I have several aims with the conversations I have online. And one of them is to model a more productive style of discourse. I definitely don’t always succeed at this. I get irritated, just like everybody else, I get defensive, just like everybody else, I get sarcastic, possibly a little more than everybody else. But the sheer volume of people I talk to reminds me how unproductive this is. And even, occasionally, helps me to cut through the noise.
I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape. I know trans people *do* get assaulted, and sometimes a lot, but Stephanie's acting so much like an entitled man that I don't find it hard to believe she's lying about that. It's not that I think women regularly lie a lot about rape; this just seems to be appropriated grievance.
I don't trust many social media women anymore who claim rape and sexual assault; mostly because the words have been stretched so out of shape by sexual assault activists and extremist feminists that I'm not sure they even understand any more what *is* a rape. In fact, when some #MeToo personal story orgy breaks out over the cancelled celebrity du jour, I suspect a *lot* of women, esp the anonymous ones, are making up their alleged rape stories for the attention and the sisterhood. They're not naming some guy who supposedly did it; they're never going to get busted lying because they're @IHateTrump231 or whatever and there's nothing on their profile to identify them. Since toxic transwomen like Stephanie ape the very worst of toxic femininity & feminism, I wonder if she's making up the rape story. Who's going to challenge her? That's verboten.
She very much sounds like she's in this for the victimhood. She's everything wrong with the left, the trans movement, and exactly the sort of person JK Rowling speaks out against.
You're very good at this, Steve. "Self-unaware" is a splendid turn of phrase that I will plagiarize at earliest opportunity.
But here is where you and I differ:
"I truly hate the toxicity that surrounds trans discourse. Which is why I think it’s so important to try to understand it."
I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger. Years of online combat now feel like wasted time for me and even if I had once had your patience, seeing the odometer of age roll from 59 to 60 would have ended it. I don't know why you focus on the most hopeless and least reachable.
Because it was clear very early in the exchange that Stephen/anie is a virulently hostile person whose claims of "trans joy" and of belonging to a "community" are not exaggerations but lies. Nobody as hostile as he is could ever experience a moment of joy except maybe after getting someone banned, and he is far too self-centered to be a reciprocal part of any community.
This interlocutor supports the point of your article very well; why would anyone whose only exposure to this fad community* want to get closer to it? This person is repellent. And the backlash is growing.
*That Stephen/anie is not actually dysphoric is not proven but it is a statistically defensible presumption and his defensiveness is wholly at odds with self-acceptance. He's jumping aboard whatever bandwagon affording opportunities to play the victim.
Edit: I almost never continue engagement with people who use "lol" or "lmao" or any of those. That's just immature. I respond with "teenybopper" and answer no more.
"I have 30x the followers you do because I am at least 30x more reasonable and articulate than you are (not to mention intelligent it seems)."
LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters.. Relatable. It's a rare occurrence but it always makes me smile. You are usually so even-tempered.
Loved the final response to her. And it wasn't remotely petty - it was really resonant for me. It reminded me of what I've dealt with with some commenters (on Goodreads, not here). Except, unlike you, I can often be extremely petty. After I get a bizarre, hateful comment, I sometimes just delete their comment & block them, but more often respond with as diminishing a response as I can imagine at the time, and then block. The last word. Of course, I then have to deal with the occasional sock puppet account created so that they can continue the conversation by direct messaging me pictures of dead bodies or anime gifs of rapes (literally true). Sad LOL! People can be so crazy.
ANYWAY, I really loved this part: "But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated. And they use their “oppression” as justification to say all the things they wish they could say to their bullies."
This is so true and I need to remember this! It's a challenge trying to understand let alone empathize with people who act so over the top. But that energy is coming from somewhere and if I want to truly see myself as a humanist, I need to consider that. Online and elsewhere.
I'm learning a way of having different conversations face-to-face or in zoom called "warm data" & also investigating the use of "deep canvassing", which seems to be broadly the same thing.
The idea is to listen rather than criticize & respond with personal stories rather than sticking to a familiar script that you hope will make you sound impressive. It's the absolute opposite of those watercooler conversations where you're trying to win respect by knowing more than the other guy.
It's hard to do - even harder when you try to do it in writing rather than via the spoken word - but it does seem to disarm some of the antagonism & burst some of those bubbles.
Committed (or paid) trolls block me almost immediately, too, which is an added bonus.
Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated."
I think you have the causal relationship here reversed. The pain doesn't come from electively joining a marginalized group (and then striving to increase the marginalization); the joining of the group is a reaction to pain, to dissatisfaction, to emptiness.
In the past people would relocate and change their names, "starting over," escaping a life that wasn't working. Of course this failed because they brought the source of their dissatisfaction with them.
I've said it many times; the number laying claim to "trans" is so far in excess of those who would medically qualify as dysphoric that it would be facile to ignore that "trans" is a fad. Or to ignore how many "detransition" back to "cis" (ugh) and come out as gay or just go back to who they were before (maybe missing a few body parts).
I think Stephanie was a bitter and unhappy person before .. whatever pronoun .. decided to join the latest Justin Bieber Fan Club.
An astonishing bit from a Medium "trans" person (who routinely capitalizes it but leaves "cis" lowercase):
"And "medical criteria"... gender is not a "medical" issue by default... you're thinking of gender dysphoria, which isn't a requirement to be Trans..."
Just ... wow. This is an admission that, as gay people have fought for centuries, the "trans" thing *is* in most cases a choice.
the header image shows her flipping off the reader and the title promises that what follows will "piss you off." A list of the writer's other articles shows them to be uniformly belligerent and confrontational.
This article is mostly about lowering expectations for transitioning, that it doesn't go as well for older men as for younger, but it winds up noting that "trans" people are a vilified minority and that life hereafter is going to be grim.
Isn't that, frankly, the whole point?
I know, I know, it's only the activists who are spreading this hate and rage (I discovered this article after I reported one of her attacks on Steve, saying he was spreading "transphobia"), but the more I see, the more I am convinced of the raw inauthenticity of the entire movement. This writer is devoted, at least n Medium, to being a complete nuisance and I can only imagine what problems she and the many like her bring to the workplace; all the sensitivity training and pronoun indoctrination in the world can't compensate for someone determined to stir up conflict.
I'm going to be honest: I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe Stephanie's litany of aggressions committed against her, esp rape. I know trans people *do* get assaulted, and sometimes a lot, but Stephanie's acting so much like an entitled man that I don't find it hard to believe she's lying about that. It's not that I think women regularly lie a lot about rape; this just seems to be appropriated grievance.
I don't trust many social media women anymore who claim rape and sexual assault; mostly because the words have been stretched so out of shape by sexual assault activists and extremist feminists that I'm not sure they even understand any more what *is* a rape. In fact, when some #MeToo personal story orgy breaks out over the cancelled celebrity du jour, I suspect a *lot* of women, esp the anonymous ones, are making up their alleged rape stories for the attention and the sisterhood. They're not naming some guy who supposedly did it; they're never going to get busted lying because they're @IHateTrump231 or whatever and there's nothing on their profile to identify them. Since toxic transwomen like Stephanie ape the very worst of toxic femininity & feminism, I wonder if she's making up the rape story. Who's going to challenge her? That's verboten.
She very much sounds like she's in this for the victimhood. She's everything wrong with the left, the trans movement, and exactly the sort of person JK Rowling speaks out against.
You're very good at this, Steve. "Self-unaware" is a splendid turn of phrase that I will plagiarize at earliest opportunity.
But here is where you and I differ:
"I truly hate the toxicity that surrounds trans discourse. Which is why I think it’s so important to try to understand it."
I would change "try to understand" to "ignore" or something stronger. Years of online combat now feel like wasted time for me and even if I had once had your patience, seeing the odometer of age roll from 59 to 60 would have ended it. I don't know why you focus on the most hopeless and least reachable.
Because it was clear very early in the exchange that Stephen/anie is a virulently hostile person whose claims of "trans joy" and of belonging to a "community" are not exaggerations but lies. Nobody as hostile as he is could ever experience a moment of joy except maybe after getting someone banned, and he is far too self-centered to be a reciprocal part of any community.
This interlocutor supports the point of your article very well; why would anyone whose only exposure to this fad community* want to get closer to it? This person is repellent. And the backlash is growing.
*That Stephen/anie is not actually dysphoric is not proven but it is a statistically defensible presumption and his defensiveness is wholly at odds with self-acceptance. He's jumping aboard whatever bandwagon affording opportunities to play the victim.
Edit: I almost never continue engagement with people who use "lol" or "lmao" or any of those. That's just immature. I respond with "teenybopper" and answer no more.
