“If spite were a woman, I’d marry it.”
“And I’d jeopardize our friendship by nailin’ your hot wife.”
“You wouldn’t have to: THREESOME”
“AW YEAH, IT’S BUSINESS TIME”
[speaking of, shit, I’m late for my wedding with XCOM 2]
I thought 30 years had passed, dis they put the guy in stasis or something?
Cholma
Opening mission says 20 years.
Cholma
Whoa! Soldiers can be captured! When a mission says “x turns until mandatory evacuation”, you better make DAMN SURE all troops get to the evac zone before then!
TheNinthShader
Been playin for a while there, haven’t you Cholma.
Deathstalker
The amusement in thinking you had already joked about what I was going to joke about, and how you guys are decades late to XCOM 2, and realized you seemed to be referencing something in the remake game.
My estimator started by showing 5 hours of unpacking. I watched it drop as low as 55 minutes. It read 7 hours when I started writing this comment and now reads 5 hours, no 4 hours.
Watching the estimator isn’t madness. No, It’s just dynamic sanity.
Rutee
Steam has finished installing XCOM 2
Later taters.
Given that Ruth is plotting to avenge someone’s mildly hurt feelings quite literally over a bottle of hard liquor she’s sharing with a minor under her supervision who she’s also sexually harassing… I’m not sure her priorities are sufficiently in order for Mary not to realistically win this one. Especially since she lacks any kind of minimal good judgement that would keep her out of ‘call the police’ territory (in a more realistic setting she’d have been in jail for a while now).
Though maybe they’ll _both_ lose, and thus everyone will win.
Mary misgendered Carla as a way to dehumanize her. That’s worse than “mildly hurt feelings”.
I don’t get it. Why is this still even a thing. Why do we keep trying to downplay the inherent vileness of misgendering?
EvilWriter
Because it’s hard for cis people to imagine it being worse. If someone misgenders me, as a cis man, it doesn’t even hurt my feelings. I reply with a witty zinger, and win the argument because misgendering a cis person is seen as childish by most other people.
Because I’ve never been trans, and especially because I’m not only cis but I’m a cis white male, it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around just how it feels to deal with countless micro- and macro-aggressions every day, including misgendering. It’s hard for cis people like me to wrap our heads around our gender not being accepted by other people, and what that would feel like.
Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending that attitude. Ignorance is no excuse, and we cis people should be seeking out trans voices to better understand things from their perspective. I am merely explaining why it’s so hard for cis people to figure this out. Part of our cis privilege is misgendering not being a big deal.
It’s very easy for individuals who have a privileged understanding of the concept to assume it’s like a person teasing another person.
They don’t have experience about how it fits into an entire societal framework of violence and terroristic threat. How it plays into regular death threats, discrimination, genuine fear when you walk outside, and depression. How in that last one it can sear into one’s minds all one’s fears that you’ll never just be allowed to be, that other’s will always view you as a desperate fraud, all the pain of dysphoria you’ve ever swallowed. They don’t know how it feeds the staggering rate of suicide among trans individuals (31%, with over 50% of the survivors attempting at least once in their lives) or lowers our expected lifespans down into the low 30s.
They don’t know how it sits like an infected wound in your gut and ruins your whole day or week.
And sadly, often, they don’t want to know. Because that’s depressing. Because that means having to think about the suffering of a population that they have to this point had no social obligation to think about in any way. And so it can be very tempting to assume the trans community is making mountains out of molehills. Because that way nothing needs to change. That they don’t have to change.
It’s very similar in some ways to the way dudebros often dismiss harassment of POC or women online, comparing it to the time they got trash-talked once or got sent an angry flame as if that was the same thing as continuously being worn down by constant death or rape threats.
thejeff
Though honestly, even among cis people, while it’s not that extreme, in some contexts, deliberately misgendering someone is insulting. The more tied to gender roles the society is, the more so. Even back in my youth, calling someone a girl was pretty much fighting words. The only way to prove you weren’t was to hit back.
Stupid of course, but I doubt it’s really changed all that much for school ages. Or for macho sub groups elsewhere.
Oh yeah, misgendering men and telling them that they might as well be women and thus be treated like women has been the main means of self-enforcement for toxic masculinity for a very long time.
And calling a woman boyish or calling her a lesbian (in a negative way) has long been a way of enforcing “proper” gender roles among women as a lot of women and those raised as if they were women can attest when they actually had trouble reading that Mary was intending transphobia at first owing to that type of role enforcement.
