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Dox47
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25 Sep 2022, 12:01 pm

ilovepalmtrees wrote:
She said trans women weren't women.


They aren't, they're trans women, as I said in the OP of the thread.


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Dox47
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25 Sep 2022, 12:06 pm

At the 1/2 way mark of TIBH, it's interesting how her depictions of the various internet subcultures are playing out, as she's absolutely nailing the tone and substance of the lefty tumblr spawned diaspora that was emerging into the broader internet circa 2015 when the book is set, e.g. "spoonies", while her portrayal of the emergent alt right is more vague and Norse inflected that I remember the genuine article being. This makes sense to me, as I imagine she has much more experience with the tumblr crowd than the new right, so the portrayal has much more verisimilitude.


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25 Sep 2022, 12:10 pm

Mikah wrote:
Online dating as a lesbian these days:

https://twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/ ... 9877014528

A lesbian user of the lesbian dating app Her says in her experience more biological males than females are now using it

It could all be internet hysteria, but I suspect not. What many older folks adamantly refuse to accept is that the online dating scene is the dating scene today - the majority of people meet through dating apps. If lesbians are saying they are under undue pressure to sleep with trans women - they probably are, likewise if trans women say that lesbians are discriminating against them en masse - they probably are too.

Some music might make scrolling through these more enjoyable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg


Lordy.Some of them have to be joking….


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Dox47
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26 Sep 2022, 12:17 am

All right, just finished The Ink Black Heart, the last of Rowling's detective novels, and I can honestly say that the supposed resemblance to her personal life is extremely superficial, the only real parallel being the setup itself, a creator being turned on by her fans. It's so obvious that most of the people reviewing this book didn't actually read it, as it very quickly departs from anything close to what happened with Rowling herself, being more about an obsessed fan with the various toxic internet subcultures serving as backdrops and distractions to the reader, without any obvious "take that!" style literary score settling. The biggest critique I can really level at her Cormoran Strike books is that they tread some extremely well worn ground and are full of genre tropes, but Rowling is a good enough writer to keep them entertaining despite the familiarity of the formula used, the politics just aren't in them at all.


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DW_a_mom
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26 Sep 2022, 1:12 am

Misslizard wrote:
Lordy.Some of them have to be joking….


To each their own, but the more one goes out of the mainstream, the narrower the dating pool will be. Simply numbers. So people who want relationships may have to make a choice on just how far out of the mainstream they want to live. I think most people have some fragment of themselves they keep locked up because it just wouldn't suit the life they want. Not that I'd ever offer that as official advice; just one of those things that "is" IMHO.


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Last edited by DW_a_mom on 26 Sep 2022, 1:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

DW_a_mom
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26 Sep 2022, 1:14 am

Dox47 wrote:
All right, just finished The Ink Black Heart, the last of Rowling's detective novels, and I can honestly say that the supposed resemblance to her personal life is extremely superficial, the only real parallel being the setup itself, a creator being turned on by her fans. It's so obvious that most of the people reviewing this book didn't actually read it, as it very quickly departs from anything close to what happened with Rowling herself, being more about an obsessed fan with the various toxic internet subcultures serving as backdrops and distractions to the reader, without any obvious "take that!" style literary score settling. The biggest critique I can really level at her Cormoran Strike books is that they tread some extremely well worn ground and are full of genre tropes, but Rowling is a good enough writer to keep them entertaining despite the familiarity of the formula used, the politics just aren't in them at all.


The book series hadn't really crossed my radar. I appreciate the review.


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26 Sep 2022, 8:20 am

finished the 2nd in the series of Strike novels last night. Enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would



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26 Sep 2022, 9:36 am

I found what appears to be the BBC article that was referred to (but not directly linked to, nor its exact title mentioned) in a Daily Mail article quoted earlier in this thread by Mikah:

The lesbians who feel pressured to have sex and relationships with trans women, BBC, 26 October 2021, originally titled "We're being pressured into sex by some trans women" according to this Wikipedia article about the news story and its history.

The BBC article introduces and then quotes Nancy Kelley of Stonewall as follows:

Quote:
Stonewall is the largest LGBT organisation in the UK and Europe. I asked the charity about these issues but it was unable to provide anyone for interview. However, in a statement, chief executive Nancy Kelley likened not wanting to date trans people to not wanting to date people of colour, fat people, or disabled people.

She said: "Sexuality is personal and something which is unique to each of us. There is no 'right' way to be a lesbian, and only we can know who we're attracted to.

"Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren't attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.

"We know that prejudice is still common in the LGBT+ community, and it's important that we can talk about that openly and honestly."


