“Assuming [a trans woman’s] desire to be female is merely some sort of femininity fetish or sexual perversion…essentially mak[es] the case that women have no worth beyond the extent to which they can be sexualized.”
— Julia Serano in Whipping Girl
No, it makes the case that trans people don’t value the opposite sex as anything more than performative gender norms and sexual characteristics.
I mean. This is just. A bad strawman. Like a really bad strawman. Women (regardless of whether or not they’re trans-inclusive or not) are fully aware of value beyond sexuality. However pointing out that the trans movement tends towards being very fetishising of the opposite sex is NOT the same as saying “women only have value as sexual objects.”
I mean. This so far misses the point that it’s like the author didn’t even listen to the opposition’s position in the first place, let alone understand it.
You can dress up transmisogyny and transphobia in whatever academic rhetoric you want, but that doesn’t change the underlying prejudices informing it. A lot of transmisogyny is rooted in old school misogyny: the idea that trans womanhood is a fetish, the idea that womanhood and femininity is a costume, etc. The idea that someone wouldn’t “choose” to be a woman unless they have a fetish does seem rooted in a kind of misogyny. Because there’s no other appeal to being a woman than her “sexuality?”
Their arguments are never going to be “woman only have value as sex objects.” Because next to no one is going to admit that. People will use justifications for their prejudice like “the trans movement fetishizes the opposite sex,” but ultimately you have to buy into a lot of irrational underlying assumptions to believe that’s true. Illuminating the underlying assumptions and double standards is not a straw man. It’s also strange to take out the gendered aspect because rarely if ever do people accuse trans masc people of “fetishizing men” it’s a phenomenon pretty unique to the trans feminine experience and that’s not an accident. Serano goes into a lot of detail as to why that is in her book.
If you actually believe Julia Serano isn’t familiar with the rhetoric of transphobic thinkers, then you only reveal your ignorance. Serano activelty engaged with TERFs in academia and queer spaces for years prior to writing Whipping Girl–and pretty much any trans person with an online presence has engaged with TERFs and is familiar with their rhetoric. Writers like Julia Serano do take the time to pick apart and refute the kinds of arguments you’re putting forward, but again, you’d rather just respond to one quote pointing out the double standard out of context than look at the millions of arguments trans people have put forward in response to your claims. That’s why a lot of trans people like me have given up arguing with people like you a long time ago.
I’m responding to the quote… Because that’s what was provided. And again, there’s this assumption that anti-trans people assume that femininity is a costume, when in fact the primary arguments I’ve seen from the opposing side has NOT been that, but has been that *trans people treat the opposite sex like that.* Nowhere, mind, did I say that *I agree with that assessment* but congrats you went ad hominem in your tags and assumed that simply because I pointed out that this quote appears to be a strawman.
Nothing you’ve said shows it to be otherwise, either. It just shows that you’ve got a lot of tightly wrapped assumptions about what people who don’t support you *actually* think, with or without evidence.
I mean, in no world is saying (right or wrong as it may be) “X fetishizes Y and reduces it to sex” the same as saying “I think Y is only about sex.” I mean. “White men fetishize Japanese women and reduce them to sexual objects.” Is not the same as saying “I think Japanese women are only sexual objects.” The quote as provided is either…
1) A bad strawman demonstrating wildly poor rhetoric and just blatant ignorance, or
2) a really bad clipping of the sentences out of a larger context which destroys any sensible meaning.