It doesn’t carry the same screaming impact, but it’s definitely used as that tool. I think though, a lot of people who are not used to unpacking that on a conscious level or are not aware of its specific awfulness with regards to trans people though assume that that is nonetheless “normal” and “just part of growing up” and “you just shrug it off (albeit by buying more in to the system or paying your “annual dues”)”.
As been noted Cerberus, I’m happy you are a teacher – you are really good at it!
Tenn
Gender dysphoria is also something that’s hard for a lot of us to wrap our heads around. We’re identified at birth by our genitals, and if they happen to match our actual gender, we’re not even aware that they’re separate things.
zoelogical
as a cis person i’ve been hurt by misgendering, but mostly because it was coupled with glorious misogyny. because being called a guy is a compliment, or whatever.
Reltzik
Say whatever you will about “innocent” (meaning ignorant) misgendering. There might be some room for sympathy towards the clueless bumpkin who just doesn’t get it and so keeps putting a foot in the mouth. (Says the cis guy who tends to put his foot in his mouth because his conscious brain doesn’t catch up with the part of his brain where pronouns are stored.)
Mary went above and beyond that. (Or below and inwar– metaphor fail.) She didn’t do it because she doesn’t understand. This wasn’t ignorance, this wasn’t not getting it, this wasn’t the privelege of being able to go through life without knowing what it’s like to be a minority or to have to question your preconceptions, this wasn’t attempting to make the real world match your world view because you just assume it’s that way without thinking about it. She did it because she DID understand… at least enough to realize that this was a way to HURT Carla.
To be fair, it was a bongo-fest and both sides were carrying on asshole. But Carla was just being noisy and Mary went full evil. Huge difference in degrees.
Dude. Quit referring to a consensual relationship between adults as sexual harassment.
thejeff
Billie’s also not a minor, in any way that Ruth isn’t. 18 and 20, if I recall.
Legal for sex with each other. Neither is legal for booze
DarkVeghetta
On the other side of the Atlantic they could be happily drinking in legality. Or, miserably legally drinking (given their tendencies).
Heck, over here (varying from country to country), Billie would have been legally able to consent for years and years now. Actually, I do believe age of consent varies based on state laws in the US.
Even if you don’t get how awful misgendering is (and I suggest you read the comments, especially Cerberus’, during Carla’s part on screen, as well as some of today’s), Carla feoze in her tracks and didn’t even react until Ruth was leaving. That isn’t ‘mildly hurt,’ that’s shock, most likely accompanied with fear (for her safety on campus, for not being able to report because staff have biases, for not being able to feel at home in her hall, etc), and maybe some heartbreak for things suddenly taking such a shitty turn after a so far moderately painless semester.
You can say I infer too much, but the freezing up is on screen, completely and fairly continuously visible. That isn’t a reaction to mildly hurt feelings.
Why stop here? I feel we can minimize a lot more than just saying that blatant misgendering and transphobia are “hurt feelings”.
Like, sure, death threats sound bad, but what if we call them “strong critiques” instead. Or how about physical attacks? Not so harrowing if we call them “a light tussle”. Lynchings? Now they’re just “vigorous neck massages”.
The sky really is the limit!
(and yes, I know I’m laying the sarcasm on thick, but it’s sometimes a little disheartening the amount of people who unintentionally reinforce this notion that actions that carry so much destructive intent and damage must be “hurt feelings” or “overblown” simply because the person making this type of argument doesn’t actually understand what they’re talking about)
TheNinthShader
That was amazing sarcasm and you ruined it with the text inside the ()
misgendering a transperson is an act of transphobia.
Transphobia is Violence.
you don’t have to understand that to accept it when every single transgender person says the same thing. just like how i’m not a physicist, but i still believe entropy is a thing.
Eukie
Like, stop. “Violence” has an actual common meaning in people’s head. It does involve things like punching people, and it doesn’t involve words, no matter how hateful those words are. Saying that (premise) all transphobia is violence, so misgendering a trans person is an act of violence is a really poor argument.
And when poor arguments are used to fight transphobia, it just makes anti-transphobia activism look stupid/misguided/whatever by association.
Emperor Norton
But this seems to be changing, gradually going the same way “abuse” now gradually covers both the physical and verbal aspects of it.
