Thank you for this. I have been saying this for years. I am a lesbian, I date masculine of center women. They and a lot of my Butch/stud lesbian friends get "mis" gendered. The TIM' s flip their shit and throw and kick stuff at the teen age kid at GameStop but how many times have butches been told they are in the wrong bathroom? Do they loose their shit? No because they are women. A 6+ ft man with hoop earrings and a handbag gets called sir and he all but threatens to burn the place down. #whitemaleprivilege

Having said that and reading some posts, I amend my statement to consistent long term harassment that leads to suicide or similar is definitely a form of attack. I don't know if using the word violence is correct but Its something on that order.

VERY true

true

Trans people are what? Gurl, bye. Women the world over are still sold into marriage, forced into genital mutilation as children, denied basic property rights, have acid thrown in their faces for looking at a man not their husband, and lashed for being a rape victim.

Jessica Yaniv had more rights than the women who didn't want to wax her balls. Yes, transpeople face discrimination but let's not pretend that anyone faces the type of brutality a six year old girl faces in N. Africa and the Middle East.

You will get 10x farther with feminists if you stop pretending that women are somehow privileged in ways that people born biologically male are not.

@ThomasinaPaine Arielle nor I are saying that women don't face societal oppression. Of course they do, but that doesn't mean trans people don't go through similar problems either, or different problems of equal detriment. This isn't the Oppression Olympics where there can only be one top group of oppressed people.

And what are you talking about, "Jessica Yaniv had more rights...?" She asked to get her balls waxed, she got rejected, and then she complained about it online. That's it. Didn't she also go to jail? Or somewhere along those lines?

Being cisgendered is just as much a 'privilege' as having a normal, functioning developed body. It may not seem like much, until you compare yourself with somebody with less, or something abnormal.

People who have experienced actual violence like myself understand that violence is violence and mean words are not a punch to the face. Anyone who says they would rather be kicked in the pelvis than called a name is lying.

pretty easy philosophy to believe in when you live in a society that doesn't actively and consistently ridicule you and invalidate your entire existence.

@j_bbrav0 Are you kidding me? I was a complete nerd and social pariah until I graduated. I've had people call me names, shove me into lockers, throw my glasses over lockers, knock my books out of my hands spilling papers everywhere. In addition to the typical everyday abuse of being a nerd that had looked at someone the wrong way I also got sexually assaulted by an authority figure. So in addition to ridicule I also faced multiple types of assault so that I can tell you from a vast amount of experience--sticks and stones broke my bones but words never penetrated me.

Yeh, I'd 100x rather face ridicule than broken noses and old dude penises in my face.

What happened to me is that I realize that the only way I could remove myself from the cycle of victimization is to stop being a victim and learning to find validation not from a bunch of strangers or assholes who couldn't break the honor roll but from the people who know and love me.

Now, I'm happy as shit. I don't owe anyone anything other than nonviolence and will show everyone who is mannerly to me good manners back. If you try and force me to say what you want or abstain from what you don't want I'm going to rebel.

@j_bbrav0 .. in our society today there are very few demographics who don't face ridicule from some group or another. Words are still words and Violence is still Violence. Are you suggesting that words have the same lasting affect as violence does? If you are, I am happy for you, because it means you have never experienced real violence. Not everyone is so lucky, and not everyone is so sensitive to words.

@JeepBum you act as if ridicule is all equally shared among all groups of people for equally unconcerning reasons. this is not the reality that we live in.

"A prisoner who cracks a joke before getting his chopped off made a guillotine joke. An observer in the crowd making a joke gleefully watching is just being a part of the execution."

As somebody who's been a victim of violence, and knows a thing or two about history, I know that words can be just as deadly as a blade

@ThomasinaPaine getting bullied in school and having personal traumatic experiences is not the same thing as living in a society, where everywhere u go, people see you as something you feel as if you aren't. To be misunderstood, dismissed, or rejected when you try to open up about who you are. To have your very identity be heavily politicized and controversial in the eyes of millions of people. To constantly doubt and fear over as to where you fit with everyone else.

so please, don't think your experiences validate your "one size fits all" self-help advice.

