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crossdreamers · 2 years

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Lesbian activist unmasks the bigotry of transphobic TERFs in must-read rant

In Norway lesbian LGBT+ activist Brita Møystad Engseth has published a clear challenge to lesbian TERFs.

Norway does not see the same amount of “gender critical” anti-trans activism as Britain, I am glad to say. But there are a some who are given ample space in mainstream media.

Recently one of the country’s leading lesbian feminists and LGBT+ activists, Brita Møystad Engseth (photo from LGBT-magazine Blikk above), had had enough of the activism of the lesbian trans-exclusionary radical feminist Tonje Gjevjon and her associates. Engseth published a fierce attack in the national newspaper Dagbladet.

Her observations are also relevant for the debate in other countries, which is why I will provide you with some highlights here.

Note that Gjejjon is known for her hateful attacks against Norwegian trans women, using misgendering and accusations about sexual deviance and potential violence as standard tools of oppression.

Lesbian privilege

The debate about gender and trans is far too important to be left to “boogeywomen” (literally “dark women”), Engseth writes, before going into the privileged position of lesbians like herself and Tone Gjevjon:

“Both Gjevjon and I belong to the generation of lesbians who were allowed to be ourselves without risking lives and limbs. We can thank the uncompromising gay heroes who went before us for this.

...for us it was never - never - anything other than a matter of course that we could occupy any public space and take part in any public debate like the ones we truly are.”

Engseth adds, though, that even if they were given room to be themselves when younger, many would experience loneliness, separation and the longing to find someone like themselves. This is why she finds it so hard to understand why Gjevjon and her fellow “radical lesbians” cannot empathize with others who experience something similar.

Pulling up the ladder

Engseth find it incomprehensible that members of a sexual minority will pull up the ladder and exclude people who will not or cannot follow the binary sex norm.

It is as if all the previous battles for freedom and justice have never happened, Engseth observes.

Gjevjon also claims to be an expert in many fields, Engseth says:

“...fields that actually requires more than posting selected links, statistics and reports fetched from the dark deep of American internet communities, only with the purpose of strengthening the TERF movement’s painfully ignorant universe.”

This is the photo of Gjevjon the newspaper Dagbladet used to illustrate Engseth’s article. It reminds us that most TERFs are white, privileged, middle and upper class women. (Photo: Hampus Lundgren).

Engseth finds it inconceivable that Gjevjon does not understand that she, through her attitudes and use of language (”which in no ways are censored, rejected or canceled”) actually harms other people, and not just in the figurative sense, but in the true sense of the word: “Injuries, wounds and destroys,” as Engseth puts it.

Queer people have to get up of their comfy sofas

Engseth points out that many sensible queer persons are reluctant to take part in this debate, because they are immediately accused of bullying and censorship.

“To Gjevjon and other anti-trans-activists I will just say: Really? Was someone mean to you online because you promote ideas which no one has seen since the boogeymen (”dark men”) of the Church had their heyday in the nineties? Did you present ideas that made someone think you are narrow-minded and mean? “Not even the world’s smallest violin would bother to play for those who seeks the holy martyrdom of of cancel victims on such a weak basis. And to all of us, the party gay and party lesbians who surfed into the new millennium without a scratch: We have to turn off RuPaul’s drag race, get out of our comfortable couches and get a grip.”

Norwegian version of Engseth’s article. Google translation of article.

#lesbian #transgender #trans #queer #transphobia #terf #terfs #gender critical #lgbt #lgbtqa #lgbt+#pride #gay

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fyeahbatcat · 7 years

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Not batcat related but what did you think about the Wonder Woman movie? I love your blog btw!

Thank you!!! I haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet. I have tickets for tonight :)

Edit 6/30/17

Sorry I meant to give you an update right after I saw themovie but then the proposal happened the next day and it shifted my focus for awhile. Anyways, last year I was kind of asked about my thoughts on the thenupcoming Wonder Woman movie and I outlined my concerns about the potential forlightweight feminism, portrayals of violence, and the representation of theAmazons and everyone I am happy to say that I could not have been more wrong(for the most part). I’ve been begging the powers that be at WB for a WonderWoman for years and I fully intended to catch an advanced screening since itwas announced in 2014, but I was away on vacation that week so it didn’t happenand I had to do some extreme internet acrobatics to avoid spoilers. Between that,the letdown that was Suicide Squad,and the pressure of having the first *real* superhero movie starring a woman I thoughtthere was no way it would live up to my expectations.

