Conservative Bully Reads P0rn So You Don't Have To!

[Content note: transbigotry]

I see that Rod Dreher has continued his years-long hate-fixation with transgender people.

I won't link to it, but most recently he has reacted to Andrea Long Chu's New York Times op-ed about her experience as a transgender woman. I know Chu's op-ed has created debate within the trans community. For that reason, and others, I think trans voices should be centered and prioritized within that conversation.

Clearly, other people disagree, including Rod Dreher.

Dreher is not a trans person, a scientist, a doctor, or a mental health professional and for those reasons his musings should be given no weight.  Yet, with a confidence that belies his qualifications, he discounts the lived experiences of transgender people using the "expertise" of his "common sense" religious ideology and his platform as Professional Conservative Navel-Gazer to denigrate, misgender, and bully transgender children, teenagers, and adults all while trying to paint conservative Christians like himself as victims of a secular decadent society.

That's sort of his brand.

In his Chu blogpost, he histrionically posts update after update and that's all I'll address today. Now, he often posts updates to his articles as reader reactions come in. He particularly seems to like to either scold pro-LGBT commenters for being "uncreative" or mean to him or he wants to highlight some comment that he thinks is particularly witty (ie, it affirms his own biases/bigotry). My favorite of these are the "I'm a homosexual/Black person/feminist and I agree with ya, Rod!" genre of "private emails" he seems to receive with surprising, and not at all suspicious, regularity.

One update to the Chu piece, however, is a bit.... different. In it, he breathlessly reports how he discovered a paper Chu wrote about "sissy p0rn," gives his readers a content warning* about it, and - as though he's really taking one for the team -offers readers a summary, followed by yet another content warning.

Here he is (emphasis added):

"There are no images, but don’t click through to it and start reading unless you are prepared to go to an extremely dark place. I almost didn’t post this here, but after thinking about it, I concluded that it’s actually vitally important to know.

I’m going to summarize the paper for those who don’t want to read it. Again, I cannot caution you strongly enough about its content, and the pornographic images Chu describes in detail in the paper."

Here, I'm reminded of anti-LGBT voyeurs like Peter LaBarbera, of Americans For Truth [sic] About Homosexuality, who show up at LGBT events like Pride, Folsom Street Fair, and International Mr. Leather to document/"expose"/gawk at/whatever LGBT people for a conservative anti-LGBT audience. These armchair anthropologists start first from the premise that LGBT = bad/immoral/flawed/sinful/overly-sexual/aggressive and gather every bit of sociological "evidence" they think confirms that.

Yet, among other things, the praxis strikes me as counterproductive.

If someone weren't curious enough to go look into LGBT events or a certain type of p0rn on their own, wouldn't you sure as shit have your curiosity piqued after Dreher's impassioned, vehement description?   

You guys: this thing I found. You WON'T believe it. Don't look! Seriously, just don't. BUT, let me summarize it. I'm WARNING you, under no circumstances look into this yourselves. Why, I do declare: IT'S PORN AND ASSLESS CHAPS!

Christ. 

Rod Dreher Reading Porn, But Only As a Public Service To His Conservative Readers is just as believable as Rod Dreher's Gay Friends Who Agree LGBT Rights Have Gone Too Far and Rod Dreher's Friends Oppressed By Politically Correct Universities. pic.twitter.com/y1JOLzjsp4

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) November 30, 2018

*As a note about the content warning Dreher offers his readers. He frequently uses various forms of content notes at his blog,usually with respect to content he links to that includes profanity or what he deems vulgarity. He also frequently mocks trigger warnings and other such "politically correct" content notes. Because he's very self-aware, obviously.

Roseanne, Sarah Silverman, and the Trump-Supporter Anthropology Series

Over at Shakesville, I wrote about the post-2016 election trend of pundits and media figures, such as Sarah Silverman and Roseanne, "playing anthropologist" as they interpret Trump supporters to (I guess) everyone who isn't one.

Check it out!

The Bigot-Coddling Populism of Bernie

I would love to never write about Bernie Sanders again, but Bernie Sanders appears to be gearing up for a 2020 run or doing whatever it is he's doing at the rallies he continues to hold.

To me, one of his biggest flaws is that he doesn't appear to listen.

To me, it appears as though he has, for at least the past two years, been traveling the country speaking at people, over and over again, about what he thinks ails the nation.

It is now December 2017, and Bernie Sanders, the most progressive of progressives to ever progress, is still repeating the falsehood that "the vast majority of Trump supporters" are motivated more by economic anxiety than by bigotry, with an added dose of: "Trump said things that made sense."

.@BernieSanders: "I think that the vast majority of Trump supporters are people who are in pain, who are struggling economically… and they turned to Trump because Trump said things that made sense.” https://t.co/eoevCTIuf6

— VICE (@VICE) December 6, 2017

To me, Bernie Sanders is engaging in some craven, pandering bullshit.

To me, living in 2017 has meant being in an important cultural moment in which those who previously have not been listened to are now being heard. I'm referring to, of course, those who speak out against rape culture and, more broadly, the abuse of power.

Bernie Sanders is a populist who is hoping to leverage the power of the people for his movement.

