various commenters #transphobia

various commenters #transphobia ovarit.com

( jvsmine )
let me explain this.

trans people read Harry Potter and feel that they are special, like Tom Riddle.

NORMAL people read it and feel like Harry, like they found their community, like they're not special or a freak at all, in fact they're painfully average.

trans people think they are Harry. they think they are special because marked as the Chosen One etc etc but this is not how Harry felt about that. TOM RIDDLE felt special, singled out. trans people are either just so fucking stupid, or so fucking deep into playing pretend that they don't realize this. the trans are Voldemort. always have been.

( Spencer_Shayy )
😂 especially because I've seen them complain about Voldemort being "deadnamed" when Dumbledore called him Tom.

( RusticTroglodyte )
The Deatheaters are the perfect parallel to trans ideology. It's RIGHT THERE and they really don't get it. They don't see it and it's baffling to me

( BeachBleach )
Sometimes I see TiMs posting with some actual self-awareness of how ridiculous the whole attempt to trans is, and they give up because they realize they will never look like a tiny feminine girl. If they are lucky they will stop the hormones and stop the pretending and realize they are men. Of course they hate their bodies and are pursuing an impossible dream, which will probably eventually kill them through drugs and surgery.

The whole concept of "going through the wrong puberty" is horrific to me.

17 comments

No, sane people read Harry Potter and see that transphobes are like Voldy’ Deatheaters, bigoted & murderous conservative assholes who wish to keep their own “kind” pure and on top.

How in the actual Hell you can compare transfolk to a fantasy Hitler is beyond me…

TERFs read dystopian fiction and identify with the villains.

“NORMAL people read it and feel like Harry, like they found their community, like they're not special or a freak at all, in fact they're painfully average.”
Harry is Painfully Average?
Harry went almost instantly from the family’s butt-boy to a fucking wizard. More like Luke Skywalker than anything else. You have magic powers, your parents had magic powers, there’s an entire world you never knew about, and by the way, you’re pretty much automatically in the resistance.
I’m glad you found a book with a character you could identify with, but you’re a TERF. Your reaction to this book is NOT that of a NORMAL person.

Lol harry is not average, he's the boy who lived and exceptionally talented as a wizard, because of course he is as the protagonist?!

But whatever, Terfs can't read, not even something written by one of their friends. Not that R is any better about her own writings these days.

What a shitshow on all fronts.

If you read Harry Potter and thought he wasn't special in the wizard world, you really didn't read what I read. The books constantly talked about how special Harry was

That explanation showed OP didn't understand situation

trans people read Harry Potter and feel that they are special, like Tom Riddle.
NORMAL people read it and feel like Harry, like they found their community, like they're not special or a freak at all, in fact they're painfully average.

But trans people HAVE found their community where they are not special or a freak.

the trans are Voldemort. always have been.

I highly doubt Rowling's awareness of transgender extends that far back. And yes, she may have claimed that it was her intention, but considering how infamous for retcons and continuity errors* she has become in recent years, I would not afford claims made by the JKR of today all that much credits towards carrying special insight into the writing of the original Harry Potter series.

*and no, I don't mean that Hermione Race Manufactroversy

PS:

trans people think they are Harry. they think they are special because marked as the Chosen One etc etc but this is not how Harry felt about that. TOM RIDDLE felt special, singled out. trans people are either just so fucking stupid, or so fucking deep into playing pretend that they don't realize this. the trans are Voldemort. always have been.

Just having some parallels with an evil person does not mean that you are just like said evil person. As pointed out in Chamber of Secrets.

Never mind that Muggles can be said to stand in for people consistently (and probably willfully) blind to one’s alleged specialness/splendor. It’s not so much Harry finding his normal as him finding his rightful aristocracy. The Weasleys are even basically Impoverished Patricians (i.e. their at-least-comparative penury is supposed to be understood as a temporary setback, naught else).

What @KeithInc and @fishtank said, but also…

( jvsmine )
let me explain this.
trans people read Harry Potter and feel that they are special, like Tom Riddle.
NORMAL people read it and feel like Harry, like they found their community, like they're not special or a freak at all, in fact they're painfully average.

And this, this right here, excellently encapsulates the typical TERF worldview.

From what I’ve seen, GCs tend to lionize and aspire towards normalcy. Being unremarkable, fitting in… and yes, conformity.

Being ‘normal’, in this view, is good and desirable. That’s what they want, and what they think everyone else should aspire to as well.
Being abnormal, ‘special’ or standing out is undesirable, and equivalent to being a ‘freak’.

That, I’d say, is the essence of actual conservatism. Not in the sense of being reactionary, but quite simply conservative.
Don’t rock the boat. Be normal, don’t stand out. Conform, be professional, don’t break social harmony.