And personally, I’ll be glad if it does. To me, words are actions. And actions has consequences. You can destroy a person’s life with the “right” words. You can get them frozen out of society, make them completely unemployable, stop their progress, harness their feelings… All of this without a single punch being laid.
And when you use words to do just this, when you use words to yank another person’s life from under them, to take away their job, their personal relationships, their self-worth, their sense of safety… How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?
As Marie just a couple of scrolls up in the comments remarked, Carla’s reaction was that of being gut-punched out of nowhere. Actually, it was even worse, because if she’d been punched, she could’ve fought back (and this being Carla, she might very well have). But Mary’s act of (verbal) violence was finding that weak spot that was impossible to fight back against. I know there are comments in the archives explaining exactly why this is, I could find them for you if you wish.
And I haven’t even begun talking about how repeating the same words to the right group of people is what leads to the actual punches or worse.
Eukie
“How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?”
As an act of verbal abuse? As an act of harassment? As a an attack (of the verbal type)? There’s some rather adequate words that describe this with the appropriate gravitas. There’s no need to start equivocating actual violence with things that don’t involve physical harm. That just undermines the actual severity of the physical harm, and makes communication hard. Common people have a common understanding of what violence is, and it doesn’t involve the use of words alone.
I don’t believe that transphobia is best fought by using a weird jargon that seems deceptive. I think it’s much better to be clear and sincere, so that the people we want to sway don’t start doubting claims we make.
Yes, words are sometimes correlated with the punches, but they’re still not actually the punches. When a culture that’s been mostly bigoted through words starts being bigoted with punches, that’s a very bad sign, but it’ll be harder to convince anyone that the switch matters if the words have already been described as as severe as the punches, by terming them both violence.
Liliet
Dude.
First of all, re: “common people have a common understanding”. This means nothing. Common people also have a common understanding of gender as a binary determined by genitals and leading to different IQ levels, so what? That doesn’t make it true.
Second, no. “Undermines the actual severity of the physical harm” my ass. If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family? Which is more ‘severe’? I say it’s not the goddamn punch. Yes, physical violence can be horrible and lead to people’s deaths; verbal violence can also be horrible and lead to people’s death, either via driving to suicide or via incitement of other people to commit physical violence.
As a wise person said, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cause lifelong psychological wounds that never heal”.
And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).
Plus there tends to be a thing among abusers and bullies where they seem to think that so long as they don’t escalate to physically assaulting you, they can say and do anything they want, because it’s “just words”.
Not to mention that physical violence can sometimes be preferable. A physical ache in your bones and bruises and scars feel visceral. They communicate things and are a lot harder to internalize as your own fault. They are also more likely to be picked up on by others as a negative action or a wrong. A black eye gets you concerned questions about your safety. A depression complex so severe you are constantly suicidally ideating gets you an admonishment to “smile more” and people naively saying you just need to ignore that sort of thing if they even notice or respond at all.
Eukie
Lady, thank you very much. Or “gal”, or “girl”, or any other term that isn’t a way to refer to a male person.
“And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).”
I’ve not claimed that. My claim is that some bigoted cultures, as a general rule, don’t use physical violence in their bigotry. They’re not kept from using violence by the belief that it’s less severe, but by other factors. My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.
I believe that this is useful, because I see the societies that don’t allow physical violence from bigotry to happen as preferable to the ones that do; people not being beaten up for who they are is a sign of progress, and when the physical harm comes out in force it’s a sign of things getting worse. Among other things because the “choice” tends to be “physical violence and verbal harassment” versus “only verbal harassment”.
“If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family?”.
With physical violence there’s also a chance of developing depression, PTSD, and the alike. The PTSD rate for being physically assaulted is actually pretty high (over 30% IIRC), and it’s the kind of thing that people can and have lost their jobs over, and have their social lives or whatever deteriorate from. Not to speak of the risk of being killed from the physical harm itself, and the risk of receiving a lasting injury.
Yeah, psychological harm from verbal abuse is pretty bad! But physical violence is also pretty bad by itself, since it causes physical and psychological harm. I don’t want to undermine the harm of verbal abuse; I wish to point out that physical abuse is that kind of thing that, in the context of transphobia and similar, is an even worse sign; it means a society that is OK with violence against trans people.
And I think that distinction is important to make.
Liliet
Oh, sorry, I wasn’t meaning to imply anything about your gender. That “Dude” was more like “Wow” or “Holy shit”.
“My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.”
