Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: If this was ever funny, it's…, in reply to andin,
It never was
Not remotely.
Through her grief, Dunham talks about being in a better position than most Americans. “It’s a privilege to be heartbroken by the system for the first time at age 30,” she said, adding, “So many people — those in the prison system, those with undocumented American relatives, those who are trans, who are queer, who are people of color, who are Muslim, who are trying to prosecute their abusers — have felt the crushing failure of the system over and over again."
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Hard News: Friday Music: Nadia 2, in reply to Russell Brown,
That dancin' brass band looks like the business!
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
On a recent post, I got a rather sharp (but civil) rap over the knuckles for carelessly using “tranny” in a way that was read as a slur on transgendered folks.
Just for the record, I never read it as a slur, you’d used it before, it always felt like an affectionate use, to me. Despite having produced some of the crudest sentences and phrasings in probably the English language, it never completely obscures the reality that you’re a bit of a sweety Craig. Beyond that Guardian piece you linked to at the time, Julia Serano has written, at length, about her personal history of the T-word:
I would love to see conversations about the word “tranny” reach this level of nuance. Rather than calling out the mere utterance of “tranny,” let’s call out instances in which the word is used to exploit, erase, or denigrate trans people. And rather than simply calling out the fact that someone has used the word, let’s call out the negative meanings behind the usage (e.g., “When you called her a ‘tranny’ just then, you were trying to sexualize/objectify her,” or “…you were implying that she’s not a ‘real’ woman”).
I would argue that it’s the negative meanings behind word “tranny” that invalidate us, not the word itself. If we only strive to eradicate words (whether it be “tranny” or others), those negative meanings will continue to persist, and they will inevitably latch themselves onto other words. And it is only when we have convinced the much of the cis majority to abandon those negative meanings that the “activist language merry-go-round” will finally stop spinning.
Last year I found myself alongside some others in an online debate with a Trumpster who was spouting all manner of bigotry and at the end of it, a cisperson informed me that they’d complained to the administrator about the Trumpster’s use of the word “tranny”, encouraging me rather encouragingly to do the same, as if that one word was the stand out in the 20 minutes odd minutes of hate we’d just witnessed.
At the same time I totally appreciate and respect one’s right to vociferously resist, in the strongest possible legal terms ~ a word is as many things to as many people after all. Taking offence to a slur is quite natural and need not be discouraged ~ we all have our own baggage – I noticed Scarlet thanked you then and there.
As for being an intractable conflict-seeker, it’s often difficult to fully grasp another’s motivations, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if "You don’t exist unless we’re puttin’ our hormones up ya!” may have harvested the odd tearaway.
Having one’s identity invalidated for decades, basically being told “you: your identity – you don’t exist” is the conflict. Without support networks, without the basic validations that most people quite reasonably expect and take for granted as a privilege, conflict is established as the modus operandi of one’s life, there’s no ‘seeking’ required, it’s there from sun up till sun down every day.
Everyone is transphobic to some degree, all of us, because our civilisation is transphobic. Very few can begin to envisage alternatives. Some of the worst verbal transphobia I’ve witnessed has been internalised transphobia expressed by transgender people against ourselves, purely an export of ignorance, a folly which I’ve been led to believe is habit forming. Exclusion’s endless duel to the death with Inclusion might be a blinder. But as long as the pathologization of the transgender community remains in the hands of people like Ray Blanchard, progress will remain stunted:
I would say if one could start from scratch, ignore all the history of removing homosexuality from the DSM, normal sexuality is whatever is related to reproduction. Now you have everything else. I would distinguish between behaviors which are anomalous and benign vs. those that are malignant. So homosexuality would be not normal but benign. Whereas something like serious dangerous sadism would be a malignant variation.
At the end of the night, one is required to appreciate and distinguish between the degrees of acceptance and prejudice that one might expect from any given individual, and I’d personally rate the odd “tranny” down the lower end of the totem pole compared to say a well-intentioned individual who would pay lipservice to their support for the community, as they habitually employ oppositional sexism framing (10 years after the publication of Whipping Girl), while behind closed doors trotting out the familiar “some of my best friends are transgender and they would be appalled at you getting so het up about the bigotry” – as if we’re the Borg – which is again is much lower down the totem poll compared to Blanchard’s Neo-Freudian depictions and the obstacles to basic legal recognition. Another individual however will no doubt hold opposing views.
