at least he’s not one of those transsexuals – they’re obviously *nothing* like the homosexuals.
Caine,
Critters and Nina are two of my favorite things!
Sure many more people were oppressed, bullied into suicide or to stay in the closet, and they didn’t have any legal rights, but it was so much better because we could make fun of them. What the hell kind of thinking is that? What’s more important, treating people as human or the right to make fun of them? It reminds me of the conservative folks like Rush and Beck talk about the “good old days”, ya now when minorities had their own drinking fountains and women knew their place. gag.
That’s how I read the OP’s title: a critique not merely of his “leadership” but of his skepticism.
@k_machine #56
You can find this gay fascist macho beauty strain played to the hilt by Yukio Mishima. He was fascinated by beautiful male bodies (including his own), and was also a right-wing nutjob. At least he had the courage/insanity of his convictions enough to attempt a forlorn coup against the Japanese government and then commit seppuku when it failed. Mishima certainly had guts, well, that is, until shortly before the finale of the ritual.
@ 93 – no, the blockquote sign is there to identify me, because Mayhew is so stupid that she thinks everyone thinks what she does (theory of mind? wozzat?), and what she thinks is that I’m a fraud and a disgrace because I quote things in blog posts.
Crip Dyke @ 77: Must you steal my thunder again? I log into the thread at #76, note that no-one has pointed out the DJ has no idea of the actual gender or identity of the person he saw, and that his speculation is springs directly from the ground of bigotry. And I write my post, and I refresh and get ready to submit, and there you are!
Fumph!
Oh, and fuck DJ Grothe!
PS. – Has anyone ever talked to James Randi and gotten his reaction to how bad DJG et al. make the JREF look? Do he even care?
Spoken as someone who admires Randi, and wishes to remain doing so.
@ Ophelia Benson, 100:
Ok, that makes more sense. I’d even commented on that particular thread at your place, but it didn’t stick in memory. You know, because it was just so damn silly. :)
Obviously Mayhew’s mind is a Velcro trap for inconsequential topics.
Hairhead @101
I’d be amazed if Randi didn’t know what many peoples’ reaction to Grothe is. Randi supposedly told Carrie Poppy that Grothe would not be running JREF much longer. Grothe remains ensconced as Maximum Leader of JREF so either Poppy is mistaken, Randi is powerless, or Randi doesn’t care.
It’s a pretty sad world we live in when nobody is allowed to comment at all about someone’s bigotry without being called PC.
“I just saw the worst passing gay, black, indigenous, disabled person.”
Seriously, same thing. “Passing” for the entitled class is something people have done to survive in our sick society. It is not something they should have to do. While transwomen are women and may look how ever they see fit, they should not have to look like ciswomen to be accepted in society without ridicule. That’s privileged bullshit. Meanwhile, DJ does not know that person’s background or identity. His judgement is based on what he has decided a woman should look like, not what women actually look like. If he understood that, he’d understand why a woman born with different genitalia still looks just like a woman, even if she is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She looks like herself, you douchnozzle. We don’t have to fit into your vision of what we “should ” look like.
Al Dente:
Source? Because Randi is on record as saying DJ would have a job running JREF as long as he was alive.
Caine,
Pirate Jenny could be seen as a song about passing. ;)
What’s she got to grin?
Jackie @ 105:
The first thought in my head when I read DJ’s idiocy was “what if it was just an ugly [to DJ] person?” Where on earth he gets off stating that the person just *had* to be a trans*person, and he just couldn’t believe that they were honestly a trans*person, but just someone screwing around with a mental mind fuck, I don’t know.
There is depth to DJ, and it’s a deepity of idiocy.
Caine @106
Pharyngula – Carrie Poppy Tells All, from the OP:
Al Dente @ 109, ah, thanks. I forgot about that. It seems Randi is happy to tell people what they want to hear, then just go about doing what he wants to do.
I don’t know this person but he’d better be both exceedingly good looking and well dressed to be the judge of what the rest of us look like. In my experience it is usually ugly and insecure people who feel the need to let everyone know how superior they are to everyone else in the world.
mary2:
Fixed that for you, as one of the points of this thread is that the notion of ‘ugly’ is purely in a person’s own head. What constitutes ugly for one person doesn’t apply to everyone else.
Crip Dyke, comment no. 94
The person that they are referring to is me. =^_^=
I don’t see why those have to be the only options.
My mind is one, my body the other, so I’m usually both, occasionally neither.
