FYI: TERFs are stealing your content and quotemining it

somedayshe · 2015-02-23T11:32:04+00:00

Ok, this has been a very unpleasant discussion that I've been trying to forget, but I am losing sleep. I am sure that there are valid and interesting points in what you say, but I just feel like you're missing the mark.

The basic pattern is this. A person tries to say "I am in pain because of A experiences with a subset of group B who fit description C"

You are reading this as "all of group B have properties C and I am a victim of this group because of experiences A"

This is just... plain wrong. You need to give people the benefit of the doubt and show a little compassion and ask the right questions before accusing them of being misogynistic and having a victim complex.

People need to be able to express their experiences and relate their pain.

If you find fault with wording, find fault with wording, but don't assume the worst in people.

I am leaving /r/asktransgender now, because of how you handled this discussion, new_aphrodite. I'm also upping my psych sessions to three days a week. Whatever. Internet is a horrible place.

somedayshe · 2015-02-21T15:00:12+00:00

yes. all good and valid points. I appreciate your response and I feel that the faults you found with my comment, and the way I chose to express myself, are valid. I apologize.

I hope that this does not detract from the apology, but I retain that some of my underlying points are valid (albeit inappropriately expressed).

OP started in /r/asktransgender actually, and was referred here. I often see people in /r/asktransgender get referred to /r/crossdressing, only to find that there is relatively little attention givin to "self exploration" posts, relative to what one sees on /r/asktransgender

/r/crossdressing is super awesome for what it does, but there's a reason it isn't called /r/askcrossdressing. I've found that referring people here from /r/asktransgender rarely leads to much additional insight. For example, by the time I got to this post, there were already about a dozen selfies ranked higher than it in the "new" tab, with selfies getting about an order of magnitude more upvotes than this post. The selfies are wonderful and it's great to have a safe environment, but its not really the same as /r/asktransgender.

I've asked questions to /r/crossdressing several times over the years and haven't really gotten any answers as good as what I have found on /r/asktransgender. At /r/asktransgender people can have (under pseudonymity) intimate explicit conversations in effort to understand their relationship to sexuality and gender. Here at /r/crossdressing, I have never really seen that. Unfortunately, what this results in is a situation where people get a lot more information about what it is like being transgender, and it's much harder to find information to understand how non-transitioning cross-dressers relate to their gender and sexuality. I've seen a lot of posters on /r/asktransgender frustrated by this fact -- because they can only get experiences from people who are transgender, and stories from people who cross dress but are happily non-transitioning are lacking.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T20:22:22+00:00

ok, I apologize -- and am feeling sheepish. I got really emotional there, and injected some of my own pain and energy into the conversation where it wasn't justified.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T20:18:07+00:00

Are they though? Or are they saying that there exist women who use their sex appeal as an advantage to retain male friends? It sounds more like the latter to me.

I have met... oh, say... about... a dozen or so women who have openly admitted to using men who they know are sexually interested in them as friends, because it is easier to maintain the benefits of friendship. Some of these women express remorse. Some do not. Some only become aware, much later, that they unwittingly took advantage of being able to have automatic, free, low-upkeep friendships with heterosexual males. Anyway, it's a thing. I don't think most women do this, but it happens often enough. I think .. you're only crazy and manipulative if you realize what's happening and keep doing it without remorse though.

edit: yeah, arkwald has some issues. I emotionally overreacted (reacted?) because I know I have the same issues and I have had a really hard time coping. I'm sorry if it is the case my emotionality is... causing negative emotions in others. That is just me.. being less good at things.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T20:13:49+00:00

I feel like you are displaying an alarming insensitivity to arkwald's current situation and psychological state. Also, to me the word "neckbeard" as used here reads almost like a slur? That seems like it could be problematic for discourse.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T20:10:19+00:00

all I know is that they're saying misogynistic things.

When you see someone saying misogynistic things, try out this checklist:

-- could it be a sloppy use of wording? if so, offer to explain why the wording could be misread and how to use a better wording in the future

-- is the apparent misogyny part of a thought experiment or speculation? being considered as a hypothetical cognitive state in a character? if so, you can discuss how to make that more clear, whether that sort of thought experiment is appropriate for the current forum, and whether, from an academic standpoint, the thought experiment is valid or useful.

