GC Rowling's Battlefield TERF, part 2: Fantastic Wheeshts and Where to Find Them

[Stigdu]

Her novels included some extremely transphobic elements, such as a serial killer who targeted women by dressing as a woman and going into bathrooms

Someone's been watching Dressed to Kill! I'd hardly call that part extremely transphobic.

[Dr Rock]

It's part of a long pattern stigdu. Imagine you were trans and the media was constantly portraying you and your kind as homicidal nutcases and nothing else?

And Rowling likes to pretend she has nothing against the trans, but has written two books with negative portrayals of trans characters. It's not a coincidence is it

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Someone's been watching Dressed to Kill! I'd hardly call that part extremely transphobic.

Literally how do you not see that trope as transphobic, @Stigdu?

[Stigdu]

Literally how do you not see that trope as transphobic, @Stigdu?

SPOILER ALERT

Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill. Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Robert Jacks in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John Lithgow in Raising Cain.

All dressed in women's clothing and murdered women, but I don't think they were transgender haters (nor are the directors). They're just psychologically damaged.

[PlanktonSideburns]

SPOILER ALERT

Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill. Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Robert Jacks in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John Lithgow in Raising Cain.

All dressed in women's clothing and murdered women, but I don't think they were transgender haters (nor are the directors). They're just psychologically damaged.

I don't agree, I think that's a similar line of defence that was put up for depiction of different races/gay people in the past - and that the fluidity off gender is used as a way of othering people in those films, auters intentions be dammed

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

SPOILER ALERT

Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill. Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Robert Jacks in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John Lithgow in Raising Cain.

All dressed in women's clothing and murdered women, but I don't think they were transgender haters (nor are the directors). They're just psychologically damaged.

yes i know these movies. i love some of them, in fact, but the trope of trans women as deceptive maniacs and murderers is at best a symptom of a broader transmisogynistic society and an active eager participant at worst

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

it's not really about transmisogyny in horror but yer ace ventura avatar reminded me of julia serano's bit on trans women in the media (from the seminal whipping girl)

Media depictions of trans women, whether they take the form of fictional
characters or actual people, usually fall under one of two main archetypes: the
"deceptive transsexual" or the "pathetic transsexual." While characters based
on both models are presented as having a vested interest in achieving an
ultrafeminine appearance, they differ in their abilities to pull it off. Because the
"deceivers" successfully pass as women, they generally act as unexpected plot
twists, or play the role of sexual predators who fool innocent straight guys into
falling for other "men."

Perhaps the most famous example of a "deceiver" is the character Dil in the
1992 movie The Crying Game. The film became a pop culture phenomenon
primarily because most moviegoers were unaware that Dil was trans until
about halfway through the movie. The revelation comes during a love scene
between her and Fergus, the male protagonist who has been courting her. When
Dil disrobes, the audience, along with Fergus, learns for the first time that Dil
is physically male. When I saw the film, most of the men in the theater groaned
at this revelation. Onscreen, Fergus has a similarly intense reaction: He slaps
Dil and runs off to the bathroom to vomit.

The 1994 Jim Carrey vehicle Ace Ventura: Pet Detective features a
"deceptive transsexual" as a villain. Police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (played by
Sean Young) is secretly Ray Finkle, an ex- Miami Dolphins kicker who has
stolen the team's mascot as part of a scheme to get back at Dolphins
quarterback Dan Marino. The bizarre plot ends when Ventura strips Einhorn
down to her underwear in front of about twenty police officers and announces,
"She is suffering from the worst case of hemorrhoids I have ever seen." He
then turns her around so that we can see her penis and testicles tucked between
her legs. All of the police officers proceed to vomit as The Crying Game's
theme song plays in the background.
Even though "deceivers" successfully "pass" as women, and are often
played by female actors (with the notable exception of Jaye Davidson as Dil),
these characters are never intended to challenge our assumptions about gender
itself. On the contrary, they are positioned as "fake" women, and their "secret"
trans status is revealed in a dramatic moment of "truth." At this moment, the
"deceiver"'s appearance (her femaleness) is reduced to mere illusion, and her
secret (her maleness) becomes the real identity.

In a tactic that emphasizes their "true" maleness, "deceivers" are most often
used as pawns to provoke male homophobia in other characters, as well as in
the audience itself. This phenomenon is especially evident in TV talk shows
like Jerry Springer, which regularly runs episodes with titles like "My
Girlfriend's a Guy" and "I'm Really a Man!" that feature trans women coming
out to their straight boyfriends. On a recent British TV reality show called
There's Something About Miriam, six heterosexual men court an attractive
woman who, unbeknownst to them, is transsexual. The broadcast of the show
was delayed for several months because the men threatened to sue the show's
producers, alleging that they had been the victims of defamation, personal
injury, and conspiracy to commit sexual assault. The affair was eventually
settled out of court, with each man coming away with a reported 125,000
British pounds (over 200,000 U.S. dollars at the time).

