I really wanted the first things I wrote on this site to be about Resident Evil Requiem or The Evil Within or something, but I had realized that when I’m asked to contribute to the discourse or something that I’m really crappy at being able to speak it. So, naturally, the utility of a blog came to mind. I’ve legitimately have had this site for like 20 years in some incarnation and figured it was time to exhume it.
So hi, I’m HarlequinPanic, and I don’t really like interview podcasts. I feel they’re often self-serving, navel-gazing and the hosts almost always laugh way too much. Sure, a blog is also self-serving and navel-gazing. But like, yknow. I like the sound of my own voice. So I get it!
All this to say that I am Going Out Of My Way to listen to this podcast called the Comment Section wherein comments are made that transphobes seem to be running with. The comment comes from guest E.R. Fightmaster (side note: what a name. Work.);
“I think transwomen have a more beautiful understanding of what womanhood is…they talk about it in such this beautiful, expansive way…I want cis women to stop letting men be a barrier to their identity.”
Well…I get the idea, and I get the charitable read. But this is also a little weird. I find this statement a little…patronizing comes to mind? Maybe pandering. It doesn’t pass the “would this be weird if it was two white girls saying this about someone that wasn’t white?” Test. However, I’m also a pretty firm believer that people Should Be Allowed To Say Dumb Things. Or at the very least I think an important part of unpacking my own prior maleness involves giving grace to dumb statements. I draw a BIG distinction between dumb and hateful, just btw.
I don’t think the host or the guest did anything wrong, but one thing I do know that being a trans woman fuckin rocks and there’s not a lot of us. So everyone has some sort of shit to say about us and even something positive like this is no exception. It just stinks when something like that is said and left in the public void, without any of us present, just for transphobes to pick up and imprint their own bullshit outrage upon and then we have to weigh in on it.
misery business
More galling, honestly, is that the responses are all the same, shopworn transphobic arguments that we’ve been hearing forever. We’re not real women. We didn’t develop as women. We enjoyed the privilege of being a male growing up. We just put on a dress and expected the world. We don’t get periods. We don’t get raped (we do, actually). Ugh. It’s boring.
Who has the time for is this rhetoric from frankly miserable women that their womanhood is solely defined around some sort of suffering? I’m not sure if I really have the vocabulary to talk about this kind of perverse collectivism: but to me it’s akin to the same tired “I had a hard time so you need to have a hard time” arguments might hear when it comes to Student Debt, Medical Care, Government Assistance, and so on and so on…it’s just tired.
but first, a word from the stupid wizard lady
Hey speaking of saying somthing without a transwoman in the room that might look charitable but kind of sucks: you may have seen some internet chatter that male author impersonator, JK Rowling, has released a STUNNING admission that follows:
I’ve always believed that adults with intractable gender dysphoria may only find peace after surgery and taking hormones.
It might be compelling to see this as some sort of olive branch. After all, JKR has spent the better part of the last ten years of her life being an activist against the rights of trans folk. Shouldn’t we be happy that something resembling respect for our existence is being stated?
Not so, this is the just same tired rhetoric behind autogynephilia, transphobe’s favorite ‘junk science’, and just another example of a non-trans person trying to impose their concept of what makes a legitimate transsexual vs a non-legitimate fetishist. This is not a ‘reasonable’ take. This is JK Rowling doing mental gymnastics to justify that she might have a trans woman in her inner circle while also despising every other trans woman. There are ‘good’ trans women, and then there are ‘bad’ trans women in her world, and where the scales tip is obvious. This is not support, and I’m a little embarrassed for the person at LGBTQnation that gave it this headline.
Point being, my lived experience is my own, and my transness does not own people a tribunal-approved level of oppression or suffering to be reality. So maybe talk to a few of us before saying something, or even better, include us in the room.
Anyway I’m going to write about Resident Evil next time. Bye!