Cancel culture - From the other side

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So, what you're saying is that if bathrooms were designated for the "sex" of the person using them, not the "gender", then you would have no issue with the cartoon, being that the "male\female" and "newt\crocodile" are both biological terms?

Now, with the interchangability of gender\sex in common language, how are you to know that ordinary people don't understand bathrooms to be for people of a "sex" and not a "gender"?

Also (from another topic):


So, to clarify, you "acknowledge the danger of people using transgender as excuse made up on the spot to enter a space", yet see someone bringing this danger up in public as being "an attack on trans women"...

This being the case, can you explain what is wrong with someone else also sharing this belief in the risk of the potential danger, and opening up a public discussion\debate on whether it is an acceptable risk? The fact that you consider the "risks\benfits" in a given way does not give you (or anyone else) the right to punish someone else who evaluates this "risk\benefit" differently, nor to force others to accept unquestioningly your beliefs.

How do you decide if someone has no external indication\evidence of being trans?

Look, I would fine with questioning someone if they put no evidence in presenting as their identified gender, in fact I might probably encourage it as long as it is not done in an offensive way. At best the person could provide some tips on what they could do to look more feminine or masculine, help them out. At worst you pissed off maybe even a cis person who does not want your input on how they dress or present themselves. Even better you might turn off an actual pervert.

The problem is that things like this comic don't do that, in practice they instead create fear and suspicion of anyone not considered presenting well enough. Simply it is not done sensitive enough. I have already given examples that it could have shown that there are acceptable trans people, but instead the whole thing thrives on a fear factor that is going to give every woman with an Adam's apple or maybe did not shave the best and most recent, an open to being the target of an anti-trans rant.

Those are the reasons why people are upset, because it is the equivalent of saying any minority is their very worst stereotype. If it was not meant to come across that way, then they should have tried harder.

So these people are afraid of being bigots?

This whole article makes zero sense, it's like a criminal being worried about going to prison and getting caught and I am sitting here thinking "so stop committing crimes?"

But I sometimes pity bigots because bigots don't know they are bigots so how can they stop being bigots? I can imagine this becoming a mental disorder in the future because it will impact their life, well because of human evolution.

Okay, you starting to see my point.

You are right that gender and sex have historically been interchangeable, which muddies the water a bit with historical building of bathrooms. Even that bathrooms have largely points with dealing with biological purposes of getting rid of waste.

The point comes that such things as intersex toilets exist, with really the only thing you are probably going to miss out on is urinals, the toilet bowls are going to be the same. The question is why do we separate the toilets in the first place. The argument is that it is not for just having a dick or not, you are not going to send a man to the ladies room because his dick was chopped off for some reason. The real reason is that it makes people feel more comfortable, that they might not want to go to the same bathroom as the person that looks like the opposite gender. That reason is probably incredibly complicated and cultural in ways that might not take into account of lesbian/gay/bisexual people, and we already had that discussion in the past over gay panic, but I think we are past the point where we should worry about that.

Truth simply is that women might feel uncomfortable going to the toilet with a man entirely presenting as male, maybe with a beard and stuff, as men might feel uncomfortable going to the men's room with a pretty lady in a dress, regardless of what their pieces are that make up their sex. I am pretty sure most of us logically agree how someone may present can be more important than what is in their pants in feeling comfortable with them in the next stall. After all what are even the chances you see what is in their pants? So it bathrooms are decided by gender.

I even acknowledge how much of a difficult subject that can be as someone identifying as non-binary, as technically under that logic I probably should not even be in the men's room, and as someone who has historically felt a little uncomfortable there anyway, probably due to those hidden feeling, fml. Until there are non-binary bathrooms, I will stick to the men's room of which I mostly present as. Let people feel comfortable.

Believe it or not, I am being consistent. The problem is presentation. You yourself agreed that presentation is important when bringing up the idea of a person who put no work into their presentation for the gendered bathroom they want to go into.

To talk about this subject you have to present it in a way that is not so absolute that it leaves out actual trans people, that they should be included in this discussion to be protected. Like what this says about trans-men that must be newts going into the crocodile pond. I think a lot more people would be receptive to it if there was some sort of acknowledgement that trans-women could go into this space without being a threat. I think that this is an incredibly reasonable expectation.

I hope that this shows that I am intellectually honest enough to understand the threat of actual perverts, while I want to include other people worthy of being protected that would get thrown into the same category as the pervert. More than anything we should be kind to each other, there are a lot of people worthy of being protected, but I don't hold a lot of sympathy for those that would throw some of them to the wolves because it would be easier.

Overall I would love systematic changes that would reduce the amount of these types of perverts by eliminating things like toxic masculinity. After all, I refuse to believe that there is something biological that makes men more dangerous outside greater strength from testosterone. Live for the day that a predatory lesbian would be an as big risk to a woman as from a man (I mean this in no negative way to lesbians in general, nor excuse to actual bad behavior lesbians).

The point is, though, that you have accused the cartoonist of being transphobic, simply becasue she pointed out an issue related to "self identifying" which you yourself admit is an issue.

You are seeing the cartoon (and judging the cartoonist) as implying "all transgender people are represented in the crocodile", whereas the cartoonist (both in the cartoon and accompanying letter) indicated the problem is that the crocodile is claiming (self identifying) to be a "newt", but the only evidence of such is it's words (with no change to mannerism\appearance\etc. having been made to indicate a true intention to change).

And that is where the "cancel culture" problem lies: People rush to judgement on their assumptions regarding words\actions, without taking the time to consider what was said and if they are misunderstanding the intended message\actions. (Maybe a "newt-ified crocodile" was needed near the pond, to help clarify the issue?)