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26 Sep 2022, 5:03 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
Sometimes groups of people just have to go through the extremes to get back to the middle.

As I said earlier, I do have empathy for the fact some gender expressions are going to have a limited dating pool. I feel like the best we can do is to encourage different groups to socialize together, as sometimes familiarity can increase attractiveness. Societal tastes do change and evolve over time, but not because someone demanded it.

Also, it's possible that some LGBTQ+ spaces (both in-person and online) may need to have a stronger ethic of consent and "no means no," and perhaps stricter enforcement of whatever rules they might have against people trying to guilt-trip or otherwise pressure people to date or have sex with them.

If cis lesbians are being harassed by some trans lesbians, that would be the best solution, it seems to me, rather than trying to break up the LGBTQ+ community/movement, as groups like "Get the L Out" and "LGB Alliance" are trying to do.


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Dox47
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26 Sep 2022, 7:44 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:
If cis lesbians are being harassed by some trans lesbians, that would be the best solution, it seems to me, rather than trying to break up the LGBTQ+ community/movement, as groups like "Get the L Out" and "LGB Alliance" are trying to do.


Going back to one of my original points that I believe I made in another thread, is it really a community at all and not simply an arbitrarily lumped together group of identities?


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Dox47
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26 Sep 2022, 9:41 pm

Huh, funny coincidence:

Image

It's almost as if all of these outlets just made something up to feed a narrative.


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DW_a_mom
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27 Sep 2022, 6:10 am

Dox47 wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
If cis lesbians are being harassed by some trans lesbians, that would be the best solution, it seems to me, rather than trying to break up the LGBTQ+ community/movement, as groups like "Get the L Out" and "LGB Alliance" are trying to do.


Going back to one of my original points that I believe I made in another thread, is it really a community at all and not simply an arbitrarily lumped together group of identities?


Communities aren't exclusive circles. They overlap, connect, and can be grouped together.

On a Pride day, all these identities ARE a community. They unified in one goal, of being allowed to be who they are.

In other situations, they may not be.

What is an appropriate community varies by time, place and purpose.


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Dox47
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27 Sep 2022, 11:07 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:

Communities aren't exclusive circles. They overlap, connect, and can be grouped together.

On a Pride day, all these identities ARE a community. They unified in one goal, of being allowed to be who they are.

In other situations, they may not be.

What is an appropriate community varies by time, place and purpose.


You know that saying we have in this community, "if you've met one AS person you've met one AS person? That's kind of how I think about the ever expanding alphabet people grouping, people want to lump them together and assume more commonality than there actually is, particular between the more traditional LGB portions and the trans cadre, who as I've mentioned previously, are a completely different thing than being gay or bi. In a way, this reminds me of the way that a lot of people just couldn't get their heads around the Log Cabin Republicans back in the day, as if one's sexual preferences should have any bearing on how they thought the government should be run.


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28 Sep 2022, 10:59 am

Dox47 wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:
In the real world, the vast majority of lesbians do not experience that sort of tension, and the vast majority of trans lesbians don’t expect every lesbian to be personally attracted to them. In fact, shock horror, queer people tend to be less queerphobic.


And yet, lesbian spaces are disappearing both online and off, and those that remain are often fractured by the issue of how to treat transbians, particularly non-op ones. What is your opinion here, should lesbians who don't want anything to do with natal males or male bodyparts be forced to include transbians in their spaces under the banner of "inclusiveness"?

I’m extremely skeptic about talk of “spaces” reserved for groups, to me it seems like an attempt to dress segregation up in progressive language.

I think you should be allowed to exclude people based on any characteristic you like. It’s just if you decide to exclude people based on race then you’re a racist, if you decide to exclude them based on gender you’re a sexist, if you decide to exclude gay people then you’re homophobic, if you decide to exclude trans people then you’re transphobic.
Dox47 wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
I was recently at a meeting of my workplace’s LGBT group. One man stood up and said he was concerned about how “the trans issue” is “impacting women, particularly lesbians”. Not a single other person at the meeting (and it was mostly women at a pretty large meeting) expressed any support, and most of the rest of the meeting was a string of cis women of all ages actively saying they disagreed with him. It just isn’t an issue for most people.


Am I supposed to draw any grand conclusions from your anecdote?