And yet, while I think he thinks he's speaking for the downtrodden, forgotten man who is oppressed by The Establishment, Bernie Sanders demonstrates to me primarily that populism in a nation that has been rigged for racists and misogynists from the get-go means that the coddling of racists and misogynists is usually required in order for a populist politician to be popular.

Bernie Sanders' populism is not premised upon listening to the diverse, lived experiences of the the many people of this nation. It is premised upon talking to the aggrieved white people who get upset when people point out their various bigotries. If Bernie's populism were more than a crusty socialist version of Trump's, he would heed the call of his critics to do a better job balancing the perspectives of those who enabled the rise of Trump with those who are now disproportionately harmed by the Trump regime. He would also stop gaslighting the people of this nation about the prevalence of bigotry in our nation.

Bernie Sanders wants to lead the revolution. But what, exactly, is he tapping into, here?

Per Bernie, in the Vice profile on him:

"[Trump] said he was going to take on the establishment, and he was going to provide healthcare to everybody. You know what, it's pretty much what I said."

There's your 2020 slogan.

I guess I'll leave it at that.


Related: 
Throwback Thursday To When We Were Gaslit About Bigotry

The Nationalist's Delusion - by Adam Serwer

Establishment Republicans Lose in Alabama

Via the Washington Post, Roy Moore, has won the Republican primary in the Senate race to fill Jeff Session's seat, beating his Mitch McConnell-back opponent:

"Unable to match the [Republican-led] ad campaign against him, Moore was defended by a loose grouping of anti-establishment conservative activists, including Bannon, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, 'Duck Dynasty' star Phil Robertson and conservative talk radio broadcasters including Laura Ingraham.

But in significant ways, his campaign differed from any other Senate effort in recent memory. On the stump, Moore made his belief in the supremacy of a Christian God over the Constitution the central rallying point of his campaign.....

In a 2002 legal opinion, he described homosexual conduct as 'an inherent evil,' and he has argued that the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage should not be considered the rule of law. He was suspended from Alabama’s court a second time for defying the higher court’s marriage decision, and he later decided to retire from the bench.

If elected to the Senate, Moore has promised to be a disruptive force who will directly challenge the leadership of McConnell."

Palin? The Duck Dynasty guy? Laura Ingraham? These people are the fringe of the fringe.

Sure, this election happened in Alabama, but it's becoming more and more clear that Republicans, after having stoked bigotry for decades to win elections, have lost control of the monster they've created.

Now, if only someone had warned us that so many of our fellow citizens might fall into a, how shall I say this, basket of deplorables.

#Winning

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) held its annual anti-equality "March for Marriage" in Washington, DC over the weekend.

Per Right Wing Watch, about 50 people attended what seemed to be an awkward display:

"Fifteen minutes before the event was scheduled to begin, about 20 adults were milling around an empty stage while several children worked to unfurl large red and blue banners to carry during the march. One passerby wondered whether they were going to a kite festival. Gradually, a few more participants arrived, including five men wearing the signature capes of the group Tradition, Family and Property and carrying a 'Honk for Traditional Marriage' sign."

Despite this sad showing, NOM activists are reported to be looking forward to the opportunity for the US Supreme Court's composition to change and, accordingly, for the Obergefell decision to be reversed.

It's tempting at this juncture to scoff at their chances, but I advise against overconfidence.

Anti-LGBT activists talk a lot about "the will of the people," but they don't seem all that interested, actually, in the will of the people.

As I noted recently, Donald Trump is a deeply-unpopular politician who lost the popular vote in the 2016 election. In addition to these factors, that he is also under investigation for having ties to a country that tampered with the election in which he lost severely undermines his legitimacy.

The day after his Inauguration, the largest protest in US history took place, with approximately 2-4 million attendees - vastly outnumbering NOM's little event.

Same-sex marriage, in contrast to Trump's unpopularity, is now accepted by 64% of Americans.

To think that Trump, with his questionable legitimacy and historic unpopularity, could appoint another fringe conservative to the Supreme Court who would potentially overturn a popular decision .... well, that's a lot of things - chief among them a constitutional crisis, perhaps. What it definitively would not be is "the will of the people."

NOM and the far right have forever lost that argument in the United States.

Of course, we've known all along that the "will of the people" argument was usually a mask that covered more unsavory opinions about queers.

Again, via Right Wing News, a quote from one of the speakers at the NOM march:

“We left God,” she said, “then we allowed ourselves to be aligned with ungodly movements. This gay rights movement is ungodly, it’s from the pit of hell.”

If a Trump-stacked Supreme Court ultimately strips same-sex couples of marriage rights, make no mistake that bigotry like this will have enabled it.

Trump Supporters Still Chant "Lock Her Up"

In case you were wondering if some Trump supporters are still deplorable bigots, a crowd of 7,000 resumed their fave chant, about a woman who no longer holds public office, at a Donald Trump rally over the weekend.

Oh, and they still want their fucking wall, even though Trump's proposed budget plan would cut domestic spending - including medical research that they would ostensibly benefit from - in order to pay for it.

Via the Washington Post:

"They’ve been watching Fox News and reading Facebook, and they’ve concluded that the Washington machine is blocking him at every turn. They blame the conservative Republicans, and they blame the Democrats, and they blame the news media, and they blame, even now, Hillary Clinton.

