MRA Gets Around

So I managed to get two posts done before crashing last night. That’s not bad, right? It’s not the full three, sure, but now I’m freed up to talk about the absolutely batshit rant I woke up to find circulating around the blogowebz. I’m a little behind on this compared to my FTB colleagues, on account of time zones and the human physiological need for sleep and other inconveniences, but I’ll take a go anyway.

Last night TJ Kinkaid, known more popularly as The Amazing Atheist, went on some kind of incredibly vicious tirade on reddit, deliberately trying to provoke a trigger response in a redditor who’d expressed once having been a victim of rape. This was apparently all motivated by his disagreement with the use of trigger warnings on the internet (almost as stupid and useless as NSFW, amirite!?) and how incredibly angry he was that the dogmatic, intolerant feminazis were trying to “control sexuality” and ruining atheism and blah blah blah we’ve heard this all before. Though usually without the same horrifically violent, degrading, hateful exploitation of rape and trauma to “make a point”. Various wonderful rebuttals to his arguments are currently scattered all over the FTB today, so I’d mostly just like to direct you there. I don’t much feel like retreading ground that has already thoroughly been covered. And landscaped. And set up with a little garden.

Instead I’m going to tell you about something kind of spooky. [Read more…]

The Duality Of Skepticism

For a long while now I’ve been increasingly fascinated by a sort of underlying tension I’ve noticed within skepticism… the community and the movement, in so far as the two can reliably be said to exist, and even the philosophy and set of values. I’ve felt more and more, as I’ve immersed myself deeper into skepticism, that there seem to be two similar but distinct skepticisms, operating in parallel. And I’ve been trying to suss out exactly how to articulate this, what it means, and why we have this tension. Is it as simple as two distinct philosophies that accidentally shared the same word? Is it branching out into different interpretations of a common value? Is it based upon people arriving at a similar set of concepts by differing means and motivations? Am I just imagining it?

And if I’m not imagining it, what can we learn from it, about who we are and where we’re heading? [Read more…]

Conservatives In Baltimore Up In Arms Against Trans Rights Law

I am a bloody idiot.

I spent all day lying around in bed watching Sherlock and eating junk food. It’s now quarter past midnight and I have absolutely nothing scheduled to go up in the morning. I am now going to attempt to crank out three posts before my brain shuts down from sleepy.

-sigh-

First we have this awful business coming out of Baltimore. A new law is being proposed in Baltimore County that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace, housing and public spaces on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Effectively, it’s a “bathroom bill”, the kind of legislation designed to allow trans people to access basic services, rights, opportunities and necessities without our lives being needlessly complicated by the irrational fears of others. It protects us from the instiutionalized discrimination we typically face on a daily or near-daily basis, such as the inability to rent apartments, land a job or go pee in a safe, non-humiliating space. [Read more…]

“Reiki For Trans People”

So I was fucking around on Twitter the other day, as I am often wont to do (@nataliereed84, hint hint hint), and happened to catch a re-tweet from some place called trans-health.com. This site has existed since 2001, but sort of fell under the radar for awhile before recently being purchased by transguys.com and re-launched this past December with some very spiffy, slick, professional-looking, doctor-y science-y medicalish graphics. [Read more…]

The Artifice Of Femininity

There’s a certain scene included in virtually every film, documentary or television series depicting MtF transgenderism. It’s worth at least one shot in the trans documentary drinking game, and is usually framed facing a mirror, looking over her shoulders into a trans woman’s reflection. She’s carefully applying her make-up. Putting on her face. The camera may lovingly detail the painstaking process of assembling her outfit, perhaps putting on a wig or plucking her eyebrows, painting her nails or fastening her bra, pulling her socks over her knees or squeezing her feet into her six-inch stiletto boots. Perhaps a quip gets thrown in about how beauty is pain, and she remarks on  how the work, effort and sacrifice is worth it to be a woman.  Bit by bit we follow along as she constructs her female self to present to the world. She puts on her disguise.