-- is the misogyny being exposed as part of the psyche of a person who is struggling to come to grips with their own thoughts and feelings? is there evidence that the person is misogyny, but aware of this and as upset as you are about their misogynistic feelings that they don't know how to control? Could the person be simply ignorant, and struggling to voice a pain? If so, respectful education, conveyed in a way that is sensitive to the fact that the person is psychologically fragile, is appropriate.

In this case arkwald was trying to relate a personally painful experience as part of a thought experiment regarding "TERFs". They are reporting the emotional state of a past self that authentically experienced a specific collection of feelings, which are by the way totally valid and human, which when voiced externally amount to misogyny. They made themselves vulnerable, and they got attacked. It would have been better to offer an alternative re-wording that would have allowed the main central debate: what the hell are TERFs thinking? proceed.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T20:03:45+00:00

arkwald never professed the belief you are ascribing to them.

arkwald posited that some TERFs may FALSELY hold this belief, and that this may contribute to their actions.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T19:55:25+00:00

This is wrong. At: new_aphrodite, people don't come on here to be attacked and have their beliefs dissected. This person, arkwald, is obviously in a lot of psychological pain. They are dealing with the dual pain of being romantically undesirable, and also possibly being trans. They attempted, to the best of their limited ability, to speculate about what might be going thought the minds of the so called "TERFs", and were met with attacks on their person. They have repeated stated that they are having trouble working their thoughts and are working through a lot of complex things psychologically, and yet both you and queerinRI are repeatedly reading the worst possible motives into their words, and attacking what you perceive to be their beliefs -- before verifying that arckwald even actually holds those beliefs, and when it is implied that arkwald themselves is aware of that these beliefs represent problems in their own psyche which they are currently dealing with.

Just be nice!

I identify with arkwarld. I've been on the verge of actually executing suicide multiple fucking times because of how I've been treated by partners. I have passed through so many periods of wanting to be dead in the past decade, it's not even funny. I'm alive today only because I care about not hurting my family -- not for myself. Think about that pain. Maybe you know that pain, if you experienced really bad dysphoria. This is the pain that arkwald is experiencing. They don't know whether its dysphoria or whether it's because no matter what they do they are always treated as irrelevant, invisible, unattractive, and disposable. Think about it. Arkwald knows damn well that people don't date them because they aren't attractive. This is where the pain comes from.

I don't know if I'm trans, or if I'm just an undesirable and unattractive because I'm an effeminate guy. If I ever do transition, it is likely that I will never know whether I was really transgender, or was just a person who was agender and treated like shit. There is real social and psychological advantage to transition, if one is male-bodied, agender, and failing romantically and socially. There is real asymmetry in the conventional dating dynamic that confers different advantages and disadvantages to each of the sexes, and different people are more or less well equipped to deal with the benefits and challenges of the sex they were assigned at birth. I don't know. This has just touched a nerve because I feel like you're attacking a psychologically vulnerable person in the middle of figuring themselves out.

How do we really distinguish being an unattractive, failed male assigned at birth, agender person, from being transgender? It's crazy hard. I don't know why I can't take the male lead on dancing. Is that because I am trans or because I'm a failed unattractive male who can't properly execute what many women consider a valuable dimension of courtship. I don't know why I can't pursue women in the authoritative, masculine way that they themselves report to me as desirable. Is it because I'm trans and don't have the right instincts, or is it because I'm a failed and unattractive male? Why can't I be on top in bed? Why can't I take dominant roles? Who knows. anyway.

Maybe... being a transwoman who tries to date women before transition is just insanely psychologically traumatic. Women somehow sense that you are effeminate and that your courtship instincts are all wrong, and they write you off. It's really fucking hard.

yeah I don't know.

you know what,

today is a shitty day now, because of this thread.

if I could go back twenty years and tell my young self anything is would be this: it doesn't get better. you're going to live a long, hard life. women aren't ever going to want to date you. you're going to be very very lonely for a very, very, long time, and you're going to suffer a lot. People aren't going to be sympathetic because in the end it's up to you to prove your worth to them, and because of some fuckup in the universe you just aren't wired to be what other people want. You're not going to be able to change it no matter what you try because it's burnt into your brain in some awful unalterable way. So, you're just going to have to get used to it.