In the 1970 film adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel Myra Breckinridge, the
protagonist is a trans woman who heads out to Hollywood in order to take
revenge on traditional manhood and to "realign the sexes." This "realignment"
apparently involves raping an ex-football player with a strap-on dildo, which
she does at one point during the movie. The recurring theme of "deceptive"
trans women retaliating against men, often by seducing them, seems to be an
unconscious acknowledgment that both male and heterosexual privilege is
threatened by transsexuals.

In contrast to the "deceivers," who wield their feminine wiles with success,
the "pathetic transsexual" characters aren't deluding anyone. Despite her
masculine mannerisms and five o'clock shadow, the "pathetic transsexual"
will inevitably insist that she is a woman trapped inside a man's body. The
intense contradiction between the "pathetic" character's gender identity and
her physical appearance is often played for laughs—as in the transition of
musician Mark Shubb (played as a bearded baritone by Harry Shearer) at the
conclusion of 2003's A Mighty Wind.

Unlike the "deceivers," whose ability to "pass" is a serious threat to our
culture's ideas about gender and sexuality, "pathetic transsexuals"—who
barely resemble women at all—are generally considered harmless. Perhaps
for this reason, some of the most endearing pop culture portrayals of trans
women fall into the "pathetic" category: John Lithgow's Oscar-nominated
portrayal of ex- football player Roberta Muldoon in 1982's The World
According to Garp, and Terence Stamp's role as the aging showgirl Bernadette
in 1994's The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. More recently,
the 1998 indie film The Adventures of Sebastian Cole begins with its teenage
protagonist learning that his stepdad Hank, who looks and acts like a roadie for
a '70s rock band, is about to become Henrietta. A sympathetic character and
the only stable person in Sebastian's life, Henrietta spends most of the movie
wearing floral-print nightgowns and bare-shouldered tops with tons of jewelry
and makeup. Yet despite her extremely femme manner of dress, she continues
to exhibit only stereotypical male behaviors, overtly ogling a waitress and
punching out a guy who calls her a "faggot" (after which she laments, "I broke
a nail").

In the case of Henrietta, this extreme combination of masculinity and
femininity does not seem designed to challenge audiences' assumptions about
maleness and femaleness. On the contrary, Henrietta's masculine voice and
mannerisms are meant to demonstrate that, despite her desire to be female, she
cannot change the fact that she is really and truly a man. As with Garp's
Roberta and Priscilla's Bernadette, the audience is encouraged to respect
Henrietta as a person, but not as a woman. While we are supposed to admire
their courage—which presumably comes from the difficulty of living as
women who do not appear very female—we are not meant to identify with
them or to be sexually attracted to them, as we are to "deceivers" like Dil.
Interestingly, while the obvious outward masculinity of "pathetic
transsexual" characters is always played up, so too is their lack of male
genitalia (or their desire to part with them). In fact, some of the most
memorable lines in these movies are uttered when the "pathetic transsexual"
character makes light of her own castration. At one point during Priscilla,
Bernadette remarks that her parents never spoke to her again, "after [she] had
the chop." In Garp, when a man is injured while receiving a blow job during a
car accident, Roberta delivers the one-liner, "I had mine removed surgically
under general anesthesia, but to have it bitten off in a Buick ..." In the 1994
fictionalized biography Ed Wood, Bill Murray plays another "pathetic
transsexual," Bunny Breckinridge. After seeing Wood's film Glen or Glenda,
Bunny is inspired to go to Mexico to have a "sex change," announcing to
Wood, "Your movie made me realize I've got to take action. Goodbye, penis!"

The "pathetic" transsexual's lighthearted comments about having her penis
lopped off come in stark contrast to the revelation of the "deceiver," who is
generally found out by someone else in an embarrassing, often violent way. A
Freudian might suggest that the "deceptive" transsexual's dangerous nature is
symbolized by the presence of a hidden penis, while the "pathetic"
transsexual's harmlessness is due to a lack thereof. A less phallic
interpretation is that the very act of "passing" makes any trans woman who can
do so into a "deceiver." Ultimately, both "deceptive" and "pathetic"
transsexual characters are designed to validate the popular assumption that
trans women are truly men. "Pathetic" transsexuals may want to be female, but
their masculine appearances and mannerisms always give them away. And
while the "deceiver" is initially perceived to be a "real" female, she is
eventually revealed as a wolf in sheep's clothing—an illusion that is the
product of lies and modern medical technology—and she is usually punished
accordingly

[Stigdu]

yes i know these movies. i love some of them, in fact, but the trope of trans women as deceptive maniacs and murderers is at best a symptom of a broader transmisogynistic society and an active eager participant at worst

I wasn't even aware this was a trope. Are you sure about that? I've never heard of trans people being called deceptive maniacs and murderers in my life until a couple of people above mentioned it.