That said: I am a changed person having now seen Diana ofThemyscira grace a giant plasma screen in her own movie. Watching Wonder Woman was a spiritual experience.In response to my own concerns about:

1. The trailer looking too violent

It’s not that I expected there to be no fighting or violencein a multi-million dollar action movie I meant more along the lines of WonderWoman was created as a foil for violent hyper-masculinity and a symbol ofpeace. A lot of these themes have become very muted over the last severaldecades by mostly male writers who interpret Wonder Woman’s strength as coincidingwith traditionally masculine ideals when William Moulton Marston created WonderWoman as a symbol of feminine power. Because it was very clear that PattyJenkins and the DCEU is taking the recent New 52 daughter of Zeus origin story Ithought that they would mostly be relying on more recent versions of WonderWoman which, in my opinion, strayed too far from Wonder Woman’s importantlarger themes (until Greg Rucka, God bless him, came back to the series).

The ending completely shattered my expectations and I amhappy to report that I was wrong. The movie was all about Diana’s destiny andhow she became the hero that she is. By the end she decides that she wants tobe a hero that believes in the power of love. That’s exactly who Wonder Womanis. This was a feminist movie through and through.

2. The diversity of the Amazons

You can read about what I had to say about the initial promoshots of the Amazons in my previous post: but what it came down to is the factthat diversity among the Amazons isn’t just a meaningless gesture of diverserepresentation or just for optics. It’s essential to Wonder Woman’s characterbecause she stands for equality among all women and intersectional feminism.People expressed concerns over how the first images of the Amazons were of allwhite faces and Patty Jenkins said was just Diana’s “immediate family” and the restof the Amazons would be diverse. It was a pretty unsatisfactory placation, buton that end Jenkins did hold up her promise. My exact words last year were:

So diverse like WOC will be playing actually namedcharacters who contribute to the plot and/or Diana’s development? Or diverselike they’ll all be in the background swinging swords, thrown a few tokenlines, and will be credited as “Amazon” #4? Because those are two verydifferent ideas of diversity?

Spoiler alert: it was the second one (though I think some ofthem had names, not that you would’ve known). It’s hard for me to criticize thedecision to cast Robin Wright as Antiope because my goodness she was born toplay that part. It was so thrilling to see an actress in her fifties in actionsequences and woman fighting as warriors free from the male gaze, but it justas well could’ve been Phillipus that also had a hand in training Diana. Evenafter viewing the movie Jenkins reasoning strikes me as defense for casting allwhite actresses in the most prominent roles for the Amazons, which is prettyexpected by Hollywood standards. There wasn’t even any need for Diana to havean “immediate family” as it didn’t contribute to the plot in any way.

Stray thoughts:

Okay I anticipated the “twist” but that didn’tstop me from thinking “If they make her the daughter of Zeus Patty Jenkins isgonna catch these hands” the entire time. I’m willing to overlook it but thatdoesn’t mean that I liked it.

Omg Diana’s characterization was so friggingood. A lot of writers make Wonder Woman too severe and serious, but Diana wasa character that was full of joy and humor. One of my favorite moments in theentire movie was when Diana swoons over the baby (“A BABY!!!!!!”) which wasadorable because they don’t have babies of Themyscira so it’s something thatshe didn’t take for granted. Also I loved it when she tells the ice cream manthat “you should be very proud.” It was just little moments like that you gotto see Diana’s human side and that she was a joyful, loving person.Also the scene in NML when Diana is socompelled by human suffering to cross the trenches and put an end to theviolence once and for all. This is the moment that she becomes Wonder Woman.I also think that they did a really greatjob of conveying what it’s like to be in a foreign place. Some of the mostinsulting stereotypes in media are that foreigners are just stupid and don’tunderstand anything (see Starfire). Dianacan speak dead languages and knows about literature. Diana wasn’t dumb by anymeans, but she didn’t quite know all of the cultural cues. Like when she didn’tknow why her and Steve couldn’t “sleep” together which Steve assumes this meansthat she doesn’t know what sex is and Diana matter-of-factly informs him that she’s“read all twelve volumes of Cleo’s treatises on body and pleasures.” And whenshe tries to hold Steve’s hand because “they’re together.” Cultural norms areregion specific so of course anytime you venture to a place unknown you, youdon’t know everything about there is to know about how to socialize with the peoplethere. The film did it in a way that was funny and honest without beingcondescending.

