Men behaving badly
About a week ago "comic" Lil Duval was asked on the radio program The Breakfast Club what he'd do if he found out a woman he had a relationship with was transgender.
This might sound messed up, and I don’t care. She dying. I can’t deal with that.
--Lil Duval
When cohost Charlamagne Tha God told him "you can’t go around killing transgenders," he did not back down:
If one did that to me and they didn’t tell me, I’m going to be so mad I’m probably going to want to kill them.
In a year that is stacking up to be among the most deadly for transgender people in the U.S., Duval’s comments rang of the “panic defense” used in court by those who kill LGBTQ people to justify their violence. As states introduce legislation to push trans people out of public life, the remarks resembled the rhetoric employed by the Christian right to cut off trans people’s access to bathrooms. And, for their part, DJ Envy and Charlamagne demonstrated how the media “cosigns” transphobia when they allow these narratives to go unchecked, according to Ashlee Marie Preston, the editor in chief of Wear Your Voice.
[The comments] reinforced the criminalization of transgender women by communicating the lie that we're all deceptive sexual predators who trick men into having sex with us
--Preston
On Wednesday Duggar family Member Derick Dillard a 28-year-old adult attacked 16-year-old Jazz Jennings on Twitter. Apparently the husband of JIll Duggar was pissed that Jennings show replaced the Duggars on TLC, until his wife's new series Counting On was picked up. Upon seeing an advert for I am Jazz, Dillard became a twit:
What an oxymoron... a "reality" show which follows a non-reality. "Transgender" is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it's ordained by God.
There was pushback:
Is it necessary for a grown man to throw shade at a teenage girl?
--Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller
I want to be clear. I have nothing against him. I only have issue with the words and definitions being propagated here.
--Dillard
That clearly was not going to quell the fire.
You mean her. Use the right pronoun if you have no issue.
--a user
If you are upset with TLC calling HER a HER than maybe you shouldn’t be apart of the reality TV network that pays your bills.
--another user
Bullying a teenage girl? How brave and "godly" you are.
--@Haley Kasprzyk
Jennings eventually tweeted:
Every day I experience cyber-bullying, but I keep sharing my story. Today was no different.
--Jennings
All TLC would say was,
Derick Dillard's personal statement does not represent the views of TLC.
Sweetie I wouldn't brag about that speck of dust on your finger. You married a delusional piece of shit, and he's probably hiding he's gay.
--Jax Taylor, Vanderpump rules
I thankfully have no idea who most reality show people are. Nor do I listen to any radio beyond NPR.
As trans people face challenges to their rights at the federal and state level, as well as hate crimes, addressing Duval’s harmful statements “is urgent. It is not a matter of opinions; this is life and death.
--Jamal Lewis, filmmaker
When it comes to the bathroom bills, when it comes to trans folks in the military, when it comes to trans folks in the churches, when it comes to trans folks in school, when it comes to trans folks at the dinner table, we have got to recognize the real message is that society doesn’t want trans people in public space. We need to look at how every space needs to be safer.'
--Angelica Ross, TransTech Social Enterprises founder and actress on Claws
Comments
kudos
Kudos and Bravo to all of these, and all the other trans defenders!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
"You mean her. Use the right pronoun."
I'm not a man, but I've been around long enough to suspect that this is the crux of the matter. "Lil Duval" and his ilk don't see transgender women as women. They see them as men. And it's been culturally impressed into their psyches since birth that "men do not have sex with other men".
In their view, if a man does have sex with another man, it means something terrible about himself. The mere idea is a horrible, frightening, shameful injury to their self-identity, to their "manly" ego. And such an injury must be avenged in order to redeem their "masculinity".
So if a man like Lil Duval discovers that the person he had sex with is a transgender woman, it's not just that he was deceived. It's that he was tricked into having sex WITH ANOTHER MAN! Oh noes!!!! Kill, kill, kill!
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
@Centaurea Toxic masculinity.
Toxic masculinity.
I think you're spot on
And it's things like that which make me glad I really don't have any clue what "masculinity" is. I honestly don't. I figure I'm male because... you know... dangling bits. I figure being masculine ahs something to do with wearing chaps and riding a horse.
Nothing can attack my masculinity since I don't think I actually have any... or any that I care about anyway.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Killing anyone for *almost* any reason is wrong.