Next you'll be saying that anyone who wears black gloves should be discriminated against as they're obviously sexual deviants who like hacking up women. Or maybe I watch too many gialli?

EDOT: I see you've posted something else. It looks like a very interesting read, but I'll need some time to read it (kids calling me to put them to bed)!

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Next you'll be saying that anyone who wears black gloves should be discriminated against as they're obviously sexual deviants who like hacking up women. Or maybe I watch too many gialli?

guess so

[Captain Z]

Stigdu has been on the wind up for several days, as a quick check of their post history will reveal.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

i mean yeah

[PlanktonSideburns]

If it's a wind up, this must be a bit of a disappointing response

[Registering to lurk]

SPOILER ALERT

Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill. Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Robert Jacks in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John Lithgow in Raising Cain.

All dressed in women's clothing and murdered women, but I don't think they were transgender haters (nor are the directors). They're just psychologically damaged.

Dressed to Kill, 1980
Psycho, 1960
Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1994
Raising Cain, 1992.

Wint and Kidd are great fun in Diamonds are Forever but a pair of camp, sadistic, gay killers wouldn't be acceptable characters today. Just as JK Rowling's resurrection of the trope of transgender people as "psychologically damaged" killers wasn't acceptable in 2014 or 2020.

[Mister Six]

Some people say that the killer in that Strike novel isn't actually transgender, but of course that's missing the point.

TERFs use the completely fabricated "threat" of a cis man dressing up in drag to rape and murder women as an excuse for excluding trans women from women's toilets.

"It's not the trans women, you see, it's the nasty men - and how can we know if that's a trans woman or a nasty man temporarily identifying as a woman to do a bad rape?"

It's bollocks, obviously, because murderers and rapists aren't going to give two shits about about being caught in a ladies' toilet in male clothes, and in any case this has never actually happened, but Rowling puts this idea in there to seed suspicion among readers about trans women, and subtly promote the thin edge of the banana TERF ideological wedge.

I know Stigdu's just being a boring troll, but for anyone else who's floated in here and doesn't know...

[Ferris]

If you're not utilizing Limmy's BAMO system, you're missing a trick.

Even if someone isn't trolling but I find their comments tedious; BAMO. Don't even bother mentioning it usually - I do so here just to remind people it's an option on CaB 2.0 and can save a lot of time.

[Stigdu]

Stigdu has been on the wind up for several days, as a quick check of their post history will reveal.

Not at all. Not intentionally, anyway. How am I trolling?

[Stigdu]

Dressed to Kill, 1980
Psycho, 1960
Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1994
Raising Cain, 1992.

Wint and Kidd are great fun in Diamonds are Forever but a pair of camp, sadistic, gay killers wouldn't be acceptable characters today. Just as JK Rowling's resurrection of the trope of transgender people as "psychologically damaged" killers wasn't acceptable in 2014 or 2020.

I would consider any of these things acceptable, after all, it's fiction. I'm sure there have been sadistic, gay killers in history. John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer for example. No reason why someone couldn't invent a story about two gay killers in a relationship.

[Indomitable Spirit]

How am I trolling?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Snipped as it broke the page]

[Stigdu]

Some people say that the killer in that Strike novel isn't actually transgender, but of course that's missing the point.

TERFs use the completely fabricated "threat" of a cis man dressing up in drag to rape and murder women as an excuse for excluding trans women from women's toilets.

"It's not the trans women, you see, it's the nasty men - and how can we know if that's a trans woman or a nasty man temporarily identifying as a woman to do a bad rape?"

It's bollocks, obviously, because murderers and rapists aren't going to give two shits about about being caught in a ladies' toilet in male clothes, and in any case this has never actually happened, but Rowling puts this idea in there to seed suspicion among readers about trans women, and subtly promote the thin edge of the banana TERF ideological wedge.

I know Stigdu's just being a boring troll, but for anyone else who's floated in here and doesn't know...

I agree with what you said (except me being a boring troll - gee, thanks for that).

[Stigdu]

If you're not utilizing Limmy's BAMO system, you're missing a trick.

Even if someone isn't trolling but I find their comments tedious; BAMO. Don't even bother mentioning it usually - I do so here just to remind people it's an option on CaB 2.0 and can save a lot of time.

I thought this was a discussion board where people... Discuss things?

I had to look up Limmy and BAMO. But ok, I get it. I'm literally sitting here shaking my head as I GENUINELY don't know why i getting all these negative reactions. That's fine. Move on, and I just won't participate. This really is unbelievable.

[Barry Admin]

Not at all. Not intentionally, anyway. How am I trolling?

I hope you're not and am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I understand the scepticism.