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine had some of the bestchemistry I’ve ever seen on screen. They were both so charming and funny. Evenmy mom liked them and she hates superhero movies.

“I wish we had more time.” I’ve never sobbed somuch from one line before.

Best universal human theme since The Dark Knight. Wonder Woman was allabout Diana’s journey of self-discovery. When she first leaves the island shenaively believes that all of the violence and evil in the world is a result ofAres’ influence and once she destroys him it will magically end. Before sheleaves she asks Steve if he’s typical representation of mankind. Sure Steve Trevor was a genuinely good guyand that probably got her expectations a little too high, but he points outthat even he’s not a saint. No one is. When she first kills who she thought wasAres and nothing changed she became immediately disillusioned by mankind andrealizes that people are pretty shitty and it wasn’t just because of Ares. It’sSteve that brings her to this realization that: yeah we suck, but that doesn’t meanthat we’re not worth saving.

Steve got hella fridged. Well sort of. Steve’sdeath is really what motivated Diana to destroy Ares and continue to mentor theworld through love, so it’s a rare example of a male character’s death beingused as motivation for a female character. However, Steve was given much moreagency in his death than a female character would’ve been given. Steve died onhis own terms in a way that was really, really heroic and sacrificial. It’s almostthe way Batman went out in The Dark Knight Rises and how Steve Rogers “dies” inCaptain America. Compare that to GwenStacy’s death in Amazing Spiderman 2 whoseneck snapped in the last ten minutes just to make Peter all sad and angsty. Ithink that writers still have more expectations for male characters to beactive and think that it’s more acceptable for female characters to be passiveso in terms of gender representation in Hollywood there’s still a long way togo but hey it’s a start.

Scene that had me laughing even days later:

Diana, who has neverseen a man before standing in front of a bare ass naked Steve: What’s that?

Steve:

Steve: This is awatch.

Bottom line: I loved this movie. I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I’mgoing to go see it again this weekend.

#ask #anonymous #not batcat related #personal note #wonder woman spoilers

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littlegirlblue96 · 7 years

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Early in "The Empty Hearse," the generally outstanding third-season premiere of the BBC's Sherlock series, John Watson (Martin Freeman) must explain at length to Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs, who has the best name on television) that he and the "late" Sherlock Holmes were not, in fact, lovers. "The Empty Hearse" is delightfully loaded-to-overflowing with metatextual jabs at the pop cultural conversation around Sherlock, and the nudge-nudge-wink-wink nature of Sherlock and John's all-boy living conditions was not, of course, immune.

(Read Todd's full review of "The Empty Hearse" here, and if you're just catching up with the series in its domestic run here in North America, beware of minor spoilers for Season Three below.)

Along the lines of sexuality on Sherlock, "The Empty Hearse" ran the gamut. It acknowledged - while refuting - the popular subtextual possibility that Sherlock and John are gay; it sent a thousand slash fiction pens a'scribbling with a fantasy sequence in which Sherlock and Moriarty start to make out; and it gave equal screen time to Sherlock's assured status as a thumping-red heterosexual fantasy date, when the lithe superdetective crashes through a window, musses his hair, and plants a big one on long-pining Molly in a single, deft motion.

The episode was exciting as hell, and the comprehensive conversation it had with the series' exterior mythology was the biggest part of the fun. But, of course, Sherlock and John aren't gay lovers. That would make a fascinating storytelling exercise within a Sherlock Holmes interpretation on its own terms, but in this case, it would also negate the fantastic cultural power that this Sherlock, particularly, has been accumulating - which is at least in part thanks to the fact that Sherlock and John are normal(ish), heterosexual men... who love each other.

I have a friend who goes titicaca every time a heterosexual male around her mentions even a passing interest in, or fondness for, babies. She's a lunatic, but I've always found the reaction abjectly fascinating. She's told me that seeing any man step outside his emotive gender norms, particularly expressing what we might typically call "maternal" feelings (although I'd argue they're just as much paternal feelings, in a world where parents are allowed to love their children equally), throws her into an emotional overload, because it's so rare.

It's sentiments like this that make me think quite a lot about bromance vs. our cultural conceptions of masculinity. Naturally, being a Sherlock fiend too, I think about Sherlock and John's bromance in particular quite a bit.