I agree that Lil Duval meant he could not deal with having been attracted to, or having had sex with, a man. But killing the person to whom you are attracted doesn't end the tendency to be attracted, only suicide would.
Whatever Lil Duval may have meant by his comment, at some point in a relationship, before it gets sexual, disclosure is probably a good thing.
Ugh, another Duggar asshole
This is my favorite quote:
Knowing how uncomfortable anything other than a subservient wife begging to serve and please him obviously makes him, I find it delightfully delicious that a transgender show replaced a grifting fake Christian show. Simply scrumptious!
This one has been eating at me, so I have to add:
1. Lmfao, a non-reality show star said this.
2. I guess butterflies are myths then.
As for the musician promoting hate crime murder, I'm glad he has never made any money off of me, but too bad I can't mail him all the destroyed merchandise I (n)ever bought.
Deja, you forgot:
Hey Deja, you forgot:
0. Kindly please produce this "God" thingie of yours. Or make public admission that there is no such thing. One or the other, please, now.
Please note, I'm theistic myself. And I find that blame of God for anti-trans hatred (and denial of their mere existence) downright blasphemous. If you believe in a Creator, then you must accept that the Creator created trans folk. It really is that simple!
That challenge, Item 0 above, was named "The McCullough Challenge" on the FidoNet HOLYSMOKE Echo -- after me. I'm McCullough. (Sean McCullough, to be precise, Captain!)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Exactly! God don't make no mistakes, as they say.
I've gone back and forth about god for as long as I can remember. Being raised white southern Baptist and attending two private schools (not because my parents were ultra religious, but because I came home from public kindergarten singing This Old Man with a Spanish accent), I've questioned so much of what I was taught. So many contradictions, and answers of simply 'have faith'.
That said, when people use their particular god flavor as an excuse to marginalize and promote hate - it really pisses me off. This dude, as my teen son would say, needs to suck a bag of dicks! (Except, he might like it.)
Yes, but TLC still carries the show.
When I hear a network or a local station disclaim responsibility for even an infommercial, my gut reaction is, "You took their money and gave them a venue and air time to spread this message. Sorry, but your attempt to disassociate yourself or disclaim responsibility won't work."
This is regular programming--the next generations of Duggars--and after the first Duggars show ended because one of the Duggar boys had molested a few of his sisters. But, then, they gave a show to the next generation of Duggars?
No one would give flying flyspeck what any Duggar said about anything, if TLC hadn't made the Stepford sickos famous in the first place. You don't get to make them famous and rich and make money from their show AND disassociate yourself from what they say publicly. Heck even Pontius Pilate could not get away with that. If you don't want to associated with their bigotry or their calling, real or imagined, to populate the world with baby Christians for eventual takeover, cancel the fracking show of the second generation.
Am I getting this right?
A person associated with a show on a network viciously attacks another show on the same network? And the answer from the network in effect supports the attack to be made as a matter of vanilla bullshit?
Yep, MrWebster, you got it right.
Sad, ain't it? They probably see it as a way to bolster ratings, which is disgusting and dangerous. They should consider the liability, since it's obvious they don't give two shits about decency and inciting violence, possibly murder or the possible victims of said violence and murder.
Same goes for the radio station first mentioned in the essay. Both networks should be backtracking like crazy and educating their listeners/viewers on how NOT to behave, even if it's simply to cover their own asses. It might save an innocent life.
Bulls eye, MrWebster! Bullshit, TLC.
The beneficiary of one TLC show viciously makes a bigoted attack on the teen star of another TLC show and TLC continues airing and raking in money both shows. Not as though a transgender teen who is airing her struggle has anything else to deal with either, now is it?
Lil Duval and Derick Dillhole are only two men.
The heart of Jax, a ladies' man who participates (voluntarily, I assume) in pride parades every year with his employer and co-workers, is probably in the right place on this one. But Jax not the brightest bulb in the box, nor the most enlightened one, either.
I'm so tired of seeing men and women, but usually men, insulted, even when reasons to insult them are good, by saying or implying they're gay. Even the brilliant Jon Stewart, whose heart I also believe to be in the right place, seemed unable to mock warmonger Graham without using a high-pitched, Southern belle voice. Graham is oh! so eminently mockable for many reasons. Being born gay is not one of them. For that matter, neither is being born and raised Southern.