Okay, okay, let’s stop and look closer here.
Do you classify anxiety, invasive thoughts and fear of violence as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
(I mean, technically, brain is a physically existing thing. You could)
Do you classify suicidal ideation and suicide attempts as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
Do you classify being shunned and disowned by your family as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
Do you classify losing your job and/or housing, and not being able to find new ones, as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
(I mean, starving / dying of exposure is pretty physical)
Do you classify being denied medical help with life-threatening conditions as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
I could continue, but I hope you see my point.
If we are clarifying terms, let’s clarify them to their core, okay?
520 thoughts on “Win”
Ana Chronistic
“If spite were a woman, I’d marry it.”
“And I’d jeopardize our friendship by nailin’ your hot wife.”
“You wouldn’t have to: THREESOME”
“AW YEAH, IT’S BUSINESS TIME”
[speaking of, shit, I’m late for my wedding with XCOM 2]
[[stupid pre-load lag]]
Doctor_Who
Love that Venture Bros quote. That show has some amazing writing.
Mr. Random
One episode in, and the new season’s looking good already.
Cassidy
There’s… there’s a new season of Venture Bros?
Dante
Somehow, yes. I don’t hate the show, but I’m still surprised it’s still going.
Tabitha Desanto
Well they will definitely have pleasure in taking care of this business.
Van Jealous
Spite! It’s The UNCola!…..wait a minute….something’s wrong here.
Van Jealous
That’s right it’s 7-UP!
John Merklinghaus
Damn straight.
Cholma
XCOM2! Aww yeah! Pre-loaded last night!
WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER.
Ana Chronistic
FINALLY FINISHED PRE-LOADING
UGH
K^2
And we’ve never heard from her again… Which reminds me, mine finished too.
iforgetwhatiputhere
I thought 30 years had passed, dis they put the guy in stasis or something?
Cholma
Opening mission says 20 years.
Cholma
Whoa! Soldiers can be captured! When a mission says “x turns until mandatory evacuation”, you better make DAMN SURE all troops get to the evac zone before then!
TheNinthShader
Been playin for a while there, haven’t you Cholma.
Deathstalker
The amusement in thinking you had already joked about what I was going to joke about, and how you guys are decades late to XCOM 2, and realized you seemed to be referencing something in the remake game.
Goddamned kids!
Rutee
I AM WAITING FOR IT TO FINISH INSTALLING AFTER PRELOADING IT EARLIER. I WILL SEE YOU AT AN UNDETERMINED BUT LATER TIME.
I AM EXCITED.
John
My estimator started by showing 5 hours of unpacking. I watched it drop as low as 55 minutes. It read 7 hours when I started writing this comment and now reads 5 hours, no 4 hours.
Watching the estimator isn’t madness. No, It’s just dynamic sanity.
Rutee
Steam has finished installing XCOM 2
Later taters.
Shiro
Come on now, Billie and Ruth would be in a happy and fulfilling triad with Spite.
Rukduk
Wish I was installing it, but my laptop doesn’t have a good enough graphics card. Curse you HP Dell Inspiron from 2012!!!! Curse you!!!!
dethtoll
It’s so gooood.
Architex
Spiiiiiiiiiiiite~
Badeyes
I thought it said Sprite
Stephen R. Bierce
Obey Your Thirst
That Damn Rat
It is a thirst for necks.
Silvester Crow
And femurs.
neeks
a thirst for…? ;_;
oh, NECKS, ok, that’s fine.
JonasofAtlantis
… for vengeance?
Mo
THIS IS SIERRA MIST
MrZombieScordo
no linking to that party. is too mean :'(
Lou
Sierra has better aim than that.
SundaesChild
Obligatory.
https://youtu.be/UwbqPPSUp90
Architex
RIP Gravity Falls
TheNinthShader
THIS IS SPARTA
TheAtomicBrainFart
http://i.imgur.com/dfF47gd.png I think it does.
DarkVeghetta
New Sprite – Spite flavor. Quench your thirst… for vengeance!
Church
Spitesprite what
Tabitha Desanto
YES Mary is going down
Doctor_Who
Someday this campus will have a crater named Mary, and a statue of Billie and Ruth looming over it. The plaque will read “Beware”.
heyman
After BIllie goes down.
Tacos
iseewhatyoudidthere.jpg
TheNinthShader
After Billie goes down on Ruth?