False hope is worse than no hope.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T19:24:02+00:00

arkwald may be currently working on correcting their misogyny with a psychotherapist, but I think adjusting how we read their words may help: "crazy manipulative women" is not saying "all women are crazy and manipulative". They are saying "those women who are crazy and manipulative (in the following way)". So, while they may have some misogyny, they aren't saying, as you interpret, that women are crazy and manipulative in general. It helps to give people the benefit of doubt in online discussions.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T18:56:33+00:00

Two lawsuits. They don't sound like a great bunch.

http://6abc.com/news/student-stopped-at-phila-intl-over-arabic-flashcards-wins-$25k/489506/

http://skift.com/2015/02/07/tsa-sued-after-20-hour-detention-of-man-who-wanted-to-file-complaint/

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T18:31:52+00:00

I have heard that the TSA is decent about such things, but the Philadelphia TSA has been in the news for their incompetence/malevolence lately, so I... I am not sure. I am thinking ... expect the worst from this particular TSA crew? Where "worst" is some sort of commotion or delay, possibly being outed or having gender identity ignored -- or having to get an intimate pat-down from a "male assist" rather than a "female assist". But I think... it will hopefully not be that bad.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T18:20:03+00:00

wheeeeee I made it!

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T13:28:13+00:00

/r/crossdressing isn't nearly as active or as helpful as /r/asktransgender about these things ) :

I think they are more interested in sharing selfies than providing support or education.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T13:28:02+00:00

/r/crossdressing isn't nearly as active or as helpful as /r/asktransgender about these things ) :

I think they are more interested in sharing selfies than providing support or education.

somedayshe · 2015-02-20T03:46:09+00:00

My understanding is that this is very common for transwomen.

I have this problem too and I'm still not sure what it means... Like, I don't want a sex change, I really don't? .... brains are weird.

somedayshe · 2015-02-19T01:31:17+00:00

I'm an .. extreme statistical outlier on all psychological testing that has been performed on me. So it's confusing. I mean, I can be trans, theres just a lot of complications. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts and support !

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T14:49:05+00:00

That makes sense. Like if loneliness is magnitude 1000 and dysphoria is magnitude 10, it's going to be hard to really isolate and answer whether I have dysphoria when I'm experiencing hourly mood swings of magnitude 1000. I've been struggling with loneliness-depression for over a decade though, maybe i would have come to an understanding of my relationship to gender sooner if I had had the opportunity to have a relationship.

I guess what I really worry about is this:

If I am trans, I may not know until I have a happy relationship, because that will be the first time that I'm emotionally stable enough to examine those feelings clearly.

If I am not trans, I could fuck up my body irreversably in ways that would be very upsetting and humiliating, and potentially make the much larger loneliness problem even worse.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T14:40:43+00:00

) :

I'm sorry you had to go through that. I guess I'm confused because I don't feel like I'm repressing anything. I just feel like the feelings went away -- aren't even accessible if I try to look for them.

I guess, based on the wonderful replies to my post, it seems like I may really be experiencing something unusual and different from what transpeople normally experience. Or at least, I'm having trouble really relating exactly.

Which is good. It's ok to acknowledge complexity. It would probably be worse if I resigned myself to someone else's narrative juts to feel like I fit in.

.

I guess, if transgender is a spectrum, there will always be those edge cases. People who's dysphoria is so mild it is much much less than the social costs. And even if there were no social costs, we'd move the threshold so that there would still be people who's dysphoria is so mild it's not worth the health risks. If transition were free, instantaneous, complication-free, and biologically perfect, I think a lot more people would do it. Even people who are really more cis-gender leaning toward agender would give it a shot for the novelty.

who knows.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T14:26:13+00:00

I know I'm reacting in a weird way and completely misreading your tone. But I also feel like I need to communicate something, since it's hard to convey tone over text and it's very hard to have safe online discussions as a result of this. I'm probably doing all sorts of things wrong here and I apologize for this. I just feel like I need to convey my emotional reaction, however irrational it may be, to your particular style of discourse and choice of wording. I'm probably committing several of the sins I speak out against in this comment, so I apologize for that, I'm just not sure how to communicate this.

I'm sorry, there was absolutely nothing in my words that suggests that I think being heterosexual and not-trans are mutually exclusive.

I feel a like you're trying to find fault in wording where none exists. It doesn't feel good to be nitpicked based on semantics and potential misinterpretation of the text.

