Sometimes we have to do things in a different way than we otherwise would like. This is such a time.
In the comments to a recent post of mine, one commenter has been railing at various elements of our differences, and at me, personally, as well. I’m an easy target. I know that quite well — and the odd thing is that I often see great humor in that, as I recognized my flawed self for what it is — flawed and fleshly.
Anna,
Do you have an issue with abstract thought?
If so, why?
You are one of the anti-trans trans people, Anna.
You are also sexist (personally), racist (via institutional racism and a cultural ideal that you apply on different ethnic groups unknowlingly), ableist, and elitist. To name a few things.
Like all of us, you are a product of your times, the sum total of all your varied experiences and the way the world was when you grew up.
That is reflected in your desperate desire to ignore the simple fact that you are not normal, and never will be. You strive for something even more nebulous than perfection, and you have placed much of your sense of self, your personal self esteem and social value on this conceit of being normal.
And you do that because of the times in which you were raised — a time of great conformity, a time when anything that was different was frowned on, a time when propaganda was spoonfed to you from early childhood about the proper and the right, in the name of false patriotism and economic growth.
You can help that, but to do so would require you to do something you resist doing, constantly, predictably, with fervor and fire.
You probably think I am insulting you in writing all of this, for example, for you were raised and taught and likely think that all of this is insulting to you. That it is an insult to be called racist — when it’s still true, no matter how much you want to think otherwise because you don’t see that institutional degree of it within yourself.
In part because you avoid abstractions.
I don’t avoid any of it.
Fucking a penis is worship of one if you use it as the essentialist measure of what defines sex. Perhaps you should learn what worship means — as an abstract concept, of course. For that, read the Rule Of Screwing. It’s a fairly quick and simple way of explaining a larger concept that surround the idea of what I am talking about when I speak to worship. But for an even easier and likely more familiar way of looking at it — you are a tool of the patriarchy, willingly and substantially, and you are working to reinforce it by using it as the basis of your arguments.
And a Penis is absolutely the center of your function. What, you think that the abstract concepts of the discourse exist in a vacuum? Your use of the Penis or lack thereof (which is a penis-centric structure) affects everything in your social interactions that stems from that.
Including your self. If the penis wasn’t at the center of how you function, you wouldn’t have suffered so greatly from incongruence or dysphoria or just flat out transsexualism to the point where you had to get the surgery. And if that strikes you as somehow saying that I suffer from the same thing here, then you are right.
You wouldn’t use it as a verbal weapon and a sneering retort “oh, you little pre-op with no experience” which places a person as an action, creating a value structure by which only surgical status has merit.
You use braniac as an insult, in a space where sexism is already present fundamentally, calling to mind the ideas of “smart girls” being less desirable, less valuable.
You raise MENSA like it’s something of value and importance. I was a member of MENSA, it was full of fuckwits who valued a number over knowledge. And what sucks is that one of my personal little issues is that I can’t talk about when I was a member, without some bright toad doing something I don’t want done and bringing up the name I had for most of my life (which was not the same as the name I was born with, thankfully).
MENSA, to me, is a cool thing for those who want to be a part of it. I think it’s a waste of time and has little value beyond that because it’s sole purpose is really just to say that we’re smarter than the rest of you idiots out there. And when you have intellectual abilities a little or a lot ahead of the world around you, things get pretty annoying because you develop a sense that you don’t belong on that basis, and it colors your perceptions of others. So what if my number is high. It’s just a number meant to reflect potential, not capability, not use, and it is the use of that intellectual capability that is more important, imo.
I am not “smart” at Engineering. I do not enjoy math enough to sit and do calculations; I am not a chemist (though I understand some of it), nor a physicist (although I try to grasp some of it as best I can). I am not a hard science person — that is not the gift or curse I have, that is not the source of the spirit that the Greeks said roamed the house and home and gave inspiriation: genius.
And my manly man is quite real, Anna. He’s also my fiance and I am his fiancee, and I’m quite satisfied withthat arrangement.
You skipped the class you said, and yet a short while back you were talking about how you read through what is trans and openly admitted you didn’t understand that. Instead, you disagreed with me on what I said about the article, and then dropped it when I pointed out what I had written already. And that’s only one part of it, AnnaRose.
If you don’t understand that part, what makes you think you will understand the other parts, found in the same space, such as What is Sex, Gender: expression, identity, and role, the sections on situational membership and so forth as well? Instead of asking questions, you make assumptions, you leap to conclusions, you write things here or elsewhere to me that spend more time saying I said something other than what I said, or you attack some personal aspect of me as a person.