In a sense, there's nothing in Sherlock that exceeds the boundaries of any of twelve dozen buddy cop movies and TV series over the past fifty years. Sherlock and John initially don't like each other, because Sherlock is crazy (he's the Riggs), and John (who's too old for this shit) likes to protest in favour of standards of normal behaviour. "Odd," meet "Couple."

Sherlock and John's animosity immediately proves to be poppycock, of course, and not just because John is secretly a risk addict and Sherlock is secretly a human being, and working together therefore really solves a lot of their mutual problems. They like each other, is the immediate point, even if it takes them a year or so to get round to somewhat acknowledging it.

They also need each other, which deepens the onscreen chemistry beyond mere partnership or friendship and into a very serious form of co-dependence and love. John is plainly Sherlock's human credential, the single visible piece of evidence that Holmes is not, in fact, an irredeemable, reprehensible clod. (Even Sherlock figures this out at some point, as he incorporates a reference to it into his speech at John's wedding.)

But I like to think that Sherlock is John's human credential as well, in a less obvious way. John is so categorically repressed on an emotional level that Sherlock must legitimately conjure an apocalyptic bomb scare (in "The Empty Hearse") just to get John to admit that he likes him and is glad he's not dead. Whenever John's stiff-twittishness gets in the way of his ability to live a fully-realized human life - never more so than over the course of Sherlock's "death" and return, between the second season and the third - it's Sherlock who provides the (often exceptionally churlish) kick in the ass to get John's emotional mojo flowing again.

And this is why I think the Sherlock bromance has sounded such a staggering chord among the show's fan base. Here are two adult heterosexual men who are, in various ways, doing their absolute utmost to not deal with one another on an emotional level at all, who are simultaneously playing out one of the most completely emotionally supportive relationships on television. And because it's two highly emotionally-resistant males playing out the relationship in question, I think the Sherlock bromance shows up just how rare that sort of relationship actually is in popular culture.

Men and women (or men and men) (or women and women) relating romantically, or potentially romantically, has an ancient series of emotional codes and behaviours that we can access and understand with little effort. We all know a love story. That sort of relationship is everywhere, even where you don't want it (Mulder and Scully, anyone?).

Women are easily coded in media (and everywhere else) as the emotionally available and supportive half of the gender balance, so as long as a series or movie is willing to leapfrog over the Bechdel test long enough to let women have a relationship with one another, those kinds of friendships aren't too outside the norm, either.

Male friendships, though, seem to exist in a perpetual, hands-off assertion of emotional dudeness. Returning to the buddy cop model, that trope works because the men are a) professionally linked, which legitimizes the pairing for objective/non-emotional reasons, and b) able to wiseass their way past every other emotional element, from dislike to abiding love. (Wiseassery is a great shield against the emotional overshare, as I or any other male in my circle of friends will frequently demonstrate by responding to anything resembling a heartfelt compliment with a smartass joke.)

Or, on the more passively homophobic side of things, there's the whole presumption/subtext/joke that Sherlock and John are gay in the first place - because it's easier to assume (or joke) that there are sexual motives involved in their relationship than to think that they might, entirely asexually, have a deep and meaningful love for one another.

We are not, generally speaking, a culture that very much likes the idea of men as emotional creatures; or at least, not the "soft" emotions like love and affection. (Anger, jealousy, anything dominating or prepossessing? Sure. See The Wolf of Wall Street.) And yet when all the alphas have gone off to do whatever it is alphas do at night, I'd argue that there's still a gigantic audience of men and women who want and need to see emotional connections among men, played out in a language that makes sense to them.

And Sherlock and John are so good at it. They utterly adore one other without ever having to say that they do; they complete each other far more than Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger ever did. If they ever get around to an explicit statement of their feelings about one another (as, again, in Sherlock's lengthy, devastating wedding speech for John), one can scarcely get to the internet fast enough to write "FEELS!" in block capital letters over every gif on Tumblr.

Indeed, the word "FEELS!," superimposed over two heterosexual men whose connection is unabashedly platonic, yet unabashedly heartfelt, is my point. It remains so rare in the zeitgeist that it calls capital-letter attention to itself, all on its own. Surely, then, we need more Sherlocks and Johns.

#bbc sherlock #Sherlock #john watson #bros #bromance

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