"I have 30x the followers you do because I am at least 30x more reasonable and articulate than you are (not to mention intelligent it seems)."
LOL wow! I actually love it when you get a little bit petty when responding back to some of these unhinged "You just cannot leave me alone" type commenters.. Relatable. It's a rare occurrence but it always makes me smile. You are usually so even-tempered.
Loved the final response to her. And it wasn't remotely petty - it was really resonant for me. It reminded me of what I've dealt with with some commenters (on Goodreads, not here). Except, unlike you, I can often be extremely petty. After I get a bizarre, hateful comment, I sometimes just delete their comment & block them, but more often respond with as diminishing a response as I can imagine at the time, and then block. The last word. Of course, I then have to deal with the occasional sock puppet account created so that they can continue the conversation by direct messaging me pictures of dead bodies or anime gifs of rapes (literally true). Sad LOL! People can be so crazy.
ANYWAY, I really loved this part: "But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated. And they use their “oppression” as justification to say all the things they wish they could say to their bullies."
This is so true and I need to remember this! It's a challenge trying to understand let alone empathize with people who act so over the top. But that energy is coming from somewhere and if I want to truly see myself as a humanist, I need to consider that. Online and elsewhere.
This is fantastic.
https://medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-activists-a-story-in-screenshots-78e01dca68d
Very moving. It’s ‘transference’ …the problem is people aren’t even aware it’s happening.
Certainly proved your premise.
I really laud your patience and the humanity you show when having these conversations.
I'm learning a way of having different conversations face-to-face or in zoom called "warm data" & also investigating the use of "deep canvassing", which seems to be broadly the same thing.
The idea is to listen rather than criticize & respond with personal stories rather than sticking to a familiar script that you hope will make you sound impressive. It's the absolute opposite of those watercooler conversations where you're trying to win respect by knowing more than the other guy.
It's hard to do - even harder when you try to do it in writing rather than via the spoken word - but it does seem to disarm some of the antagonism & burst some of those bubbles.
Committed (or paid) trolls block me almost immediately, too, which is an added bonus.
Seems like that was sort of what happened when you added some of your personal experience to the conversation, without claiming superiority?
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But the most likely explanation, at least to my mind, is that they’re in pain. Whether as a result of transphobia or racism or something completely unrelated."
I think you have the causal relationship here reversed. The pain doesn't come from electively joining a marginalized group (and then striving to increase the marginalization); the joining of the group is a reaction to pain, to dissatisfaction, to emptiness.
In the past people would relocate and change their names, "starting over," escaping a life that wasn't working. Of course this failed because they brought the source of their dissatisfaction with them.
I've said it many times; the number laying claim to "trans" is so far in excess of those who would medically qualify as dysphoric that it would be facile to ignore that "trans" is a fad. Or to ignore how many "detransition" back to "cis" (ugh) and come out as gay or just go back to who they were before (maybe missing a few body parts).
I think Stephanie was a bitter and unhappy person before .. whatever pronoun .. decided to join the latest Justin Bieber Fan Club.
An astonishing bit from a Medium "trans" person (who routinely capitalizes it but leaves "cis" lowercase):
"And "medical criteria"... gender is not a "medical" issue by default... you're thinking of gender dysphoria, which isn't a requirement to be Trans..."
Just ... wow. This is an admission that, as gay people have fought for centuries, the "trans" thing *is* in most cases a choice.
Like ... listening to BTS.
An example of the toxicity of the online "trans community."
https://medium.com/prismnpen/trans-reality-this-will-piss-you-off-5e45cad585ad
the header image shows her flipping off the reader and the title promises that what follows will "piss you off." A list of the writer's other articles shows them to be uniformly belligerent and confrontational.
This article is mostly about lowering expectations for transitioning, that it doesn't go as well for older men as for younger, but it winds up noting that "trans" people are a vilified minority and that life hereafter is going to be grim.
Isn't that, frankly, the whole point?
I know, I know, it's only the activists who are spreading this hate and rage (I discovered this article after I reported one of her attacks on Steve, saying he was spreading "transphobia"), but the more I see, the more I am convinced of the raw inauthenticity of the entire movement. This writer is devoted, at least n Medium, to being a complete nuisance and I can only imagine what problems she and the many like her bring to the workplace; all the sensitivity training and pronoun indoctrination in the world can't compensate for someone determined to stir up conflict.