5434a
1d ago
The complexity of inter-homo-binary-transitional relationship terminology makes it difficult both to track and to discuss [the man-who-liked-men-before-becoming-a-woman-who-likes-men, vs the 2/5/17 other combinations]. Maybe German style additive word construction would be better than the standard Greek derived combinations.
The major difference of AGP would appear to be the A. Auto.
The weird bit is firstly that, while I can't speak for them, it's a fairly uncontroversial idea that heterosexual women can be as aroused by being an object of desire as they are by direct observation of what they desire. Apparently this is a very common theme in popular women's erotica.
Secondly there's the complication of what gay men want versus what they can offer. Like your example of the camp, openly gay queens who don't have sex with each other. Why not? Because they don't want a faggy queen, they want the kind of highly masculine man who... has gay sex with faggy queens. I believe the phenomenon persists in the preponderance of bottoms vs tops, and their ideal fantasy partner being a straight man. If masculinity is what gay men are attracted to then logically they should masc-maxx, but if femininity is what masculine men want then it would make more sense to trans-max, so that they can "go straight" to fulfill their gay fantasy of straight sex. I've never looked at gay porn but I have a hunch it focuses a lot more on blue collar bodybuilder types than on lisping waifs with frilly cuffs.
And then we have the AGP, who fetishises women to such an extent (a very male hetero mindset) that they become maximally feminine (a homosexual characteristic in men) so that they can embody themselves as their own object of desire (a female hetero mindset, maybe?) in their own eyes, the eyes of a heterosexual man. It's a muddle.
5434a
2d ago
It's not just the state and church, those are just one aspect of marriage. The Queer Theory interpretation is asking us to believe in revolutionary conformity.
The changed element is the institutional homophobia that disallowed gay marriage. That's a change, granted. But it can be described as an expansion, not a reduction. Marriage becomes an option for more people. The various and diverse structures that support the established norms that make up the cultural institution called marriage have gained additional clients, while Queer Theorists and their non-conformist norms have lost clients, hence why they have to contort themselves to present it as a good thing for their cause. I don't doubt that they can offer complicated and counterintuitive explanations for how it aids their cause, I just don't find those explanations convincing.
5434a
3d ago
The only thing that dismantles is the hetero norm that marriage is for a man and a woman. Any other factor remains unaffected at best or reinforced at worst (legitimacy as determined by the state or church, etc).
It's like putting on a dress and gagging on your wife's strap-on to dismantle queer theory. "Checkmate, homos! Your degeneracy has no place in this vision of society".
5434a
3d ago
You can't rally against injustice by expanding the advantages of an injustice to include your own group. Consider slavery.
5434a
3d ago
Fair, but the road travels both ways. For example progressives can't hold that gay marriage is good without holding that marriage itself is good.
5434a
6d ago
I'm reminded of the '00s era of affiliate marketing websites. They had a formula that they had aggressively A/B tested and the result was glaringly horrible. Huge pages with reams of dense repetitive text, corny testimonials, and endless nagboxes offering a FREE EBOOK if you subscribe to their newsletter. Sure a lot of it was keyword SEO but that only gets the visitors to arrive, it doesn't guide them into completing the desired actions.
One person's worthless waste of bandwidth and compute is a hundred other people's most interesting media of the moment. I don't understand why anyone gets into 4chan if they're not an irredeemable weeb, but they do.
If you read up on the case it started with her own prescription for sedatives, then he added muscle relaxants and would police and supervise the men to such a degree that he insisted they warmed their hands before touching her and didn't smoke cigarettes beforehand lest they smell of smoke. Apparently she did initially question him about deliberately drugging her but he gaslit her (if you'll pardon the proper use of the term) that she was too ill to know her own mind.
5434a
7d ago
I don't understand. In your example the defendant didn't lie to their lawyer, they lied to the court. If the defendant is guilty but has opted for a trial then that fact alone is an effort to imply he isn't guilty, and presumably everything else he does will be in service of the same end too. Otherwise why not skip the trial and plead guilty?
The way I read it the lesson is "don't admit to your UK lawyer that you're guilty if you expect them to argue for your innocence". No?
5434a
12d ago
Finished Tom Brown. Surprisingly wholesome, reads like Dickens minus the literary indulgences and with social deprivation swapped for social privilege.
Now reading a collection of Nasreddin Hodja stories, a wit'n'wisdom trickster figure from Turkish folklore.