It's basically that you're so at odds with the general tone (like thinking Gervais is really good), and are going into high traffic threads and eg asking what GC means.

Personally I think it's a shame someone can't be at odds with the general tone without being immediately suspected to be a troll. If people do think that, they can stop feeding you or put you on ignore :-) and we'll see what happens.

[Barry Admin]

It is really dumb if someone can't be a genuine fan of Gervais on this forum now honestly.

CaB doesn't seem to get many new posters, so I'd encourage people to give this bloke a chance. Am I being naive? What's the harm so far really.

[Stigdu]

It is really dumb if someone can't be a genuine fan of Gervais on this forum now honestly.

CaB doesn't seem to get many new posters, so I'd encourage people to give this bloke a chance. Am I being naive? What's the harm so far really.

I hope you're not and am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I understand the scepticism.

It's basically that you're so at odds with the general tone (like thinking Gervais is really good), and are going into high traffic threads and eg asking what GC means.

Personally I think it's a shame someone can't be at odds with the general tone without being immediately suspected to be a troll. If people do think that, they can stop feeding you or put you on ignore :-) and we'll see what happens.

I asked my wife earlier in the kitchen if she knew what a TERF was, or GC, and like me, she said no. I'm sorry I don't watch all the news or read up on what J.K.Rowling or Ricky Gervais are up to all the time, but life gets in the way.

Anyway, much to the delight (I'm sure) of many people on here, I have been made to feel INCREDIBLY unwelcome on here in the past 2 weeks. I only found out about this place last year when it was mentioned on the TV programme Inside No. 9 so that was when I first posted, and it was nice to see other people who enjoy the programme talking about it.

Apart from that, a lot of people on here seem really rude, nasty or judgmental. Yeah, yeah, I know, "don't declare your departure and don't let the door hit your arse on the way out" and all that, but really. I don't need this shit, so I'm gone.

Cheers

[The Guppy]

It is really dumb if someone can't be a genuine fan of Gervais on this forum now honestly.

CaB doesn't seem to get many new posters, so I'd encourage people to give this bloke a chance. Am I being naive? What's the harm so far really.

It's not just these he's at odds with the general tone. The "just asking questions" shtick is textbook trolling.

Flouncing out is also textbook.

Could just be a well-meaning dipstick, of course, but I find it incredibly hard to give people the benefit of the doubt nowadays.

[Mister Six]

I hope you're not and am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I understand the scepticism.

It's basically that you're so at odds with the general tone (like thinking Gervais is really good), and are going into high traffic threads and eg asking what GC means.

Personally I think it's a shame someone can't be at odds with the general tone without being immediately suspected to be a troll. If people do think that, they can stop feeding you or put you on ignore :-) and we'll see what happens.

To be fair, the Glinner threads have had concern trolls from time to time; it's hardly implausible that this person might be one of them, especially when they can Google all of these terms, and their avatar is the protagonist of an infamously transphobic movie.

[Barry Admin]

To be fair, the Glinner threads have had concern trolls from time to time; it's hardly implausible that this person might be one of them, especially when they can Google all of these terms, and their avatar is the protagonist of an infamously transphobic movie.

Missed that as phone. Hmmmm.

Yeah, I dunno.  Be really sad if he was genuine.

[Blumf]

(somewhat back on topic)

How old is the murdering cross dresser trope? Off the top of my head I can think of Psycho as the earliest, and that even goes out of it's way to note that Norman Bates isn't a transvestite, just nutty about him mother.

[Ferris]

If someone will google "BAMO" on the basis of one of my posts which didn't directly quote them (and for the record is my genuine response - I'm not after aggro and I'll stick people on ignore and move on to make life easy) but not bother googling "terf" or "glinner" before wading in (but just so happens to find themselves in those threads, of all places) then I am sceptical.

At minimum they get the BAMO treatment, but realistically I'm not convinced they're posting in good faith. Maybe they are, but BAMO all the same. It's the future - life's too short.

The poster also had a few identity changes early on (woman called Stacey but now claiming to be a bloke with kids or whatever) which raised my eyebrows and triggered the initial BAMO.

Maybe it's entirety genuine, but at the same time I'm on a comedy forum and if someone can't explain why they think pablum like a new gervais special is funny or not to the point of not wanting to try, I don't feel like I'm going to miss any insights by my policy re: BAMO. That's all I'll say about it.

[Mister Six]

Missed that as phone. Hmmmm.

Yeah, I dunno.  Be really sad if he was genuine.

Same re: avatar. I didn't realise until someone upthread mentioned it.

It would be sad, but honestly it just seems very unlikely that this is anything other than someone looking to get a rise out of people with lots of weak sauce concern trolling.

[Barry Admin]

@Ferris

The name Stacy is primarily a gender-neutral name of English origin that means Resurrection. Originally a short form of the name Anastasia.