Given that you seem to be drawing grand conclusions based on vibes and vague feelings, I’d have thought rising to the level of anecdote would be a staggering step up. But I suppose it’s inconvenient for your narrative, where lesbians are nothing more than hypothetical cudgels to hit trans people with :roll:

But if you want evidence - polling consistently shows that women are 1) less transphobic than men, and 2) more accepting than non-accepting of trans rights (although with a significant portion of the population who say “don’t know”).
US: https://news.gallup.com/poll/350174/mix ... ssues.aspx
UK: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/ex ... ransgender

(I’ve stuck to two highly-reputable pollsters - the most comprehensive polling I could find in the US seemed to be commissioned by a Democrat-aligned think tank: https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/20 ... -inclusion)

Not only are women more trans-inclusive than men, but in both countries, young people and people who know a trans person were significantly more likely to be trans-inclusive. As lesbians are disproportionately likely to 1) know trans people, and 2) be young (there are twice as many lesbians in Gen Z as in your generation), it seems likely that lesbians are also disproportionately trans-accepting, although I couldn’t find any polling breaking down opinions on trans issues based on sexuality.

But take a step back. Fundamentally, does it pass the sniff test that suddenly large chunks of the LGBT community are at each other’s throats? No, it doesn’t. It bears absolutely no resemblance to reality at all. Why are groups like “Get The L Out” and “LGB Alliance” so widely hated in the LGBT community? Why is the reaction of cis lesbians to the cotton ceiling fear mongering always so overwhelmingly negative (see: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-new ... e-rcna3903 - this quotes more lesbians than the BBC article).
The whole idea is just transparently out of touch.



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28 Sep 2022, 11:11 am

I don't think that JK Rowling did anything really bad initially. The problem is her CONTINUAL need to fight with trans activists online. It's not helping anyone..... it's not helping women, it's not helping trans people and it's most definitely not helping her. If she had just shut up about the issue, most people would have forgotten about it quickly. But she can't let it go, and she's digging a bigger and bigger hole for herself.



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28 Sep 2022, 1:14 pm

Dox47 wrote:
You know that saying we have in this community, "if you've met one AS person you've met one AS person?

Yes, as autistic people, we're all different. But this doesn't mean there's no point in having a variety of us get together in forums like Wrong Planet.

Dox47 wrote:
That's kind of how I think about the ever expanding alphabet people grouping, people want to lump them together and assume more commonality than there actually is, particular between the more traditional LGB portions and the trans cadre,

Actually, the association between LGB and trans people is very "traditional," at least as old as the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific Humanitarian Committee), founded back in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfield. (More info here and here.)

Even in the 1970's, when what is known today as the LGBTQ+ community was known as just the "gay" community, bi and trans people were very much a part of it, although there was controversy in some quarters over how welcome they were. For example, in the late 1970's, when I was attending the University of Rochester, a local monthly gay newspaper called The Empty Closet had a monthly column by a trans woman (known back then as a "male-to-female transsexual").

So the "ever expanding alphabet people grouping" is really just a way of acknowledging and explicitly welcoming various categories of people who always were a part of the "gay" community.

Dox47 wrote:
who as I've mentioned previously, are a completely different thing than being gay or bi.

There's a natural affinity among (at least most of) the various kinds of people who don't conform to mainstream traditional sex/gender expectations in whatever way and for whatever reason. There's also a natural political alliance among such people, on the basis of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," if nothing else.

Dox47 wrote:
In a way, this reminds me of the way that a lot of people just couldn't get their heads around the Log Cabin Republicans back in the day, as if one's sexual preferences should have any bearing on how they thought the government should be run.

There's a natural political affinity among people who oppose traditional hierarchies of various kinds, just as there's also a natural political affinity among people who who want to shore up traditional hierarchies of various kinds. These two natural political groupings are what's known as "left wing" and "right wing," respectively.

So it's natural for Christian nationalists and anti-gay activists to be part of the right wing.

So too, an otherwise right wing gay rights activist is indeed an oddity.

To be fair, gay right wingers occasionally make worthwhile contributions. For example, in the late 1990's and early 2000's or so, gay right wingers were the ones pushing hardest for same-sex marriage. Back then, left-wing gay activists tended to favor the opposite approach of "civil unions" for everyone. Left-wing gay activists commonly wanted to "abolish marriage," i.e. replace "marriage" by "civil union" in all relevant laws, so that the term "marriage" would become a purely religious thing rather than a government-regulated thing. (These are my personal recollections from reading various LGBTQ+ websites back then.)

However, once the goal of same-sex marriage became popular among the masses of lesbians and gay men, left-wing LGBTQ+ activists got on board with "marriage equality" too. Only then was real progress made towards marriage equality.

In general it does make sense for activists on behalf of various marginalized groups to form an alliance with each other. The process of building that alliance can be long and arduous, but it's an important part of how things usually get done in the political realm.


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Last edited by Mona Pereth on 28 Sep 2022, 2:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.