'Lock her up!' the crowd chanted spontaneously, again and again. They were families and young couples and old folks, lifelong Republicans and people who’d never voted for a Republican before, an almost entirely white audience, and they danced to Trump’s trademark soundtrack of ’60s and ’70s pop hits, and they chanted 'Build that wall.'"

Here is my summary of Donald Trump's entire term: He will pass the buck for every loss and take credit for every win. His fans will believe it all because he frames anything counter to that narrative as "fake news."

Not This Shit Again

Meanwhile, the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is urging its supporters to pressure Trump into signing the recently-leaked anti-LGBT, anti-choice, anti-sex Executive Order.

I have a brief observation, over at Shakesville.

Well That Seems Reasonable

[Content note: Misogyny, trans bigotry].

Rod Dreher, who we already know for his deplorable opinion of trans people, is now taking issue with a college that... provides free tampons and pads in university restrooms.(*)

Do you ever get the feeling that some cis white men think that if they don't need something, then nobody should have access to it?

Attribute it to what you will, but what a massive empathy gap.

That goes for abortion. Menstrual supplies. Safe spaces where his views aren't welcome. Content notes preceding content he doesn't understand or care about. Birth control. Gender affirmation surgery.  All of these, many a cisgender white male conservative sees as decadent wickedness that have no place in their preferred utopian enclave. Motto: I don't need it, nobody should have it! Even if others getting it in no way impacts my life!

Can you imagine what it would be to be a woman and/or LGBT person in this Benedict Option-esque society?

What an incoherent logic system.

Imagine: to simultaneously favor forced birth while opposing and mocking the provision of supplies one needs as a result of having a reproductive cycle.

It's the mindset of the men who think that men like themselves are human. Everyone else, an aberration. A supporting cast member to his important hero story. Except, like all privileged white men with unexamined privilege, when he finds out he's not the world's central hero, he believes he's its most important victim.


*I have not embedded a link to Dreher's blog, but rather to a different politics and culture blog whose authors have views that more align with my own. In light of the changes to AfterEllen, I've been thinking more about how many commercial Internet models reward hateful clickbait authors who are financially rewarded for drawing visitors to their site. It presents a dilemma, of course, as one (n=me) wants to counter such speech.

I'm going to try to minimize my complicity in directing traffic to such sites by (a) no longer directly linking to them (perhaps I'll do screenshots or something instead), and (b) not gratuitously calling attention to something unless I am also in some way countering it.  Any "share" of a deplorable opinion that doesn't also counter it or say it's awful is a promotion of it, which, I believe is partly responsible for our current Donald Trump situation. We must do more than use our social media networks to merely say, "Hey this person said this thing, oh no!"

Full disclaimer that I'm not perfect. I'm just trying to be more mindful to minimize my complicity in the Internet's toxic clickbait model.  /Welp this addendum was basically a whole entire other blog post, BYEEEE!

Today in Definitely-Not-Deplorable

"Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke out against Hillary Clinton's description of half of Trump supporters as in 'the basket of deplorables.' 'They are not a basket of anything,' Pence said on Sept. 10. 'They are Americans and they deserve your respect.'"

He says, standing behind the podium of FRC Action, the legislative arm of anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, at whose Values Voters summit he spoke over the weekend, exactly three months after the deadliest terrorist attack against LGBT people in US history.

Election 2016 in a nutshell, folks.

"Both sides,""worse to call someone a bigot than to be one," etc.

Dreher: "Obsessed With Decadent Crap"

If you've been on Internet for any length of time, you might be familiar with the hyperventilating blogging technique of linking to an article in which someone highlights an issue of importance to some people and then being outraged that some amorphous group of "people" (usually consisting of one's ideological foes) are stupid/elite/out-of-touch for caring about that issue when this other issue is what "people" should actually care about.

We've all seen it, right?  .

Well, that's the gist of a recent Rod Dreher obsesso-hate-fest, where he's super pissed that The Atlantic ran an article about the plight of transmen feeding their infants when flooding has happened in Louisiana.

He writes (content note: anti-trans bigotry)

"I am not interested in understanding the bodies or experiences of women who think they’re men who are bitching because nobody understands what it’s like to want to suckle your child at the breast you had cut off.

What I am interested in is trying to get inside the head of a coastal elite media that is obsessed with decadent crap like this. I think we can safely say that the people in J.D. Vance’s book aren’t readers of The Atlantic.com (one of my favorite websites, by the way), nor are most people in my part of the world who are out there mucking houses, feeding flood victims and doing their laundry. I get that. No magazine or web publication can be all things to all people all the time, nor should it try to be. 

But if you read The Atlantic, The New York Times, and other publications edited by coastal elites, you would think that the travails of transgenders was the worst social problem facing America today. The bizarre degree of coverage and interest says little about transgenders and everything about the priorities of the media gatekeepers."

That Rod Dreher isn't "interested" in understanding trans people is abundantly clear by his own rantings about trans people, in which he contextualizes their plight primarily in terms of how they threaten a preferred Christian-supremacist social order. That Dreher both lacks interest in understanding trans people and yet writes/rants about them on the weekly, however, might offer some insight into why others in the media cover the plight of said trans people.

Just a thought!

David Brooks Mystified By Dislike of Hillary

Gee.  If (sexism) we (sexism) only (sexism) had (sexism) some (sexism) explanation (sexism) as (sexism) to (sexism) why (sexism) so (sexism) many (sexism) people (sexism) dislike (sexism) Hillary (sexism) Clinton (SEXISM).