@j_bbrav0 You misunderstand me. I'm saying that I don't think that humans report to a hive mind and can "share" someone's experience. No, they have their own. If they share someone else's they do so either out of empathy (not this case) or as is more common today a desire to be part of a victimized clique for political reasons.

I understand that as the reproductive class of human I have fewer rights in 90% of all countries that any biological male (that includes transgender women) have at birth. BUT while I sympathize with the young girls who have their labia and clitoris forcibly removed by relatives who have bowed to their culture that is not happening to me, thank the goddesses. For me to pretend that I have in some way or form shared that injury is a terrible lie and incredibly narcissistic.

If someone calls me a bitch or cunt--the latter used by nearly every rapist since time began the woman doesn't the street doesn't feel it or know about it unless I choose to tell her. I am personally offended even though it was said with a different emphasis than it would be said to a man. HOWEVER, I am not injured by the opinion of any douchenozzle out there and the fact that you and other people WANT to be injured is still, in fact, your CHOICE.

I know that is hard to believe in 2020 but gurus, boddhisatvas etc have been trying to lift people out of this type of low-level bullshit for centuries. That is your ego talking. You will always be controlled by that ego until YOU make the choice not to be. I am not a cunt. I know I'm not. Someone who calls me one isn't injuring me because I know myself.

It is not the job of government to make me like myself or know myself or love myself. It's not the job of government to turn the person who calls me a cunt into either a nice person OR a criminal. Government provides -poorly--for infrastructure, defense, and if we have smart people in charge it also helps to promote commerce. The rest is up to us.

When its not, when we attempt to use government to solve social complaints you end up with the LGBT movement having an Unfavorable view by polled Americans for the first time in over a decade. That number is still dropping because no one else by TRAs today is trying to use government to silence people like this.

@j_bbrav0 .. I'll bite, can you give me an example of a situation where "words can be just as deadly as a blade"?

I love Ru!

@JeepBum read one of these recent mass shooter manifestos. look through an incel forum. look up suicide stories where some poor kid got bullied to death.

@ThomasinaPaine so gish galloping aside, what, is reaching out to the government to solve "social complaints" always a bad thing to you?

do you think black people back in the 60s made the mistake of reaching out to the government for the right to vote and abolishing jim crow laws because it caused an unfavorable view onto themselves?

How is this any different than trans people wanting to occupy the spaces they need to be in?

@j_bbrav0 In both of your examples, a person made a conscious decision to escalate to violence. The words by themselves did not cause death.

In your first example, there was no direct connection between the words and the victim. An act of violence was initiated before the victim was involved. I don't see how this illustrates your point, it does more to illustrate that words by themselves are not deadly.

I want to make a quick disclaimer before you read my next statement. I am aware through my brother and sister that the entire L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ group has likely heard 1 million times or more that they have a mental health issue. That is not what I am about to say in any way shape or form. I do not agree with anyone who make such statements. I will be speaking about anyone who your second example can be applied to, no matter how they label themselves (to include straight white Christians).

In your second example, you seem to be illustrating that because X person used a word to Y person, Y person committed suicide. I am the first person to lament that loss of life, especially when it's needless. However, if they took their life over what they felt was a verbal attack, it sounds like there are some larger mental health issues going on with this individual that aren't occurring in the majority of the population. If verbal attacks caused death based on this example I would expect we would see much larger suicide numbers as people have become more polarized in our society and verbal attacks have escalated. Mental health issues largely go diagnosed and exist in all demographics, not just the people in this example.

Now, if we want to discuss mental health issues, the lack of support for those issues, and the stigma that exists for people seeking treatment, you have my full support. I feel like it is a problem that affects everyone in our country and it ignores every label we give ourselves. It is also widely ignored by everyone. If you think about it, who really thinks that they have mental health issues?

@j_bbrav0 I think black people in the 60's reached out to the Federal Government because State Government's had not bothered to change their laws regarding public access since the 1800's. The laws they were protesting actively created "separate but equal" facilities for people of color and so-called "whites". Business owners had to spend money to create two different seating areas, bathrooms, fountain's etc and states had to create two different sets of public entities.

