Living with trans ideology

submitted by themiserychick from self.GenderCritical

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Men never had a Betty Friedan, though.

Huh? Men didn't need a Betty Friedan! Middle-aged men in the 1960s and before had "identity crises" all the time; that was the term used. In fact, it's one of the few times the word "identity" was used in common Western parlance prior to the emergence of today's identity politics. Men in the 1950s and 60s had Kinsey, Masters & Johnson and the "sexual revolution" engineered by men for the benefit of men.

Sometimes when men back then had their mid-life "identity crisis, " they would just grow their hair or sideburns long or get plugs and start smoking pot; other times they'd buy sports cars. But a whole lot of the time, they simply walked out on their wives and children to take up with a new woman half their age - often the babysitter of their own children.

Tons of men in the 1950s and 60s were screwing their secretaries, going to brothels and strip clubs and Playboy clubs, paying for the services of call girls, chasing their female employees around the office, trying to cop a feel in the stock room, hitting on the pubescent female friends of their young teen daughters, consuming porn and sneaking off to peep shows. Just as men had been screwing their parlor and scullery maids, cooks, slaves, governesses and nannies forever. Look at movies like "The Apartment," "Butterfield 8," "Georgie Girl," "Blow Up" or "Auto Focus." Men have felt free to "have their way" with girls and women since the dawn of time, as novels like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Ubervilles show. They've been dumping, impoverishing and even institutionalizing their longstanding wives who've given them many children for "sweet young things" for generations, as the life of Charles Dickens show.

For a picture of how married, middle-aged men behaved in the West in the 1950 and 60s, check out the TV series "Mad Men." The behavior of Don Draper and all the other married men screwing around and mistreating their wives and children in that series about the US in the 1950s and 60s was depicted realistically. Sure, not all men behaved so badly. But a whole lot of them did. Screwing around and having the "male mid-life crisis" were both entirely normalized back then. And men who behaved that way were lionized for adopting the "Playboy lifestyles" of the "swinging sixties."

Some men back then literally got away with killing women whilst pursuing their "no holds barred" lifestyle of male indulgence, as the case of Teddy Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne shows. It's not like Bill Clinton's middle-aged dalliance with the young intern Monica Lewinsky was an aberration, and that sorts of things only started happening recently. The "Profumo affair" of the early 1960s was a huge political scandal that finally culminated in the Tory PM resigning and a Labour government being voted in.

Men of the era Betty Friedan's book focused on had famous men like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Normal Mailer, Pablo Picasso, John F Kennedy, Ted Hughes, Roman Polanski and a zillion more championing men's right to devote their lives to the selfish pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment. They didn't need a male version of Betty Friedan.

Also, there were lots of best-selling books in the 50s and 60s that addressed the issues facing men and male psychology, such as "The Organization Man," "Lolita," "Culture of Conformity," "Invisible Man," "Catcher in the Rye" and "Man's Search for Meaning."

[–]MaleFriedanFan 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Men of the era Betty Friedan's book focused on had famous men like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Normal Mailer, Pablo Picasso, John F Kennedy, Ted Hughes, Roman Polanski and a zillion more championing men's right to devote their lives to the selfish pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment. They didn't need a male version of Betty Friedan.

Maybe I am misunderstanding here, but I don't think that Betty Friedan championed women's right to devote their lives to the pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment at the cost of others -- that seemed to be part of the problem, being forced to make these false choices. She seemed to hope that there would be a way that a woman could explore her sexual feelings without needing to become a Playboy Bunny, have career ambitions without needing to abandon marriage or children, not to be forced to choose between personal fulfillment and the happiness of others, but to find a more stable identity that encompasses all of these hopes as a full human being rather than defining oneself as a choice from a set of lifestyle brands a magazine created.

I guess why I said, "never had a Betty Friedan" rather than "never had a Feminine Mystique" is that she didn't just write a book and move on, like William Whyte with The Organization Man, who was more interested in urban design. Unlike the academics like David Riesman who wrote The Lonely Crowd, she saw intellectualization of the problem as a dead-end; after the release of The Feminine Mystique, there were government task forces, and academic round-tables on "The Woman Problem", but they never seemed to go anywhere. So she went back to her readers to try to understand a path forward. David Riesman kept writing on the "Lonely Crowd Problem", but seemed content to merely be a public intellectual, and because of this the books never really turned into anything concrete.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Maybe I am misunderstanding here

I think that assessment is correct.

