I’ve been ssaving these, which were tendered by one “Cerry Joyne” on two different and random threads, the first on the ideological capture of scientists in New Zealand and the second on, of all things, a readers’ wildlife photo post.
Comment #1:
have you considered just fellating a shotgun instead of being a disgusting, transphobic cunt?
Comment #2:
hey jerry merry christmas, just wondering, along with all the other “new atheist” guys when it was that you became a delusional right-wing racist fuckwit?
Judging from the IP number, 60.234.105.217, it appears that this delightful person is a Kiwi:
Country:New Zealand
State/Region:Taranaki
City:Hawera
Needless to say, this Kiwi will post no more. This is only a sample of the (unposted and nasty) comments I have gotten since the KerFFRFle began. For some reason I cannot understand–and I invite readers to speculate—gender issues engender (pardon the pun) more hateful comments than any controversial topic I have ever discussed here. Suggestions?
I like this approach – highlight some of the “best”.
And about this observation :
“… gender issues engender (pardon the pun) more hateful comments than any controversial topic I have ever discussed here.”
To try to sum it up, it is because Queer Theory is the doctrine of a gnostic cult religion.
That means when belief – e.g. Judith Butler’s gnosis of “gender” performativity, Foucault’s gnosis of the power of societal enforcement of “normalcy” – collides with reality – e.g. biology, or civility – emotions will run high, partly as a defense mechanism / reaction – a power struggle.
“the soul is the prison of the body”
-Michel Foucault
Butler cites this as well.
The ideas of belief, reality, and their relationship as we know is a major theme of this website.
Dawkins did a whole video of reading his hate mail in his charming British accent.
Do not feed the trolls.
I like this idea a lot. Maybe could shoot the video at UofC, with Jerry’s cowboy boots propped on the desk, sipping coffee and reading his hate mail. Instead of a charming British accent, Jerry could do a Chicago Superfans SNL accent?
But yes agreed don’t feed the trolls.
Superfans!
I’ll get my grass skirt, coconuts, and Polish sausage
Pics, please!
I don’t do this often, so you needn’t tell me not to post what I want to.
If Alexander is thinking the same way I am, he means by “don’t feed the trolls” something like “feel free to ignore those jerks except maybe to change their posted comments to something about chalk”. Def not telling you what you should say in your own living room.
How vile. If I had to guess I would say it’s because online hateful and aggressive gender activism has become socially acceptable within a small but loud subgroup of the ultra progressive Far Left.
Likely your posts on other topics are less salient to the current concerns of this group.
Having lived in New Zealand, I am unpleasantly surprised by those posts, as I found Kiwis to be generally friendly and respectful. This one’s defensiveness suggests a very personal involvement in the issue. But your best option is just to shut that one down.
As a Kiwi, though living in Australia, I find that many kiwis can be quite nasty about others they look down on, ie Australians, Americans and the British. They just do it behind your back. They are very insular and have a sense that they are superior to others, which is encouraged by their media. This builds in to their support of an incompetent Prime Minister during Covid, as they wanted to look good in the eyes of other countries, their desire to be seen a living in a racially harmonious paradise despite obvious problems and their support of alternative lifestyle choices such as the transgender community despite the obvious violence facing anyone wanting to raise issues relating to the loss of female rights. Australia has multiple issues too, but less hidden vitriol.
Non-Kiwi Kiwi here. My experience with New Zealanders is that most of them are lovely people, punching much higher than their weight. Those who are inclined to punch down maybe arrived here from other parts of the world.
”For some reason I cannot understand–and I invite readers to speculate—gender issues engender (pardon the pun) more hateful comments than any controversial topic I have ever discussed here. Suggestions?”
In many or most controversial issues, each side really believes that they are correct. In the gender arena, even the most woke don’t actually believe all of their claims, especially those such as TWAW!!! and that one can actually change one’s biological sex. Thus, they know that they cannot win an argument with logic, and thus resort to such tactics.
I have a hypothesis as to why trans ideologues are so prone to anger, indeed fury. Bertrand Russell noted that when he heard a view which was patently ridiculous he felt no impulse to anger: ‘If somebody says that two plus two equals five, or that Greenland is on the Equator, I merely smile, and pity his ignorance’. However, if the view expressed threatened his belief system, he found himself getting angry; and thus he diagnosed anger as a sign that he was not wholly confident in his beliefs and should re-examine them.
My hypothesis is that trans ideologues fear, deep down, that their position is not really tenable or coherent. When they read rational, considered rebuttals like Jerry’s it threatens their whole belief system and their reaction is anger (expressed in hostility and insults). Anger is not just a reaction but a refuge. Feeling angry makes one feel righteous. People who have an uneasy sense that they might be in the wrong often get angry – at times, it seems, on purpose – and then their doubts disappear.
+1
Bingo.
Sorry that this happened. When I was in graduate school (1978-83), my advisor held weekly seminars with his grad students where we would discuss a paper that was recently published. Each week he started the seminar by reading a piece of what he called “nut mail.” Usually it was just, well, nutty, but sometimes it was like the stuff that you’re getting. Of course the nut mail at that time was delivered by the United States Postal Service. Knowing that this has been going on for a long time probably doesn’t make you feel any better. Public intellectuals are vulnerable to this kind of crap, unfortunately. It’s not always obvious why a certain topic might set someone off.