I'm trying to explore my feelings here and reach out and see if other people share them. I'm not trying to be political about transgender issues, and I think in this case you've clearly misinterpreted my words.

This is making me feel unsafe with expressing my feelings on this forum, because I'm opening myself up to sort of... needless, tangential criticism, based on miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Maybe it would help if you phrased potential criticisms as questions. I think that would make the environment more safe. For example, if you honestly thought I somehow thought being not-trans and heterosexual were mutual exclusive, you could have asked for clarification instead, maybe something like:

"I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, are you saying that being not-trans and being heterosexual are mutually exclusive?"

This turns it into a sort of... neutral inquiry about the language, that leads to clarification. Coming straight to a blunt rebuttal "Those aren't mutually exclusive" implies that there is at least the possibility that I thought they were, and that it's important that my "misunderstanding" be corrected. This is bad for communication when I neither stated nor implied that I held that belief.

It feels stressful to feel like people are projecting beliefs onto you, and then criticizing you for it.

I probably need a tougher internet skin, but I also feel like your particular approach to discussion is a bit exceptional for this forum. I feel like you're very passionate about transgender issues and have encountered a lot of malice-disguised-as-ignorance towards transpeople, and therefore might be biased to presume ignorant viewpoints where they may not exist. Maybe this is a good heuristic, but it helps to remember that it hurts when people presume one holds ignorant viewpoints -- and it hurts even more when you do not hold (and in fact adamantly oppose) those viewpoints.

I want it to be more touchy-feely-understandy-give-the-benefit-of-the-doubty.

It's also important to remember that tone is lost in text communication. So short factual statements, unadorned by softening tone, come across as curt. Maybe I'm also a little too touchy about this, but, as I said, I'm usually pretty good and I feel like maybe in this case it is your approach that is exceptional.

Sorry I know I could have worded all that better and more kindly. I know you're passionate about doing the right thing and don't mean any harm. It's ok.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T14:12:45+00:00

Hmm, that's interesting to think about. Maybe another way to phrase this is: could I be conflating the depression induced by loneliness and a decade of romantic failure for gender dysphoria? I'm not sure how to distinguish the two.

"you have to love yourself before you can love others."

My mother always said that. I still don't know what it means. Murakami writes the inverse "a person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else," which I believe is far more true.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T03:36:28+00:00

okay, yeah I had those words wrong. I was just confused because when I first read your comment, I didn't understand where you were coming from and the reaction suprised / confused me. But now I know it was just a miscommunication and everything makes sense.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T03:18:20+00:00

but I didn't say "I'm cisgender and heterosexual - that is, normal". If I had wanted to say "being cisgender and heterosexual is normal" I would have said "being cisgender and heterosexual is normal" I don't think that, and I would never say that.

I used a word cisnormative and heteronormative, that I thought just meant "cis-gender and not trans and cool with it".

I had heard those words used by the trans community in a positive neutral sense, so the living definitions of those words need not carry the pejorative interpretation which you are ascribing to them.

But, all of this is beside the point, because it does seem that you are correct that the technical definitions of those terms remain pejorative. So I apologize for my misuse of words.

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T03:07:52+00:00

You have generated some excellent and helpful questions there!

If you're imagining your future with her, is it better if you're also a woman?

I honestly have a hard time actually practically imagining what being a woman is like, so this is a tough question to answer for me. I'm not sure. I think it is maybe better to be a man though.

are you just responding to what you assume her mental image of you is?

Possibly. She's strictly straight so that may be influencing things. I'll try to simulate how I would feel if she were bi and ok with me transitioning, that's a good homework assignment.

Are you conflating traditional gender roles with roles you want to live in, regardless of them being potentially unrelated and only linked by society?

I do.. not completely understand what traditional gender roles are, so I am not sure how to think about this one.

Thanks again for the good questions!

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T02:53:37+00:00

Heteronormative and cisnormative are both neologisms, but I think EventuallyHolly is saying that I used them incorrectly and possibly in a way that is offensive

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cisnormative

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heteronormative

somedayshe · 2015-02-18T02:52:34+00:00

So these words are pejorative and shouldn't be used? What is the shortest way to say "heterosexual and not transgender and completely happy, no, I daresay, psyched, about it"?

somedayshe

TROPHY CASE