Makkabee
No Billie doesn’t get to go down again until after Mary does. One kind of fun at a time.
JonasofAtlantis
Given that Ruth is plotting to avenge someone’s mildly hurt feelings quite literally over a bottle of hard liquor she’s sharing with a minor under her supervision who she’s also sexually harassing… I’m not sure her priorities are sufficiently in order for Mary not to realistically win this one. Especially since she lacks any kind of minimal good judgement that would keep her out of ‘call the police’ territory (in a more realistic setting she’d have been in jail for a while now).
Though maybe they’ll _both_ lose, and thus everyone will win.
Spencer
Mary misgendered Carla as a way to dehumanize her. That’s worse than “mildly hurt feelings”.
I don’t get it. Why is this still even a thing. Why do we keep trying to downplay the inherent vileness of misgendering?
EvilWriter
Because it’s hard for cis people to imagine it being worse. If someone misgenders me, as a cis man, it doesn’t even hurt my feelings. I reply with a witty zinger, and win the argument because misgendering a cis person is seen as childish by most other people.
Because I’ve never been trans, and especially because I’m not only cis but I’m a cis white male, it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around just how it feels to deal with countless micro- and macro-aggressions every day, including misgendering. It’s hard for cis people like me to wrap our heads around our gender not being accepted by other people, and what that would feel like.
Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending that attitude. Ignorance is no excuse, and we cis people should be seeking out trans voices to better understand things from their perspective. I am merely explaining why it’s so hard for cis people to figure this out. Part of our cis privilege is misgendering not being a big deal.
Cerberus
This.
It’s very easy for individuals who have a privileged understanding of the concept to assume it’s like a person teasing another person.
They don’t have experience about how it fits into an entire societal framework of violence and terroristic threat. How it plays into regular death threats, discrimination, genuine fear when you walk outside, and depression. How in that last one it can sear into one’s minds all one’s fears that you’ll never just be allowed to be, that other’s will always view you as a desperate fraud, all the pain of dysphoria you’ve ever swallowed. They don’t know how it feeds the staggering rate of suicide among trans individuals (31%, with over 50% of the survivors attempting at least once in their lives) or lowers our expected lifespans down into the low 30s.
They don’t know how it sits like an infected wound in your gut and ruins your whole day or week.
And sadly, often, they don’t want to know. Because that’s depressing. Because that means having to think about the suffering of a population that they have to this point had no social obligation to think about in any way. And so it can be very tempting to assume the trans community is making mountains out of molehills. Because that way nothing needs to change. That they don’t have to change.
It’s very similar in some ways to the way dudebros often dismiss harassment of POC or women online, comparing it to the time they got trash-talked once or got sent an angry flame as if that was the same thing as continuously being worn down by constant death or rape threats.
thejeff
Though honestly, even among cis people, while it’s not that extreme, in some contexts, deliberately misgendering someone is insulting. The more tied to gender roles the society is, the more so. Even back in my youth, calling someone a girl was pretty much fighting words. The only way to prove you weren’t was to hit back.
Stupid of course, but I doubt it’s really changed all that much for school ages. Or for macho sub groups elsewhere.
Cerberus
Oh yeah, misgendering men and telling them that they might as well be women and thus be treated like women has been the main means of self-enforcement for toxic masculinity for a very long time.
And calling a woman boyish or calling her a lesbian (in a negative way) has long been a way of enforcing “proper” gender roles among women as a lot of women and those raised as if they were women can attest when they actually had trouble reading that Mary was intending transphobia at first owing to that type of role enforcement.
It doesn’t carry the same screaming impact, but it’s definitely used as that tool. I think though, a lot of people who are not used to unpacking that on a conscious level or are not aware of its specific awfulness with regards to trans people though assume that that is nonetheless “normal” and “just part of growing up” and “you just shrug it off (albeit by buying more in to the system or paying your “annual dues”)”.
Bagge
As been noted Cerberus, I’m happy you are a teacher – you are really good at it!
Tenn
Gender dysphoria is also something that’s hard for a lot of us to wrap our heads around. We’re identified at birth by our genitals, and if they happen to match our actual gender, we’re not even aware that they’re separate things.
zoelogical
as a cis person i’ve been hurt by misgendering, but mostly because it was coupled with glorious misogyny. because being called a guy is a compliment, or whatever.