The whole trans movement really is a secular religion. If you don’t accept all of the dogma unquestioningly, then you are an evil heretic to be condemned and cast out.
+1
I see the trans movement as having much in common with religion as well. The root of the problem with the fundamentalist camp in both is their demand of not just tolerance for the making of claims, but the demand for linguistic acquiescence to them by unbelievers. I have no interest in the fantasies of others, be they religious or sexual. I draw a very distinct line, however, at being asked to acknowledge the truth of their claims by adopting their language. I will continue to take the Lord’s name in vain, to the dismay of any who choose to be offended, and I will continue to distinguish between sex and gender. The word is not the thing.
Of course you’re right. However…
If you work in a regulated profession, like law or medicine, the regulator may tell you that you must use the pronouns demanded by the client/patient, and otherwise behave as if you affirm his beliefs, “Yes you are a woman because you say you are.” If you don’t, you will suffer professional discipline if he complains about you.
You don’t have to affirm the existence (or non-existence) of God just because the client/patient states a belief. You do have to affirm his gender claim, explicitly with pronouns and the sir/madam salutation and letting him use his choice of bathroom even if your female nurse complains to you, as her boss, about there being a man in there.* The body that controls your licence says so. This is sometimes called the ad baculum logical fallacy. An argument is true because you will be punished if you call it false.
————————
(* Actual recent case in Ontario.)
Malignant totalitarian narcissism with a theme of sexual violence and a dollop of angry misogyny — what man, even if he thinks he’s a woman, would call another man a cunt? — seems to be a feature of queer activism. That’s why enforced compliance with pronoun demands and recognition of gender non-conformity as a civil right will lead to pain and suffering and must not be granted. The worst of these people will put themselves in charge and will use this power to make our transphobic lives miserable.
As to why they are like this, could it be internalized homophobia? Some of the noisier homosexual activists talked like this in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, restrained back then by the risk that the cops would actually beat them up. We’ve forgotten about them because they’re all dead. A kinder, gentler, joy-based history has been re-written. With trans you have the additional contribution of anger and disappointment at having spent all this effort only to be a “woman” who will never pass as one.
Even though you are in the public eye and have to expect hate mail, it must be a visceral and hurtful shock to open your inbox and see stuff like this. I am sincerely sorry for you.
Good point. We’ve forgotten about the gay debate, how heated it was. I reminded of that reading about recent death of notorious homophobe Anita Bryant. Hadn’t heard her name in decades.
Jim Jefferies is a hilarious comedian and gets great laughs with the word cunt! I’d recommend his Netflix special “Freedumb” to the blog readers, especially his analogy of science being like a train.
In grad school I had a housemate who enjoyed using the term, and he had a rather glottal way of saying it that was hilarious. Now I am a bit ashamed at laughing since deep down he was really a racist and misogynist jerk. His opinions would not go over well in academia today (I hope), and so I guess that is some progress.
Jeffries is Australian, and the word has very different usage and connotation there from in the US.
Ricky Gervais uses the term rather frequently. I think he intends the usage to be comedic, except when he doesn’t.
Sadly, this level of discourse isn’t unusual on the transgenderist side of the debate. Abuse, it would seem, is all that they have.
MaryCate Delvey frequently posts videos on X/Twitter in which she reads the actual words of trans-demands activists. Sadly, there’s no shortage of lunatic threats so she is unlikely to run out of material any time soon. https://x.com/marycatedelvey/status/1783494628273946920
Can’t read it without an account.
I would have (and think I may have) predicted that of all the issues surrounding critical social justice and DEI, transgender issues would turn out be the most controversial and inflammatory. Disagreement on any aspect sets off a fury of outrage — sometimes angry arguments, sometimes announcements that there can be no arguments. Race and Gaza are also hot wires, of course, but there are I think a few elements that make gender special:
1.) Forced connections with homosexuality (“just like being gay!”) race (“Intersectionality!”) and feminism (“it’s gender nonconformity!”) — with the subsequent conviction that this is the Big Civil Rights Issue of Our Time. Naysayers are subsequently demonized as equivalent to thugs who want to beat up queers, Jim Crow supporters, and/or fundamentalist enforcers of the Patriarchy.
2.) Children are directly involved in the narrative, with “trans kids” presumably suffering suicidal levels of distress which only unfeeling monsters would refuse to alleviate. Anything involving abused kids ups the ante.
3.) A uniquely vulnerable Identity which depends on subjective belief, goes against plain observation and understanding of the facts, and is easily denied by outsiders. This then leads to charges that “they want to erase our existence” and claims of genocide, which again ups the ante.
There are other features, but these are the ones that come to mind first when I try to think of what might make gender unique.
There are two differences I see between the gay rights movement and the trans rights movement, at least the more extreme form. In nearly all cases gay rights do not conflict with the rights of other groups (wedding cake making is one case). Second, people perceive gender extremists as posing more of a threat to the well-being of children (hormones, surgery, etc.) than people did about advocates of gay rights.