I hate this scene. [Read more…]

“I Am The Lorax. I Speak For The Gender Binary.”

On Thursday night I went out to see The Muppets with a few friends. It was actually really, really good! Funny, cute, and clearly a sincere, heartfelt love letter to The Muppet Show and simultaneously an homage to Muppet fandom. It was fun seeing it with a pretty big group of really cool people too, Muppet fans all. I had a nice time. I even got a little bit teary-eyed when they sang The Rainbow Connection, which I honestly consider one of the greatest songs of the 20th century.

The quality of the movie, though, was just barely able to make up for the unspeakable Eldritch horror that was the trailer for the upcoming CG-animated adaptation of The Lorax. Yes, dear readers, it looks every bit as bad as you fear, and then some.

[Read more…]

How To Ask A Trans Person Questions Without Being Insensitive About It

Okay. We get it. You’re curious. You have questions. Lots of them. That’s totally understandable. Transgenderism is, to you, something really strange and hard to comprehend, and also intensely fascinating as it calls into question some of the fundamental assumptions about identity and gender. We’re rare, too, and a great many of us prefer to remain invisible. You don’t meet us very often, and when you do, it’s rare that it’s an occasion where you’re able to ask anything. There are very few trans people who are out there willing to make themselves available as sources of information. So you want to take that rare opportunity to ask some of the questions you’ve had floating around in your head ever since you first heard there were such a thing as people who change their sex.

What’s the harm, right? You’re only expressing interest and trying to understand. You’re reaching out, showing a desire to learn and grow. You’re demonstrating your acceptance through your willingness to engage.

Well.. sort of. Trouble is, you’re also often expressing entitlement, and reenacting some of the forces of oppression that make our lives a bit less than wonderful. Unintentionally, of course, but as we should all understand by now, intent isn’t magic, and consequences are consequences.

It’s important to understand that there’s a whole lot more of you (cis people with questions) than there are of us (openly trans people to ask). As such, we’re bombarded with questions all the time. It defines (and detracts from) a pretty significant chunk of our social interactions. And it’s virtually guaranteed that whatever your question is, this is not the first time we’ve been asked.

There’s a couple things that have resulted in this being on my mind. The FAQ and the questions sent in in response to my “Ask Me Stuff!” post are NOT amongst them. Those questions were solicited, which is a totally different kind of thing, and I’m appreciative of all the questions readers did send in. I’m talking here about unsolicited questions. There was the little interaction with commenter Eternally Learning in response to my post In Memory Of Another Natalie, based on some prior history at a skeptic web forum, and there was also an annoying little run-in I had yesterday where a stranger at a check-cashing shop asked me a series of very personal questions, such as when I first knew I was trans, whether I was on hormones, and how my family had reacted.

So I figured it might be helpful to put up a little guide for how to ask your questions in a respectful way. [Read more…]

“But I’m An Ally! I’m On Your Side!”

Lately I’ve been doing this thing where I make a point of trying to call people out on their cissexism and transphobia. Typically it’s not the big, nasty, evil, “you’re perverted and delusional and ought to be shot on sight” stuff, since it’s unlikely I ever end up interacting with such people anyway. Instead it’s usually the little things, the tiny little micro-aggressions that piece by piece help normalize a culture of intolerance.

One of the most common defenses I’ve been finding myself having to deal with, on a pretty frighteningly consistent basis, is people saying “But I’m an ally! I’m on your side!”. This can end up being expressed even by people trying to defend some horrendously cissexist views. Apparently, for them, all it takes to earn your “ally” card, be “on my side” and therefore magically above criticism is that you not think I’m a horrific sub-human who doesn’t deserve any human rights at all and, as mentioned, ought to be shot on site. That’s all it takes, apparently, to qualify as being “on the side” of trans rights, and immune to having one’s assumptions or preconceptions about gender and transsexuality, however vile, open to being questioned. [Read more…]