And I STILL missed things

[aesmael]

A few days ago lost_angelwings and I came across some thoroughly dreadful essays and decided to split the raging between us. I got this community (yay!) but have been sick since so am only getting to it now. Bah! Enough preamble.

In the first paragraph, the writer begins by placing women on a pedestal... of sorts. He says he is afraid of women, particularly beautiful ones and makes a fool of himself around them because "I am unworthy to be in the presence of such loveliness". Bah. If you are going to treat women as pretty objects rather than as people, of course you will have difficulty relating to them!

Except his further writing reveals that apart from from being attracted to women, he rather hates them. He claims women to be inhuman (by implication), so alien in thought as to be utterly unfathomable to men, to hold a universal hatred of men so that "[w]hatever a man thinks, feels, does, or says is apt to be wrong". Perhaps, with his rampant stereotyping and exoticising of women and claims of unreasonable demands for sensitivity from men - to be treated as a person, perhaps, whose thoughts and feelings warrant consideration? - he might stop to think that maybe all this rubbish, this nonsense is what is getting in the way of his relating to another human being as a human being.

This was the first paragraph. The second paragraph is in praise of men at the expense of women. That men accept a guy as he is (implying women do not), [sarcasm] which is why men are never bullied or harassed by other men[/sarcasm]. That men never try to remake other men in their likeness (I suppose we need a new category for cult leaders and abusive parents and other such). That men are easy to be around because they do not have hidden agendas (ha!), out-of-control hormones (but men do have hormones, they are not the sole province of women and though less common than for women many behaviours of men [aggression, violence, stalking, rape *gags*] are blamed on hormones out of control - but then it really is treated as beyond his control and responsibility is shifted away from him whereas women still get blamed for behaviour attributed to their hormones, including legitimate anger), that men are not as emotional butterflies (because women flit about all over the place and never have a justifiable reason for anything they feel, right?). He concludes this paragraph by saying if a woman were more like a man she might be his ideal date.

Two paragraphs, still on the first screen and after that initial, sexist, objectifying 'praise' his hatred of women is near boiling off the page. The next two paragraphs are in praise of male genitals, including a listing of terms used to describe them (and how magnificent the associations of those are, apparently), along with likening the penis to a metaphor for the (presumably Christian) Resurrection. Then, after proclaiming his love for male genitals, the author goes on to describe gay sex as being "not about love, but power", because some gay men use self-descriptive terms such as submissive or dominant, because heterosexual couples would never be involved in such a thing, oh my no!

He writes about women seeing men as protectors and providers, his worldview seemingly not to allow for women to be other than dependant on men, or interested in non-men. And in this bizarre world of his men are to each other conqueror or conquest and that because of this "may also become a companion". At first I thought his characterisation of gay male sex as loveless and power-centred to be, well, homophobic, but he seems approving so... that is just bigoted and false then? He describes fatherhood and parental responsibilities as responsibilities a woman would "shackle" him with and submissive or dominant men in terms of allowing another man to express his own nature, so again we have women as figures of coercive entrapment and control.

He devotes an entire paragraph to stripping away the idea of individuality in sex for men - "for one man is a mirror image of all men", "[b]y sucking another man's prick, a guy sucks his own cock", followed by three lengthy paragraphs about symbology of sex between cissexual men, grabbing at every association he can find to make it seem an act of absolute significance. One paragraph devoted to the symbolism of [men] having sex with women, which I shall quote in entirety because it is so thoroughly messed up:

By excluding women as sexual partners, gay men also omit the human abilities, attitudes, beliefs, concerns, and feelings that are associated with exclusively female body parts, activities, and states of being such as the breasts, the labia, the clitoris, the vagina, the womb, the egg, and pregnancy. A consultation of a dream dictionary shows some of the things that are missing from the lives of men who have sex with one another rather than with women. For example, the breasts are associated with sexual desire or dependency, social confidence, and nurture, and the vagina is related to female energy receptivity, openness, warmth, intuition, creativity, repressed sexual memories, sexual guilt, and anger at one's sexual partner.

It looks like he believes particular qualities and abilities can only be experienced if one has sex with a person in a way he believes symbolises them. So... the author seems to believe a man can only experience creativity or anger at his partner if he has sex with a woman. That list irks me every time I read it. Women symbolised as passive nurturing creatures and sources of dependency, guilt and rage (he does associate some negative traits with men also, but in three paragraphs they seem drowned out by positivity and praise).

For some reason, he then goes on about the symbolism of sex for a woman as an act of consuming, of feeding, of the pregnant belly as representing satiation - as if once pregnant a woman has taken what she wants from a man. He does not seem able to mention women without also bringing in the idea of entrapment, he seems thoroughly terrified of a woman he has sex with becoming pregnant and forcing him to care for her.

He starts talking about the "hermaphrodite-transsexual" figure as reducing the conflict between men and women and describes writers of transgendered fiction as "like contemporary gods", by which he means he denies the ability of transgendered people to identify as men or women and places them in some third 'transcendent' sex, whether they like it or not. He describes fiction featuring transsexual protagonists as transforming the audience into completed humans by forcing them to identify with both male and female (because somehow he believes this impossible to do otherwise?). With grandiose visions of such fiction saving the world by directing people toward becoming some transcendent, "complete" third sex, this particular page of awfulness finishes.

There is a second essay we found by the same author: Shemales: An Appreciation.