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Up Front: Lighting the Dark, in reply to mark taslov,
gender essentialism and oppositional sexism
Oppositional-sexism makes good copy in our society. Be it ardent devotee Jeremy Corbett’s brain gig, our legislation, Paul Henry’s public ridicule,our advertising, our mythology, our education policies or our parenting, the media’s insistence on often heteronormaltive and cisnormative oppositional-sexism is omnipresent. Even amongst the the educated, essentialism rather than intersectionality still dominates our national discourse.
Tuesday’s Nights’ Pundit was textbook oppositional sexism, the premise contingent on the listener delineating the genders into discreet sets, geared at a punter who may find this type of paring to be bias confirmational; breaking down stereotypes by perpetuating stereotypes as it were.
At one point the host takes the interesting step of redefining the set from the conflated man/male to the more specific “bloke”, this may or may not have aided in strengthening the exclusionary thesis that banter is the domain of men/males/blokes while gossip is the domain of women.
Rather than working on breaking down gender stereotypes in order to focus on equality, the listener is instead encouraged to keep filling up the same two boxes left by our predecessors.
Sexism is by extension a narcissistic ideology, because one maintains their status (even subservient statuses) in society by supporting gender roles, enforcing gender stereotypes, and admonishing gender variance. The process is self-defeating because one must lie to themselves and engage in hypersexuality, (hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine) behaviors which undermines self-esteem by creating a self-concept basis that is not indefinitely maintainable. It’s like an addiction. You act the part, and are rewarded, but you must support or exceed in successive behaviors which increase the stress on you. Eventually the stress becomes to great that you can’t keep up the behavior, and thus experience the withdrawal of the social acceptance from gender stereotypical behavior.
Obviously it’s RNZ so one can expect this form of framing to get a lot of air, and it’s not that any malice is intended, but it does remind me a lot of primary school.
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Police ‘default’ mental health service as attempted suicide call outs jump 30 per cent
A 30 per cent jump in the number of attempted suicides handled by police is an indictment on New Zealand’s mental health system, the police union says.
Police responded to just over 18,000 calls coded as “threatens/attempts suicide” across the country in 2015-16, up from 14,000 in 2012-13.
Almost every region experienced an increase in such call outs over the last four years, with Bay of Plenty jumping 44 per cent and Auckland rising 16 per cent.
Canterbury, Southern and Tasman reported increases of 40 per cent, 43 per cent and 36 per cent respectively.
Attempting to make inquiries regarding the online services provided, the message above the Live chat widget at www.mentalhealth.org.nz reads:
We’re not available right now, but we’d love to chat another time. Leave us a message or try again during business hours (Mon-Fri, 9am-4.30pm). If this is an emergency, please call 111 or click on our ‘In Crisis?’ tab above for help.
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Bernadine Oliver-Kerby: New Zealanders need to openly talk about suicide
Each year more than 500 New Zealanders take their own lives. Each year more than 2500 others attempt to take their own lives and fail.
But is it really us as a nation who have failed?
That would be classified. How many suicides were a response to disaster? How many were to escape domestic abuse? How many were a response to rape? How many were due to failings of our justice system? How many were a response to financial issues? How many were in response to bigotry and bullying? How many were a response to preventable trauma? How many were a response to family breakdowns? How many were an escape from illness and debilitating circumstances? what role might the breakdown of our health and mental health systems be playing? How many of these might be attributable to poor governance? What were the actual circumstances of 500 deaths per year? With scant data it’s easy to theorise.
Rest assured, not a single one was an "ordinary hardworking New Zealander”.
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Hard News: The conversation they want to…, in reply to mark taslov,
stitched up and raised as female
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+HR=E’s replacement of the show that replaced Campbell Live kicked off with a hiss and roar; +HR=E* giving Michele A’Court free rein to express the much neglected* trans exclusionary perspective.
Men don’t have to use these products at all, all women have to use them
*This Transgender Man Is Showing People That Menstruation Isn’t Just a Female Thing
*My Period and Me: A Trans Guy’s Guide to Menstruation
*No mention of 300lb derelicts this time despite a familiar face.