True fact: I only know when David Brooks posts some new piece of shit column when Melissa at Shakesville points it out.  Otherwise, I usually take a hard pass on reading his columns.

But, this one was too delicious not to go read in its entirety. In it, he gazes at his navel, speculating about the "paradoxes" of her likeabliity: Gee, uhhh, she was more popular before she decided to run for the highest Executive position in the USA, but now fewer people seem to like her. Whatever could have happened?! Is it, hmmmm, that people don't know what she does for fun? Or, I don't know, could it be something else?

Now, obligatory disclaimer time: People may and do have non-sexist and legitimate reasons for disliking Hillary Clinton. But, to not once reference sexism as a contributing factor is the worst kind of gender-blindness that ignores the historic nature of what she is seeking accomplish.

You know, those with the biggest mouths and platforms in the media are great, I guess, at pointing out Trump's misogyny. But, when it comes to acknowledging any sexism or misogyny that might be negatively impacting oh, only the first viable female president in history, it's crickets all the way.

Sanders, Stop the Mob or Get Out

[Content note: Misogynist references, harassment, violence]

Oh damn, now here is a satisfying read.  I hope Kurt Eichenwald has some good security. Via his recent article at Newsweek:

"Violence. Death threats. Vile, misogynistic names screamed at women. Rage. Hatred. Menacing, anonymous phone calls to homes and offices. Public officials whisked offstage by security agents frightened of the growing mob. None of this has any place in a political campaign. And the candidate who has been tolerating this obscene behavior among his supporters is showing himself to be unfit for office. 

So, Senator Sanders, either get control of what is becoming your increasingly unhinged cult or get out of the race. Whatever respect sane liberals had for you is rapidly dwindling, and the damage being inflicted on your reputation may be unfixable. If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name, you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country."   

The writing has been on the wall, as many feminists have been saying for months now, about the Sanders' movement's anti-feminist, sexist leanings: his staff of all-male, highest-paid advisors, the way he shoved Jane away from him at the podium (he's the rock star!), the single-minded emphasis on economic issues above all other issues, the Vatican PR stunt, calling his highly-qualified female opponent "unqualified," a surrogate implying Clinton is a "corporate Democratic whore."

And, of course, the notorious BernieBros, that precious online (and increasingly in-person) mob of overly-aggressive Bernie supporters.

The progressive/radical left's ongoing woman problem is a key reason I don't organize or associate with the movement even though I agree with them on many issues (see also, movement atheism).  Let's just say I had a big a-ha moment circa 2006 when I used to participate in leftist forums. During one memorable week of my life, I objected to leftist bros calling Hillary Clinton a "corporate whore" only to be mansplained to (ha, before that term existed) that since I can't read people's minds HOW DARE I imply that anyone was sexist, and besides there's MORE IMPORTANT issues to worry about! Ignore lady issues for socialism, comrade, and then we can maybe talk about those lesser issues after the revolution happens!  

Well, to paraphrase Flavia, my revolution will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. And, I'm not too keen on violent overthrow, either, by the way, so good luck with implementing a non-violent revolution given the reality that many Americans don't want a revolution in the first place, as evidenced by our heretofore peaceful voting process in which Bernie Sanders is losing. Oh, but details, right?  It's as though in Bernie-land, once people are sufficiently enlightened beyond their/our false consciousness we'll "feel the Bern" too. Somehow.

Sorry, but no. That's not typically how these things work out.

Nor is it a coincidence that it seems to be female Democratic leaders who are targeted with the most vile, aggressive threats. You know, in the same year that the first woman in history has a real shot of winning. It's like people are wearing some warped version of beer goggles, except instead of making people look hot, they make Bernie look like a saint and any female Democratic Party leader look like a corrupt she-devil.

Sadly, Sanders' weak sauce response thus far to his supporters' aggressive behavior has had some victim-blaming tones: If Democrats would welcome more of "the people" into the process, people wouldn't be so angry. (Or, my absolute favorite response from a spokesperson on Rachel Maddow this week: his Nevada supporters were just hungry! Ha! I mean, I get being hangry, but never once have I had the hungry impulse to tell a political opponent they should be publicly executed. But I'm a shill-bot, so I'm sure my non-violent temperament just means I'm not "passionate" enough about my candidate).

And nevermind, I guess, the millions of "the people" who have voted for Clinton.  The implication from Team Sanders continues to be that Clinton is not legitimately winning, but rather, the "Democratic Establishment" has rigged the primary for her. (If you're keeping track at home: It's a failure that Hillary hasn't blown out Bernie, but also she's only winning because she's cheating? Huh. Put that one in the "women can't fucking win" files, I guess.)

And here's where I have to be serious.

If Sanders were a more skilled, thoughtful politician and leader, he would firmly state that his movement ("not me, us," remember?) should not engage misogynistic slurs, intimidation, and threats of violence in his name and that, while we must continue to fight corporate corruption, we cannot and should not sell out our other progressive values in doing so.  If he's unwilling to use his platform to make that sort of statement, he should step down.  Because as of now, I see his actions and words thus far as indicating a lack of suitable temperament and leadership for the office of the Presidency.