Hi there, I am a boring person with a massive following of 12 accounts, some of which are bots. Anyways. So OP began by quoting a transgender author who essentially says, “If you think people who want to transition to female is solely a fetish, you are reducing women to their sexuality. To which you reply this is a strawman because the people who believe this stuff about trans people being mere fetishists do, in fact, actually see cis women as more than their sexuality. you also bring up that “Just because some white dudes fetishize Japanese women and we point it out, doesn’t mean we think japanese women are sex objects.” if you had just left it at that, it would have been an accurate, though incomplete counterargument. because it’s true that when i go through radfem blogs, they frequently reblog stuff like south korean women protesting porn spycams and bullshit workplace dresscodes by cutting their hair, not wearing feminine things, and not being doormats. so it’s clear they have a beef with sexual objectification and subjugation of women and want women to be valued for their ideas and accomplishments and so on. but instead of just leaving it at that, you acted like a total dickhead and smeared an entire group of people, some of whom are children. which is quite reprehensible but unsurprising given the unchecked misandry of radfem circles (i don’t really care if you are one or not since you sound exactly like them). now, i doubt you would actually seriously go up to a very young transgirl, who has known they were trans from an early age, like Kai Shappley, and tell her she is a creepy boy who is sexualizing and fetishizing women. because you’d sound like a total loser and she’d very maturely tell you that your perception of her is wrong. however, that is just the logical conclusion of the sort of ideas you are spreading and defending. another thing that contradicts the caricature you have made of trans women is butch transwomen. then there are asexual trans women. there are trans women who dress plainly, and trans women who grow their hair long and wear makeup but don’t sexualize themselves any more than a “normal,” girl would, there are trans teenagers whose main hobby is drawing innocuous, not remotely pornographic things, and so on. it’s not as if every transwoman is out there posting futa porn on 4chan, and if they are, that’s not really my business anyways unless they do something that is legitimately creepy and predatory. And I will also directly address this quote you made. “No, it makes the case that trans people don’t value the opposite sex as anything more than performative gender norms and sexual characteristics.” I have seen this argument packaged in other ways, such as “Why can’t you just be a feminine man,” or a “butch woman.” And if that is who you are inside I totally think you should be that and you should not feel pressured to transition in order to conform to a hostile society. That being said, what many cis people repeatedly do is make this issue about themselves when it’s really not. I think the obvious cause of this is believing trans people are not the gender they say they are. the thing is, even if you believe this, the lack of empathy exhibited is glaring. i am a cis woman, i think, or at the least i am typically fine with looking like a girl. if i was in a very masculine body with a lot of body hair and very manly features, i would hate it. I would also hate feeling isolated from other girls and I would be terrified of acting like myself and being open about it around boys because people are called horrible names and even beat up for that. it may have gotten better in america over the decades, but it would still be a negative experience. even if being male gives you certain privileges, not being yourself is a heavy price to pay, just like pretending to be straight is a heavy price for a gay person to pay. Besides that, your response in itself is a strawman, ironically. You assert that trans people see the opposite sex as just a set of stereotypes. This ignores that many trans people, including likely the majority of progressive left trans people on tumblr, accept non binary and gender nonconforming identities. sure, there are binary trans people who will lash out at those groups because they feel threatened, but theirs are not the only opinions that exist. as for feeling threatened and lashing out at other identities in self defense, there’s cis gender people who do that as well. such as when some butch women insist trans men are actually women because they don’t want to deal with people thinking that they might also be men because that undermines some feminist cause on gender roles and i’m sure you know this since you have probably seen their arguments before. basically, your argument that transwomen see women as a set of feminine stereotypes is itself a strawman because there’s transwomen who are butch and transwomen who recognize and respect butch cis women or drag queens and so on. Also, I’m going to respond to what you say here: “And again, there’s this assumption that anti-trans people assume that femininity is a costume, when in fact the primary arguments I’ve seen from the opposing side has NOT been that, but has been that *trans people treat the opposite sex like that.