So, for those who are unaware, TN representative stated (twice) his personal decision to commit assault on a trans woman should she ever use the same dressing room as his wife or daughters or granddaughters.
FLOYD: I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.
Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.
In case the above wasn’t clear enough, he said it again on the news.
Now, that’s pretty clear to me. Direct, honest, forthright.
Also scared out of his mind, but hey, there it is.
Well, as ya’ll know, I love a good challenge.
So, to Mr. Floyd, and I use the honorific there with extreme sarcasm, I say bring it.
But, since he is a liar and a coward, I know he won’t.
The picture that accompanies this website there on the right was taken in May of 08 or 09. I’ve forgotten which. I am willing to test his ability to write checks his body can’t cash, and allow him the opportunity to attempt to stomp a mudhole in this one little girl.
Honestly, in part because I will sue his ass into the earth after he tries, but also because people like that really have no fucking clue about who they is fucking with.
You see, he is a liar because he *won’t* do that. He talks a good game, but he’s a lying sack of shit who can’t do what he says he will do because he really will get his ass handed to him and I’m pretty sure he knows it.
He’s also a coward, because he knows that he can say that, and never have to actually follow through.
So, here’s the thing.
I need help. I need to know where his wife and daughters and granddaughters shop. I need to know when they do it, where they do it, and all the rest, and then I need help flying out to TN so that I can in place to use a dressing room.
Now, this might sound odd, but let’s look at a few things, shall we.
I am notoriously “out”. I am vocal, and while I seriously lack the physical capabilities I once had and have at best a tenth of this over the hill ancient dickweed’s testosterone, I can not only take him, but I can take anything he dishes out and not have to take him.
The only birth certificate one can pull up on record for me, is my AZ birth cert which although names are partially obscured, meets the requirements of his pet little attempt at becoming the latest in a long line of laughingstocks.
I am consistently informed that I have this idiocy called “passing privilege”. Privilege it is, mind you — the idiocy is in calling it “passing”.
So I am pretty much of the opinion that not only would he have to face his own preconceptions in dealing with me, but that he’d also have to do so in a public, career ending manner that would involve him having to either beat up a girl or be a chickenshit.
Insert the sound of hens clucking here for what the end result would be.
Indeed, I’m even willing to do this in his offices, anywhere he frequents (even the most horribly macho old fart club), and so forth.
Because *everyone* with half a brain knows he’s simply trying to scare trans people.
And folks who know me know that I really get irked when people do that.
SO yes, Mr. Floyd, let’s do this. People who know me know that I’m going to back down — give me the opportunity, and I will do exactly this:
Show up at a store where your wife, daughters, or granddaughters are, and use the dressing rooms at the same time they do — as well as the restrooms.
All by my little lonesome Army veteran self.
You, of course, will have to show up with something significantly more threatening than your own fat assed, ignorant, cowardly little wussy self.
Come on, folks. This guy is a public person, and trans people are enormously creative, gifted, and capable in ways that most of us aren’t even aware of.
Odd thing is, this law is totally the perfect test of the fight against the bathroom bill — it’s active instead of passive, and that’s the mistake he’s made that the wiser and more educated heads that merely spout off *against* bills (passive fighting) understand.
We need more people like him to really and truly go after us.
It turns the tide in the fight.
So yes, Mr Floyd, bring it. Let’s do this.
I’m ready.
-- Download Mr. Floyd, Let's Do This. as PDF --
Last night, I drafted an email to Robert Floyd that read,
“Mr. Floyd,
You sir are an ignorant bigot, the likes of which have long disgraced the image of the American south and the state of Tennessee. When will your pathetic, inbred, hillbilly state muster enough intelligence to recognize that there are all kinds of people in this world, and they are all American citizens. It’s not just white, protestant, heterosexual men who deserve rights and equality in this country. If you can’t figure that out, then do the people of Tennessee a favor and leave the legislature, go home to your tar paper shack, eat your roadkill opossum, and feel right smart in your pointy-top robe.”
