Categotry Archives: Your RDA of Outrage

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Why I Blog, Part Wev

Categories: oh no not teh menz, why i blog, Your RDA of Outrage

Howdy, ducks! In today’s exciting installment of The Second Awakening, we learn that I learned how to set up Google news alerts! Fabulous–or is it? See below for the exciting answer.

Starting a blog is an odd thing to do: you have to believe that a) you have something to say, and b) other people will actually give a good god-damn about what you have to say. If you’re starting a feminist blog, you have to add c) that you understand feminism well enough to say something about it, and d) that what you’re saying hasn’t been pummeled to death like a very unlucky horse. But Ghu help you if you’re trans and starting a feminist blog: then you have to worry about e-z) who the hell do you think you are to talk about being a woman, let alone feminism.

So I’m quite happy to have several wonderful blogs out there that have helped me learn enough to launch this endeavor, and keep teaching me every day.

For example, Sady over at Tiger Beatdown has this provocative post about Andrea Dworkin and radical feminism that’s sparked an excellent discussion–to which, Maude save me, I’ve actually contributed. (I’ll note in passing–for it truly requires a longer post to discuss fully–that I tend to cringe at the words “radical feminism,” and probably unfairly; but given that some very, very vocal people who describe them that way have gone out of their way to let people like me know we’re not really women.)

Then there’s Liss, at Shakesville who offers up this post which might as well be another mission statement for what I want to do here:

Masculinity has defined itself exclusively in contradistinction to the feminine for so long that a serious challenge to the idea of inherent male superiority has left millions of American men floundering—and the best answer most of them have found for the question “What is my role if not a keeper of women?” is “I am a victim of oppression by women.” Femininity has become the center-pin around which masculinity pivots—on one side there is dominion; on the other side, subjugation.

What American men are lacking is a vision of equality.

Women had to change the rules, because we were told “You can’t,” because we had seemingly unnavigable barriers put in our way by people who didn’t want us to succeed, because, if we had played by The Rules (as dictated by The Patriarchy), we never would have gotten where are—because The Rules were designed so that we fail. For many of us, the odds have been against us our whole lives; everything we’ve ever done has been in defiance of the distinct likelihood—and expectation—that we would settle for less than we wanted.

The whole post is really good and a wonderful takedown of yet another Dooood’s carping “what about teh menz?’

Wait! Like I said, I finally set up some news readers–basic stuff, one for “feminism” and the other for “transgender.” (Understand that this is a work in progress.) And guess what popped up in the transgender feed? Have you guessed? Did you say–transphobia? Because Google sure did! (warning: links are triggery)

Now, do you see why people don’t want to see transsexuals and the transgendered covered in laws against discrimination?

Some discrimination needs to happen, if you’re business is going to survive. Discrimination at clubs goes on every single day, when pretty girls and celebrities go to the beginning of the line and right into the club, while others wait in line outside. Discrimination and the exclusion of freaks is the club way of life. And there’s nothing illegal about it. It’s business.

No-one wants a freak poisoning their establishment. No-one sinks their life savings into a business for the sake of social and contra-biological experimentation.

I know! What’s better is, I know about this case! helen boyd blogged about it a few months ago–she teaches up in Appleton, Wisconsin; the incident occurred right after she arrived in January.

And just when I thought I’d heard enough–and trust me, that was enough–of this Debbie Schlussel person….you know what’s funny? In a hate-filled, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it way? She wrote her own post on the article Liss blogged about:

Still, the facts and figures he cites are telling. As America continues its push toward a matriarchy, pushing men out of the way in favor of artificial insemination, single mother households, etc., it is one more step in the way of America’s demise and our continuing quest to emulate Europe. As we honor Governors who abandon their families to Mr. Moms, while they pursue political careers and while their own daughters father babies out of wedlock and shut the fathers of their babies out of their kids’ lives, we must ask ourselves what are the benefits of that. Why are we applauding those who behave this way?

As men are cast off to the wayside as obsolete, ask yourself if you want America to be the international equivalent of the WNBA or a NOW meeting?

Oh Zbornak! I should have stuck with the New York Post.

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Fear of a Diverse Planet

Categories: privilege stories, teh tranz, Your RDA of Outrage

Warning: some of the links below may be triggery, as I went to the originals.

The Sotomayor nomination has once again driven the white male protestant establishment–who after all suffer from the greatest discrimination–in an uproar. And as usual a new coded language emerges–Sotomayor is a “bully” for dressing down (male) lawyers, that she got her nomination thanks to affirmative action, and, of course, she’s not qualified.

The idea that the white guys might be biased against everybody but white guys is of course ignored.

That is, of course, the gift of privilege–the ability to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. White men are “normal” in this country–anybody not a white guy is a “minority” even though white men–and men in general–are the real minority in this country.

One of the things about being trans is that it has the potential to help you visualize your privilege, especially if you were, like me, a white male crossdresser–outside I looked no different than any other guy (well, except for the groomed eyebrows and long fingernails), but I knew that if anyone knew about my inner life, I’d immediately lose my “normal” status.

Not everybody makes use of this opportunity. I’ve met incredibly chauvanistic crossdressers–and even transsexuals aren’t immune; I’ve encountered many who were so busy sandcastling their privilege that they try to deny the womanhood of other transpeople. (Warning: super-triggery.)

(I’d be on their list for fessing to having identified as a crossdresser.)

Those who do, however, learn an important truth: that “normal” can’t live in the abscence of “abnormal”–that there always has to be some shadowy Other who opposes all your basic values. The shock of those people of privilege–like myself–who realize that their transness has made them that Other can often lead them to feel solidarity with all the other Others. (Perhaps this is why trans people still support lesbian and gay rights even after one of the largest gay rights groups threw us cruelly under the bus during the ENDA fiasco last year.)

Privilege is afraid of diversity, because it forces it to confront the Other; privilege hides in the language that underprivileged people use in order to subject them to ridicule; privilege, in short, is nothing else than fear of the Other, of losing that which didn’t belong to it in the first place, of having, in other words, “normal” become normal–a world where our various diversities of race, gender, religion, sexuality are no more important than our diversities in favorite sports team or ice cream flavors.

They live in fear, unfounded fear because diversity has never hurt anybody. Except in their minds.

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Your RDA of Outrage

Categories: internuts, Your RDA of Outrage

It seems that you can add “gadgets” to your Blogger Bloggerific Blog. I added Ze Blogroll to your right–updates coming, but enjoy their home cooking!

So I searched for “women” in the Gadget Registry. Back returned the Great Gadgetzoo–one hundred and fifty hits! Excited, I leafed through them:

“Hot Babes”

“The Hottest Women of Sports”

“SI Swimsuit Model of the Day”

“Sexy Women of Playboy”

I then did a search for “feminism.”

There were nine hits.

One was for the “Love and Marriage Quote of the Day.”

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