University Librarian: It's Transphobic to Say Lesbians Are Going Extinct. lol wut

JulienMayfair · 2021-08-01T23:05:49+00:00

I heard white supremacy killed the dinosaurs.

JulienMayfair · 2021-08-01T16:05:28+00:00

Go to therapy!

Yes, go to conversion therapy to learn to be attracted to the opposite sex.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-30T20:43:14+00:00

I suspect a lot of these stories are fake and made up for attention/sympathy. There really aren't that many transwomen out there you can't clock within a few seconds.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-29T03:23:01+00:00

Yes, someone this clearly mentally-ill should definitely have a child . . . /s

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-26T17:47:20+00:00

TERF fascist

Pretty much anytime someone calls someone else a fascist or a Nazi these days, you know they're full of shit.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-26T14:38:36+00:00

To be fair, I'm sure health insurance paid the bulk of that, but still, that money has to come from somewhere, so it will come from raising the price of health insurance for everyone.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-26T14:20:59+00:00

Or ex-husband . . .

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-26T02:23:11+00:00

$900,000 spent on the cost of medical transition. Wow.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-24T15:58:48+00:00

I remember when I met "Margot," a transwoman friend of a friend. This was ~15 years ago. We were at a club where the lighting was low. After about five minutes, I turned to my friend and whispered in his ear, "Margot used to be a man, right?" He said, "Yes, but don't mention that you've noticed. She hates it when people notice."

Margot was 1) too tall, 2) had shoulders that were too big and wide, and 3) had an Adam's apple. And I'd say Margot actually passed pretty well.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-23T18:57:16+00:00

What bothers me most about the trans suicide narrative is that it pins the blame on people not going along with the trans narrative instead of examining the idea that gender transition often ends up not addressing or treating the underlying causes of these people's emotional distress. Thus, they end up paying the high personal cost of a transition that doesn't bring them the happiness they were promised.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-23T15:06:35+00:00

Who is this person?

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-23T14:53:33+00:00

I watched that meltdown. That guy spewed out over 30 posts in one hour and then came back and spewed out some more. He set off my Cluster B Personality Disorder Indicator.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-22T14:57:21+00:00

To be honest, he isn't, so far as I know. He underwent a bizarre religious reversion back to his Catholic upbringing and, last time I heard, is celibate and obsessed with religion. I ran across his ex in a porn video.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-22T03:13:44+00:00

When I see couples presenting themselves to the world as being Unbelievably Happy, I have to confess that part of me thinks, "Let's just wait five years and check back." Pretty much every couple I've ever know that's determined to tell the world how in-love they are and how WONDERFUL their relationship is ends up splitting up, often very nastily. Think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

In fact, I got in trouble with one gay friend for not taking off work to attend his wedding. The truth is, I knew it was destined for failure because of how hard they were trying to appear perfect. Two years later, I was right.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-20T16:41:03+00:00

This is the most complicated way to say, "I am a virgin," that I've ever read.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-18T16:41:57+00:00

This is what people used to call "decadence." I do think we've become so detached from the struggle for survival that was basic to the human condition for thousands of years that people like this need to invent new things just to make life interesting for them.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-18T16:39:24+00:00

Nothing says "he/him" like a halter top, breasts, and obviously female facial features.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-16T22:13:41+00:00

I'm also reminded of an FTM trans man I knew in graduate school during the transition. She admitted to me that transition didn't fix her problems, and she eventually committed suicide.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-16T18:46:52+00:00

A person in search of a problem.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-16T03:20:37+00:00

Which one is he from GBCJ? Is he the same one that used to be thesilentchief?

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T03:45:44+00:00

Your analysis of the cultural/political fight leaves out one factor: the professional activist class.

Once marriage equality was achieved, the gay rights organizations we'd founded now needed something else to do to justify their continued existence. You had lots of people who were now professionally "LGBT." They needed a new cause to keep themselves employed, and gender identity became their new cause.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T03:42:42+00:00

Just because homosexuality is no longer classified as a mental illness doesn't mean that depression and schizophrenia are no longer mental illnesses. Also, studies have tended to show that transition really isn't a very good treatment for gender dysphoria since a large proportion of people who transition report continuing to be troubled by the same issues. This was why Johns Hopkins stopped doing gender transitions. They were tracking their patients and found out that it wasn't helping them.

Trans people have represented being transgender as Gay 2.0, but it's not the same thing.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T03:38:16+00:00

It's interesting to me that I've known two trans people who told me that they regretted transitioning because they thought it was going to fix their problems, but it didn't. One of these committed suicide.