But I’ll tell you what. You find out what I refer to when I talk about existence before essence. You read you some Simone and Sarte, you give yourself a bit of growth with Irigay. Then you get familiar with the scientific method (which I would assume you already are, having multiple advanced degrees that would have, at one time, relied on such, unless it was something like, oh, law or business where science is only useful on occasion and something other people do).
You want it simple, and yet when it is given to you simply, you say that’s not possible, that’s wrong, and worse — you ignore the simple statements and make them into something that was never said (a strawman).
Because of your ageist expectation that it’s not possible for someone 15 years or so your junior possibly having a greater knowledge of how it really is. That perhaps I somehow lack “real life knowledge” to join the long and involved efforts of my literate education.
Forgetting that I have done more in my few years than others have done in lifetimes longer than yours. Forgetting that for me “know yourself” is not merely an axiom to hang on the wall but a commandment that I followed early on. Not knowing much more of my life as it has been lived than the thinnest slice of it from a few pages all carefully edited to proffer only the hint of what I’ve done and am capable of.
You react as if I’m not speaking English, when it’s one of only two I can speak with any fluency (and the second one is a religious one that’s dying out).
Well, I am.
And if my likely unusual mix of the academic and colloquial, the familiar and the new is hard for you, then perhaps the fault is not mine for your lack of understanding, but yours. Or perhaps it lies with both of us. Or some other variant therein.
Pedantic? Quite likely. I’m not so much into the whole formalism aspect, but certainly into the precision part. And, admittedly, I write with a desire to teach others something — so yeah, given that’s its source and where it comes from, absolutely likely. Even without the whole formality thing.
But you don’/t mean it that way, of course. You mean it as a pejorative (an attack on me as a person), a way of saying I come across as condescending. Which would be rather silly if you ever met me — you’d find that it’s not even close to the way I am.
I’m far worse, lol.
As for bully, well, you aren’t the first one to call me such, nor will you be the last.
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7 Responses to “Response to AnnaRose”
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Hey Dyss.
I like this post. Thank you for taking the time. Its late now and I really would like to spend some time with this. I think we can work with this.
Just for starters I agree with about 1/2 of what you come up with, and yes, I really don’t know you beyond what you write here. Nevertheless i do see you as highly intelligent, reasonably articulate, (if you can slow it down and keep it below a graduate level) and interesting if somewhat outspoken person.
(Dyss): “Do you have an issue with abstract thought?”
Gee haven’t given that much (abstract) thought. Sounds kinda left brain to me, you know, like math. Or is it right brain. Can’t really remember and don’t really give a hoot.
(Dyss): “Like all of us, you are a product of your times, the sum total of all your varied experiences and the way the world was when you grew up.”
Yes well, that is kind of a “No-Brainer”. I am impressed though, with your keen sense of the obvious.
(Dyss): “That is reflected in your desperate desire to ignore the simple fact that you are not normal, and never will be.”
Oh No. Now this one you got completely 180′ A-WRONG! I KNOW that I am not normal. I am proud of that fact and love and flourish beyond the 3rd sigma. I just don’t flaunt it. I do TRY to walk quietly and carry a big stick.
(Dyss): “And you do that because of the times in which you were raised — a time of great conformity, a time when anything that was different was frowned on, a time when propaganda was spoonfed to you from early childhood about the proper and the right, in the name of false patriotism and economic growth.”
Wrong again……I figured out real early on that all that ,was just as you call it, “propaganda” and in short, BS.
(Dyss): “You can help that, but to do so would require you to do something you resist doing, constantly, predictably, with fervor and fire.”
NO..that is YOUR value system. I choose to simply recognized it for what it is, “propaganda”, and just ignore it.
(Dyss): “Fucking a penis is worship of one if you use it as the essentialist measure of what defines sex.”
WRONG AGAIN. You see here is where 40 years of experience makes just a tad bit of difference. I don’t use a penis for anything. I enjoy my lover’s penis as a source of pleasure. It really is not rocket science. Even mice can do it. Its fundamental, its simple, its visceral, its FUN!
YOU choose to “…use it as the essentialist measure of what defines sex.”. Feel free. Just don’t be laying all that fancy “essentialist” bullcrap on me.
(Dyss): “If the penis wasn’t at the center of how you function, you wouldn’t have suffered so greatly from incongruence or dysphoria or just flat out transsexualism to the point where you had to get the surgery. And if that strikes you as somehow saying that I suffer from the same thing here, then you are right.”
Dyss, Dyss. I hear you. But just listen to what you are saying. Try getting that existentialist vs.essense drivel out of the way of what you are trying to say. You and I were both born with a male Physiogomy. Yes we both got external plumbing. I figured out early that “this just ain’t right”. I was lucky, I prayed for and got a miracle. Am I eternally grateful? You had better HONG KONG BELIEVE THAT I AM!