True. I think there’s another important distinction.
Same-sex attraction is an ordinary claim, meaning we know what sex is, we know what sexual attraction is, and homosexuality is both conceivable and verifiable, despite it not being common. It’s relatively simple.
The arguments against gay rights then are all moral arguments — that it’s wrong and they’re perverts in so engaging. Opponents wouldn’t claim it’s never happened, or they don’t understand the concepts.
Transgender identification is an extraordinary claim, and it’s complex. We are all born with an inner sense of what gender we truly are; children reliably know what they are; sex is assigned at birth; sex is a spectrum and hard to determine; being a man or woman involves how someone sees themselves; gender is core identity; “gender” is neither sex nor stereotypes; gender must replace the category of sex in society and law; transition saves lives; women can have penises and men can give birth, etc.
There’s a lot to unpack, and dispute. Arguments against it aren’t primarily moral, but rational. “Boys can’t be girls” is a different type of objection than “boys shouldn’t fall in love with other boys.”
Thank you. Well said (as usual for you.)
I’m a gay man who fought for the right to marry but I don’t see cake-baking as a human right, and I think it was a mistake to push that, as it only confirms the fears of those opposing same-sex marriage.
When I was involved in gay rights groups in the 1990s, we always took pains to reassure parents that we weren’t coming for their children. The trans movement has thrown that out the window, targeting children and prompting exactly the backlash we were trying to avoid.
❤️
+1
My take is that misogyny is evolved and that’s why the passion. The environment is finite, there’s only so much food. We are the descendants of the monkeys that got control of the females so as to control who gets to reproduce.
As a woman, I’ve noticed distinct misogyny. These males—who apparently want desperately to be female—can be absolutely rabid as I found out on The Friendly Atheist Substack.
I don’t have anything against these people, unless their demands conflict with women’s rights. Most prominent is the men in women’s sports debate.
The Friendly Atheist commenters wouldn’t yield an inch. I must be a failed athlete! And other accusations.
The hostility there is unbelievable.
Any “women’s right” that is construed as preferential treatment of women over men in any setting will be undermined if a man can claim those preferences for himself, simply by identifying as a woman. What does “Believe all women!” mean if both the witness/complainant and the defendant in a sexual assault trial are regarded by the law as women and referred with female pronouns in Court? (“Her penis…”). To whom does a brainwashed jury give the benefit of belief?
The only women’s rights that are not threatened are those rights women have to be treated equally with men, e.g., voting and property ownership. If men have those rights equally as men, they gain nothing by dissembling as women. But look what happens if you decide, for equity purposes of electing more feminist candidates, to give unmarried women 1.5 votes in each election, or the Prime Minister decides to have equal numbers of men and women in his Cabinet.
In any discussion of conflicting rights, we should be careful to distinguish between rights to equal treatment and rights to preferential treatment. Trans ideology is more dangerous to the latter. Note that the rest of us are also uncomfortable with rights to preferential treatment unless a good reason is adduced, such as women’s private spaces to protect their physical weakness. The rest is up for grabs.
Which monkey societies are set up that way?
You don’t actually have to go all the way to monkey in terms of social animals. Fun fact, the mammalian species with the highest homicide rate is those cute little meerkats. The victim is almost always a young female and the murderer is almost always a high ranking female. Evolution is about competition and that’s about power. Every living thing is descended from the winners of that competition and remember that nature has no morality, we invented that, so behaviour will do whatever it takes to win, good or bad. Remember the first Trump win was against the most qualified candidate in American history. She still lost to the least qualified. Look at pictures from a Trump rally, look at the rapt, adoring faces on the women. They don’t love him for his economic policies, they love him because he will do the most harm to their rival women. The men vote for him because he promises to hurt the women who won’t f*ck them.
I once sat next to Peter Boghossian on a car ride after watching him demonstrate his “Street Epistemology” techniques where he gets people to question their assumptions about people they disagree with. He told me he’d lost more friends over the trans issue than anything else he’s ever talked about. He didn’t know why.
I wonder if it might be due to those people having a very close friend, or relative, who’s trans. And so any questioning of that is a direct attack on their loved one.
But that would certainly hold for gay rights, as there are far more gay people than trans people. And yet I’ve never been attacked for my stand on gay rights (granted, it’s highly pro-gay-rights!).
I’m not sure why it would be different but here’s a hypothesis.
If a man said he was gay, I wouldn’t question it, and there’d probably be evidence to support his claim. For instance, him being in a relationship with another man. So I’d agree he was gay even if I thought same-sex relationships were immoral.
But if he said he was now a female, I’d say sorry, all the evidence points the other way. I’d say his claim about himself is not true, and it would have nothing to do with subjective morality, but rather objective reality, which is a much bigger deal. So that might seem like an existential threat to that person. And might make him really mad at me!
Well, at least it was fine to revisit the delightful wildflower post.