I didn’t send it. I might have played with it more and gone on a bit further if I had sent it, but it was at that point in my writing that both the lateness of the hour and the futility in proceeding became clear. I didn’t send it because someone else wrote this:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
The email I drafted was entirely self-gratifying, and it felt good writing it. It may have even have felt good sending it if I clicked send and done so. However, apart from my soothing ego rush of linguistic revenge, what would have been gained? It would have pissed him off and ever deepened his commitment to wipe the floor with those freaks like me. The right proper ego wounding I would have inflicted would have added another layer to the hardened defenses protecting his opinions from the truth about transpeople, and would have taken the cause of preventing this injustice that much further out of reach. It would be a backfire. My time and energy invested in a immediately self-gratifying backfire. Why bother? Surely in my journey I have learned enough and developed enough maturity to know better.
I’ve known you and read enough of your writing over the years Toni to know that you believe that if you express anger, those at whom you are angry will drop what they are doing and focus all attention on finding out exactly what it is they have to do to end the horror of your rage. The reality is that the world and the people in it do not react to your anger they way you want them to react. Your anger is only truly of importance to one person on the face of this earth: you. To everyone else, it is someplace between annoying and amusing. Those who are annoyed by it, typically the people you want to annoy, see it as justification for doing even more of what it was that pissed you off. After all, you’ve now pissed them off, and in the course of doing so enlightened them on exactly how they can piss you off in return. Those who are amused by it may get a brief chuckle and having been entertained may even come back for more, but they probably didn’t need to be convinced of the validity of your position going in.
So why do you write? Are you doing it to entertain yourself, are you doing it to entertain others, or are you doing it to make positive change in this world? You’re doing the first two OK, but I don’t see where this makes progress on the last. You are exactly the kind of person Floyd doesn’t want in a restroom with his wife and daughters. How is this going to convince him he’s wrong?
Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King.
Erica
I am not out to change his mind.
I operate on the basis of the only people who can change a person’s mind are themselves, and this is a person who is already fundamentally beyond reach and education.
I am out to embarrass him, to demonstrate to *other people* the aspect that his actions, words, and efforts are not acceptable for a person in a position of power, to show that he is, in fact, a liar and a coward.
I agree — I am precisely the kind of person that embodies pretty much everything he wants to stop from being in dressing rooms with his wife or daughters or granddaughters.
To be that sort of person, I merely had to be trans.
All the rest of the information about me is irrelevant to him. My opinions, my thoughts, and so forth.
Which makes you exactly the sort of person he doesn’t want there, as well. He even makes that pretty clear, several times.
As for anger, do not make the mistake of presuming that cuss words equate with anger.
My original response to this bill was “well, guess I won’t be traveling to TN”. This response is not to the bill, however. This response is to the threat he has made.
And with that in mind, I’ll note that standing up to threats — eloquence notwithstanding — is essential in making a positive change.
Erica,
Sometimes the only thing an ignorant bully understands and needs to have happen to them in order to get the message to leave you alone when you’ve politely asked them to do so is get punched in the mouth.
And exactly how is it that you intend to punch him in the mouth without proving his point to the rest of the Tennessee legislature that trans women are in reality aggressive, hostile, violent men pretending to be women and representing a threat to their wives and daughters?
Toni’s essay, for example, is extremely masculine and aggressive in tone, makes very clear insinuations of physical violence, and specifically wants to carry out that violence in a women’s restroom. She references being an Army veteran, clearly tries to goad him into a physical fight with name calling, and tells him to “bring it”. This man is the Speaker of the Tennessee House. Toni is an obscure, unemployed transwoman. Who seriously carries a bigger stick here? Who seriously has the power to punch the other in the mouth? Who seriously is the Tennessee legislature going to find more credible? How does this not validate most of what he says in that video? How is this not handing this man the ammunition he needs to use against us?
Maybe you cant change his mind, but that doesn’t mean you have to make it easy for him to change the mind of others. It doesn’t mean you have to steel his resolve to make passing this bill his top legislative priority above all else. I do understand the value of shaming, but for it to work, an impartial observer must see the shamer as being more credible and less shameful than the shamee. This essay has the opposite effect. Those of us in the trans community see the words of Robert Floyd as bigoted and hateful, but to people who don’t know us and have been told these kind of things their entire lives, he sounds like the calm rational voice, and Toni sounds like the violent threat he’s been warning them about. We have to be the more credible voice. We have to be the more reasonable party. We have to be the ones threatened and not the ones threatening. We have to be the ones confronted with an unreasonable problem, and not the ones creating a problem to be solved.