I've known gay people who were unhappy, but among all the gay people I've known, I've never had one of them tell me, "I think I was really straight all along, and I regret identifying as gay."

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T00:59:42+00:00

One post here noted that the woke engage in borderline religious crusades. I'd go one step further.

I'm far from the first one to say this, but I think Wokeness has become a new religion insofar as it seems to appeal to people who have given up traditional religion and have a "religion-shaped hole" inside them.

Wokeness presents us with things like Gender Identity and a whole ideology/theology that surrounds it, and it includes a morality. If you believe in its principles, you're a good person. If you don't believe, you're a heretic and must be silenced and/or punished or made to recant.

I think we somewhat naively believed we could have a secular world where people didn't need religion, but religion has a way of popping back up in terms of communities of believers who truly believe that they are fighting a great battle against Evil.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, so I always knew people who tended to religiosity. They need religion. There was always a certain proportion of the population that was susceptible to that, and that hasn't changed. It's just that instead of posting every day to Facebook about how Jesus Loves You, they post their latest cause.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-14T14:43:46+00:00

Here are some questions I would ask: Were you ever subject to being arrested for your sex life?

Would you ever have been beaten up for walking down the street holding your husband's hand?

Would you ever have been thrown out of the house you shared with your partner because, after his death, his family swooped in and claimed it legally?

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-13T13:01:59+00:00

From bio:

"Fae/Her Latina | BPD/Autistic Transfem Girlflux Bi Lesbian dating @Mollybdenym | Post-Anarchist and Professional Hermetic Astrologer"

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-12T19:59:38+00:00

To put it another way, I think they perceive the bond that lesbians have with lesbians and gay men have with gay men, and they realize that they are never really going to be able to experience that. From that perception comes a deep resentment and a desire to make us as miserable as they are.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-12T00:46:24+00:00

You're all so EVIL, and I love you for it. Mwah!

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T19:25:35+00:00

How the hell do these people function in day to day life?

They don't.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T16:05:50+00:00

Wow. We're back to a Roman concept of sexual roles where the one desiring to be penetrated is now no longer a "real man."

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T15:37:05+00:00

I scanned the post history of the high-school student who posted that, and she has a long history of cutting and up and down mental health issues. It's a classic example of transition as a distraction from her real problems.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T03:24:28+00:00

Um, come on Chunkeeguy. RT is not a reputable news source. It's a Russian propaganda site.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T03:22:27+00:00

I saw a longer, later interview with Rivera, and he obviously had some flavor of personality disorder. I mean, Rivera was living on the street in some ramshackle shelter, no education, no skills, unemployable. How did such a complete fuck-up become a hero?

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T03:16:54+00:00

And this was why Gay Liberation in the early 70s wisely distanced itself from trans issues, but 20 years later, we had forgotten the lesson we learned.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-11T00:43:11+00:00

ALMOST ALL gays and lesbians feel dysphoria.

I never felt dysphoria, nor have I ever heard many gay men discuss it.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-06T02:54:44+00:00

At a certain point, I have to say: What exactly is it that I have in common with a teenaged girl who claims to have no interest in sex? Answer: Nothing.

If she wants to be queer, then let her be queer. I don't want to be that either.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-04T02:36:02+00:00

These are what are known as "chasers." I fooled around with a bi-curious guy in college, and he later told me that what he really wanted was "a chick with a dick." I guess there's also a market for "a man with a pussy."

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-04T02:31:53+00:00

America 2021: You can't peacefully assemble to make your voice heard in a public space without being attacked by Antifa. This is domestic terrorism.

Twenty years ago, I went toe to toe with Westboro Baptist Church types at a gay event, and I have to give them credit. They knew and obeyed the law. They were horrible people, but they didn't physically attack us, nor did we attack them. We all played by the rules of civil society.

But trans activists? Forget it. They'll try to beat the shit out of you. I think Andy Ngo (who I heard is gay) is right about Antifa and their ties with trans activism.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-03T17:28:11+00:00

The whole premise of the post is false, making it seem like not buying into gender ideology means that you're for religious-based discrimination in medical care, in addition to which, the issue of trans medical "care" is controversial in the sense that many doctors do not believe -- with good reason -- that transition, especially of young people, is in their long-term best interests.

It's also the case that this law is obviously aimed at reproductive health care and would mostly affect women, being anti-abortion and anti-birth control.