Online abuse of this sort is disturbing. It seems to amount to gross sexualized threats or allusions — or hyperbolic accusations of (whatever)-phobia & nazi comparisons. No thoughts about the why of it that aren’t also summarized in some of the discourse above, especially #’s 3, 6, 12, 14.
As per other comments above, sorry to learn that you are subject to this, and sorry, too, very sorry, not to be surprised.
Not surprised at all this is standard behavior from trans supporters.
Yes, it’s discomfiting. If not all trans supporters, certainly a significant and very vocal & aggressive proportion of them. At one point JK Rowling posted examples of the hate messages. I think that’s been taken down. Coming back to this thread, I see quite a few cogent comments have been added.
People have been convinced that it is THE social issue of our times, beyond racism and sexism. They have made it the hill they would, metaphorically, die on. At the same time they’ve been convinced the civil, civic discourse is a trick pushed by Capitalists.
The group most likely to believe that whether you are a woman or a man can be different from your sex at birth? Atheists—by a three to one margin. This exceeds not only religious believers (as expected) but also “agnostics,” those who believe “nothing in particular,” and the “religiously unaffiliated.” Most likely to believe that society has not gone far enough in accepting trans people? Atheists. Most likely to oppose requiring people to use restroom facilities that match their birth sex? Atheists. Most supportive of the teaching of gender identity in elementary schools? Atheists. Most supportive of athletes competing with whomever they most “identify”? Atheists.
You, dear professor, are a heretic. A high-profile heretic with a platform. And heretics always come in for worse abuse than do nonbelievers. I suspect that, atheism aside, the verbal violence and word choice of the responses also suggests a couple other factors that play to some degree: 1) transwomen are not women, and 2) some trans people are struggling with psychological disorders.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/07/07/attitudes-about-transgender-issues-vary-widely-among-christians-religious-nones-in-u-s/
+1
Some atheists are, in fact, deeply religious. Other atheists are not. For a bad example, consider Hermant Mehta. His religion is gender woo. He is a true believer. He has actually produced videos endorsing Imane Khelif.
Hemant Mehta’s “friendly” substack is full of extremists making all sorts of death threats, and yet, he only ever deletes comments that are in support of the ‘gender critical’ viewpoint, no matter how polite they are.
As a New Zealander, I am extremely embarrassed by the totally unacceptable posting by a fellow citizen (They may be a foreigner here on a work visa or like, but the country has to accept responsibility for their actions). I wish to apologise for it.
What they wrote is not free speech. It is just obnoxious trash posting that reflects totally on their lack of redeeming characteristics. I would like to think New Zealanders were not like that. Unfortunately, some are and we have to suffer their stupidity.
I’m also a New Zealander and share both the embarrassment and wish to apologize.
I have previously stated that ‘trans’ is the highest god. Anyone who deviates from the gender woo religion is guilty of blasphemy.
I have considered the vitriol over this issue as being an example of moral panic that can seize a sub-set of people, and drive some of them to become screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy persons. Moral panic had at one time emerged from the political right against voting rights for women, against civil rights, integration, and gay rights. During Covid it was about things like forcing kids to be masked in schools (I remember seeing footage of parents screaming at their kid’s teachers, for example). Now from the left we have moral panic over BLM, LGBTQ, and Gaza.
Moral panic emerges when you feel that your personal rights are being lost, or the rights and safety of vulnerable people are being lost. For the latter, the moral panicked person feels that they are The Savior of the Oppressed, and that the ends justify the means. Facts don’t matter. What your opponent actually says also does not count for much because they are fuckwits and cunts, as the be-spittled commenter says.
Interesting, because I have heard those (especially women) who oppose gender ideology accused of “moral panic” over the issue. This despite having actual fact based arguments.
Gender ideology is fundamentally misogynist and homophobic. Since society remains both of these, gender ideology has flourished.
GI is the ultimate dehumanization and erasure of women.
GI is nothing but narcissistic, overly entitled men demanding they be allowed into women’s sex-segregated facilities. Anyone who’s had the misfortune to encounter one of these men knows exactly what I mean.
And the cooperation of some women is simply sickening.
Very well said.
Indeed, but let’s not forget about “transmen,” who apparently hate women so much that they don’t want to be one. Also, most women and feminists support trans activism and gender ideology… for some reason.
Trans-identifying females (TIF) do not want to experience more misogyny — sexual harassment, assault, verbal harassment, etc. As they approach puberty, they know it’s ahead for them. Trantifa brainwashes these girls that the only way out is to ‘transition.’ Trantifa convinces these girls that if they don’t like strange men grabbing their breasts, then they must really be boys. These girls don’t ‘hate women;’ they want to avoid male objectification, exploitation, and violence.
Instead of female solidarity, girls and women are being divided against each other. This is exactly what misogynist men want — women fighting with each other and against their own best interests.
Society conditions women to conform to accepted norms in detriment to their own true wishes, common sense, well-being and safety. The same way, in opinion polls, more women than men support large-scale immigration from the most backward, violent and misogynist cultures on Earth.
To be fair, society also conditions men to conform in ways detrimental to their own physical and mental well-being and safety (often in ways resulting in adverse affects to women).