At what point do I say I will punch him in the mouth?
You describe my post as masculine in tone. Can you please describe how you achieved that particular description?
You are incorrect regarding carrying out any violence in a women’s restroom.
I state I am giving him the opportunity to stomp me. That is done through dressing rooms. That is done by making sure he is aware that I am sharing a dressing room.
After that, it is up to him. After that all I need to do is let him engage in physical violence on me, and I am most certain that he will not do so, and, should he actually be able to try, that I will not be giving him that joy.
The basis of your argument is a tone argument, supported by a sexist notion that women do not stand up for themselves.
His resolve is already steeled. He has made threats, in public, and unless someone stands up to him, it gives those people the cover to vote for the bill, whereas his having to actually follow through with assault on a woman will not give such cover, no matter how aggressive that woman may be.
Let them see me as that threat. Let them make me the demon they desire. All the better for when he fails to follow through, and this fear is revealed for what it is: ignorance in disguise.
You suggested I should look to MLK, possibly knowing the trigger that has for me.
It is my turn, now, to have you look more closely at his work, at what he extolled, and step back from the leap of assumption you have made here and see that standing before such a threat ready to receive it is essential in such nonviolence actions, being there, as yourself, ready to take what is tossed at you, even as those around you condemn such.
Because this is where X and King meet, Erica, and it takes both in this day and age.
More in the next post on the blog. You have raised some interesting points that are worth examining closer.
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good for toy Toni! i made a video that i will be sending directly to his ofice, where i challenge him to a formally-sanctioned fight, in a boxing ring! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VKbKlYwmXY let’s keep up the fight (literally if need be) against bigotry!
Check the comment chain Toni. I wasn’t responding to you. I was responding to Transgriot, who specifically referenced punching him in the mouth. I wasn’t talking to you.
No, I don’t know MLK to be a particularly significant trigger for you. I’ve known you longer than literally anyone else in the trans community, and I’ve not known you to talk much about MLK. As far as I know, he’s a far more significant person to me than he is to you.
Is his resolve steeled? Is that what you believe? Do you really think that nothing is going to sway him from his steadfast devotion to seeing this bill through to becoming law? That’s where you are coming from in all this? An interesting position to take considering that he withdrew the bill on Thursday. This issue is still reverberating around the transpolitical echo chamber, but it is for the moment a moot point. Our best hope is to keep it that way. Maybe you shouldn’t go on tickling the dragon’s tail.
http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB2279&ga=107
Claim it’s otherwise all you want, but I do know a masculine tone when I hear one.
I am still curious to know what makes you hear one in written words. That is, what it is that you identify as masculine, in order to justify that assertion, outside of your own opinion.
I do claim it isn’t masculine in tone, predominantly because such a claim requires the same degree of sexism as describing something as feminine in tone. Tone is genderless.
The bill pulled was the senate version introduced by Bo Watson, not Floyd’s house version. Check your link closely. SB2282 was withdrawn(right hand column), HB2279 is still active. And his comments come after The senate withdrawal.
I apologize, I thought you were referencing me punching someone.
Yes, his resolve is steeled. Insofar as getting the bill passed. I suspect you underestimate how strongly he feels about such.
“I am still curious to know what makes you hear one in written words. That is, what it is that you identify as masculine, in order to justify that assertion, outside of your own opinion.”
No. You need to learn that people do not automatically perceive your writing the way you want it to be perceived. You need to learn that it is incumbent upon you as the writer to try to produce a favorable response in the reader, and not the reader’s job to perceive you as you intended. I’ve told you with clarity my perception of your writing. If you didn’t intend for it to be perceived that way, then you have failed as a writer. Go back and try again. I will tell you when you come up with something that in the perception of this reader discredits Floyd’s claim that transwomen are really men, potentially aggressive or even violent men, pretending to be women.