And, when he does eventually lose the Primary, I guess we can only hope now he doesn't make that huge of a mess when he wipes his ass on the drapes on the way out.

Dreher Rages In Support of Gender Police

[Content note: anti-trans bigotry, gender policing]

Welp, Rod Dreher is at it again with the anti-trans crusade at his blog.

First things first, he begins with the preening male conservative equivalent of a trigger warning/content note (caps and bolds in original):

"Below, a video that went up on Facebook on April 19. DO NOT WATCH THIS AT WORK. The language directed at the police is foul and abusive. But if you can handle cursing, you need to watch it. I’ll describe it below."

I use content notes, so I'm not knocking the practice. Rather, my point is that his own content note shows that for all their railing against "PC culture run amok" social conservatives have their own versions of political correctness. And, I've interacted with such people long enough to know that their moral outrage about swearing, especially if engaged in by "females," usually far exceeds their moral outrage at certain (what they deem) societal undesirables being treated indecently.  Saying fuck, shit, or (lord help me) pussy while female is akin to inflicting upon society a human rights violation of the first order. But verbally bash gay or trans people? Shrug.

He continues:

"In the video, a very masculine-presenting teenager is asked by police to leave the women’s restroom. The person, who has a deep voice, says she’s a woman, and not going anywhere. She gets very aggressive: 'I’m a f–king female. Do I have to tell you again?'"

The police ask the teen for her ID and, when she says she doesn't have it, the police remove her from the restroom. Dreher links to the video, and adds his own commentary:

"I saw the video on this FB page. Read the comments for an example of the unshirted rage of these people."

"These people." Hmmm.  I guess it's something that he at least calls them people. Credit where it's due. Dreher goes on to justify the decision to remove the, what he calls "alleged lesbian," from the restroom:

"[If you don't remove her] you might have let a man stay in the women’s bathroom — a public toilet — making women who didn’t know this person was a lesbian very uncomfortable, and even make them feel unsafe.

.....This country is crazy. It is instructive to read that Facebook page, and to see how berserk so many of those on the cultural left are — as if the cops had behaved like stormtroopers instead of like reasonable people trying to protect the public safety."

The reasoning, such as it is, behind Dreher's argument is twofold (a) trans women are actually men and (b) men in women's restrooms pose an inherent threat to women.  Funny how this particular example works out though, isn't it?

In this case, he finds it justifiable for the police to have removed a cisgender woman from the ladies because some other women might have merely felt unsafe by what they might have thought was a man but really wasn't. The risk, by his own logic, was not there because neither a man nor a trans woman was present.  Thus, in practice, we see that the policy does not address actual safety of women, but perceived safety and even that's questionable. For, it is Dreher who editorializes, inserts himself, and simply imagines, on women's behalf, that women might be scared.

At his blog, Dreher speaks often of a so-called Law of Merited Impossibility, alluding to his belief that Christians like himself are at imminent risk of widespread, brutal persecution. Under this "law," he claims that liberals don't believe such persecution of Christians will ever happen, but if it does, we liberal types will think that those bigoted Christians will deserve it.

This "law" looks like 100% projection.

What was at first a policy of keeping trans people out of gender-appropriate restrooms becomes acceptable to more broadly apply, so that anyone who doesn't properly perform gender becomes suspect.  And, well, I guess those people deserve the policing and abuse, what with being so unhinged and angry.  I mean, did you hear they even swear sometimes? (Caution!)

Dreher's illogic becomes even more apparent when watching the video. In it, you see that the woman is in a line of many people in what appears to be a very crowded restroom of people coming and going.  Indeed, other people in the bathroom were telling the police, "That's a girl! That's a girl!" suggesting they were hardly threatened. It is difficult to imagine at what point this "potential man"/"alleged lesbian" would get away with raping a woman in the bathroom. What I'm saying here is that I'd do more listening to actual sexual assault experts on this matter, many of which condemn anti-trans "bathroom bills" for putting trans people at risk for violence and not actually protecting cisgender women.

Indeed, we scratch these policies even just a little bit and we mostly get the putrid smell of incoherent gender policing, coupled with threatened, fragile masculinity. The disgust at the "mouthy""masculine" "lesbian" and her cohorts is practically dripping from Dreher's mocking temper-tantrum.

Yet, rather than recognizing the flawed logic, rather than seriously engaging counter-arguments to his point of view, he acts as though the other side ("the cultural left") has no legitimate argument for all this bathroom business. As though trans people don't actually have to ever piss or shit when they're out and about. And if they do, well, too bad. It's their fault for being trans, and the rest of the world shouldn't have to accommodate that - they deserve no bathrooms! (And hey, did this lesbian ever get to pee, by the way? I hope so).

Well. Many people in his comment section rightly took Dreher to task, although he mostly responded with the typical whining that people didn't READ what he ACTUALLY WROTE so WAH! So, he posted an "update" to his piece, erm, clarifying:

"Maybe living with that degree of social anxiety [of people being able to use "whichever gendered bathroom they want"] is worth it to you so transgenders, genderfluids, genderqueers and all the rest can pee wherever they like, whenever they like. But it’s a big damn ask for women."

Okay player.

First they come for the "transgenders," and then see how the list of who it's justifiable to exclude from public restroom access expands. (Hey, by the way, did you all hear that The Handmaid's Tale is coming to Hulu?!)