You’re getting off very lightly. If you were female and writing this, well… experto credite, getting a few dozen comments like that a day would start to feel like mild joshing.
Oh, I get it at other sites, too, one of which has been mentioned. But really, this doesn’t bother me nearly as much as being “canceled” by people who actually are thoughtful.
But I have to say I have gained a lot more respect from J. K. Rowling, who takes the hate as grist for her humor mill.
I think it stopped being updated some years back, but the collection is pretty voluminous as it stands — JKR getting her own page, but it’s only one of many. https://terfisaslur.com/
As Helen Joyce beautifully put it these are the results from Operation Let Them Speak. They are utterly unhinged. It demonstrates perfectly that these men show themselves to be violent men who think they …no sorry… demand unfettered access to women’s spaces. It is obvious why women objected.
Good news though Bidens Title IX changes was rejected by the courts so the conflation with sex and gender can no longer apply. Hooray.
Amen.
Never should have let the loons out of the closet. Now the maladjusted think they rule the world…Send them to Afghanistan on holiday.
+1
Visiting a family recently whose dinner table conversations typically involve politically polarised banter, I was fascinated that the normally-levelheaded 19yr old left the table in a raging fury when transgender ideology came up as a topic. It had to be explained to us visitors that ‘he has a classmate who’s transgender’ and this makes him ‘defensive’ about the topic. Nothing in the conversation which led to the rage was inflammatory. There were just a few mild comments, giving the impression that the family had discussed this many times before, and that the kid was genuinely worried for the classmate, didn’t know how to protect his classmate, and felt completely powerless.
Before that evening, I’d supposed that the histrionics are a regular part of the activist playbook. But the evening left me with a sense that the histrionics are also due to an underlying awareness of the hopelessness of the cause, without the maturity needed to confront that hopelessness. The situation reminded me of one of my own childhood classmates who was ‘damaged at birth’ and suffered physical and intellectual handicaps. For most of our childhoods we were all just kids together, and everyone protected ‘Jimmy’. When puberty hit, Jimmy, aware of what he wanted but was missing, suddenly became too violent to have around.
We now have an army of such people violent, angry, and raging about what we used to call the human condition.
This is an intriguing insight: “Being trans but unable to actually change sex makes trans people angry.” Made me think.
Since our host invited speculation, do you think your hypothesis could be backwards? Could existing angry violence be the cause of “trans”?
People can’t be “trans” in the sense of born in the wrong body. So I think the starting point of your analogy with Jimmy might be wrong: Jimmy had a pre-existing condition that led to his later frustration and anger; that’s not the case for “trans” people. Instead it seems that ~all “trans” people have some kind of mild or savage mental health problem, the symptoms of which include depression and anger. The specific mental health problems seem to be a rainbow (ha ha) of different illnesses ranging from sad teens with unresolved anxiety about sex and sexual preference to destructive narcissistic Buffalo Bill-type autogynephiles, all lumped under “trans”. The important difference is that mental illness and anger (or depression) come first, and “trans” is just the story some mentally ill people tell themselves about why they are depressed and angry (and delusional and narcissistic etc.).
Nice, Mike. An academic psychiatrist and I are going to tackle a letter to the editor of a journal of medical education that just published a report from McMaster University
https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-024-06567-9
on their curriculum on gender-affirming care for internal medicine postgraduate trainees. The report doesn’t communicate much optimism that any critical appraisal by the learners of the core tenets of gender woo would be tolerated. But wouldn’t that be fun! “Believe this because we tell you to.” “Who says?”
I am going to discuss your insights with her for our letter as, to me a non-psychiatrist, they seem compelling. There’s so much wrong in this curriculum it’s hard to know where to start for a short LTE. I think your insights are a good place. I’ll attribute you privately (me to her) by name, so she doesn’t think I thought it up myself, but otherwise I’ll keep it on the down-low. No affiliations etc. I know you’re not exactly “out” at work.
I hope you can get some traction pushing back against that stupid article. “Scholarship” like that is so often based on forced teaming of gay men and lesbians with “trans”. The very first sentence of that paper misleads the reader by referring to “2SLGBTQIA+” as “4–6% of the Canadian population”, but cites the WPATH SoC which is exclusively about “trans” people. Most of the references that are about “2SLGBTQIA+” are about “trans” people, not gay men or lesbians. The latter don’t “present with unique health care needs” and they rarely need particular attention from authors in the “Division of Endocrinology”. It’s all so shallow eh?
We could save some ink and pixels by replacing the alphabet soup with ‘nonhetcis’.
When trans zealots cry “they want to erase our existence”, they are in a sense correct. If zealots of different fantasies insisted that their ineffable, non-material soul had converted them into Jesus Christ, Napoleon, or Elvis, we would of course deny such obviously deluded existence claims, and refer the patients for the psychiatric help they need. Needless to say, the patients would respond to anything even hinting in this direction with the most frenzied social comments.
Narcissistic rage, cognitive dissonance, misogyny–commenters above have mentioned these factors. There’s another one: very early on, false claims about vast numbers of trans people being murdered were spread around. I remember a claim that 1 in 12 trans people were or would be murder victims. That one did the rounds on FreeThought Blogs.