5434a
13d ago
Maybe. It implies either a sincere interest in permanently abandoning their current sex, or a sincere interest in joining the other sex, but not an indifference such that changing would be no benefit, because it would follow that remaining would be no worse. But also an interest that isn't strong enough to accept the substitute of even temporarily changing gender.
It's a little like trying to think of someone who would enlist but wouldn't wear any camo that wasn't issued.
I suppose the men who want to transfer to women's prisons might qualify. I can't think of any others. Faildaughters of nobles in primogeniture jurisdictions, perhaps?
5434a
13d ago
If the button was as trivial as a character select toggle on a computer game I don't see much reason why anyone wouldn't press it. Five minutes, switch back, what have you lost? If you're talking about it being a magic, transgender fantasy, one way, fully seamless and socially integrated instant sex change button with no returns I don't think anyone other than the current transgenders would press it because they're the only ones that want what it offers.
There are a thousand computer games where people push a button and play being a soldier but most don't push the same buttons to enquire online about enlisting even though it's a perfectly real opportunity.
5434a
18d ago
I seem to get roughly one a year, usually around April-ish from memory, and they started when I was about 30.
Occasionally I'll get the first hints of an aura and it will subside but that usually results in getting the full experience a few days later.
Before I had one I'd always thought they were like a particularly bad headache. The headaches aren't great but I've had worse headaches, what's distressing is the aura part and having a front row seat to the perception that my visual cortex is being slowly torn apart from the inside.
Mother is a word that carries a range of connotations, from "gave birth" to "will pour the tea". Like with man/woman, trans rights activists (at least this one) want to cleave off and deny the connotations that don't serve their ends (like gave birth!) while holding tight to those that do serve their ends (has some manner of parental relation to a child) regardless of any broader implications, for as long as they serve their ends, and no longer. It's that simple.
One very narrow implication that shows how the rationale rapidly ceases to serve their ends: The argument only works if fatherhood excludes transwomen, and that's trans erasure.
5434a
19d ago
I appreciate your post for pushing back, but
What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father?
Modus ponens, modus tollens. If it shouldn't matter to me, why should it matter at all?
A little less facetiously, it matters because if these terms become floating signifiers that are only realised when claimed by an individual then I don't know whether my father was in a same-sex lesbian relationship with the man that gave birth to me. Saying that it doesn't matter doesn't suffice. The words have lost 98% of their meaning and what's left is "I have parents", which is little more than a truism.
"My father is a Nazi". Was my father a man who served in the wehrmacht, or was my father a woman in trousers who used the okay gesture? Does it matter?
Was my father even my father? I can't even check the records because they might have been assigned fatherhood at transition. Who knows?! Eh, what does it matter.
5434a
19d ago
Transmothers are mothers. /s
Notice how, while advancing that womanhood and motherhood are socially constructed floating signifiers, nationhood and citizenship remain resolutely concrete assumptions in this argument. Hmm!
“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.
What is being invalidated is same-sex conception and the notion that a child can have two birth-mothers. Denying this individual the status of motherhood very much validates and upholds their legal status as a "woman" in a ""same-sex"" marriage, I assume other women in same-sex marriages are equally unable to be registered as a second birth-mother.
Semantics aside this person is an Irish parent, and if the purpose of the law in question is to offer Irish citizenship to the children of an Irish parent then the child should qualify for the same. That's reasonable! I don't think children should be denied Irish citizenship because one of their parents is Irish and trans identified, but I don't think radically redefining motherhood is a remotely sensible means to that end.
5434a
21d ago
After finishing my second Flashman book I've turned backwards and started Tom Brown's School Days.
Have only read the early section so far where it paints a charming pastoral picture of un-industrialised rural England. Now Tom has arrived at Rugby and it reads a bit like what I imagine Harry Potter to be like, minus the spells, where boarding school is a big adventure taking place in a grand holiday camp for the superior class of urchin.
5434a
23d ago
Would "violence by proxy" capture it? Perhaps adding further distinctions like sanctioned/unsanctioned, overt/covert, etc.
5434a
24d ago
Steal a bunch of shit. When Loss Prevention tries to stop you, fight them. When they try to transfer you to police custody, fight them. When you are in jail, fight the jail guards. When they try to take you to court, fight more.
Sounds like Charles Bronson.
No doubt, just trying to tease apart the alignments, misalignments and re-alignments. The potential combinations multiply rapidly.
Fair play, I was under the impression it was the other way around. Maybe that's a function of their discretion. But then why the discretion?
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