You made a claim that erroneously insinuated that the situation of men and women in the US in the era Betty Friedan wrote about were entirely analogous and equal. Worse, you complained that

Men never had a Betty Friedan

You further tried to switch the attention to men in Friedan's era whom you consider to have been equally or more oppressed and constrained by something you call "the masculine mystique." In your own words, you said we should turn our focus to the men in Friedan's era who might have been

feeling just as trapped as those 60s housewives struggling with The Problem With No Name, stuck between the reality of their lives and the ideals that they did not create and yet fee

Men never had a Betty Friedan, though. So the idea of just adopting another mystique that seems more doable, rather than questioning why this burden has been placed on them to be something other than their honest selves, whatever it may look like, is very tempting.

These words of your suggested that you see men in the Friedan era as just as - or more - oppressed, voiceless, constrained and put-upon than women, and that "men's issues" didn't get the same attention that "women's issues" did back then.

I provided examples from real life and popular literature of that era showing otherwise. I also showed that the concerns and life goals of these men were nothing like the concerns and goals of the women Friedan wrote about. Now you've come back to say that I'm suggesting Friedan was arguing for women to define their liberation in exactly the same way male libertines of the era did. Which is hogwash. Friedan didn't say any such thing, and nowhere did I say it either.

Now you are saying that because Friedan

didn't just write a book and move on

Like the various male authors mentioned, that this somehow disadvantages men and obscures their issues.

The reason Friedan and other feminists weren't free to write books about women's issues and then "move on" to other topics that interested them/us is coz women then or now have not yet won the battle for women's rights - nor have we been successful in getting women's issues to be taken seriously in the press, public sphere and politics as human rights issues that affect more than half the human race.

You really don't seem to have a clue about women's experience or history.

[–]MaleFriedanFan 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I apologize for being a poor communicator.

Friedan created the term "the masculine mystique", I believe. She talks about it using that name in her second book, "It Changed My Life", a collection of her articles written after The Feminine Mystique and essays explaining the context in which they were written.

I think I should have said "the men of the present who need one don't have a Betty Friedan", to clarify that I was not talking about men in general from the era the book was written, but was trying to address the original topic of trying to understand the mindset of the subset of men today who decide the solution to their problems is transitioning, which some people want to understand because while they don't believe it is the right choice, those men are close friends, spouses, or family.

I think maybe another form of confusion is that I had trouble understanding how the examples you gave were examples of being liberated, having a voice, being free or unburdened (I think these would be opposite words for oppressed, voiceless, constrained, or put upon). Feeling powerless at work so screwing your secretary to feel powerful doesn't sound like it fits in there, but maybe I am misunderstanding again. Could you help me understand what you mean?

Friedan talked about women who started affairs because it was the only thing that made them feel alive when they were trapped at home, but she didn't seem to see the affairs as a sign of liberation but as a coping mechanism for a problem that hadn't been solved.

I think maybe an equivalent to "The Lonely Crowd" might be "The Second Sex". Ms. Friedan was inspired by this book, but when she got to meet Simone de Beauvoir, she was frustrated that Ms. de Beauvoir did not seem especially interested in concrete actions, only big ideas.

I think the quote from the second book was:

the authority with which she spoke about women seemed sterile, cold, an abstraction that had too little relationship to their real lives. I felt almost like a fool, struggling with those mundane questions that women have to confront in their personal lives and in movement strategy. Those questions did not seem to interest her at all. Somehow she did not seem to identify with ordinary women trying to make something new of themselves, or to feel at all involved with their everyday problems.

I agree that I don't have a clue about women's experience; after all, I can't experience being a woman. However, I do believe that the issues Ms. Friedan wrote about in regards to women can help people to understand similar struggles in others, which is why I thought she might be worth a look.

This has been an interesting conversation, thank you for taking the time to write to me.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks for being polite. Sorry if I have been short and harsh with you. But this is a thread in which a woman in a terrible situation due to the selfish behavior of her male partner came seeking support - at a time when the whole world is applauding, centering and doting on men like her male partner whilst women like her are being told to STFU and just put the men's need to indulge their sexual fetishes first. Yet you and another male poster have tried to make the thread all about how sorry everyone should feel for MEN coz MEN have problems and issues too.

Five days ago, before you made your first post I made a post that said in part:

I find it worrying that on a thread on which the OP, a woman, has asked for support in dealing with her partner's AGP, one poster has used this as an opportunity to thump his chest and tell us how masculine and straight he is...

OP, sorry your thread has gotten derailed. I made a long post offering what I hope is support. IMO, offering support is all we posters should be doing here.