* Nowhere, mind, did I say that *I agree with that assessment* “ So you claim that you never said you agree with the assessment that trans people treat the opposite sex like a set of feminized and sexualized stereotypes. However, earlier, you stated: “However pointing out that the trans movement tends towards being very fetishising of the opposite sex….” So make up your mind. Are trans people a bunch of perverted men fetishizing women and femininity or not? Don’t try to half assedly weasel out of statements you had previously made and act like you’re not one of the radfems, you’re just one of the people defending them….while in the process of doing so having to resort to their transphobic reduction of their gender identity to a fetish. Because that’s what people like you do. You’re like the feminists equivalent of Dave Rubin. you say you never claimed to be on the radfem side, but you end up using their same arguments down to using the very same words like “performative femininity.” and you’re definitely not unique in that regard because transwomen see this happen time and again. truthfully, you likely wouldn’t have the nerve to say this in public. let’s say at a wedding. you’re not going to go up to a transwoman marrying her husband and say, “your lifestyle is a fetish,” because everyone would think you are being a total fucking asshole. it is not different from homophobes reducing gay marriage to anal sex and “sexual perversion.” it sounds exactly the same. so if you ever wonder why a man like ben shapiro, who literally was afraid to go to a hypothetical barbecue his gay friend invited him to, because “I don’t want to be in any orgy,”, agrees with radfems about trans people, this is fucking why. because the same person who throws all trans people under the bus by pointing to people like jessica yaniv, is the same person who will say gay men are a disease because Kevin Spacey preyed on children. if you have a conscious to realize this problem, you won’t take apart pro-trans arguments by using the same kind of dogma homophobes use, wrapped up in feminist moral outrage over the objectification of women. if you want to go after trans people who say very degrading things about women, absolutely do it. but the way to do that is not through defending transphobes. so in short: 1) You correctly state that radfems and others who accuse transwomen of being mere fetishists do not believe women are mere sex objects 2) But then you generalize all or most transwomen as being fetishists, showing you pretty much agree with what the transgender author accused transphobes of believing. This generalization is dangerous to transwomen, particularly to vulnerable children and teenagers who are trans and do not deserve your demonization. 3) Reducing transness to a fetish also cruelly disregards years of gender dysphoria and bullying that comes with not being cis and thus not fitting into society or even your own body. 4) Reducing trans identity to a fetish is similar to reducing gay or bisexual orientations to a perversion, which is why assholes like ben shapiro agree with radfems about trans people. This bigotry towards trans people is spread under the trojan’s horse of dismantling misogyny. 5) the arguments you make about trans women being fetishists would fall apart pretty quickly if you accused literal children of being perverts or took it to a logical extreme and said a transwoman bride is a fetishist rather than a person going through one of the most important days of their life. this is an extreme example but it highlights how you are the one degrading trans people when you call them a fetish. 6) you try to weasel out of the assertion you in fact were not in agreement with radfems in spite of using the same terminology they use and making the same generalizations they do about transwomen and the male gaze, which makes you a terf dave rubin. effectively just a shill for them that claims to be independent of them. the writing’s on the wall. 7) idk what else to say other than that i am only picking on you because you are spreading harmful ideas about a vulnerable group of people. i don’t have anything against you personally or want bad things to happen to you. i also probably won’t respond to your replies if you write any simply because i think i have exhausted any point i could have made. so at this point it would be nitpicking.
Please, oh please, show where I said that I agree with terfs. Do. Because I didn’t. I have. Repeatedly. Ad nauseum. Stated that what I am saying is *the argumentation I have seen from trans-exclusionary people.* NOT that I agree with it, NOT that those are my own views on the matter, but that this quote is misrepresenting the oppositional arguments.
Simply because I lay out someone’s argumentation does NOT mean I *AGREE WITH IT.* As I pointed out PREVIOUSLY. PROPERLY REPRESENTING AND SUMMARIZING ARGUMENTS IS REQUIRED FOR RHETORICALLY SOUND RESPONSES.
Like. That’s THE POINT. THE POINT IS THAT THIS QUOTE INACCURATELY SUMMARIZES TERF RHETORIC, WHICH I’M RESTATING AS ACCURATELY AS I CAN BECAUSE MY POINT IS THAT THE QUOTE FAILED TO DO SO.
“Oh you accurately restated the argumentation using the same phrases they do! Writing on the wall TERF!!!” No. No. That’s literally how argumentation WORKS. If you cannot restate your opponent’s argument and break it down, you DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH TO ARGUE AGAINST IT EFFECTIVELY.
Gottdamn this isn’t rocket science. It’s not terfy to know how to begin a sound argumentation structure which is LITERALLY what I’ve been criticizing this ENTIRE time.
Edit: ALSO. POINT??? IS SYNONYMOUS WITH THE WORD “CLAIM.” TO POINT SOMETHING OUT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS ACCURATE OR TRUE.