Abusive rhetoric was rationalized as understandable in response to such carnage. It was explicitly embraced and normalized by trans activists.
There was a meme going around of a trans person holding a weapon of some kind, looking threatening or smiling evilly. The caption was always: “POV if you’re a TERF in my mentions.”
The attempt to portray trans-identified people as uniquely vulnerable persists: it’s effective propaganda. It gets the kind-hearted but credulous on their side, where they join in trying to silence or shame critics. Notice that Human Rights Watch maintains a list of trans-identified murder victims, and we still have “Trans Day of Remembrance,” despite the facts that trans people are no more likely to be murdered than anyone else (actually less likely, at least in the USA–feel free to crunch the numbers), and few of the murders that do occur are actually motivated by anti-trans hate.
The image of brutal bloodthirsty men with baseball bats reading articles written by radical feminists and getting the idea to attack trans people is rather far fetched.
Especially when, as you point out, they instead seem to be going for the radical feminists.
“brutal bloodthirsty men with baseball bats reading articles written by radical feminists” target radical feminists, not trans-identifying people.
Women are always their targets.
I’ve said it here many times — GI is a men’s rights ideology.
ginger, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow that last line. It deserves to be broadcast far and wide.
Yes, Christopher, please do! Thank you for broadcasting it!
The difficulty with the “GI is men’s rights” claim is that it’s primarily ideological and secondarily makes an assumed but contestable truth claim itself. People who call themselves transwomen would dismiss the claim out of hand: “What’s she talking about? We’re not men. We’re women. We want gender-based civil rights to compel others to treat us as the women we are. We’re not advocating for men. They can’t stand us, either.”
Before a person you are engaging with can endorse your ideological claim — Men’s Rights are bad — she has to parse the truth claim and say, “Oh, right. She’s saying transwomen are men. Now I get it. But that’s transphobic, isn’t it? I don’t want to be a TERF.”
The pitfall for you is that you have to do the additional argumentative work to show what is wrong with gender ideology just because it’s based in “men’s rights”. Ought men not to have rights? Should only women have rights? “Men’s Rights” has to be coded in some way that those in the know will know why it is bad and respond appropriately, like “States’ Rights” during Jim Crow or, I suppose, abortion and “anti-trans” legislation today. Opposing gender ideology on the grounds that it is about “men’s rights”, would prompt a “So? Your point?” from ingenues who haven’t been trained to hear the dog whistle.
Leslie, when I use the phrase “men’s rights,” I mean the “men’s rights” agitators on the manosphere. The definition of “rights” there is not the conventional definition you and I know.
Search online for “manosphere” and you will quickly see the tremendous difference. Actually, it’s not only a difference but it’s a separate, warped reality. “Men’s rights” means the “right” to sex with any woman, any time, any place, whether she wants it or not. Men’s rights agitators (MRA) want the government to provide women as sex partners for any man who wants them. They want the government to mandate “corrective rape” for lesbians, imprison women who choose to remain single and childfree, and ban women from education and working outside the home for pay. They want to enforce rating women for their “sexual market value.” MRAs want to be a “Chad” or (“Tyrone” if they’re black) and women to be a “Stacey.” And that’s just the beginning. In short, MRAs want to return women to prehistory with a side of sick fantasyland.
GI is “men’s rights” because they both share virulent, violent misogyny and homophobia (actually more lesbiphobia, but they hate gay men too.) MRAs are usually incels, MGTOWs, red pillers, rapists, pedophiles, domestic abusers, etc. Many of them openly boast about their violence against women. This is something of which they are proud.
Again, just search for any of these terms. These are NOT the same rights for women and men under the law. I recommend the blog We Hunted the Mammoth for a start, and the r/mensrights on Reddit. Reddit will ban you for using the n-word, but it allows men to post about their misogynist violence.
I wish I were making this up.
Re your post at 8:53
Hm. Not a corner of the internet I want to become familiar with but I get your eye-opening drift. It would be politically useful to tar the nastier activists with that formulation of the MRA brush — and I suppose the guy who wrote to Jerry would qualify — but I have my doubts it would stick to most of them in general. Speaking as a man, to me they don’t seem to rhyme, quite. I don’t see MGTOWs in them. They are too floridly homosexual for one thing. If they were bent on violently subjugating women, why do they take estrogen and anti-androgens and some cut off their penises…and seek out men to have sex with? (The autogynephiles I can see as separate.)
Apologists and sympathizers often say that only a fringe minority of TRAs are nasty and the rest we should love and treasure for diversity’s sake. But if you consider that only 0.5% of the population is trans in the first place and these days more than half must be women, perhaps the nasty disturbed ones we notice are the majority-mainstream of the men and the sympathetic ones who just want to be left alone are the outliers.
I don’t know what more to say about this but I did want to acknowledge your response.
Thank you, Leslie, for your reply. I appreciate it. The manosphere is, quite frankly, horrifying.