I’d very much like it if kids weren’t taught in the future what they are currently taught: that humanity comes in exactly two flavours, cis-hetero-female and cis-hetero-male; and anyone who doesn’t identify with the correct one of those, as decided by other people when they were born (or even before), is not quite fully human.
If future generations didn’t have their minds poisoned from an early age, think what humanity could achieve? No longer would we be discarding the potential of more than half the human race, because they don’t fit in the ‘cis-hetero-male’ box and therefore should have restricted opportunities.
That’s why transphobia and misogyny are even more hurtful when they come from someone who doesn’t actually fit in the box – it’s as if they are saying “Please include me – I’m more like you than they are! Let me in and I’ll help you to keep them out!”
If it wasn’t actively hurting people, I would find these assholes absolutely hilarious as none of them clearly have any idea what the word “irony” means. In fact, the grand majority of them don’t seem to have any idea what anything means, but they’re pretty sure they’re supposed to abuse it.
I mean, seriously, a fucking Slymetwit saying “Don’t obsess on people you hate?” HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING FOR FUCK’S SAKE?
Sorry, I’m just really tired of this shit, and tired of people circling the wagons around these fuckballs.
@ Caine, 108:
Where did DJ say the person was ugly? Doesn’t pass I’ll grant you would = visibly trans if we knew something about the person’s ID.
But doesn’t pass = visibly trans = ugly?
How does that work?
ah yeah, those good old times when people with AIDS were condemned for it and left to rot; when marital rape was still legal in some states, but “sodomy” wasn’t.
But at least you could be honest and direct without anyone pointing out that you’re being honestly and directly bigoted.
@Tigger
Aha! Thus the certainty. I getcha.
Yeah, the GL, “We’re just like you!” crowd does that with persuasive advertising based around 2 lesbians (not dykes! never dykes!) in the suburbs with their child playing in the single family home or yard thereof. It really gets to me.
Not that I don’t have sympathy for the person who is feeling that, but I can’t condone the direction they go based on their feelings.
DJ Grotesque lives down to his name again.
I really marvel at how Adjunct Professor of English Miranda Hale and Professor Barbara Drescher ever got their teaching gigs, let alone a prominent position in the skeptics movement. When they are really just two nasty persons who happen to be literate.
As to DJ Grothe, I guess the fact that he is still at JREF is the message here.
I have no patience for this bullshit.
Little children–like, under 5–who don’t know any better, who have unfotunately been raised in a culture that stuck pink socks or blue socks on them five minutes after they were introduced into the world, and have been forced into a rigid gender binary ever since, who can only learn about the world by asking questions…okay, I’m not going to get angry when they ask (in a loud voice, always, it seems), “Mommy is that a boy or a girl?”
And you know what? When this happened with my baby brother, even my super-conservative, religious, transphobic parents apologized profusely to the person and told my little brother that it wasn’t polite to ask something like that, and it wasn’t any of his business, anyway. And everyone involved knew my two-year-old brother wasn’t deliberately being cruel–he had no idea what he was saying was hurtful! But they still apologized, still told him to apologize, and taught him to be more respectful in the future. It’s just that easy! When you make a mistake–regardless of your super wonderful intent!–and you get called on it, you fucking apologize!
But, I’m sorry, if a conservative, homeschooled, Evangelical kid like me understood by middle school that saying something like that was inappropriate, if my ultra-religious, rigidly conservative, virulently anti-gay & anti-trans parents wouldn’t say something like that (in public) or allow us to say it, you can’t tell me that a mildly intelligent gay atheist, leader of a large skeptic organization, figurehead and speaker for an international movement, didn’t know he was tweeting/facebooking a statement that had the potential to hurt, offend, and/or alienate many people. No. I just can’t buy that he’s that ignorant.
I can’t get over the “disruptive” part of Grothe’s comment. What the fuck is “disruptive” about being a masculine woman, cis or trans?
I think it’s more likely that they do have internal filters and this is what we get when they see no reason to censor. This is how they treat ‘safe targets’. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more shit expressed in private towards other groups that they can’t say because we live in such a PC age.
The PC comment says it all, the problem isn’t that DJ said something wrong, the problem is that people are uppity.
As an aside the use of the term PC immediately disproves it’s premise. We have supposed lefties parroting right wing jargon and talking points ffs.
This whole thing is just saddening but it shows how human folks are. You’re obviously not part of “my tribe” so I’m going to insult and ridicule you. Sheesh.