I stand corrected about the state of the bill. Floyd did not withdraw his version of the bill in the House, but rather his partner in the Senate withdrew the bill from the other house. However, there is debate if as a practical matter a bill has any prospect of passing the the absence of a companion bill in both houses. This writer with the Tennessee Equality Project feels that it cannot: http://grand-divisions.blogspot.com/2012/01/police-potty-bill-flushed.html. However, the TN legislative process customarily has companion bills proposed in both houses, but it does not specifically rule out progress without one: http://www.capitol.tn.gov/about/billtolaw.html. It does appear to be infrequent enough that their defined process becomes vague on how a bill proceeds when there is no companion bill. So the question remains open if the bill having been withdrawn in the Senate effective kills it or if it has a chance originating in one house alone. If the Speaker of the House cannot get a single Senate member to back him up, it speaks volumes about the kind of reception the bill will receive when it gets there. He still has until the 26th to start spending his political capital and get some other member of the Senate to propose it. All he needs to do is convince one Senator that there really is a problem to be solved.
I am aware that people do not automatically perceive my writing the way I want it to be perceived. So that lesson is already learned, and not needed. Alternatively, there is the chance that I was seeking to have such perceived in a certain way, and I have succeeded, but I am looking to provoke a response to something unrelated to this in questioning your interpretation thereof.
It is not, however, incumbent on me, as a writer, to induce a favorable response in the reader if that is not my goal. That is a matter of personal opinion, and irrelevant to the question asked (as is the prior assertion of a lesson).
I again ask you to identify what it is that you identify as masculine — and I assert that you are making defensive aversions in order to avoid answering a reasonable and direct question pertinent to your criticism.
My intent on how it was to be perceived is irrelevant — and, indeed, I have not made any assertions on how it is to be perceived save that I did not speak of direct threats of violence against him (those are inferences of yours, not mine, and, thusly, not my issue). The question pertains to your perceptions, not mine, and, therefore, these are non-sequiturs (strawmen).
The point at hand is your assertion that my writing in the post is masculine. I have, at most, asserted it is neither masculine
nor
feminine, and pointed out that your assertion is most likely relying on culturally imposed expectations of gender performance which I generally oppose as being oppressive, ciscentric and sexist in their application and function.
Lastly, I see no reason to discredit a claim as already thoroughly debunked as Floyd’s claim in writing when the action I am proposing will take care of that rather graphically, nor do I see how attempting to do so does anything regarding the threat that is involved here, which is the subject of this post, not the bill.
While the threat and the bill are linked, they are still two distinct issues (a threat of stomping and a bill).
Oh please. You’ve been on this journey long enough to know quite well those things that differentiate masculinity from femininity. It is absurd for any transperson to suggest that there is no difference between masculinity and femininity. If there were no difference, none of us would do what we do. None of us would have committed our lives the way we have. If it sexist to suggest that there is a difference between masculinity and femininity, then all transpeople are the most incredibly sexist people in the history of the earth. Sexism is saying one sex is better or more deserving than another, not one sex is different from another. We build our lives around the differences between masculinity and femininity and the deeply held belief that such differences matter, and cannot be simply ignored for reasons of social expectation or practical convenience. Coming from someone like yourself, your complaints ring hollow.
Those differences are not limited to genitalia. Those differences are not limited to secondary sex characteristics. Those differences are not limited to clothes or hair or nails. They are not limited to names or markers. They are not limited to pitch or resonance of voice. There are differences between gender in thought, approach, attitude, and reaction. There are differences in emotion, aggression, passivity, relation, and attraction. Just as you can form perceptions about masculinity and femininity through mannerism and movement, you can form perceptions in speech, conversation, choice of words, and yes, most certainly, the tone taken. You can perceive gender in writing every bit as much as you can perceive gender in deportment, and I have seen you discuss and present methods for feminizing deportment. You know what I mean.
I perceive masculinity in this piece as much as I perceive masculinity in a swagger, a nose flaring snarl, or a clenched fist at the end of muscular arm and shoulders. You don’t change my perceptions with accusations of sexism for having had it.
@Erica: “You need to learn…” “You need to learn…”
To me, the tone of this lecture seems stridently masculine.
Volunteering to risk being beaten up, as Toni is doing?
Not so much.
“Masculine in tone,” yes? you throw that around like a sexist slur Erica. The right of self-defense is not conceded nor precluded those who are directly threatened.
Unrelated to everything else:
If you leave a comment, please be patient. I have to approve all comments, and I will do so, but I am not always sitting here on the site and have to look for it.
My standard comment policy is in place otherwise. Criticism is good, and I do think about everything and I only take to heart certain nasty comments that people who generally don’t like me are going to leave.
I rarely get upset by good commentary, and I do enjoy a bit of back and forth.