Reltzik
Say whatever you will about “innocent” (meaning ignorant) misgendering. There might be some room for sympathy towards the clueless bumpkin who just doesn’t get it and so keeps putting a foot in the mouth. (Says the cis guy who tends to put his foot in his mouth because his conscious brain doesn’t catch up with the part of his brain where pronouns are stored.)
Mary went above and beyond that. (Or below and inwar– metaphor fail.) She didn’t do it because she doesn’t understand. This wasn’t ignorance, this wasn’t not getting it, this wasn’t the privelege of being able to go through life without knowing what it’s like to be a minority or to have to question your preconceptions, this wasn’t attempting to make the real world match your world view because you just assume it’s that way without thinking about it. She did it because she DID understand… at least enough to realize that this was a way to HURT Carla.
To be fair, it was a bongo-fest and both sides were carrying on asshole. But Carla was just being noisy and Mary went full evil. Huge difference in degrees.
Shiro
Dude. Quit referring to a consensual relationship between adults as sexual harassment.
thejeff
Billie’s also not a minor, in any way that Ruth isn’t. 18 and 20, if I recall.
Legal for sex with each other. Neither is legal for booze
DarkVeghetta
On the other side of the Atlantic they could be happily drinking in legality. Or, miserably legally drinking (given their tendencies).
Heck, over here (varying from country to country), Billie would have been legally able to consent for years and years now. Actually, I do believe age of consent varies based on state laws in the US.
Marie
‘Mildly hurt’???
Even if you don’t get how awful misgendering is (and I suggest you read the comments, especially Cerberus’, during Carla’s part on screen, as well as some of today’s), Carla feoze in her tracks and didn’t even react until Ruth was leaving. That isn’t ‘mildly hurt,’ that’s shock, most likely accompanied with fear (for her safety on campus, for not being able to report because staff have biases, for not being able to feel at home in her hall, etc), and maybe some heartbreak for things suddenly taking such a shitty turn after a so far moderately painless semester.
You can say I infer too much, but the freezing up is on screen, completely and fairly continuously visible. That isn’t a reaction to mildly hurt feelings.
Emily
Oh cool we’re gonna call blatant bigotry mildly hurt feelings. Lovely.
Cerberus
Why stop here? I feel we can minimize a lot more than just saying that blatant misgendering and transphobia are “hurt feelings”.
Like, sure, death threats sound bad, but what if we call them “strong critiques” instead. Or how about physical attacks? Not so harrowing if we call them “a light tussle”. Lynchings? Now they’re just “vigorous neck massages”.
The sky really is the limit!
(and yes, I know I’m laying the sarcasm on thick, but it’s sometimes a little disheartening the amount of people who unintentionally reinforce this notion that actions that carry so much destructive intent and damage must be “hurt feelings” or “overblown” simply because the person making this type of argument doesn’t actually understand what they’re talking about)
TheNinthShader
That was amazing sarcasm and you ruined it with the text inside the ()
Cerberus
I’m history’s greatest monster 😉
de Combys
I’m more afraid or gorgons, sorry!
Emily
This would be funny if people didn’t already do most of that so instead it’s just heartbreaking.
altalemur
misgendering a transperson is an act of transphobia.
Transphobia is Violence.
you don’t have to understand that to accept it when every single transgender person says the same thing. just like how i’m not a physicist, but i still believe entropy is a thing.
Eukie
Like, stop. “Violence” has an actual common meaning in people’s head. It does involve things like punching people, and it doesn’t involve words, no matter how hateful those words are. Saying that (premise) all transphobia is violence, so misgendering a trans person is an act of violence is a really poor argument.
And when poor arguments are used to fight transphobia, it just makes anti-transphobia activism look stupid/misguided/whatever by association.
Emperor Norton
But this seems to be changing, gradually going the same way “abuse” now gradually covers both the physical and verbal aspects of it.
And personally, I’ll be glad if it does. To me, words are actions. And actions has consequences. You can destroy a person’s life with the “right” words. You can get them frozen out of society, make them completely unemployable, stop their progress, harness their feelings… All of this without a single punch being laid.
And when you use words to do just this, when you use words to yank another person’s life from under them, to take away their job, their personal relationships, their self-worth, their sense of safety… How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?
As Marie just a couple of scrolls up in the comments remarked, Carla’s reaction was that of being gut-punched out of nowhere. Actually, it was even worse, because if she’d been punched, she could’ve fought back (and this being Carla, she might very well have). But Mary’s act of (verbal) violence was finding that weak spot that was impossible to fight back against. I know there are comments in the archives explaining exactly why this is, I could find them for you if you wish.