How is this at all like someone deferring to someone's biology versus their independent, individual perception of themselves?

What this activism attempts to undo is the right of an individual or business to define for themselves how they speak. Calling someone with a penis a man is in no way, shape, or form calling someone the N word or C word. It is their right to address a biological fact as fact. If that hurts someone who is dealing with a mental condition of dysphoria that is unfortunate but it is no more "violence" than calling me the C-word, something I don't personally believe I am.

Using blacks and intersex people to bolster transactivism is both a poor comparison and really doesn't work on me anymore. I used to feel more kindly before watching old lesbians get beat up by transactivists and salon workers being sued. My charity is at an end.

I will be polite to people who are polite to me but I reject this type of activism that is usually used to harass lesbians and bisexual and heterosexual women into submission.

@j_bbrav0 Mass shooters are also mentally disabled but we don't cater to their illness, we don't subvert society, force their views of the world on others, or rearrange society to make them feel better.

@j_bbrav0 I realize that these type of tactics usually silence women because women are socialized to want to be part of a group but I no longer want to be part of the left. I have seen what they do with political power, social power--any power and honestly they have proven they are no better than the right wing when given power. So to answer your question--I do not believe that humans are capable of wielding power fairly and responsibly. I believe when given power they first seek to enact revenge against whomever they perceive wronged them.

I believe that social ills ought to be cured through social means or not at all. In most cases from women's suffragettes to the 1960's civil rights movement, government lagged behind people. People had already decided that previous government laws (used to push a social movement) were wrong, ,outdated, and unfair and began to break those laws until they had to be changed or politicians would be forced to admit that people have real power.

Every persecution from the Inquisition to the Salem Witch trials to the Soviets to the Nazis occurred by governments. It was the political authority of Massachusetts who hung witches. It was Phillip of France who persecuted templars. It was Trotksy who ordered Ukrainians to be killed. Nazis who rounded up the Jews. All of these groups were doing LEGAL injury to people.

Power always corrupts.

@JeepBum The existence of mental health issues has always been a popular scapegoat among people who have trouble with having empathy for those who have been socially marginalized and discriminated. It's a method of deflection in order to make it seem as if all of their problems stem from within, so that any issues they experience from their environment can be overlooked and unchallenged.

Trans people especially, are no exception when it comes to dealing with this type of disregardment.

@ThomasinaPaine You should really study race realist (racist) rhetoric, both contemporary and older. You'll find a lot of what you're saying about trans people, racists were saying about black people, from pointing out biological differences, to downplaying how certain words that describes people aren't that big a deal, to even using personal anecdotes to justify your bigotry. "I wouldn't consider myself a racist, but then I saw these two n*ggers rob my uncle's store and shoot him in the chest."

I'm a bit confused by this thread but I don't agree to misgender should be a law against people and more just seen as a social norm to say hey asshole quit it but I also think we should talk about how many dead trans people there are / missing ones or fact that a lot trans people go through domestic violence and often aren't helped by abuse centers because they're a ( fake gender / or seen as a preditor ) also I feel like people tend to forget that trans people bare the brunt of both genders for example if your trans woman you walk your life as a woman well your walking same misogynistic lines most women have to endure but trans woman get the bonus of if someone finds out they're born a man they are in even more danger let alone being always compared to pedophiles

@j_bbrav0 No. You should study what happens to countries where freedom of speech and individual LIBERTY is disregarded. It's not worth it. If someone misgenders me and calls me a boy then they do. Part of being an adult human in a complex world is learning how to control my own emotions and operating from a place of reason and logic.

@j_bbrav0, @dassgooodyaaaa Then trans people should take a more aggressive position AGAINST pedophiles and those people who use the cloak of transgenderism to get away with sexual assault and other bad behavior. I'm sorry but if your first response to Jonathan Yaniv exposing himself to children or forcing a woman to wax his balls is "Don't misgender him" then you need to rethink your position.