look, i went into a lot of detail and spent over an hour going over what you actually said, so it is really frustrating that you to continue to claim you’re being taken out of context. So you ask, “Please, oh please, show where I said that I agree with terfs.” I am quoting you directly here: “No, it makes the case that trans people don’t value the opposite sex as anything more than performative gender norms and sexual characteristics.” you can claim that the above quote wasn’t what YOU personally believe, but in that case you should have made that more clear from the start. Furthermore, you say, and this is a direct quote: “the trans movement tends towards being very fetishising of the opposite sex…“ This is the same exact thing that radfems argue is true. So for you to constantly complain that you are being taken out of context is absurd. Furthermore, I myself agreed that the quote was flawed, because radfems in fact don’t believe women are just sex objects. However, like I said before, in YOUR criticism of the quote, you don’t stop there, but proceed to say, “The trans movement tends towards being very fetishizing of the opposite sex.” And look, if you agree with the radfem opinion that trans women fetishize women, then fine. if you want to go through Gender Critical or kiwifarms or archived 4chan boards to find the worst examples of transwomen, okay. do what you want with your life. but at the very least stop acting like you aren’t agreeing with radfems and are merely dismissing strawman arguments by trans people, because you aren’t. i don’t know how many times i have to bring up your own quotes to point that out, but i will do it one last time just for kicks, “the trans movement tends towards being very fetishizing of the opposite sex.” no, no, let me say it just one more time because i am a petty dickhead. “the trans movement tends towards being very fetishizing of the opposite sex.”
I said “However POINTING OUT that the trans movement tends towards being very fetishizing of the opposite sex…”
Pointing out IS a SYNONYM of “CLAIM.” As in, you know, CLAIMS IN AN ARGUMENT. IT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS CORRECT OR TRUE.
And I fail to see how I could have been any more clear when I’ve REPEATEDLY stated that I don’t agree, including in the tags on the ORIGINAL RESPONSE. You failing to understand sentence structure is NOT my problem, and also you once again manage to demonstrate the issue of *taking a quote out of context to change its meaning.*
And AGAIN. You do not need to AGREE WITH A STANCE IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO ACCURATELY STATE IT. GO AWAY.
look, if you did not yourself agree with this, you should have said, “Radfems are actually claiming….” i honestly don’t look at tags most of the time. your argument should be contained within the text. If you had just done that, and also said, “While I don’t agree with them,” within the text, we wouldn’t be arguing over weird semantics.
Point and claim are used in the same way even if they are technically synonyms. for instance, i never, never, ever hear Christians say, “Richard Dawkins points out God isn’t real.” they instead will say “Richard Dawkins CLAIMS God isn’t real.” And people don’t say, “She’s got a claim,” they say, “She’s got a point,” when someone says something they admit is valid. If you speak American English you must know these things, it’s not like you’re from China and don’t know these nuances. The word claim has different connotations implying the speaker has uncertainty about the truth of the statement. you shrieking at me doesn’t change that. You can angrily type in caps and pull open google dictionary all you want. You can block me or say I’m a retard or tell me to fuck off into Mars with Elon Musk, it won’t change that your language was too ambiguous, nor will it change that you are angry at me for misunderstanding your unclear language instead of being angry at people who are actually directing hatred towards a marginalized group of people. also, if you don’t agree with radfems, but in your post you only show their side and don’t explain why you disagree with it, then you shouldn’t be shocked when people think you are basically just defending radfems. if a single misunderstood word (point vs. claim) affects how your entire post comes across, that is a problem when it comes to communicating. i’ll go away now so you don’t need to capslock me anymore.
I use capslock to emphasize things.
Just because you’re used to a word being used in a specific connotation does not mean that that’s the only way to use it, nor does it suddenly make it my fault that you don’t know its definitions. Synonyms exist for a reason, I use them, get over it.
This post was not about my views, and will CONTINUE to not be about my views. I do not have any need to state my personal views on the topic in order to be able to make and defend the claim that the original quote is a strawman, anymore than I do when I cite other rhetorical fallacies in other areas. I don’t particularly care if you don’t like that. Your lack of backtracking in a conversation that you decided to jump into is not my problem.
I don’t need to change my language just because you lack reading comprehension and decided that instead of asking for clarification you’d attack me. No, I did not need to “just say it like this…” You “just need to” use a dictionary, ask questions, and backtrack in conversations before jumping on people.
I’m not *angry at you.* That involves energy that’s better spent recovering from physical therapy and you’re not worth it. My language was not ambiguous to…. Literally anyone who follows me. Which. You don’t. I didn’t post this for you, so I didn’t take into consideration your lack of familiarity with my use of synonyms. I posted this for my blog, aimed at my followers, who are presumably *pretty damned familiar with my idiosyncrasies and use of language.* If they’re not at this point then they are at least familiar with the fact that I’m good at responding to questions, asks, and direct messages if they’re unclear on what I’ve said.
