IGF CultureWatch

It didn’t have to be this way, but once the academic left takes control this is what happens. Not that this is anything new (e.g., see my 1994 post Masculinity Under Siege, and from 1999 Mary, Mary (Daly), Quite Contrary).

Writes James Kirchick:

More troubling than this fawning from avowed enemies of the American “security state” is Ms. Manning’s embrace by large swaths of the LGBT community. At the New York City Pride March in June, thousands cheered as Ms. Manning sat atop the American Civil Liberties Union float. While in prison, she had repeatedly been named honorary grand marshal of San Francisco’s gay pride celebration. She has also been the subject of constant, adulatory coverage in gay media.

Celebrating Chelsea Manning just a few years after gay and transgender people were permitted to serve openly in the military discredits the LGBT cause. Throughout most of the 20th century, homosexuality was associated with treason and used as a basis for purging gay people from government jobs, denying them security clearances and restricting their service in the armed forces. The decision by Ms. Manning’s defense team to argue that untreated gender dysphoria was a factor in her decision to leak classified information unwittingly aids those who say that LGBT people cannot be trusted in sensitive government jobs. And it dishonors the LGBT people who have served in the military throughout history without betraying their country.

More below:

And:

A lesbian college professor writes about today’s LGBT-PC student culture:

A non-binary student critiques a faculty colleague of mine in class for using the term “drag queens” to describe the self-identified drag queens who resisted at Stonewall. My colleague, who is 35, queer, and teaching Sociology of Sexuality, is informed that this is an incorrect and insulting term.

Michael Musto writes, What To Do When Your Friend’s a Gay Republican. Answer: drop them.

Similarly, if a real-life friend—someone who knows my plight, my accomplishments, and my oppressions—decides to trumpet in my face the alleged glories of the Republican party, I simply have to show them the hand and the door. Friendship over.

And he adds this bit of brilliance:

There are other icky issues within our own backyard, as longtime performer Penny Arcade astutely points out. Arcade is a bisexual fag hag, who finds that bi people are routinely ignored in the community. (She likens it to being a part Jew who’s Jewish enough for the Nazis, but not enough for the Jews). What’s more, she’s a self-admitted fag hag who’s been diminished for that too, and has lobbied to put an “F” for “fag hag” into LGBTQ.”

Yes, because they’re aren’t quite enough letters in the acronym already.

Here’s a nice counterpoint:

Also:

"When I came out as transgender, I lost two friends; when I came out as Republican, I lost 100 friends on Facebook." https://t.co/VmpMT8AHhN

— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) July 28, 2017

Pertinent points made by Frances S. Lee, a queer designer, trans baker and cultural studies scholar. Lee writes:

As a QTPOC (queer trans person of color), I have experienced discrimination and rejection due to who I am. … And yet, I reject QTPOC supremacy, the idea that QTPOCs or any other marginalized groups deserve to dominate society. The experience of oppression does not grant supremacy, in the same way that being a powerful colonizer does not. Justice will never look like supremacy. I wish for a new societal order that does not revolve around relations of power and domination.

Katie Herzog wrote an article for The Stranger titled The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren’t, about “an emerging population of people who have transitioned to a different gender and then later transitioned back.” Then all hell broke lose.

It seems like much of the ferocity behind the attacks on Herzog’s article asserts that detransitioning is akin to becoming ex-gay. But this assumes transitioning as transgender is a close parallel to coming out as gay or lesbian. The studies Herzog cites and her interviews with detransitioners indicate that this isn’t the case.

I’ll leave aside the issue of “effeminate” gay or “masculine” lesbian pre- and post-adolescents who now increasingly are pressured to view themselves as transgender. Suffice to say that solid research has shown that many who experience gender dysphoria when young will grow up gay, lesbian or bisexual and feel comfortable as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Ironically, when an effeminate gay man (or boy) transitions as a woman (or girl), “she” typically takes on a heterosexual identity. By detransitioning, “he” reclaims a gay identity, thereby enraging trans activists, our LGBT+ “allies.”

On a related note, Taylor Fogarty writes that some trans activists are now disputing the definition of being gay itself:

Shannon Keating of Buzzfeed suggests we eliminate the word lesbian altogether, arguing: “Against the increasingly colorful backdrop of gender diversity, a binary label like ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ starts to feel somewhat stale and stodgy. When there are so many genders out there, is it closed-minded — or worse, harmful and exclusionary — if you identify with a label that implies you’re only attracted to one?” …

Riley J. Dennis…tells lesbians their “genital preferences are discriminatory,” since they only “prefer” vaginas, and “some women have penises.”

And finally:

Related: Vermont gay bar apologizes, changes name. “Mister Sister” is not a name I would have gone with, but it should be the bar owner’s decision, tempered by market forces and not by activist campaigns charging transgender insensitivity.