Now, here I have to ask, why the potty obsession, which seems so fashionable in conservative circles at this particular moment in time, with an election looming?  With so many defenders of traditional morality being exposed as sexual hypocrites or predators themselves, are we looking for a new social wedge issue or does the topic serve the purpose of being p0rn for prudes? By "monitoring" "deviant" gender and sexual behavior, some conservatives can consume that behavior while also signaling their own virtue by publicly rejecting it.

Here: I do not reject any of this.

On a final note, if we assume the very best intentions on his part, well, as a woman, I don't want or need Rod Dreher, or any other concerned-ass citizen, to exclude trans people from women's restrooms on my behalf, for my defense. Mostly, because I live in the real world where trans people don't actually pose a threat to me in the potty.

The fact is, I have shared restrooms with trans people (when I've even known they were trans) and I have literally never felt unsafe. But, for me, trans people aren't an abstraction. They're not a symbolic evil or sign of societal decay and decadence. They're not "men trying to be women" or "women trying to be men" or predators hell-bent on attacking women in restrooms.

They're human beings.  And, I'm of the opinion that when one understands that simple concept, one also understands that therefore trans people's concerns and perspectives are worth contemplating beyond a knee-jerk reactionary level that dismisses the whole debate itself as evidence of how "crazy" modern society is about gender.

But, you know, I'm a swearing lesbian who likes a prison show featuring trans, lesbian, bisexual, and otherwise gender-non-conforming women too, so I'm sure that discredits my entire argument in the view of some. Scribble that on your goddamn content note.

The Moral of the Story

A woman has to be exponentially more competent, more careful, more intelligent, more conciliatory, better groomed, and more thoughtful than a man in order to be a serious contender for President. And meanwhile, a man can be an exponentially worse person by nearly all measures compared to a woman and still be a serious contender for the same job.

That's basically the shitty-ass take-away from this article.  It asserts that women disproportionately dislike Donald Trump and men disproportionately dislike Hillary Clinton.

Could you even imagine a female candidate existing and being viable whom men actually had legitimate reasons to disproportionately dislike on the basis of gender?  One who, say, regularly expressed misandry in the way that Trump expresses his misogyny?  Who maybe went on obsessive rants about her male critics being creepy, disgusting, flaccid pencil-dicks - and who still did well in elections?

Yeah, me neither.

Judge Disrupts Home Life of Child in Foster Care, Because Heterosexism

Can we get a big, loud *slow clap* for Team Bigotry?

According to Utah's Division of Child and Family Services (via Deseret News), a judge has ordered the removal of a 1-year-old child from the home of her lesbian foster parents.  

Rather than basing his decision on the content of the couple's parenting skills, the judge, Scott Johansen, purportedly based his decision on their sexual orientation.  In so doing, the various news accounts I've read claim that he referenced, but did not specifically cite, "studies" allegedly showing that heterosexual parents were "better" than same-sex parents (scare quotes mine). 

(Hmm, I wonder if Johansen had read the widely-discredited Regnerus study?)

The two women had the support of the child's biological mother to be foster parents, and Utah DCFS director Brent Platt is quoted in the Deseret article as follows:

"'There weren't any concerns about the family and no concerns about the placement, it sounds like [the judge] has concerns overall with same-sex couples being foster parents.'

Hoagland and Peirce have met every DCFS requirement to become licensed foster parents, including routine reviews with the division while they have been caring for the child, according to Platt. If the girl would have become eligible for adoption and the couple had expressed interest in taking her, the division intended to support them, he noted.

'It's my understanding they have a couple of older children, these are experienced parents," Platt said. 'As far as we're concerned, it was an appropriate placement. It was a placement that worked for the kid and worked for the family, so we were surprised the judge issued that order.'"

The child has been living with the couple for 3 months, and the judge has ordered her removal within a week to an as-yet-unidentified family.  Thus further disrupting the child's life. You know, because outcomes.

From her much-lauded 2014 dissent to the 6th Circuit opinion that upheld same-sex marriage bans, Judge Martha Daughtry's quote regarding the illogic of anti-gay advocacy seems apt:

"How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be 'channeled' into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry."

And, apparently, the ability to be foster parents. (Although I want to be careful to note that in this particular case, we do not know the circumstances of the biological parents. Unlike the "pro-family" crowd, I think people put their children up for adoption for a myriad of reasons, only one of which might be "irresponsibility.")

The facts about "pro-family" actually being pro-family speak for themselves.

Whether they're promoting fraudulent "ex-gay therapy" that does more harm than good, ripping children from stable homes, or running dehumanizing smear campaigns to deny trans* people access to bathrooms, Traditional Family Warriors ("TFWs"- let's make it a thing) so often prioritize their own selfish bigotries and prejudices over the actual best interests of children.

Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum

Say what you will of Andrea Dworkin, but she was spot on in Right-Wing Women that a world in which women's lives were valued only insofar as they engaged in childbearing would be a very scary place for women.

In such a world, women without children would be deemed "not worth much." Their lives pointless.

Why do I bring up this book from 1983?

When in Rome, I suppose.

Over at his blog, conservative Christian Rod Dreher cruelly shares his opinion on the worth of women's lives.  I find a small satisfaction, I suppose, when non/anti-feminists just sort of come right out and say these things.  While some conservative writers keep their repugnant thoughts just below the surface, there's nothing like a "telling it like it is" dude to keep feminists like me from getting too complacent in our victories.

