Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Transphobes gunning hard for 'paedophilia' angle all of a sudden

Actually I hate the idea that we have "trans threads" that are the only place it is acceptable to mention being trans or nb or other gender-fluid/genderqueer type identification

It's like corralling us all into a pen so that people know where to find us to have a go.
yep - we just get accused of making everything about trans as if being trans doesn't interreact with everything else in our lives.
 
yep - we just get accused of making everything about trans as if being trans doesn't interreact with everything else in our lives.

It smacks of the old thing back in the '80s and even later where people would say stuff like "I don't mind if someone's gay as long as they don't shove it down my throat" (har har) and then go on to talk about their wife and family and their heterosexual lifestyle while if a gay acquaintance mentioned having a boyfriend (if he even dared bring it up in conversation) it would be met with disdain or even outright hatred.

Shut the fuck up, stay in the closet, don't make anyone feel uncomfortable with your odd lifestyle type of thing. :(
 
It smacks of the old thing back in the '80s and even later where people would say stuff like "I don't mind if someone's gay as long as they don't shove it down my throat" (har har) and then go on to talk about their wife and family and their heterosexual lifestyle while if a gay acquaintance mentioned having a boyfriend (if he even dared bring it up in conversation) it would be met with disdain or even outright hatred.

Shut the fuck up, stay in the closet, don't make anyone feel uncomfortable with your odd lifestyle type of thing. :(
my colleagues talked about their partners all the time and so did i when they were women, before i transitioned but as soon as i had a male partner i became incredibly self conscious and went out of my way to try to not mention him. It was ridiculous. And of course some colleagues preferred to refer to him as my friend.
 
How did we white people learn about racism? We let black people be the experts.
How did men learn about sexism>? They listened to women.
Trans people try to tell you someone is a transphobe and you all go, well maybe they might have a point, lets see what they say next....

I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics tendency of categorisation into singular groups that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.
 
I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics categorisation tendency that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.
I get what you're trying to say, but I think we should listen to anyone who's actually been affected by an issue, revolutionary or not. Some people might not have the wherewithal to be revolutionary, but they still deserve a voice.
 
It depends if we're talking about just personal experiences or wider political stuff I guess?
 
I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics tendency of categorisation into singular groups that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.

:hmm:

if the alternative is telling 'minorities' they are doing it wrong and should shut up and let the straight white cis men get on with it (as seems to be the approach of some who at least claim to be on the left) i'm not sure...

ETA -

(i'm not quite sure if that's what you're arguing, but i tend to put 'identity politics' in the same category as 'woke' and 'pc gone mad')

ultimately, i don't think any minority speaks with a single voice, people aren't one dimensional, so it's quite possible for one person to be working class, black, gay and disabled (as a random example - i'm not claiming to be)

and if we stick with your example of black people, then different black people will have different experiences of racism and will have different ideas about challenging / dealing with / living with it. they can't all be right (except in the case of personal lived experiences), but i'm not convinced that as a white person i've got a right to tell any of them they are wrong and i know better.
 
Last edited:
I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics tendency of categorisation into singular groups that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.

Mmm, I agree with a lot of what you're saying in those first couple of paragraphs but equally when people from marginalised groups say that traditional left groups feel dismissive of their concerns, they're often not wrong are they?
 
Mmm, I agree with a lot of what you're saying in those first couple of paragraphs but equally when people from marginalised groups say that traditional left groups feel dismissive of their concerns, they're often not wrong are they?

No they're not, I think all the traditional left groups are often (always) horrendous on this stuff largely, and totally agree and accept that some of the emergence of some of what goes as identity politics is in part a reaction to that.

Anyway, this is going off topic and veering into the identity politics thread territory...
 
I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics tendency of categorisation into singular groups that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.
ID politics thread >>>>
 
I don't think it's that simple at all, and that identity politics tendency of categorisation into singular groups that underlies your post is also massively problematic.

What 'black people' do we listen to? Nation of Islam? Or just any of them? Ditto with women, which women, etc etc.? It's only a slight step to talking about listening to 'community leaders'. Reducing it all to 'just listen to X' isn't radical or revolutionary politics, it's identity politics.

Maybe you didn't mean it to read so simplistically, but unless you're a liberal (maybe you are?) we should listen to and work with revolutionary POC, women and trans people, not those who just happen to tick some box of identity.
yeah go ahead and completely miss my point. Yes i was trying to keep things simple. And you had to interpret it in the worst way possible. Of course, you assume i'm a liberal, aren't trans people liberals, right? Aren't we all identity politics warriors right? fuck off!! I don't need your half assed support.
 
Interesting evening - saw Cabaret and had a fantastic time, it was amazing.

But there was a rather disturbing occurence in the interval - I went to the same loo cubicle I'd been in just before the show and someone had stuck a gross, transphobic sticker on the door, the contents of which I won't repeat here. Naturally I took it down and binned it immediately. But seriously - at this show? A show about totalitarianism crushing sexual and self expression while going about the work of destroying everyone it considers an outgroup to 'protect our values/women/children'?! :mad:

I'm assuming the person who did it was a woman, and she's a fucking idiot if she thinks the mindset behind that sticker is going to leave her with her rights and autonomy and not tell her that she ought to be living under someone else's imposed 'values'.

Literally in the 2nd half about 10 minutes after I saw this was the line 'If you're not against them you're with them'.

It left me quite upset actually, what with watching the impact of the Nazis on the Jewish character on stage and thinking about my own family history in that respect.
 
Quite entertained today by a number of tweets showing transphobic lesbians suddenly clocking that their complaining about trans women being recorded officially or seen as children's mothers might just have an impact on non-birthing cis lesbian parents, including the below:

 
If you refuse to accept that a word can have both a biological and a social meaning, and if you think precise definitions of words are more important than people's happiness and social/legal recognition, then of course only a biological parent can be considered a mother or father.

:thumbs:

I'm sure GC types manage to accept this just fine when it comes to adoption, say, or just when, for example, someone has always considered their mother's partner to be "their Dad" regardless of blood.
The refusal to accept different types of meaning is rather selective.
 
I'm struct by Stock's phrase "definitional anarchy" especially coming from a philosopher. I can see Kellie-Jay Keen's POV in that she sees women's worth as tied to their biology and she fears the erosion of this from definitional anarchy and so "mother" has to mean biological mother and to hell with what the lesbians might say. I think KJK is horribly wrong of course, but it's at least of POV with social/political traction. But fearing definitional anarchy for it's own sake is arcane and unrelatable as well as a terrible philosophy/theory of language.
 
Back
Top Bottom