Being “NORMAL” and “painfully average” is good; being “special or a freak” is bad. Belonging to a community of average people is good; standing out is bad.

But here’s the thing.
An oft-stated TERF goal is “abolishing gender”.
What does that mean, and why would we even want to do that?

For me, abolishing gender — as in, ending gender norms and stereotypes as well as sexism — is all about breaking the bondage of social enforcement. It’s about freedom from being boxed into a set of oppressive norms and assumptions, and — crucially! — about the freedom to be you.

TERFs often speak of this “freedom to be yourself”. To them, it means renouncing our transness and accepting the bounds of our biological sex and all that entails — including social aspects (e.g. you must use pronouns in line with your natal sex, and stay out of female spaces if you’re ‘male’).

They say it’s okay to be gender non-conforming; but is it, really? When you consider it in the context of normalcy and averageness being good and desirable, and ‘freakishness’ being a bad thing?

The problem is that gender non-conformity is by definition non-conforming. In the current societies, such people are inevitably seen as “special” and “freaks”. They are not average. They do not fit into ‘polite society’ and the prevailing norms of the mainstream community of people.

TERFs might say: Gender isn’t real.
But… if it’s not real, then why is there a need for it to be abolished?
Just because something is a social construct doesn’t make it “not real”; it exists as a social force, it influences the actions of people, it is treated as real which has real consequences… hence, gender is real. Because gender norms and stereotypes exist as a social reality, and most people follow them to some extent.

To be non-conforming… is to be a freak.

But I maintain that being ‘special’ or a ‘freak’ is NOT a bad thing!

For me, a gender abolition that is worth pursuing would be an aim to stop the enforcement of norms — that includes stopping the enforcement of normality.
It is the goal to enable us all to be the special people we are. To make it okay for ALL of us to be freaks, if that’s who we are or want to be.

Every human being is unique.
We are not ants or bees. We are people.

You want to abolish gender norms and stereotypes as a social enforcement mechanism oppressing women? Guess what, so do I — as an ‘AGP TIM’ according to your GC criteria.

I want every woman — and man, and enby — to be able to be themselves. To express who they are, including their inner weirdness. To be judged by who they are, not what they are by accident of birth.
Not to make them conform, be normal or average. Not to push them into a different herd.
Yes, they can be normal — if that’s what they truly want and are comfortable with. But they don’t have to be.

TERFs want normalcy. In their hearts, most of them seem to be conformists, going by what they say — with the sole exception that they don’t want to have to suffer for it.
But they only truly want to ‘abolish gender’ and end enforcement mechanisms that specifically target themselves and only themselves — they don’t really want to end them for everyone.
Instead, they’re glad to keep the enforcement mechanisms they like; they just perform a sleight of hand by which they re-christen certain gender norms and stereotypes into ‘sex realities’ — thus making them actually good and desirable, protective of women instead of oppressive towards them.

Many GCs/TERFs just want to be equal members of the herd.
But I… I want us to be able to choose not to be part of the herd, and not get punished or shunned for it. Perhaps there shouldn’t even be a herd at all, hmm?

In conclusion: You’re a human being. You ARE special. Don’t drown yourself into the crowd, don’t be a drone — instead, be you, unapologetically. Be a freak, be abnormal, break the norms, let your inner self shine!

If enabling that is not a goal of your so-called liberation, then what even is the point?

( BeachBleach )
Sometimes I see TiMs posting with some actual self-awareness of how ridiculous the whole attempt to trans is, and they give up because they realize they will never look like a tiny feminine girl.

News flash — trans people have moments of vulnerability and don’t always deal with personal hardship ideally! Such a wonder.

But of course, you take that as some sort of moment of awareness that we’re all living a lie, which… no. When things are hard, when the world is often hostile, people have moments of self-doubt and despair. It’s normal. But that doesn’t mean that they’re living a lie or going to ‘desist’. It only means that times are hard and people are finding it difficult to cope at the moment.

If they are lucky they will stop the hormones and stop the pretending and realize they are men.

Keep dreaming, hun. I’m no man, and my body is less male with every passing day. I know what I am, and your constant repetition of the TERF declarations of faith (like “TIMs are men living a lie!”) won’t convince me of anything.

Of course they hate their bodies and are pursuing an impossible dream, which will probably eventually kill them through drugs and surgery.

Maybe it kills me someday, maybe not. Either way, I’m well aware of the risks and accept them.

But you know what? I actually don’t hate my body.

Yes, I have gender dysphoria. Yes, I wish my body was different, and that I could change it to be fully female. Yes, I’m doing what I can with hormone therapy.