Writing of Gloria Steinem's dedication of her recent book to the doctor who performed her abortion many decades ago, Dreher writes:

"To be 81 years old, to publish a memoir, and to dedicate it to the doctor who killed your unborn child in your womb — what a sad waste of life. Two lives. That dedication is an epitaph and an indictment."

Wow.

NEWFLASH: The Handmaid's Tale was a dystopian novel. Dystopian.

But seriously, if someone of Steinem's accomplishments has wasted her life (and Dreher gets to be the judge of this, because.... umm?) then there is absolutely no hope for the rest of us. Although, over at his blog, there really seems to be no woman, trans person, or "SJW" who is too large or small for Dreher to mock or judge (just like Jesus would do, I'm sure).

What gets me is not Dreher's mean, judgmental tendencies - those, after all, are so expected from a conservative Christian as to be unremarkable. It's the attitude that because a feminist woman's morals differ from his own, she either completely lack morals altogether or, alternately, cannot possibly have lived a useful, meaningful life.

I stand opposite Dreher on many issues, but I would never assume that I have authority to dismiss his entire life's work (or his life, for that matter). Indeed, as some feminist theologians have theorized that male-centric religions such as Christianity mimic and misappropriate a birthing process that men are fundamentally envious of, so too does this your life was pointless since you didn't live by my Christian morals mentality mimic and misappropriate abortion, of sorts.

With one fell swoop, a man deigns to erase a woman's life as "wasted." As though he has that power.  Such is the entitlement that Christianity imbues in some men.

To end, Dreher himself has been promoting his own "teachings" about conservative Christians voluntarily isolating themselves from a SJW-laden, secular society that they can no longer live in since the laws don't replicate/enforce their values upon everyone else. I guess the kindest thought I can share on that front at the moment is good riddance, don't let the door hit ya, etc.

Radical Conservative Activists Call For Rebellion

I really hope that post-apocalyptic Earth will contain better remnants of our society than cockroaches, Twinkies, and symbolic conservative statements in which signees are make a big show of Taking A Stand on the issue du jour.

Via NOM's weekly newsletter (don't ask), I learned that a group of "prominent" legal scholars has signed a declaration calling on citizens and public officials to "resist" the US Supreme Court's marriage ruling.

What a world when predominately-white, male, conservative college professors and "think-tank" folks can call for legal obstruction and rebellion without being widely disparaged as thugs, yeah?

Anyway, this group's chief complaint is nothing new. The ruling will supposedly lead to a host of "evils" BLAH blah BLAH, and that the scholars oh-so-nobly "stand with" Abraham Lincoln and James Madison in believing that constitutional matters should not be decided by 5 judges.

7 years ago, I reviewed Leonard Levy's excellent book Original Intent and the Framer's Constitution. In it, Levy makes a strong case that we should question conservatives' claim that they eschew judicial activism and, unlike liberals, merely discover and apply law.

Judicial review - that is, the power of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and say what the law is - has existed since the very beginning of the Supreme Court, albeit not without controversy.  Indeed, that controversy is why declarations such as these, coming as they do only in instances which coincide with a groups' political leanings, ring so hollow.

Here, I suspect that it's not the Supreme Court's power of judicial review that these conservative folks are opposing, but rather, judicial review in the case of same-sex marriage.

This statement, like so many before it, is the cowardly whinging of privileged folks about an issue that disproportionately affects other people.  Truly taking a stand would be for this group to call for the eradication of judicial review even in cases that they believe have "come out right" for them.

I challenge them to do so, if they have any integrity at all.

Public Discourse Continues to Disappoint

Like their peers at the National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM), writers at The Public Discourse* blog (oh, I'm sorry "online journal") continue to wail about the evils of same-sex marriage.

There, Melissa Moschella writes:

"A crucial aspect of liberty is respect for subsidiarity—in particular, recognition that the family, based on marriage, is a pre-political community with natural and original authority over its internal affairs, especially the education and upbringing of children. Redefining marriage in law to include same-sex couples undermines the principled basis for the primacy of parental childrearing authority by obliterating the link between marriage and procreation as well as the norm of conjoined biological parenthood that conjugal marriage laws help to foster."

First things first, I'll address that argument regarding "the link between marriage and procreation" being severed by same-sex marriage.  Sorry-not-sorry but, allowing infertile couples to marry "obliterated" that connection long before same-sex marriage was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

Secondly, this is your semi-regular reminder that, in many conservative circles, anti-feminism and anti-LGBT advocacy go hand in hand.

Did that phrasing, that particular longing for the days of ye 'olde when families (i.e., fathers) had dominion over the "internal affairs" (i.e., women and children), send a shiver down anyone else's spine?

Yep, me too.

The thrust of her argument is that "conjoined biological parents" (adjectives in all my years of writing about this stuff I've never seen combined before and which are now inducing interesting mental pictures) should have dominion over their children and that the state should not be able to interfere with that. The state, let me repeat, should not be able to interfere with the internal affairs of child-rearing.

Incidentally, I'm guessing she would be, however, in favor of allowing the state to force someone to give birth.