Do i think that I am special, or better than you? Please! Spare me! OF COURSE NOT! I was just lucky. Just like we were both lucky to have been born into this day and age in this country as opposed to say Ethiopea, or Bangla Desh.
Trust me. If you need/want your surgery to feel complete, the drop everything and devote yourself 100% to getting what you want/need. If you don’t then just be happy and keep on doing what you are doing. However, I will question your claim to transsexuality because in MY book and MY book only, (well OK fine, maybe there are some other “anti-trans trans folks” (read REAL CTS’s) that might agree with me), IT IS THAT UNRELENTING, OVER RIDING, IRRESISTABLE NEED/DRIVE/OBSESSION, with getting the plumbing fixed that defines a transsexual.
And THAT is where the line is drawn in the sand. If you want to fudge around then you don’t meet the standard definition of transsexual. To put it another way it would be like me, a Dutch/Spanish woman claiming to be Black and demanding that I be granted minority status because I claimed/believed and was convinced I was black. Maybe in your world, but not mine.
Anyway.I need some sleep. I’llllllbe BAAACk.
Thank you for the opportunity to spew forth.
Anne
You are quite welcome.
As a note, you still missed the meaning of worship. Overly focused on the essentialist.
And you do use an essentialist measure. It’s not bullcrap, either.
You surprise me. You differ strongly from your compatriots. The rest of them talk about being normal as if it’s some kind of Holy Grail. I shall have to give you a bit more thought then. I also apologize.
And you still have to deal with the questions you were asked in the other thread. For a simpler understanding: the definitions you gave have no real real value since they are not definitions.
Plus, they didn’t address the questions I asked.
If you are going to have a discussion with me, you have to have a discussion.
works for me….:)
I am trying…..see..,.I even googled up “essentialist.”
Main Entry: es·sen·tial·ism
Pronunciation: \-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1927
1 : an educational theory that ideas and skills basic to a culture should be taught to all alike by time-tested methods — compare progressivism
2 : a philosophical theory ascribing ultimate reality to essence embodied in a thing perceptible to the senses — compare nominalism
3 : the practice of regarding something (as a presumed human trait) as having innate existence or universal validity rather than as being a social, ideological, or intellectual construct
Nope
A penis is still for fucking
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described. In this view, it follows that terms or words should have a single definition and meaning.[1]
In simple terms, essentialism is a generalization stating that certain properties possessed by a group (e.g. people, things, ideas) are universal, and not dependent on context. For example, the essentialist statement ‘all human beings are mortal’.
Yep…I penis is for fucking, especially a HARD one….:)
Ya see Dyss. you keep trying to squeeze me into this little box you seem to like so much. Well “darlin’”, I don’t “do” boxes.
Seems to me, you just muddy the waters by injecting all these “exisitentialist” concepts to confuse and distract from the simple issues at hand. You can wiggle you can wag but guys still got ‘em and girls DONT!
Just admit it it. That is just the way it is for,, (your number)., 97’6% of people. THe other 2.4% ? Well, they are diffent. So whats wrong with that?. So are people with red hair, or people with IQ’s better that 140 or 150.
Where’s the beef?
Because some of that 2% are men and some are women and you are saying that they can’t be such.
And I am saying that’s wrong.
You keep talking about the rest. I’m not. I’;m only talking about the exceptions, Anna.
Transsexuals are part of the rest. Some of whom are women with penises.
You reduce it to penis, and you will always be making a statement that has no logical reality.
existentialism is not something that can be readily dealt with in a single definition, Anna.
Ah well.
When, if ever, you really want to have a discussion, answer the questions I asked.
Without jumping and evasion like you’ve done here, without trying to escape the thoughts, without bouncing into some silly absurdity.
Right now, like your compatriots, you don’t want to look at the heart of the matter.
You want to play, which is fine. But I don’t see human rights and dignity as toys or baubles or fun little mind games.
You said I should do everything I can to get my surgery earlier, repeating the little mantra that always comes out at the end.
Well, did it ever occur to you that I am?
That this is part of it?
I’ve got some things to take care of. I’ll check email and so forth, but I’m tired of the game — you dance in and and run away.
Leigh’s snarky, like me, but she at least has a clue how to hold a discourse.
Dyss: “Because some of that 2% are men and some are women and you are saying that they can’t be such.”
Nope did not say that. stop putting words in my mouth.
You want to talk about silly absurdities…try this…The Rule of Screwing by Dyss