My mind is still stuck on Barbara’s “Oh, how I long for the days when no one would call us on shit when we talked about people” comment, because that sentiment comes up so often in this stuff. And what it comes down to is that they just don’t realize that people in those marginalized groups were never ok with those comments, but didn’t have the social standing to even complain about it back then. So they’re creating a fantasy past in which people in marginalized groups were all ok with everything, when really it was a world so oppressive that they couldn’t even risk voicing any negative opinion and at most just laughed nervously to cover their pain.
And people like Barbara Dresher think that was a good thing.
Hey all! I saw someone today I found particularly unattractive. And to top it all off, they had the nerve to be out in public, where they were distracting people with their non-normalness. The bastard!
/snark
Jesuuuuuuuus!
WTF, Grothe gets worse by the day.
But don’t you ever stick anything on him. Not his lies (never a report about TAM), not him inviting speakers he personally witnessed commiting sexual assault, not his transphobic remarks.
+++
Tigger
While I still struggle with it (damn, this whole binary thing is fuck deeply engrained) I make a conscious point about using phrases like “men, women, everybody else and in between” when talking to the kids. It is hard to break because they have so much data about boy=penis, girl=vagina and literally none about anybody else. I’m careful to use phrases like “most men have a penis, most women have a vagina, some don’t.”
+++
Since this is coming up, can I ask a question? Kick me to TD if you consider it a derail.
One professor keeps using male/female as a binary. He makes a disclaimer that of course he’s only talking about the biological sex and that he’s aware that there are other people but please don’t storm his office yadda yadda.
The whole thing just serves as an example of something you can code with 0-1, so it’s actually not even the point of the lecture, but still with all of his disclaimers I find it fuck annoying because it keeps perpetuating cis-normativity just because he’s too lazy to think about another example (seriously, why not use Rh factor +/-? Everybody should have heard about them, right?).
Is my cramping gut right on this?
Fwiw I agree, Giliell. Using m/f as an arbitrary example when what they really want to talk about is coding 0-1 merely serves to make students in the class conscious of their sex (which as we know tends to make people perform to gender expectations, as in girls doing less well on maths tests when there is a m/f tick box to fill in before starting). So it’s not just irrelevant, its – if anything – actually harmful.
And as you point out, it’s not exactly difficult to come up with alternative examples that don’t carry any problematic cultural weight. Dammit.
Aside from the insensitivity to any number of potential problems a trans-woman could have in a southern state could this have just been a Halloween costume? Not that that would excuse Grothe, maybe make it even more ridiculous.
cswella #62
And now that link goes nowhere anymore, the post has been deleted. A follow up post has been posted:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/rodda/2013/11/05/there-will-be-no-more-sunday-funnies/
See DJ? This is what your ‘allies’ do. Congratulations.
*Only got five hours of sleep last night thanks to insomnia*
*Woke up with big obvious bags under my eyes*
*Spent the last hour working u the self-esteem to leave my apartment*
*Reads this post and realizes what the assholes out there would think of me*
*Decides to just stay inside today*
And now DJ has TERFs defending him:
If his comment was truly meant as a compliment and he and his buddies really are not transphobic, I suppose we’ll be seeing them denounce such support, right? Right?
@Giliell:
He can absolutely use that example. He just has to say, “Imagine a scientific study being done on only male and female people, we can now code biological sex as 0 or 1”.
It actually disrupts the binary in a sneaky way. Those people who are least aware of the artificiality of binary sex will be most affected – possibly even freaked out, “Imagine…?” they might think, “aren’t all scientific studies on people done on only male and female persons?”
Why I can’t give him credit for such a policy is, 1) he’s not willing to defend his choices, and 2):
What does only talking about the biological sex do? Transsexual people exist but intersex people don’t, is his point?
His disclaimer does nothing to solve the problem.
======
@Everyone.
I have been complicit. I got sucked in by someone else framing DJ as calling the person “unattractive”. I didn’t remember the word in DJ’s text quoted in the OP, but I couldn’t remember every single word and assumed that something was in there that made it a reasonable interpretation. But when mentioned “ugly” I was sure that I hadn’t seen that word, so I went back.
There is nothing at all about this trans person being ugly or unattractive in DJ’s writing as quoted in the OP. If others have been following along on FB or twitter (it would turn my stomach to no point, so I haven’t) and seen these words *before* using them here as quotes then that’s a proper slam on DJ.
Otherwise, there’s a problem here.
So let’s …
1) criticize him on what he did say, not what he didn’t.
2) try to pay attention to our own biases about the appearances of trans persons (yes, very definitely including me. If I ever believe I’m physically attractive before I die, I’ll have to sit in stupefied amazement for a week)
=====
crap there was a #3, but I was interrupted to break up the littles fighting & now I can’t get it back. Possibly later.