Moschella goes on to reference a litany of, well, nothing that hasn't already been said by her allies about a gazillion times already, including comparing the public education system in the US to Nazi Germany and claiming that pro-LGBT folks are practically kidnapping children of Real Families, soooooooo I'm going to slowly. back. away. from. the computer and see if I can get the latest American Horror Story on Netflix instead.


*The Public Discourse is run by the conservative Witherspoon Institute. For background see, here.

Related: Same-Sex Marriage, Feminism, and Women

Christian School Denies Entry to Child of Same-Sex Couple

A Christian school in San Diego is not allowing a 5-year-old girl to attend kindergarten because she has two moms.

Via MSN:

"When asked by the news team if it was discrimination to stop the child from attending because of her mothers, a woman who described herself as the school's director, said, 'The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. We don't condone any sinful lifestyles.' 

KGTV got a copy of the school's parent and student handbook which was revised over the summer. Under the school's statement of nondiscrimination, the handbook declared the school's right to "refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student." 

'This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, living in, condoning or supporting sexual immorality; practicing homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity; promoting such practices; or otherwise having the inability to support the moral principles of the school,' the handbook continued, according to the news station."

I have two items of note here.

One, I highlight how the conservative National Review frames the situation only because it's indicative of a mindset held by many anti-LGBTs. There, David French asks, in a piece entitled, "Lesbian Parents Try to Force a Christian School to Educate Their Child":

"Here’s a question for the secular left — when religious liberty collides with the desires of LGBT citizens, is there any case where religious freedom should prevail? How about when a lesbian couple tries to force a private Christian school to educate their child?" (emphasis added)

Ah, note the use of the phrase "desires of LGBT citizens," a word that, oh, maybe suggests that a lesbian couples' simple, decent wish for their daughter to attend school is in some way related to sex.

But, more pertinently, notice how French centers the beliefs (and prejudices) of adults in this scenario when, in fact, it is the child who is actually most profoundly impacted by the discrimination. How different does it sound when we ask:

Here's a question for all - when religious "freedom to discriminate" collides with the rights of children to attend school, when should religious freedom to discriminate prevail?

This case isn't one of Christians v. LGBTs, or even the Christian right v. the secular left.  It's one of Christian anti-LGBTs v. children who happen to have same-sex parents. That is, grown-ass adults punishing a child because they disagree with the "lifestyle" of her parents.

Two, notice the moral code in the handbook which specifically calls out homosexuality.  Yet, does the school also prohibit children of divorced, adulterous, or single parents from attending the school?

Of course not. Nor should it.

But that's how it so often is with the Christian bigot crowd, isn't it?

In the debates about marriage, many opponents of allowing same-sex couples to marry held that marriage was about "procreation," yet they had no issue with allowing infertile heterosexuals to marry. It's LGBTs and same-sex couples who these sorts of folks so often single out for their special brand of entitled, discriminatory treatment that they rarely reserve for other groups.

Bigot Kim Davis doesn't deny marriage licenses to people on their third, fourth marriage. No, her hill to die on is same-sex marriage. For special lucky reasons, I guess.

Even as these folks wail that it's LGBT people who constantly seek "special rights," these are the folks who seek both the special right to discriminate against LGBT people without consequence and to in no way face public shaming (or being called a bigot) for doing so.

Women Pass Ranger Program: Internet Misogynists Flip Out

Perhaps you've read about the 2 Army lieutenants who have become the first women to graduate from the US Army's Ranger program, a physically- and mentally-intense training course from which women have historically been excluded.

I've read several articles about this and have of course noted the misogynistic whinging in various comment sections.  Hilariously, the US Army has addressed some of the misogyny directly to those oh-so--courageous purveyors of misogynistic attacks on Internet.

I've noted before that those who identify with toxic masculinity define themselves largely by what they are not: women. In their minds, women and men are "opposites" in which men are supreme and women are …. not.

They take great pride in the activities which are, they claim, "inherently" "male," and if women end up engaging in these activities, these men view the activities as having become  imbued with the taint femininity.  "Women ruin everything," they bawl, as they see women too showing interest in things like sports, military, science fiction, comedy, geekdom, and other interests and activities that some men try to stake out as No Girls Allowed Land.

Thus, the comments by such men, in relation to the Rangers issue, fall into predictable categories:

• The system was somehow rigged to help the women pass, because no woman could actually pass on the same terms as men. This claim allows the man to continue believing that there are still Important Things that men can do that women cannot (In truth, the women passed the same standards as the men); 
• If it is admitted that the women passed on the same terms as men, their femininity is called into question by mocking their appearance and calling them "manly." While the man may concede that the woman did the thing that men do, he implies that she's not a real woman and therefore it doesn't count;
• The man gripes about "political correctness" and "social experiments." By uttering these meaningless phrases, the man believes he can magically waive away the accomplishment as though it didn't happen and isn't a thing that exists in reality, but rather is Social Justice Warrior fabrication.

All of these attempt to preserve the man's masculine identity As A Man (and not a woman).

Although, then there's my personal favorite:

The man who was concern trolling about male Rangers having to share humvees with "menstruating females."  Dude,  I'm gonna stop you right there.  If a man isn't tough enough to be around a menstruating person, that guy probably isn't tough enough to be a fucking Army Ranger, which might also mean that the Army has bigger problems, yeah?