With a title like that, well, normally I would close the window but I am feeling masochistic. He starts by listing terms for "chicks with dicks", saying there are many but clearly not knowing what he is talking about. Androgynes tend to identify as neither male nor female or as a blending of both but not, in my experience, as "chicks". Nor do they necessarily have or ever have had a penis. Futari, well,  I expect he meant futanari. Girly man... isn't that normally wielded as a sexist insult against perceived gay men? He-she, I normally see used as a derogatory term directed at ftm transsexuals. Intersexed people are as I understand it are those whose unaltered bodies exhibit some variance from a strict binary division of sex; some may be "chicks with dicks" but intersexed is not a term for them. Hermaphrodite is an outdated and considered offensive term for intersexed people. Kathoey may be the only term he has gotten at all correct so far but all I know of it is in the linked article. Ladyboy is just the same term again. Shemale is almost without exception a hideously offensive and degrading term used principally in pornography. Tranny is generally offensive too and not restricted to pre-operative trans women, let alone women at all. Similarly transgender and transsexual are broad terms covering far more people than he wishes to speak of.

Our author, ever respectful of other people, decides he wishes to talk of hormonal, non-operative trans women and that the term he will use to describe them is shemale because why go with the lesser offence? I do know one person who self-identifies as shemale but more often in my experience the preferred term is unicorn. Despite what the author says, breasts do not make a person womanly and a person's identity is not defined by their genitals. What matters is being comfortable inhabiting one's own body and no matter how high the pedestal you place them on ("divine beings", "sexiest creatures in the universe" indeed), most women, most people are not going to appreciate being fetishised for a single part of their body, be it her lips, her breasts, her penis or whatever. If you are not interested in a person for who they are but as a collection of body parts, I believe the appropriate term is objectification.

He puts forward that despicable idea which is used in many transphobic feminist criticisms of the existence of trans women - that they are in truth men who think they can be better at being women than real women - and supports it, denying the womanhood of trans women by suggesting they are "mimicking" cis women but that they "can be all that beautiful women are characterized as being: empathetic, gentle, lovely, sensitive, sympathetic tender, and so on". Really? That is what he thinks beautiful women should be? It reads like a checklist for a pretty and docile toy, not a person. And this by implication is what women are failing at being so that imitations need to be brought in, men showing women 'how it's done', even at being women? No. Trans women are women, cis women are women, and it is not up to him to tell them how to be.

He says human existence is more complex than genitals and other sexual characteristics, yet in the next paragraphs denies that trans women are women, describing them as "apparent women" instead. (It is not, by the way, any more incumbent on trans people to disrupt current Western ideas of sex and gender than it is for other people to do so) He denies that trans women can be women and he denies that men who are attracted to them must be gay because the only thing that matters in defining orientation in relation to people is the configuration of their genitals. For someone a few paragraphs ago who looked to be decrying gender essentialism, he sure seems to subscribe to it.

To describe trans women - specifically unicorns - as "the best of both worlds" for possessing breasts and penis rather implies then that trans men are the worst of both for often possessing neither, nevermind that despite his grand talk of third sexes and whatnot he seems rather stuck on binary ideas. It is not despite what he says, a rationalisation on the part of a man attracted to a trans woman to think of her as a woman. That is what she is. Women are not defined by what lies between their legs; they happen to be people, not walking, talking, decorative sexual organs.

He does not seem to think any perspective other than that of men matters, though: "Despite this paradox, which would have it both ways, men want to think of shemales as women, not as men. Therefore, such creatures are regarded as chicks with dicks rather than as dudes with boobs."

And of course he thinks his own perspective is more important still: Him > other men > everyone else, since he believes trans women should be placed into a third category apart from women and men, but apparently not holding sway over the beliefs of others generously allows that their identity can be defined by what men think of them.

Our dear author has been playing before. Now, at this point, he decides to pull out all stops and maximise offense. In his view a trans woman is ultimately a denial of feminity because the function of a woman is to conceive and bear children.  According to him the most a trans woman can be is a playmate, and for a 'true' woman, a helpmate, but that rather presupposes the idea that women exist for men and the greatest achievement in life for a woman is to serve a man's enjoyment in some way. He describes trans women as existing for fun and not family, for sex and not responsibility. For him and his enjoyment and not for themselves, in short.

Somehow, he has the conclusion that a man dating a trans woman has no need to explore the feminine in himself because he is not actually dating a woman. Is this relating to his idea of sexual symbology, that the organs of the person one is having sex with determine the qualities one will experience in life and the abilities one has? It seems in contradiction to his earlier statements about trans women proving men and women each contain masculinity and femininity, but he seems quite terrified of women so perhaps this is his rationalisation for having something that looks like a woman but is 'safe' like a man. He describes favourably trans women as man-made women, thus protecting him from any possibility of fertility - as fatherhood seems to him the most awful thing ever and he seems to hold the view that the mission in life of any cis woman is to entrap him into marriage and parenting.

He states outright that non-operative trans women are wonderful not only for possessing both breasts and penis, but specifically as an utter denial of the purpose of womanhood - to be a mother. I am... I am stunned to see such dehumanisation and hatred of women placed so plainly on the page. His essay finishes with repeated statements that trans women are not real women, that they are superior because they represent the annihilation of what he considers the primary reason women have for existence and its replacement with pleasure free of any responsibility of attachment.

And I think I am going to be sick now.

[cross-posted to feminist_rage ]