It's pretty obvious that members of Gaybroscirclejerk are brigading AGB.

And what influence do members of AGB have on laws being passed in Ohio by Republicans? Some in that thread are complaining that there's a red "takeover" of the U.S. going on. To them I'd say, "Whose fault is that? Who do you think is driving people away from left-wing policies?"

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-03T03:27:27+00:00

A TRA on AGB today called same-sex attraction a "transphobic dog whistle."

Funny how 20 years ago, in academic essays, we used "same-sex attraction" as the proper terminology to avoid projecting terms like 'gay' and 'homosexual' back in time before those words or usages were coined.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-02T02:44:41+00:00

The cult of St. Marsha is very strange. It's clear from the documentary about Johnson that he was a very difficult personality, sometimes threatening to the people around him. I think I heard he was banned from some local gay bars in the 70s/80s for being hostile towards other patrons.

That's part of what makes me wonder what the hell was going on in the 6-7 months that he and Sylvia Rivera were trying to help homeless gay youth via the much-mythologized S.T.A.R. I mean, imagine having nowhere else to go but an apartment rented by someone with untreated schizophrenia.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-02T02:08:27+00:00

I . . . I can go outside again???

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-01T15:53:02+00:00

Step 1 is realizing you shouldn't waste your time listening to a mentally-ill teenager with blue hair.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-01T01:11:38+00:00

I've realized that there's no point in arguing with the gender-believers, but I will do it sometimes in the hope that perhaps someone else will read it and be encouraged.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-30T14:04:28+00:00

So . . . Chiyo is basically a woman who's had a mastectomy and has no interest in even attempting to simulate maleness in any other way?

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-28T17:37:45+00:00

It's also the case that there's simply an asymmetry between having a man exposing himself in the women's room and the reverse since, statistically, men represent a much greater threat to women and are far likelier to be exposing themselves for the purpose of deriving a perverse sexual thrill from it.

Admittedly, I was raised in the South where chivalry is still a thing.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-28T17:31:54+00:00

It does affect all of us because of the perceived solidarity of LGB and T on issues like this by outsiders. As long as we are all perceived as "LGBTQ," the LGB are going to pay a price for the actions of the T and the policies that legalize this kind of invasion of women's spaces. That may very well result in an uptick in homophobia.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-25T12:46:13+00:00

What an idiot. No, it was always the egalitarian relationship between two men that was considered the most threatening. There has long been a space for effeminate men, one that's been written about numerous times. He could be the church organist, the hairdresser, the florist, the decorator, any one of many "ornamental" social roles where he didn't have much power and was kept contained. It was when we emerged from that that we encountered condemnation.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-23T19:50:31+00:00

In most circumstances, if you file a complaint with the city about something, the city will not tell the person you're complaining about who filed the complaint -- for obvious reasons -- but it seems that that's exactly what Seattle did.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-23T19:47:26+00:00

Just in the interest of doing the "whole truth" thing, this is ONE event scheduled as part of Seattle Pride. You could go to Seattle Pride and not attend this particular event.

I'm sure there's a trans event where they'll let you in free and diagnose you as trans while-u-wait. Free HRT shots.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-20T00:41:48+00:00

I see your point, but I still think it's mainly a bad-faith argument technique. They seize on one part of the picture, like what genitals one has, but that's never an isolated issue. It's that, plus all the other details that don't fit.

For example, a friend of a friend is a trans woman. In terms of appearance, she passes well, but every time I talk to her, I become aware that I'm talking to someone who used to be a man. It's the things she's interested in and the directions she chooses to take in the conversation. She talks like a guy.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-19T16:06:44+00:00

I posted this elsewhere, but I've noticed that one common TRA strategy is to break things down into weird little pieces and then come up with arguments based on those pieces in isolation with no reference to how those pieces are integral to some kind of whole. The thing is, attraction is holistic. We take in everything about that person.

If you're 6'6" with a square jaw, wide shoulders, a prominent Adam's apple, huge hands, and a deep voice, you're not going to come across to anyone as female. Anyone who can see will add those things up in a fraction of a second. Talking about genitals and genital preferences is a red herring. Attraction is not based on any one thing; it's the whole picture.

We should always call TRAs out on this when they pursue style of argument.

Edit: I have a high-functioning autistic friend, and he has a tendency to do this as well. He's a friend, but it can be maddening.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-19T14:07:29+00:00

They will just continue to move the goalposts. Nothing can ever be enough.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-19T12:29:02+00:00

The first case against this guy made all of us look petty and vindictive. The second case makes all of us look even more petty and vindictive.

