![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There are an awful lot of Radical PCers on livejournal. I'm not talking about reasonable feminists, homosexuals, and transpeople. Not at all. I'm talking about Radical!Queers, Radical!Wyminn, Radical!Not-Racists. People who are so not-racist, sexist, or homophobic that they loop around and turn a hateful eye on all non women, non ethnic people, and non-queers. I call them BAW-ers.
Comforting to know that as an FTM, a person has two options with BAWers :
1- Be read as a guy and get lumped in with every single male ever and get blamed for everything
2- Come out as trans so they back the Hell off of us, but get seen as not really a guy but a "poor thing, let's humor him".
Shoot, I don't want to constantly have to talk about "blah blah I'm trans" because I don't wanna be that guy, but they sure don't give us many options. And a few of 'em are too proud to even take it back after a person comes out and says "excuse me, Capslock Harry,I just happen to be one of the people you're supposedly fighting for."
They really don't like us unless we're pots of misery whining and crying about how miserable our lives are because of who we are and how we can't do anything about it. We're totally helpless. New theory: BAWers just have a huge surpressed humiliation/discipline/punishment/sadism kink for women and queers and are fapping to the thought of us being oppressed.
They're twice as destructive as the fiercest Limbaugh Stan. Limbaugh stans will vote to take away our rights. BAWers:
* Are "Screw rehab, nail all offenders to the wall" ("It's not my job to educate you!") They are anti-intellectual. What do they hope to accomplish by yelling and raging and accusing people of being (blank)ists?
* Will accuse their own peers of high treason and sleeping with the enemy if said peers have different opinions (The mod of Trans_Rage and the old mods of queer_rage come to mind)
* Make those of us who are in the minority feel as though everyone hates us. They're like a cult- "All of them hate you. Look, see what he just said? It means he hates you. I'm your only friend. I'm the only one who accepts what a freak you are."
* Make others spend energy doing damage control for their stupidity. I often imagine that we're all on a wooden boat, and they're running around boring holes into the hull and we're running after them trying to patch the holes with duct tape.
* Make us second-guess ourselves when we're offended. "I feel hurt, but what if I'm just being a whiny crybaby like them. I don't want people to think I'm them."
* Give the real bad guys cannon fodder when we try to talk about a real problem ("Oh, they cry about everything. Whatever, I'm sick of it.")
* Turn would-be allies' rationality into contrition and spite.
*Drive would-be allies away with their constant accusation and broad hate speech. There's a difference between an insult and a slur (Advance Protip: If you're at war with Japan, but you have Japanese friends, the following sentence will not go over well- "Oh, God, another incident. I bet they're letting the fucking nip who did this walk."
Intermediate Protip: No, not even if you add "I wasn't talking about you. You're not a nip. The nips are the bad ones."
Beginner's Protip: You know how we don't like it when people use "gay" as an insult...?
Basic! Protip: "Neckbeard" is as much of a sex-based slur as "bitch", Professor)
I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't end by saying this: Jessica Valenti is the most lovely and wonderful thing ever. She has a book out called He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know. The book looks, at title glance, like a list of fifty depressing facts, but it isn't. She doesn't just talk about how bad women have it. She talks about how this stuff hurts everybody, including heterosexual cismales. She even gives several huge props to heterosexual cismales who are clearly part of the solution. And does Ms. Valenti stop at just listing the bad things? Hell no! At the end of every section is a page titled "What you can do about it" where she offers advice on how a person can undo the sort of hurtful thinking. She's constructive, helpful, and dedicated to the cause. And unlike those BAWers, she does it without resorting to using hate speech.
No art this time. U Mad?
Comforting to know that as an FTM, a person has two options with BAWers :
1- Be read as a guy and get lumped in with every single male ever and get blamed for everything
2- Come out as trans so they back the Hell off of us, but get seen as not really a guy but a "poor thing, let's humor him".
Shoot, I don't want to constantly have to talk about "blah blah I'm trans" because I don't wanna be that guy, but they sure don't give us many options. And a few of 'em are too proud to even take it back after a person comes out and says "excuse me, Capslock Harry,I just happen to be one of the people you're supposedly fighting for."
They really don't like us unless we're pots of misery whining and crying about how miserable our lives are because of who we are and how we can't do anything about it. We're totally helpless. New theory: BAWers just have a huge surpressed humiliation/discipline/punishment/sadism kink for women and queers and are fapping to the thought of us being oppressed.