Giliell, comment no. 125; I cannot thank you enough for fighting against your programming to try ensure the false notion of the gender binary stops with us. There is no possible excuse for us oldies to pass on our prejudices to future generations and ruin their potential as ours was ruined in so many ways.
I also agree with Crip Dyke at comment no. 131.
What DJ did was bad enough, without commenters interpreting it to say things it didn’t, and attacking the strawman version. It seems to be bringing out a lot of hidden prejudices…
DJ made no hint as to whether he thought that the person he was immensely rude about was MtF or FtM; whether he found them to be attractive (or not) in any way; or even why he thought they were transexual in the first place and trying to pass or why his opinion was that they were failing.
None of that matters, of course; what matters is that he thought his nasty little opinions on another person were appropriate to spread across the internet and that he had a right to do that without causing an outcry.
Speculation about the person he allegedly saw, and described in such a mean way, is a red herring as much as speculation about the looks and motivation of Elevator Guy was, waaaaaay back at the beginning of the Deep Rifts.
The point being that decent people do not treat other humans as the means to an end.
Terry Pratchett put it best (Granny Weatherwax, talking to Mightily Oats in Carpe Jugulum):
Crip Dyke #131
I don’t know if my comment upthread is what you’re referring to, but just in case…
FWIW, when I framed my half-joking comment about having seen some people I found unattractive, the thought behind it was that I’d made a purely subjective judgement of [something] about them which I would never consider using to denigrate them, just as DJ made a purely subjective judgement of [something] which he should never…etc. I didn’t mean it as anything but analogy, and I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I did.
Thumper @ 124
Hey! I had to buy groceries and we don’t have delivery service here in the sticks.
Besides, it could have been far, far worse. I could have been naked. (Trust me, I make Wilbur Whateley look like a GQ cover model.)
So, what is it with people in public positions and the seeming inability to say “whoops, sorry?”
I mean, this shouldn’t have gone anywhere. If he was making a compliment poorly, he should’ve realized it when the first person took offense at his words. He could have closed the post and offered a quick retraction and apology.
But he didn’t. He doubled down and made himself look worse for it. And now he’s got a bunch of TERFs and transphobes and arseholes in his comment thread.
@ zenlike:
Well, technically, it’s the “sanctimonious commenters” ranting about how “grievously offended they [were]” that caused Chris Rodda to shut down the Sunday Funnies. Paul Loebe’s just an upstanding guy who works with American Atheists/Rock Beyond Belief who really likes posting blind jokes (in Braille!) then laughing when y’know, blind people reading the thread get upset, other people question why she’s defending his behavior, etc. It’s just humor!
So yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to help suck all the fun out of comics forever. :/
@Goodbye Enemy Janine #22: HRC? The Human Rights Campaign? Is there something awful about that organization that I’m about to wish I hadn’t had to find out?
@Daz, 133:
That I inferred what I did says as much about me as your choice of analogy says about you – probably more. I’m not attacking people here, I’m calling out a dynamic that I didn’t want to remain hidden.
B/c I want to fight it & avoiding the -4 and/or miss chance makes it easier to get my vorpal blade through its neck: snicker-snack!
carlie @123
Exactly.
It’s a time when the oppressed groups were so oppressed that they couldn’t even speak in their own defense or if they were they were so thoroughly ignored or threatened that they were treated as non-existent (with a heavy price to pay if they insisted on standing up for their own existence), with culture and media doing backup on the impression by refusing to show any depictions of them to mainstream culture.
And here’s the feeling they are actually nostalgic for: it was a time when the dominant group could trust that other dominant group members would fully share their bigotry and that oppressed group members would be too scared to resist their bigotry. In short, where they could feel safe relating bigotry to other dominant group members without that dominant group member happening to know someone who belonged to the oppressed group or just viewing the oppressed group as human and deserving of basic respect.
In short, they hate that the culture has moved on. That those particular forms of bigotry are no longer a guaranteed method of improving one’s standing in the eyes of other dominant group members and the world is not such anymore that one can trust that almost every dominant group member for the most part will share your bigotry and be pleased by it.
They are sad that the world has grown up and moved on without them and they are expected to grow up as well and treat human beings like human beings if one wants “mainstream” social approval and they want to pretend like this simple facet of reality moving on and archaic forms of outright bigotry being less socially rewarded is some great oppression to overcome (because much like right-wing Christians have jihad envy or science envy, bigots are envious of how the oppressed have the moral high ground and the moral authority of fighting for social justice against a harsh world instead of just punching down to protect one’s unearned advantages).