All other points aside, do these people have no comprehension of PUBLIC RELATIONS? Do they wonder why people's attitudes towards everyone under the goddamn LGBTQ umbrella are turning more negative?

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-17T00:21:58+00:00

I stay as far away from Pride as possible.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T18:16:39+00:00

One of the Gaybros mods, DCLawdude, is a major TRA and a general asshole.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T18:12:50+00:00

Mod infiltration

Yep. This was how the TRAs gained control of the gay male group I used to belong to and imposed LGBTQIA++++ on all of us.

BTW, that group's website has really died. No one I used to know in real life posts there anymore.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T13:10:45+00:00

Being in my 50s now, this is very true. Ageism is one of the remaining acceptable prejudices, not to mention the fact that they attack you if you aren't on board with gender nonsense.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T13:06:37+00:00

And they include r/ainbow, which used to be a very active sub up until ~2014. Then the trans presence moved in, and participation plummeted. Hardly any posts get more than 1-2 comments. Many have none.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T13:04:47+00:00

The problem with most gay subreddits is that they have at least one TRA or TRA-sympathetic mod. Gaybros has one, as do AskGayMen and AskGaybrosOver30.

All you need is one TRA mod with the power to ban users or remove content, and it changes the whole tone. People fall into line to avoid conflict.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-16T00:25:47+00:00

Gender ideology has not helped us at all.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-14T00:42:17+00:00

Who's going to be our Joseph Welch to speak that immortal line, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-12T16:25:00+00:00

Well, we know the wokesters are terminally high on Rousseau and the idea that non-European cultures were all gender-diverse utopias before Europeans showed up. They think Europeans invented proscriptions against homosexual sex. I guess they forget that the authors of Leviticus weren't white or European.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-11T14:39:51+00:00

And they wonder why people don't want to date them.

All other issues aside, why choose someone who's going to force you to tiptoe around all their psychological issues?

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-11T14:36:28+00:00

I remember Jesse Helms saying, "The innocent will be spared." In other words, gay men are dying because they deserve it.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-10T20:47:27+00:00

More broadly, what we have in the U.S. right now is a corporate techology elite that's broadly out of touch with popular opinion because these companies all tend to be run by people from prestigious universities that teach gender ideology as fact.

At best, these companies are afraid of being targeted for being racist or transphobic in a way that affects their bottom line.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-07T02:19:27+00:00

I mean for me anyone showing me their genitals at that much of an early stage is a firm no.

Yeah, gay men NEVER send dick pics or general nudes to each other before meeting in person for the first time. Absolutely unheard-of. We'd NEVER rent a room in a bathhouse and lie there naked while others stroll by to inspect the goods and offer their own. We're all much too high-minded for that sort of behavior.

What do you want to bet we'd find that this queen's private messages aren't quite as noble as her tweets?

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-06T20:33:59+00:00

I think Marsha and Sylvia represent a better image for the queer theory (and critical theory in general) crowd, which fetishizes dysfunctional people. There is an attitude that unkempt, mentally unbalanced people are more "authentic" than people who are not. I'm not saying Rivera and Johnson were bad people, but based on how their lives played out, there were obvious mental health issues. Johnson was taken in for the remainder of his life by a friend who recognized Johnson's inability to live independently.

I was about the post the same thing, and I was trying to think about how to put it.

If you're involved in grassroots/amateur activism, at some point you have to confront the fact that it will attract a certain number of extremely dysfunctional people, and since it's volunteer, you have to figure out some way to cope with them. It's not an easy thing. In one group I was involved with, we had a gay guy who was in the initial stages of schizophrenia. We tried to help him, arranging places for him to stay and eventually getting him back to his family who got him hospitalized. Problem was, when he was released from the hospital, he just disappeared one day. That was almost 20 years ago. Even his family doesn't know if he's alive or dead. No efforts to find him have been successful.

But back to the main point, you can't really organize a successful movement for social progress if your own life is so profoundly disordered that you can't even take care of yourself. A friend of mine whose son had cancer gave me this advice once: You have to take care of yourself so you can take care of other people.

With Johnson, it's obvious that he was extremely mentally ill. In interviews I've seen with Rivera, it's more subtle, but she sets off my "personality disorder" detector. In a 1995 interview with Randy Wicker, they show that Rivera is living in a makeshift shelter on the street. She talked about wanting to get a job doing something, but you have to wonder if she was even minimally employable or if she would have been too much trouble to have around.