I said that a "newt-ified crocodile" would have helped, but I can also see that the concept is ridiculous, because clearly a crocodile can't turn into a newt, it is biology, which does not lend itself well to the social construct concept of gender.

Rather than rushing to assumptions, I would rather believe that cartoonist would know her craft well enough to know the impact her picture would have. This is just like case of accusing people of reading into Rowling's words that she is transphobic, when the simple fact is that she is a writer, she has to know what impact her words are going to have when a lot of people easily understand them as misleading and offensive.

I feel comfortable sticking to the accusation that she is transphobic, until I see evidence that says otherwise. Even if she is not actively conveying hatred and fear of trans people, I think the work speaks volumes of what she thinks inside. Since her accompanying letter was about how she used to think that she might have been a boy, and thinks that in the current climate she would be convinced that she is transgender, none of which means it is true, but gives a hint that she thinks that transgender people are confused.

It matter not if her main concious intention when making it was about people who are not transgender and thus have no effort into actually transitioning, the effect is something that paints trans people as dangerous, nothing about the picture says that it is only about the "fakes". In practice it is transphobic. If you don't find it transphobic, that is on you, most trans people and allies would say that it is transphobic, since it would be no different than if someone made it with the intention of being so.



You don't get to decide if people find this offensive, and something they are unwilling to want debate based on. But as you have seen, we have debated based on it, and I still don't think you understand what impact this has. I have already said there is a possibility that some bad faith people might abuse transgender acceptance, are you able to agree what impact this comic could have on trans people. That someone might see this comic, and the next time they see someone who does not pass well she might harass their already damaged mental health, scream for her boyfriend to beat the "pervert", have her kick her own daughter out because she "has no daughter"?

Art is not harmless, a simple comic can influence a hate crime.

So, let's consider this another way...What would you include\use in a cartoon that was intended to highlight the potential danger (which you have admitted exists) of a "self identifying" trans person entering a "Safe area" for those of the gender which they had "self identified as"?

How would you differentiate the people\groups involved, being that "biology" is not an option available?

This comic expresses some real fear of very particular possible danger that calls for systematic adressing.
Dismissing this fear as "transphobia" or even "hate crime" won't make it disappear - neither the fear nor the possible danger. Both need adressing, not dismissing.

PS - personally, I find this comic male-phobic, not trans-phobic - portraying a biological male as crocodile suggests inevitable predatory nature inprinted into one's biology and females as their inevitably powerless victims. That's IMO very, very unfair towards all biological males, regardless of their gender identity.

The comic causes real fear of harassment and a worsening of systematic oppression of transgender people. A spreading of transphobia.

Even if the intention is not transphobia, that is the impact. If I went and posted it on a transgender board I would probably get myself banned. I would go so far as to say it as implicit transphobia, since a plain reading is not flattering to anyone who does not look like their gender.

What part of the comic says that it is not about regular trans people? No part does, it is incredibly easy to get the impression that the fear in general is about any trans person. Thus transphobia.

There might be a time to address a danger of people using identifying as transgenderism to be a creep, but it is not from something like this that sets the tone with transgender people needing to defend their existence against the threats of predators. This is 2020, not 1990 where someone turning out to be trans could be the butt of a joke.

If you want to make a political statement about possible dangers of predators, actually put the work in so it does not read like transphobic propaganda. I know response going to tell me that I can't just label things as transphobic, but that just makes someone look like a white person saying that a heroic picture of a man in a white bedsheet and pointed hood does not look racist to them and you shouldn't label it as such. It comes across as incredibly offensive.

I am informing you all now, this comic is not okay.

As I put in my PS, I find it not okay, too, but for different reasons.
What does this comic say about cis-males? It suggests they are all awful predators we need to hide from!

Don't you think the TERF problem is more in the male-hating RF part - but only TE part made it highlighted and causes reactions? Like it was okay to hate males but not transfemales.

Of course I think that radical feminists against men in general is bad. As am AMAB feminist I think that anything that portrays "males" as dangerous monsters hungry to prey on helpless girls as something very gross, it only furthers culture that allows toxic masculinity to stay strong. I have had my fair share of it and assumed to have intended to have groped a classmate when I was in the 5th or 6th grade. And I have similar thoughts about another experience where acting like pornography is some sort of disrespectful attack on women too that happened to me in highschool, I think that there is a related to TERF called SWERF (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist).

As a moderate feminist, the radicals that not in the times of what feminism stands for (currently mostly Intersectionality), I don't have a lot of patience for the different kinds of radicals that discriminate. But not to make it look like this is just an attack on women, men can indeed also be TERFs, the type that saying that they want to protect female spaces and thus don't want transgender people in them.

So we agree this cartoon prolongs harmful stereotypes about both cis-men and trans-women.

I also think it does harm cis-women as portraying them as helpless victims.
I actually did encounter a pervert trying to gain access to female-only space claiming to be a transwoman. I can tell you, we got rid of him very quickly and not very politely. If a lesbian cis-woman behaved like he did, we would throw her out as well.
On the other hand, when an obviously cis-male respectfully entered female bathroom to make some very urgent announcement, no one acted offended.
So, when it comes to safe spaces, in my experience, it's much more about behavior, not biology nor identity. But how to regulate it with laws?

Bradleigh... you are not part of "cancel culture" - because we have just discussed something you disagree with.

"Cancel culture" does not need to be left-wing. My right-wing parents did pretend some phenomenons they didn't like never existed, to quite disastrous results. Silencing and dismissing the opposite views can come from any side.

That behavior thing is probably the best that can be hoped for. The bad faith people who would actually try that sort of thing will likely give the game away, and I would like to think that women can usually look after their own spaces without quoting a law, and there be some set standard that someone looks too man like. I have read cases where cis women have been victims of being accused of being men, because people decided to be overzealous.