After that, you made your first post theorizing out of the thin air that the OP's partner's gaslighting, lying and utterly selfish, abusive and irresponsible behavior to her and their children was probably coz he felt stalled in his career at mid-life and was frustrated for not living up to what you called "the masculine mystique." Which only showed you have no understanding whatsoever of the the nature, etiology, manifestations and trajectory of the obsessive male sexual fetish called autogynephilia, or the damaging, often devastating impact it has on these men's female partners and children, as well as on others in their lives. And it showed you have no clue about what it's like for women to live under coercive control or with a male narcissist, either.

Worse, you recommended that the OP read

"Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury; it is their attempt to translate the tactics that diplomats used for managing relationships between countries into principles individuals can use in their day-to-day lives.

As if women in intimate relationships with emotionally abusive autogynephilic men just need to brush up on their diplomacy skills and adopt a more positive, collegial, accommodating attitude towards these men so they can "get to yes." When the reality is, what women like the OP need to say to the men in their lives is, NO, just no!

Now you say

I agree that I don't have a clue about women's experience; after all, I can't experience being a woman

You don't have to experience being a woman to learn about or obtain an understanding of women's experiences! You just have to listen to women. And see us. Which means stop spending all your time focusing and sympathizing exclusively on men. Or at least stop coming to forums for GC feminists and our male allies and attempting to turn the convo on a support thread for a woman dealing with toxic man into a discussion that centers men's feelings and problems.

Most of us have an awareness and understanding of the experience of people who are very different from us - not just by sex, but by age, nationality, race, religion, and so on. Coz we are curious about others. We read books about and by people different to us. We watch documentaries and movies about people in different cultures and different time periods. And coz empathy is a thing. I've never been a whaler in the 19th century, a Chinese farmer in the early 20th century, a Hobbit, a victim of the Holocaust, an astronaut, or a young boy growing up in Afghanistan under the Taliban - but coz of stories by and about such folks I feel have some understanding of their experience.

You can easily get an understanding of what women in OP's shoes are going by making use of all the informative links I included in my very first post up at the top of the thread, as well as the later one containing links to two eye-opening videos.

There are tons of "trans widows" out there who are telling their stories of how their families and own lives have been damaged by their male partners' AGP. Children of these men are starting to coming forward and tell what they've suffered too coz of their dads' selfish, exclusive focus on pursuit of their own sexual pleasure and narcissistic fantasy lives. These women and children need to listened to, given support, and encouraged to make this their theme song: https://youtu.be/ccenFp_3kq8

Again, sorry I am so sharp. But every place on the internet that women try to give and get support for issues and problems we are dealing with coz we are women gets invaded by men who try to derail and make the convo all and only about men.

[–]MaleFriedanFan 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you for your response! It encouraged me to re-read the OP carefully -- I am not sure, but think maybe I see where I became confused.

In the original post, OP asks a question, "Why is it that they all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing?" I took this to be an earnest question (perhaps the other poster did as well), but after your explanation, I realize that this was a rhetorical question, and, as you pointed out, the actual purpose of the post was not to get an answer to that question but for the other purposes you outlined.

I see now that I was misunderstanding. I should have realized as this happened once in reverse, with a male friend who was trying to have a "Women, am I right?" where I did not get the drift that he wasn't really looking for help solving a problem.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you for your response in turn. Now that I understand you took a rhetorical question of OP's as an earnest one, I can see where you were coming from in your first post. In a classic example of "not reading the room," you seemed not to get - or perhaps read - all the posts that preceded yours, either.

I hope if you are interested in the experience of women affected by the current trend of so many heterosexual men claiming to be women - particularly when they are married, have already fathered children and have a new baby on the way - you will avail yourself of the links I shared at the start of this thread.

For more insight into why so many heterosexual men - including many married fathers - are claiming they are women and they

all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing

I suggest reading such works as "The Man Who Would Be Queen" by J Michael Bailey, "Galileo's Middle Finger" by Alice Dreger, "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Trannssexualism" by Anne Lawrence (an MD sexologist who is also AGP trans; the book is available for free on Lawrence's website), Janice Raymond's seminal 1979 book, "The Transsexual Empire" (available for free at janiceraymond.com), the papers of Ray Blanchard (all available for free - check his Twitter), and the utterly misogynist recent work "Females" by Andrea Long Chu, a man who says that "sissy porn" made him trans.

Chu, another heterosexual man with AGP who now "identifies as" a lesbian, says he

transitioned for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend . . . for feeling hot, for getting hit on by butches, for that secret knowledge of which dykes to watch out for, for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops, and all the dresses, and, my god, for the breasts.

What's more, Chu says the defining essence of being female is

an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”

A view that I hope you can see is profoundly offensive and insulting to those of us who actually are female.

A review of Chu's book: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-2020/sissy-porn-and-trans-dirty-laundry/