I think I remember reading in David Carter's book that Craig Rodwell was actually meeting with people in the NYC mayor's office to try to get the police to stop harassing gay bars before Stonewall. Can you imagine Sylvia Rivera or Marsha P. Johnson trying to meet with a public official in 1968 or 69 and being taken seriously? They would have thought, "Who are these nutjobs?"

The people who actually made progress on gay rights were people who had functional lives. They got law degrees or ran businesses. They understood how to sustain organizations and use them to achieve goals.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-04T19:57:21+00:00

I get a mostly blank page when I click on this link. No text.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-04T19:50:47+00:00

You can’t win in these circumstances.

This is when you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, slip out quietly, and block them on all media as soon as you get clear.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-03T22:11:32+00:00

Even when they oppose the St. Marsha narrative, they always say, "We owe so much to Marsha P. Johnson," or "We owe a lot to trans women."

I'd like to ask: What exactly do I, as a gay man, owe to trans women? Name one thing. Is there a single thing that trans women have done historically that has materially made the conditions of my life better?

I can't think of anything.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-03T19:44:05+00:00

What gets me is the sheer cynicism of it all.

Marsha P. Johnson was a local colorful character who helped out to some degree with local homeless kids. Now that's a great thing in and of itself, but it's never been clear to me how much their organization was actually able to do. Has that ever been documented? How many kids did they help? How much help did they provide? Many people tell stories of how volatile and unstable she was, so how did that work in terms of providing for kids?

The bottom line for me is that Marsha P. Johnson was never a figure of any national importance until TQ+ opportunists were looking for someone to turn into a saint. They've taken advantage of the fact that Marsha was dead to rewrite her life and turn her into their creation.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-02T00:53:46+00:00

Fair points. I recall the gay couple on the TV show Northern Exposure, back in the 1990s, and the salient thing about them was now average they were and the fact that they shared so many interests with Maurice, the town's resident conservative crank. They did run an upscale B&B, so I guess there is some stereotyping there, but it was obvious that the writers were trying to play against previous stereotypes.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-01T13:49:33+00:00

Part of it is simple laziness. Writers know that they can get laughs with portrayals of gay men as fussy, shallow, obsessed with fashion and pop culture, etc...

The perennial problem with writing interesting gay characters is that unless you're navigating social disapproval in the script, being gay, in and of itself, does not move plots forward. A lot of gay men live pretty average lives, so the question is how do you bring attention to the character without resorting to flamboyant stereotypes?

My personal least favorite is the character of Leonard, the gay curate in the UK show Grantchester. He's perpetually simpering and looks as though he would screech or faint if he saw a mouse. Of course, that show is pretty bad overall.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-01T13:36:31+00:00

Most actors have little control or input on how their characters are portrayed on-screen, so this is not simply a matter of them 'knowing better' or not.

In this case, the original concept of the show came from Dan Levy, and he's an executive producer and screenwriter of many of the episodes, so he has an unusual degree of control over the character since he's the main force behind the whole show.

JulienMayfair · 2021-06-01T13:28:35+00:00

A male friend of mine is in some kind of long-distance relationship with a trans woman, and I've met her a couple of times. She passes pretty well, but it's in conversation that the illusion drops. It's hard to nail down exactly what it is, but the things she focuses on and the patterns of her responses are still unmistakably that of a man.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-28T12:09:28+00:00

Yeah, it's sad that this person doesn't realize that this is not a healthy basis for a relationship. What's tragic is that gender identity theory has sold them this bill of goods instead of telling them honestly that they have a psychological problem that needs to be dealt with, and they're doing all they can to make it illegal for psychologists to give them the help they need. Desperately needing someone else to shore up your unstable self-image is basically the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It's like RuPaul says, "If you can't love yourself, how they hell can you love somebody else?"

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-27T17:09:05+00:00

I think they were trying to add something to the photo that emphasized masculinity, like they did to those actors in the movie 300. It was probably the easiest thing to tweak. But you aren't going to get abs like that without toning everything around them to a certain extent, and it would be especially hard if you've recently had a double mastectomy. My cousin's wife had that from cancer, and it took her a while to recover and regain fully mobility.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-27T17:01:46+00:00

Remember, sweeties, this is 2021 when every image can be digitally edited. Those abs read to me as obviously Photoshopped, just like they do in the movies. Ya think Elliot doesn't know someone with the tech to do that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Qa2-TDupA

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-27T13:27:48+00:00

They are and have been doing this for some time.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-26T22:22:42+00:00

Just some initial thoughts, not terribly well-organized since it's been a long, frustrating day.

