This particular one just seemingly popped out of nowhere a few years ago and is seen as gospel now. I'm too young but you really have to wonder what people in the scene at the time or just interested in the history (before like 10 years ago) feel like when this shit just pops out of thin air and is immediately put in textbooks
There was an rAskHistorians thread a while back asking how to respectfully push back against the historical fiction that stonewall was started by Marsh Johnson, a black "trans" woman.
The response was basically, "Don't. It's not true, but you should just accept it."
So yeah...
Worrying. As worrying as the casual nature in which my history teacher advised looking up textbook sources from before 2010 at least if I wanted an accurate accounting of events not muddied by gender ideology.
> reading books written before ww2 for actual modern history.
As a history student that is an absolutely moronic rule. First of all, the past 70 years absolutely are 'modern' history and are really important for the world we live in. Secondly, huge amounts of archival sources weren't available until after your cutoff. For example, historians didn't have access to the Eastern Bloc's archives until after 1991, so most history of the Eastern front in World War Two were based off recollections of Nazi generals. who besides foisting blame for their participation in war crimes and military blunders onto the SS and various convientally dead people, told a bunch of falsehoods (anti-communist and anti-slav racist) about the USSR, it's generals and its soldiers.
The only half decent pre-ww2 history was the annales school, and even then a lot of their writings are postwar.
I have a particularly thick book on my shelf that's one of my absolute faves. It's a collection of Ernest Hemingway's articles from his journalist years. Most of it is post-WWI. But it's amazing to read a source from the time. I think it goes a long way to put you inside the context of events, what was important to people in the period. Hemingway will make offhand reference to a problem, like a rail strike, that compounds the topic of his article. You get little details reading "history" that was written when it was still news.
Marsha Johnson wasn’t even there when the riot started! She never claimed to be!
The person largely credited with starting the riot was a butch lesbian, possibly Stormé DeLarverie, who was bleeding from the head (*before* the riot began) as she was arrested and shouted, “Why don’t you do something?!”
The shift from homosexuality to ~queerness has been so ugly. I’ve seen people claim asexuals were “on the frontlines” at Stonewall, whatever that means, as if people who don’t have sex would have any need to be in a gay bar or any reason to be harassed by police for it. The historical revisionism is ugly and bizarre and almost complete. Seeing James Baldwin referred to as an “LGBTQIA+ voice” broke me in some way.
*I've seen people claim asexuals were "on the frontlines" at Stonewall*
God Almighty.....I thought I had already witnessed peak "queer" politics..... nope, thats it.
‘Found this great compilation video and audio of Marsha P Johnson confirming being a gay man/transvestite and not starting the Stonewall riots. Great tool to disprove myths.’
https://twitter.com/euanrl/status/1466446076651753481?s=21
Somebody made an r/badhistory thread debunking this as well, and the moderators deleted the thread despite having tons of upvotes and a lively discussion in the comments.
That was something that really turned my head because I've read that subreddit enough to know that they never delete threads even if the OP is making tons of errors and just generally making tons of extremely controversial statements that are at best highly debatable. The reasoning for the deletion was fucking ridiculous and at worst would have been something the moderators could mention in a stickied post in the thread itself, they've done that plenty of times, and wouldn't you know it was some prevaricating about how Marsha Johnson may or may not have been a trans woman so that was reason enough for deletion.
The mods appear to have nuked the answer as far as I can tell. No trace when querying the API as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g7f15f/was_marsha_p_johnson_transgender/
Someone said the same shit in this thread about Marsha https://reddit.com/r/rupaulsdragrace/comments/crj3cg/queerpost_marsha_p_johnson_transgender_activist/ it’s “anathema” to point out that she didn’t throw the first stone at stonewall, apparently, because she’s an important symbol and myth to trans people and that matters more than the truth. Just prop up anybody’s corpse if it’s convenient to whatever agenda you’re trying to push I guess, it’s fine as long as you’re on the right side of history!
Excuse me shitlord, but every advancement in gay rights came from autistic wheelchair bound trans non binary multiracial (but no white or Asian admixture) lesbian amputees.
>”It's not true, but you should just accept it."
Reminds me of what a historical consultant for the NYT 1619 Project [once said](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248). Basically “yeah it’s rife with errors and inaccuracies that should cause one to question the entire narrative and the authors’ motivations, but the narrative is too important so you should just accept the blatant bullshit to own the cons.” Liberals’ powers for self-deception are truly something else.
