The difference between feminist theory and trans beliefs is that feminism is a sincere effort to diagnose and fix a problem for the good of all humanity. You can read bell hooks, Audre Lorde, or Andrea Dworkin and find love in them. Trans beliefs are different. They’re after-the-fact justifications for demanding that we all participate…
Clearly, trans issues have been taking up a lot of my arguing-on-the-internet energy. In a recent editorial, trans activist Florence Ashley asks a deep existential question: Don’t TERFs have better things to do? It’s a moot point because he’s already arguing on the internet about it, too. Moving on to the line-by-line critique: Identifying a…
Nathan Robinson is a brocialist, the kind who can write whole articles wondering where Matt Taibbi went wrong, without really identifying racism as the problem. It seems to be an identifying feature of brocialists that they like both Adolph Reed and the trans movement. Here, Robinson does a softball interview with Julia Serano, where the…
I really wish trans activists would shut up about their so-called “existence.” It’s such an annoying, dishonest talking point. A perfect example would be Susan Miller’s recent piece from USA Today: Not a ‘two-sides issue’: Transgender people exist. Why is there a debate over whether they should have rights? Well, there are a lot of…
As a man with a lot of opinions about feminism, I’m not one to say people can’t comment on identity politics issues that aren’t specifically about them. I’ve praised white authors for their comments on black issues before. Nick Pemberton should probably stay in his lane, though. I saw the headline Dave Chapelle should read…
Today I watched Passing on Netflix, and I quite liked it. One of the reasons I liked it was that it’s good to remind everyone that the original meaning of passing has to do with tragic mulattos, not with trans people. The whole point is that passing is something bad, shameful, self-hating, an abdication of…
Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue has gotten a lot of praise. I thought it was pretty good too, backhandedly. He used to be a lawyer, and it shows. The book makes it feel like giving trans people whatever they want is reasonable, forward-thinking, and open-minded. Instead of resorting immediately to “our existence is not up…
If you read Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin’s thinking is OBVIOUSLY incompatible with the trans movement. There’s just no way an honest person could read the book and come away thinking that anyone is going to get free by “identifying” with male or female gender roles. You can’t possibly read a passage like this and think, “Yeah,…
It’s good to read forbidden books. They’re often surprisingly good. In that spirit, this will be about the 15th anniversary introduction to The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, written in 1994. It’s the arch-TERF book, the Mein Kampf of feminazis. A similar treatment of Gender Trouble is here. A fun fact is that…