MGTOWs are MGTOWs because they hate women. Incels blame women for all their own (numerous) shortcomings. In fact, a few years ago a law-enforcement agency (I want to say FBI) said incel violence is a major domestic terrorism threat.
Most TIMs are misogynists because they think they’re women, want to be women, yet realize on some level that they cannot be women no matter what they do. They hate what they can never become.
I’m also excluding AGPs who fetishize, sexualize, mock, and dehumanize women. They also hate what they can never become.
A major part of the problem with GI is that now any men who think they are entitled to use women’s single-sex facilities can use them with impunity without any excuse. In many cases, these men don’t even have to claim that they’re women. They just walk right in. Women like me who complain are reprimanded and banned.
And I have seen numerous high-profile cases of abusive and predatory men gaming the system. For example, a registered sex offender in the UK dressed in drag, claimed he was a TIM in an abusive relationship, and was admitted to a women’s shelter where he proceeded to rape two women staying there. The women are suing the shelter. Also in the UK, men using ‘gender neutral’ dressing rooms in a department store have raped women users; the women are suing the store. Nicola Sturgeon lost her political career over housing violent men in women’s prisons. In CA and WA, women inmates are suing their states’ departments of correction for housing violent men who have raped (and impregnated) them. ACLU is, of course, defending the rapists. Many US women’s prisons have condom dispensers — gee, why would a WOMEN’S prison need condom dispensers? In some US public schools, boys have raped girls in girls’ bathrooms. The girls’ parents have sued the school boards for allowing boys in girls’ facilities.
Not to mention adult men being naked around minor girls in locker and dressing rooms. Men like William Thomas competing against and stealing awards and accolades from women. President Biden meeting with two TIMs on Lesbian Visibility Day.
I could go on.
This madness must end. Soon.
If I see a man in womanface (or any man, for that matter) in a women’s restroom, how am I supposed to know whether he’s ‘sympathetic’ or predatory? I don’t.
The only policy to ensure women’s privacy, dignity, and safety is to ban ALL biological males from women’s single-sex facilities. How they “identify” is irrelevant. No males permitted. Simple. End of story.
Forgot to mention this: a branch of the San Francisco Public Library hosted an “art exhibit” that contained, among other things, a bloody t-shirt reading “I Punch TERFs” —
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/05/01/trans-activism-become-centered-justifying-violence-women-time-allies-speak/
BTW, I’ve gotten “Die TERF Die,” and one charmer posted my address and asked if I still lived there. And I’m NOBODY. But my Facebook posts are public. Everyone who fights this nonsense gets this crap. Everyone.
+1
You’re not “nobody” E.Z.
I for one adore you!
And your stealth spy work at WPATH was excellent!
cheers,
D.A.
NYC
David, I’m not Eliza Mondegreen! We just share a “last name.”
Re EZ, tho, I appreciate and agree with your comment!
Oh sorry about that. No disrespect. The name, cool art on your profile and context got me in error.
D.A.
NYC
No worries!
+1
Sorry, Lady E.M. I meant to type.
D.A.
NYC
I don’t know, Ceiling Cat, the “charitable, love letters” Dawkins read a few years back are pretty up there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW7607YiBso
Maybe the difference who the letters are coming from….
I don’t know, Ceiling Cat. The “love letters” sent to Dawkins are pretty bad too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW7607YiBso
There does seem to be something especially cruel and dehumanizing about the trans ideologues’ comments — something worse than fundamentalist Christians’. I wonder what’s behind it.
Whatever the case, I’m sorry you have had to deal with it. (I think it is good to document hate mail, if only because it signals you can track IP addresses.)
(Before I went anonymous on social media, I was mobbed. I recall crazies tracking down my work email [then at a cancer hospital] and sending me some “love letters.” Let me tell you, I didn’t handle it with the composure you have. Speaks to your experience and level-headedness.)
I never claimed I was in the same Hate League as Richard. He is a big fish and has been stirring the pot for a lot longer than I!
Well, I wouldn’t think the comments you get would be as humorous, either. There’s something about people wishing “Jebus make Dawkins burn cuz Dawkins gay,” which is so dumb it’s funny. That’s not the case with the comments from the trans-ideology narcissists.
One last thought: My first comment about Dawkins’ videos was a complement to you, placing you solidly within the fold of those receiving “love letters,” and a long-running memory, as I probably learned of Dawkins’ videos from WEIT.
Your reply is a reminder to me that I am not male and don’t think about how men see themselves in the hierarchy of other men. You went with “Dawkins is a bigger fish” when I was thinking you were in the fold.
I was just thinking of that exact thing. 🙂
I write for some publications – a few of which have comments. It takes my editors a while to cull the crazies (I write about Israel so there’s no shortage).
Thus – big round of applause for PCC/E’s editing in our treasured comments section at WEIT.
D.A.
NYC
The trans rhetoric of vitriol also seems to overlap with the pro-Palestinian supporters along with the it’s all colonialisms fault oppressed narrative.
Takes about 2 responses before the hurling of insults.
When they have no facts to rebut an argument they call one names. It is a real sign of immaturity, lack of critical thinking and thinking passionately and emotively means they must be right.