And I haven’t even begun talking about how repeating the same words to the right group of people is what leads to the actual punches or worse.
Eukie
“How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?”
As an act of verbal abuse? As an act of harassment? As a an attack (of the verbal type)? There’s some rather adequate words that describe this with the appropriate gravitas. There’s no need to start equivocating actual violence with things that don’t involve physical harm. That just undermines the actual severity of the physical harm, and makes communication hard. Common people have a common understanding of what violence is, and it doesn’t involve the use of words alone.
I don’t believe that transphobia is best fought by using a weird jargon that seems deceptive. I think it’s much better to be clear and sincere, so that the people we want to sway don’t start doubting claims we make.
Yes, words are sometimes correlated with the punches, but they’re still not actually the punches. When a culture that’s been mostly bigoted through words starts being bigoted with punches, that’s a very bad sign, but it’ll be harder to convince anyone that the switch matters if the words have already been described as as severe as the punches, by terming them both violence.
Liliet
Dude.
First of all, re: “common people have a common understanding”. This means nothing. Common people also have a common understanding of gender as a binary determined by genitals and leading to different IQ levels, so what? That doesn’t make it true.
Second, no. “Undermines the actual severity of the physical harm” my ass. If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family? Which is more ‘severe’? I say it’s not the goddamn punch. Yes, physical violence can be horrible and lead to people’s deaths; verbal violence can also be horrible and lead to people’s death, either via driving to suicide or via incitement of other people to commit physical violence.
As a wise person said, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cause lifelong psychological wounds that never heal”.
And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).
Cerberus
Heh. This.
Plus there tends to be a thing among abusers and bullies where they seem to think that so long as they don’t escalate to physically assaulting you, they can say and do anything they want, because it’s “just words”.
Not to mention that physical violence can sometimes be preferable. A physical ache in your bones and bruises and scars feel visceral. They communicate things and are a lot harder to internalize as your own fault. They are also more likely to be picked up on by others as a negative action or a wrong. A black eye gets you concerned questions about your safety. A depression complex so severe you are constantly suicidally ideating gets you an admonishment to “smile more” and people naively saying you just need to ignore that sort of thing if they even notice or respond at all.
Eukie
Lady, thank you very much. Or “gal”, or “girl”, or any other term that isn’t a way to refer to a male person.
“And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).”
I’ve not claimed that. My claim is that some bigoted cultures, as a general rule, don’t use physical violence in their bigotry. They’re not kept from using violence by the belief that it’s less severe, but by other factors. My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.
I believe that this is useful, because I see the societies that don’t allow physical violence from bigotry to happen as preferable to the ones that do; people not being beaten up for who they are is a sign of progress, and when the physical harm comes out in force it’s a sign of things getting worse. Among other things because the “choice” tends to be “physical violence and verbal harassment” versus “only verbal harassment”.
“If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family?”.
With physical violence there’s also a chance of developing depression, PTSD, and the alike. The PTSD rate for being physically assaulted is actually pretty high (over 30% IIRC), and it’s the kind of thing that people can and have lost their jobs over, and have their social lives or whatever deteriorate from. Not to speak of the risk of being killed from the physical harm itself, and the risk of receiving a lasting injury.
Yeah, psychological harm from verbal abuse is pretty bad! But physical violence is also pretty bad by itself, since it causes physical and psychological harm. I don’t want to undermine the harm of verbal abuse; I wish to point out that physical abuse is that kind of thing that, in the context of transphobia and similar, is an even worse sign; it means a society that is OK with violence against trans people.
And I think that distinction is important to make.
Liliet
Oh, sorry, I wasn’t meaning to imply anything about your gender. That “Dude” was more like “Wow” or “Holy shit”.
“My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.”
Okay, okay, let’s stop and look closer here.
Do you classify anxiety, invasive thoughts and fear of violence as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
(I mean, technically, brain is a physically existing thing. You could)
Do you classify suicidal ideation and suicide attempts as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
Do you classify being shunned and disowned by your family as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
Do you classify losing your job and/or housing, and not being able to find new ones, as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
(I mean, starving / dying of exposure is pretty physical)
Do you classify being denied medical help with life-threatening conditions as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
I could continue, but I hope you see my point.
If we are clarifying terms, let’s clarify them to their core, okay?