They're twice as destructive as the fiercest Limbaugh Stan. Limbaugh stans will vote to take away our rights. BAWers:
* Are "Screw rehab, nail all offenders to the wall" ("It's not my job to educate you!") They are anti-intellectual. What do they hope to accomplish by yelling and raging and accusing people of being (blank)ists?
* Will accuse their own peers of high treason and sleeping with the enemy if said peers have different opinions (The mod of Trans_Rage and the old mods of queer_rage come to mind)
* Make those of us who are in the minority feel as though everyone hates us. They're like a cult- "All of them hate you. Look, see what he just said? It means he hates you. I'm your only friend. I'm the only one who accepts what a freak you are."
* Make others spend energy doing damage control for their stupidity. I often imagine that we're all on a wooden boat, and they're running around boring holes into the hull and we're running after them trying to patch the holes with duct tape.
* Make us second-guess ourselves when we're offended. "I feel hurt, but what if I'm just being a whiny crybaby like them. I don't want people to think I'm them."
* Give the real bad guys cannon fodder when we try to talk about a real problem ("Oh, they cry about everything. Whatever, I'm sick of it.")
* Turn would-be allies' rationality into contrition and spite.
*Drive would-be allies away with their constant accusation and broad hate speech. There's a difference between an insult and a slur (Advance Protip: If you're at war with Japan, but you have Japanese friends, the following sentence will not go over well- "Oh, God, another incident. I bet they're letting the fucking nip who did this walk."
Intermediate Protip: No, not even if you add "I wasn't talking about you. You're not a nip. The nips are the bad ones."
Beginner's Protip: You know how we don't like it when people use "gay" as an insult...?
Basic! Protip: "Neckbeard" is as much of a sex-based slur as "bitch", Professor)
I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't end by saying this: Jessica Valenti is the most lovely and wonderful thing ever. She has a book out called He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know. The book looks, at title glance, like a list of fifty depressing facts, but it isn't. She doesn't just talk about how bad women have it. She talks about how this stuff hurts everybody, including heterosexual cismales. She even gives several huge props to heterosexual cismales who are clearly part of the solution. And does Ms. Valenti stop at just listing the bad things? Hell no! At the end of every section is a page titled "What you can do about it" where she offers advice on how a person can undo the sort of hurtful thinking. She's constructive, helpful, and dedicated to the cause. And unlike those BAWers, she does it without resorting to using hate speech.
No art this time. U Mad?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 12:40 am (UTC)From:I don't think they get off on us being helpless whiny miserable crybabies. I think it makes them feel powerful (which is different from "empowered") while stroking their "I'm a good person" egos. Like how good Christian Midwestern women will be aggressively "pro-life" so that they can feel like they're doing something genuinely good in the world when, according to ALL research and evidence, what they're really doing is 1) failing to save fetuses, 2) killing women, and 3) reducing the moral value of conscious, sentient people to less than a cluster of semi-formed mammalian cells. If you try to call them on this, they'll defend their position to the death, because to admit that you're right is to admit that they've been doing horrible things for their own vanity.
The flag these "ally" types are waving may be progressive instead of batshit conservative, but the psychology behind their motivation is, I think, pretty much the same.
Feel free to refute me. You took a lot more psych courses than I did.
no subject
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 01:57 am (UTC)From:I like your theory better than mine (which was just a joke, really. I don't actually think they're sitting there and... well, you know).
no subject
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 03:45 pm (UTC)From:This is making fun of them and their attempts to defend their privilege. (I've also found it useful in refuting their attempts to refute you.)
no subject
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 04:16 pm (UTC)From:No, I've never tried to do that. Or maybe I have... but I haven't done that in such a long time that I don't remember ever doing it. What I do instead is decide that they just aren't using English the same way I am. Then I give them every opportunity to revise their statement by asking things that they'd have to agree to if they meant exactly what they said. I can't remember when it hasn't worked out.
People don't like themselves. Not really. That's why the BAWers suck so much- their motive is to force people to say "I said something wrong, therefore I am wrong, less than, and stupid." That's exactly what they want people to say. It's much easier to make people think they came up with the idea on their own. And it's courteous to, even if they've backtracked completely, pretend that they were making the positive point all along.
But... I understand. It's what we get taught. "Argument = kill the other person, trod them down, make them wish they were never born."
Did you ever play Age of Empires? I do. I like building a shit-ton of monasteries and making monks, because the monks convert enemy troops.
no subject
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 06:00 pm (UTC)From:Monks are scary.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 12:54 am (UTC)From:They had me second guessing myself every step of the way while they acted like assholes and tore the community apart.