And yes. Congrats, I *do* communicate differently than what many people are used to. As in, “clinically speaking my communication style is significantly different from numerous norms to the point that it was qualified as symptomatic of several disorders which I have regularly talked about and addressed on both this and my main side blog.” Oooh. Ahhh. And YET, *somehow* I still managed to use the word correctly and *you* still managed to assume that an ulterior intent was meant in it, and then instead of accepting my response wherein I *repeatedly stated that I don’t agree with terf rhetoric* as true, you doubled down on your assumptions because you couldn’t be bothered to think oh hey, maybe this person uses words differently than I do! And then instead of actually accepting that hey maybe this person meant something different by the word than what I thought, you decided to just OMIT IT from your quotation of me in order to make the point (CLAIM just in case you are STILL unclear about the use of this word) that I was agreeing with a summarization of terf argumentation.
And FINALLY. Simply because YOU PERSONALLY do not hear people use a word in a specific way does NOT mean it is not used that way. It simply means that you are not familiar with that usage. A vast majority of my immediate and extended family uses point and claim interchangeably. Debate team in college used point and claim interchangeably. Speech team did so. Science classes in college divided claim and point based on whether it was within the hypothesis or the conclusion, but communications classes did not.
*Also your assumption that I’d use an insult such as retard shows yet another attempt at character assassination which is unsurprising given your previous points towards me and my character. As of yet I have not used a single derogatory term, nor have I claimed that you have done anything other than failed to understand a word usage and failed to fully read through in order to get the context.*
I very much doubt that the change in a single word would have changed your response, either, because you also stated that you wanted me to explain why I disagree with the rhetoric I summarized. That’s neither necessary (on this post), nor relevant to what I was stating. I am aware of the fact that the OP likely reads tags, given the fact that they put entire essays in tags themselves. I am also aware of the fact that my primary active following read tags incessantly because they write more in their tags than they do in their actual OPs.
The primary point (claim) which I was making in my original response to the quote was that the quote as presented is a demonstration of a strawman fallacy which misrepresents the claim (point) that is made by trans-exclusionary groups that trans people fetishize the opposite sex. It draws from that argument that *IF* trans-exclusionists view trans people as fetishists *THEN* they must themselves view women as being only worth the extent to which they can be sexualized. This point (claim) is clearly flawed, as I demonstrated previously, since one does not have to themselves sexualize a group in order to make the claim (point) that another group does so. The simple view of this particular style of strawman is one I sometimes refer to as the “No U” strawman because it’s essentially saying that if someone thinks another person or group does X to Y, then that someone making the claim (point) must do X to Y themselves! You can see the “No U” strawman in the discourse on the hypersexualization of teens and preteens in the media and advertising as well. “If you think that advertisers are making things featuring preteens hypersexual and the ad companies are run by perverts then YOU’RE THE REAL PERVERT HERE.”
i admit i have absolutely no idea what your learning and speech disorders are or how it would affect how you explain things, so i’m sorry for not being aware of that. you also say that i’m in the wrong for not asking you for clarification and assuming that you actually supported the arguments you were writing in your text. i’m sorry for not doing that. we will not agree on whether or not your post was explicit in its intention but it is better to get as much context for someone’s ideas before disagreeing. i had a knee jerk reaction to seeing transphobic arguments, but i should have asked questions which would have avoided this. however, you point out that i didn’t ask for clarification. yet you yourself didn’t ask OP for clarification on their stance. you talked about how you were “just responding to the quote.” so while i was wrong for just responding to you at face value, to me you did the same thing. and i’m aware of the no u strawman, and as i said, if your argument stopped there i wouldn’t have commented anyways. but it didn’t. i know i should not have just responded to what you said at face value, but i only did that because you made arguments which are undeniably transphobic. even if i am an extremely unpleasant, stupid person, it doesn’t change that you are spreading transphobic arguments. you mention that your followers will understand what you mean, and i’m not one. and yeah, i’m not. i’m someone who is looking through OP’s posts, which means that the kind of things you are saying are seen by people other than your followers. you are exposing people other than them to transphobic arguments without tempering them with reasons you disagree with them. and we’re not going to agree on if it’s ethical to spread such arguments without giving further context or clarification. so i suppose it would be best to leave this argument at that. again, i’m sorry for misrepresenting your beliefs. and i am sorry that you are going through PT or other things which isn’t made better with convoluted arguments. but i do not agree with what you are doing.