Staying polite really causes them extreme anguish. Professor Coyne is doing well. 👏👏👏
Disgusting but by now unsurprising. Why has the trans rhetoric become so overheated? Other commentators have proposed numerous good explanations above. I will admit to not having seen this coming as, similar to Sam Harris, I didn’t think there were enough trans people, and enough people willing to “die on that hill” supporting them, to create such a furor. I hate to say this, but I think they’ve succeeded in pumping up the volume by specifically encouraging the level of unhinged nastiness and vitriol that so many of these supporters spew.
But the rise of the critical social justice movement and the advent of SJWs (identity politics) has fed the fury, as has the inappropriate conflation of trans rights with gay rights (as other readers here have previously observed, there is no necessary element connecting gay rights with trans issues other than garden variety discrimination). But I still find myself a bit dumbfounded at how this subject appears, in too many cases, to turn even seemingly rational people shockingly irrational. From there it is no large leap to find this other set of people engaging in these vile, grotesque, and ultimately pathetic tantrums.
That troll sounds like the abusive types you see at Hemant Mehta’s blog, or over at Pharyngula. You know, the “friendly” places always banging on about opposing “harm”.
Being gay, goes back centuries (at least). Napolean and Hitler had very senior staff who were gay. Note that Hitler was notably anti-gay. Stalin was even more fanatically anti-gay. So human experience includes a long history of some fraction of people being same sex attracted. By contrast, ‘trans’ is apparently quite new. Of course, there have been attempts to find ‘trans’ characters in history. For example, there are claims (with no evidence) that Joan of Arc was ‘trans’.
I offer this comment as a partial explanation for the hysteria over ‘trans’. It is not a full explanation, but may be part of the explanation.
I am not sure why but others (Douglas Murray?) have also commented on a higher intensity of hate / backlash towards those who question “trans”. I am guessing that trans issues are the hardest for the average person to accept as reality, thus conformity requires the most vicious of attacks on people who simply ask questions.
Isn’t it obvious? Toxic masculinity.
[sarcasm]
I have a theory about the phenomenon of aggressive, name-calling trans activists. They view their beliefs about gender as essential to achieving their vision of a fair and just society. Consequently, these beliefs form a significant part of their identity and the moral framework they rely on. However, it’s apparent—even to them—that their views lack a sound and rational foundation. Deep down, they understand that women aren’t men, men can’t become pregnant, and similar realities. Yet, they are convinced that these beliefs must be universally accepted to create the society they envision.
In most cases, their social circles fully embrace these rigid views, making it unthinkable for them to express doubt or dissent. However, their arguments are often weak, counterfactual, and insupportable. Faced with the inability to substantiate their stance rationally, they resort to overcompensation. This is the root of their hostility: lacking sound reasoning, they deflect through anger and personal attacks.
Name-calling and aggression serve as tools to shift attention away from the weaknesses in their arguments. The most effective strategy, however, is demonizing those who disagree. By labelling opponents as hateful bigots, they immediately discredit opposing perspectives—after all, who would take the views of a supposed “hate monger” seriously?
There’s another dimension to this behaviour: it acts as a warning. By ostracizing non-believers and portraying them as objects of scorn, they send a clear message: disagree with us, and we will vilify you, exclude you, and isolate you. Unfortunately, this tactic often works, as many people prefer to avoid the risk of becoming social pariahs.
A few ideas about the cause for the extreme vitriol:
For many of those who adopt a gender identity, the identity is a coping mechanism as a response to trauma. Others may have no stable sense of self beyond the identity or are depending on the interventions to remedy existing mental health struggles or real or perceived difficulties fitting in with peers. Also, a gender identity is a way to exclude yourself from higher levels of “critical theory” “oppressors,” which is surprisingly significant for teens, especially in Blue states/cities. Those on the autism spectrum — often prone to rigid, black and white thinking and extreme reactions to distress — are over-represented in the cohort of youth adopting a gender identity. For this population, the identity can become a significant fixation. Unfortunately, the belief (and it is a belief system) that they can change sex or “live as” a different sex is a delusion, and one that relies on continual external validation. For these populations, anything that challenges the identity challenges the validity of what they’ve been told is the single solution to their distress. The inability to control others and ensure that necessary validation is a source of further frustration and is interpreted as an existential threat worthy of an extreme reaction. And, as someone else mentioned, when you have no facts or evidence to prop up your belief system, the next option is anger and insult.
Outside of those adopting a gender identity, the US has a large misinformed general-population — primarily those on the left who have been lied to about the identity as some kind of thoughtful medical diagnosis and about the evidence to support the interventions as magical and lifesaving. They see this as the major social justice issue of our time. Compounded by our extremely tribal political reality, and the mainstream media’s continual characterization of any dissent as coming from the Right, which is equated with bigotry and all things bad, any opposition to policy and practice that doesn’t celebrate gender identity is seen as toxic, untouchable, worthy of the worst scorn.
Add to these two groups the parents who have facilitated their child’s medical “transition.” This is a group that will vehemently and aggressively reject any suggestion that instead of helping their child, they instead consented to medical abuse.