There was never one "LGB Community," even taking the long view of historical developments. The early neo-Classical groups and Whitman-inspired groups were mainly for men. Gay communities and lesbian communities had different, but parallel, histories, and ethnographers were studying this before Queer Theory arrived and shoved that research to the side. Gay and lesbian groups began collaborating in the 1950s and 60s and came together in activism in the 1970s and 1980s.

We were united like many groups are united by our shared opposition to anti-gay laws and social practices.

In some places, in the 1980s and 1990s, lesbian and gay men did actually socialize. In the American South, where I grew up, lesbians and gay men went to the same clubs (because there were not that many options?). In other places, these groups remained relatively more segregated.

But now, in the U.S., we've won most of our battles against sodomy laws, military service, and bans on marriage. To what extent were our communities shaped by those external pressures? What do we do now? In the age of smart phone apps, gay bookstores and gay bars have closed. If I think about it, do I want to be part of a gay community, or do I want to be part of a world of people who share other interests I have regardless of whether we're gay or straight? Is being gay really that interesting in and of itself? I've often asked myself that question. It's a problem faced by people who write "gay novels" or "gay movies." How do you make it interesting? My sense is that being a lesbian or a gay man really isn't that interesting in and of itself.

And, yes, class has always played a part. I'm from the upper middle class, and I was always invited to parties at homes of other gay men of my background, though we are segregated much more notably by class than by race.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-26T00:41:39+00:00

There is such a poll out there, and there was a reasonably high percentage of trans people who say they'd date other trans people.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-25T15:09:52+00:00

Well, in a poll, only 13% of gay man say they'd date a trans man, so that puts 87% of gay men in the "transphobic" category.

These people live in echo chambers.

Edit: In a pro-trans article from 2018, it was reported:

"But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences."

https://www.them.us/story/cis-trans-dating

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-25T14:36:22+00:00

I think back 30 years to when homophobia was the norm, when no one was out on my entire college campus, when it was common for people to be disowned by their families for coming out as gay, when HIV was a death sentence, and when sodomy was still a crime, affirmed by SCOTUS in 1986.

And then I read about people feeling bad because they are not validated by external representations, and I think, "Oh, cry me a fucking river." But people have been trained to fit their experiences into this oppression paradigm, whether they merit that paradigm or not.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-25T14:03:22+00:00

This group seems similar in outlook and sensibility to the group I've been talking about. They will likely run into the same problems I've described where when you try to include people whose concept of identity is fundamentally contradictory to your own, conflict will inevitably ensue, and it's not a conflict that can really be managed because it is so fundamental. It will become a pitched battle with bad feelings on all sides, and some trans person involved in it will triangulate the conflict via social media bringing all sorts of external attacks and negative publicity on a community that was previously minding its own business -- because that's how they operate.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-25T13:53:39+00:00

There's also a post on Gaybros with a another guy lamenting the "transphobia" of AGB when all he has done is go through the comments and throw insults and charges of transphobia at people. He seems unaware that all the places he considers "safe" are heavily moderated such that he experiences an artificial consensus that doesn't accurately represent the views of LGB people as a whole.

People like him have been trained to think a certain way about gender identity theory, and they've also been trained NEVER to think beyond that dogma or to see the cracks in it.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-25T01:47:52+00:00

There's a difference between having a mental health issue, acknowledging it, and managing it and having a mental health issue and expecting everyone to participate in your acting it out.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-24T21:59:06+00:00

I was about to post the EXACT same thing.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-24T21:56:44+00:00

In this group, the movement to make the group inclusive came from younger members who have been trained that inclusion is good and exclusion is bad, and there was some fairly overt ageism involved in some of the fights over changing the nature of the group with older members being called behind the time or obsolete. And we know how age works in the gay community.

In addition, transgender people and allies slowly maneuvered themselves into moderator positions, and when they had gained a critical mass, they issued an edict that anyone advocating exclusively gay male policies would be instantly banned.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-24T16:02:34+00:00

Chaos

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-19T14:45:51+00:00

Just as an example of how Google manipulates search results, I decided to google Kai Decadence (not being familiar). Google auto-completed the name as "Kai Decadence TERF."

Then I used duckduckgo, and it didn't try to paint him as a TERF.

JulienMayfair · 2021-05-19T13:38:40+00:00

Words just mean what they want them to mean at this point.

JulienMayfair