There are parts of my body that I’m uncomfortable with, and that I really would like to change. But I don’t hate them.

I do have an impossible dream — being fully female in body — but I am and always have been aware that it’s just an unattainable dream. Instead, as I said, I do what I can, making some of the changes that are possible.
It’ll have to do — and probably will, given how much I feel better about my body already, after only 7 months of HRT.
It’ll never be ideal, but it just may be good enough.

And I am far from unique in that among my fellow transfolk.

The whole concept of "going through the wrong puberty" is horrific to me.

Oh, I very much agree — just not in the way you meant it.

Those who play “Hogwarts Legacy” identify Sirona Ryan. They don’t have a problem with this character.

Ovashits are horrified by this.

Isn't Longbottom the one to really aspire to. He went from being the but of all jokes to being a strong and powerful wizard, and a resistance leader on top of that.

trans people read Harry Potter and feel that they are special, like Tom Riddle

I don’t think there’s much peole identifying with Riddle. I mean, even Snape has more supporters!

@Vgal:
But here’s the thing. An oft-stated TERF goal is “abolishing gender”. What does that mean, and why would we even want to do that?

During second-wave feminism, some of the radfem schools of thought gravitated around the idea that people don’t inherently have genders, just sexes, and aside from purely reproductive aspects the sexes are just as superficial as eye color. Gender is a set of attitudes, behaviors, and roles forced on people via socialization. There’s no such thing as male or female nature, we’re all just people.

Trans and nonbinary people had no place in this. It was common in those circles to believe that such people were dangerously delusional at best, and a weapon created by the patriarchy to enforce gender norms and discredit feminism at worst. The latter being ironic given how most anti-feminists considered trans people to be a weapon created by feminists to undermine gender norms. This is the origin of the term “TERF”. (These radfems didn’t actually create this term, it was an outsider label created by pro-trans feminists, though there was a relatively brief period when some of the younger TERFs embraced it proudly.)

They were the “gender abolitionists” of their day (mainly the late 1980s through the early 2000s, though the general idea dated back to at least the 1970s and some traces of it continued up until around 2010 or so), and their idea of “abolishing gender” meant abolishing gender roles and gendered socialization. Their common attitude of “trans isn’t real, you can just be gender non-conforming” was mostly sincere but misguided. But today, those people are virtually nonexistent. “TERF” hasn’t been an accurate description for most of the people commonly labeled as such by the time the general public became aware of that label, and there’s a reason why the less-used “GCF” (Gender-Critical Feminist) label dropped the F. The tiny number of present-day gender abolitionists come from a radically different and less problematic mindset, almost entirely unrelated to the TERF origins of the concept.

To the limited extent that present-day TERFs/GCs talk about “abolishing gender”, they’re actually talking about something entirely different: embracing bioessentialism. That we should abolish the idea that gender is a thing which exists separately from sex. That people’s “essential natures” are largely sex-based and that this should be embraced, but also that men’s essential natures are so dangerous to women that women need special protection, exclusion privileges being the most important. That this is *so* important, that everyone’s “essential natures” need to be clearly and easily identifiable to anyone else. That if there truly are exceptions (which some of them either don’t believe in or have doubts about), those exceptions need to be sacrificed for the greater good of protecting “true women”.

TL;DR some context about how/why TERFs/GCs got associated with “abolishing gender” and what they currently mean by it.

@Zinnia #206838

My question there was rhetorical, but thank you for the response neverthless, I appreciate it :)

Though I’d disagree with one thing, based on what I’ve seen of present-day TERFs (the GCs who do identify as radical feminists):

They were the “gender abolitionists” of their day (mainly the late 1980s through the early 2000s, though the general idea dated back to at least the 1970s and some traces of it continued up until around 2010 or so), and their idea of “abolishing gender” meant abolishing gender roles and gendered socialization. Their common attitude of “trans isn’t real, you can just be gender non-conforming” was mostly sincere but misguided. But today, those people are virtually nonexistent.

Actually, I think people who see things that way very much still exist — they are none other than TERFs (the trans-exclusionary radical feminist core of the gender-critical movement). They still largely see things that way, and sincerely so.

I agree with the rest of what you said, though.

I’m not entirely convinced that most of those people aren’t just appropriating older ideas (including, in some cases, beliefs they themselves might have held) for tradcon and/or neo-nazi purposes and aren’t actually sincere, but I’ll admit that I could be wrong about that.

@Zinnia #206842

Well, I’m rather certain that most (nearly all?) of Ovarit and similar places don’t consist of neo-Nazis or tradcons.

As I specified in my previous post, I was referring to the actual TERF core of the GC movement, not the conservatives who attached themselves to it (opportunistically or otherwise).