So they pretend that changing social norms are some kind of plot against them personally by nefarious vaguely foreign forces, that they’ve lost something precious in the way being an out-and-out bigot is occasionally responded to in negative manner rather than cheered, and that something so common and increasingly normal that its becoming more and more a mainstream thing is some weird new invention that they are completely new to experiencing (so they shouldn’t receive less social rewards for it) even though they have encountered it enough to be extremely bitter about the whole trend.
Sorry, you whiny fuck, the world has moved on and you’ve had decades to get used to it. Move the fuck on and do the bare minimum of work, you lazy fucks.
Gileill @125
I may be stuck in the closet in my jobs, but the one thing I refuse to tamper when I’m tutoring in statistics is when I get one of those “male/female” “50%/50%” questions, I always always add the snark “because apparently intersex people don’t exist”, because fuck that erasing ascientific lazy bullshit. And it does a tiny bit of good that all of my other enforced silences fail to do.
@gussnarp:
This is just one of the latest outrages.
But there is a long history. Transgriot takes a more historical approach.
The first of the 3 Transgriot links itself has a number of links, and you should follow those so that I don’t have to repost them all here.
But then on top of that, they have a history of classism, ableism, and anti-kink. If you look at their advertising campaigns, you’ll see suburban lesbians (not dykes!) with kids and professional-looking gay men without kids. The message? We’re just like you, you privileged, middle class influential and influenceable folk!
Don’t target groups with fewer median years of education: write them off as uneducable. Don’t take photos of people who would look out-of-place in suburbutopia: HRC is fine with firing or redlining being predicated on being **queer** so long as it is not predicated on the mere existence of a same sex relationship that takes on no public overtones of actual sexuality or gender transgression or poverty.
Query: How can a person who is just sitting in a room, not making a lot of noise, not smelling bad, not singing off key or demanding that you hear the gospel of Dr Who, just sitting there and looking like xe doesn’t “pass” well be “disruptive”? You don’t have to look at xer you know. Look in the opposite direction and this person will have zero impact on you. No one owes you a certain appearance. If you can’t handle how they look the onus is on you to move.
Gussnarp, the HRC has a history of leaving gender variant people in the cold with the excuse that it would be easier for the straight people to accept gays and lesbian rights without the issue of gender expression.
People asking how this can be “disruptive” might want to read Crip Dyke’s lounge comment from a few days ago.
He’s merely trying to make amends for past misdemeanors, by trying to make common ground with the other group of bigots who hate transgender people.
Any ideas who they are? Answers on a postcard!
@Erin
I agree. He’s not that ignorant. He’s that bigoted. It’s been a while since his claim on the benefit of the doubt went down the drain.
DJ is an asshole. He knows it and he doesn’t care. Because he’s an asshole.
Hey–I wonder if you guys could help me out? I’m trying to reconstruct the argument on the Sunday Funnies #83 thread that’s been disappeared. I got the first few from a google cache, and the last 1/3 or so from someone who had subscribed to it later on, and of course I have other people’s posts from when I subscribed–but I don’t have my own & I spent a lot of time on them! If someone has them from a subscription or whatever if you could make a pastebin or something I’d hugely appreciate it! Thanks :-)
CD
Nah, he really doesn’t challenge anybody’s ideas about sex and gender.
It’s more the usual “let’s pretend there are only male and female” cisnormativity.
As I said, it’s only in order to demonstrate coding in 0-1.
The “biological sex” is me trying to convey this from German, which doesn’t have sex and gender but just sex (as a word).
Honestly, I’m doubtful that this guy is actually interested in changing small things just to be a bit inclusive. I did that lecture last year already (and then couldn’t sign up for the exam) and I remarked that he only ever has boys in his examples (this is a teaching lecture). “Oh thank you very much, I didn’t notice, yadda, yadda, will change that”
Guess what?
@Giliell:
It was a “what could he do,” comment (my #133) not a “what Seedy thinks he’s doing” comment.
Oh, oh, I know this one!
Now he’s always quoting Alice Schwarzer, his exhortations towards ingenious work always use Hildegaard von Bingen as the standard of excellence, and he can’t shut up about how history has straight-washed someone as important as Sweden’s Queen Christina who abdicated so she could be a mercenary general kicking ass through central Europe, a writer, a kingmaker, and an art Matron: and people thought La Pucelle d’Orléans challenged gender roles!
He must be as annoying as a full bladder on a long road trip.