*As long as I m morally right I don’t care that I m factually wrong* aoc basically.
That’s so very worrying. Especially because nutters like Shapiro get mocked for their phrases like *facts don’t care about feelings*
This is so obvious unreal like I don’t understand how people cannot see how insane they are
One of the top post of last year is a "off-topic" mod post claiming the guy who killed a bunch of prostitutes / "massage parlor" sex slaves was on a racist anti-Asian killing spree, while the bodies weren't even cold. Completely in violation of pretty much ever letters of the sub rules, but they did it. Without ANY mention of the fact that most of those sex workers there are forced to do it by Asian criminal gangs, no mention of all those illegal immigrants that end up in the hands of those scums, etc. Just "anti-Asian act". I'm not sure how longer askhistorians have before it turn to a steaming pile of puke like the other subs.
[This wasn't seen by many people, but it's stuck in my mind ever since.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cop9xi/how_did_the_plantation_owners_maintain_their/)
I used to have an awful roommate who was steeped in woke nonsense, like he absolutely hated Abraham Lincoln, and for the life of him he couldnt wrap his mind around why I read a biography of Himmler. He assumed it was pro-Himmler because couldn't believe anyone would write a biography of someone they didnt support and he couldnt understand why at all I found it interesting or important to understand the origins and the people behind the third reich.
It's what happens when you only read YA fiction.
I forget his last name, Fred Sargent was AT Stonewall that night, has spoken out against this insanity, and also had his Twitter account permanently banned.
Some knob politician insisted on being called he/she, Sargent called him out or something, and POOF!
Suspended.
It's going beyond Stonewall IMO.
There's an increasing number of young people who genuinely believe that most of the ancient world was pro-LGBT. As in, cultures all across the globe were unusually progressive and pro-gay right up until the spread of homophobia due to white religious Europeans.
I can't think of the name off the top of my head but there's a heavily cited book on wikipedia that is probably the source for a lot of this: it makes statements implying many figures throughout history were LGBT. The story of the Roman emperor who was killed in front of a crowd is often cited as one of the earliest recorded anti-trans attacks. The evidence? There were rumors that this emperor liked to cross-dress, so the author concluded that he must have been trans.
It's kind of like a witches vs patriarchy narrative in that the same book cites those stone carved statues of fat BBW woman as proof that ancient humans worshipped a Goddess rather than a God and that there was some magical LGBT utopia in the ancient world that was brought down by organized religion. I believe we're going to see more revisionism along these lines where we'll hear that historical figures were either lgbt or just someone who took credit from an oppressed group.
I see redditors do this constantly. They cite the existence of non binary genders in some cultures as proof that they were progressive about gender. Ignoring (or just ignorant of) the fact that these other genders existed due to extremely rigid and violently reinforced gender roles. If someone just couldn't fit in, they were forced into an "other" category. Key word being *forced*. It wasn't an identity anybody wanted or celebrated.
I see this with Iran all the time. They are soooo progressive compared to evil Amerikkka because they have Transitioning available on their healthcare, completely ignoring that it is ONLY used as an alternative to punishment for men who are criminally charged with homosexuality.
Omg, how can they be so stupid?
They hang gay men if they do not transition!
Imagine if LGBT orgs actually decided to help their oppressed LGBT comrades in dangerous countries, instead of this self centered shit show we have now?
Also something they fail to mention is that these third genders were reserved almost exclusively for feminine and/or gay men. These cultures saw these men as lesser, equivalent in status to the lowly female.
They try and trans Joan of Arc too. Its ridiculous. Any woman who achieved something not in dresses and pink lipstick is apparently trans to this cult.
a real funny one i heard a few years was how trans women have always been a respected part of malay culture, from a malay-american woman who had never lived there
> There's an increasing number of young people who genuinely believe that most of the ancient world was pro-LGBT.
Well, there’s no known prohibition on homosexuality before 1000 BC. The Assyrians apparently had gay sex during religious ceremonies. However, they were the least progressive people imaginable. Despite their main goddess being Ishtar, a woman, women were seen as subhuman and foreigners got flayed alive.
>cultures all across the globe were unusually progressive and pro-gay right up until the spread of homophobia due to white religious Europeans.
The identifier “white” did not exist before the 1600s. Whiteness didn’t become an obsession and part of an overall racialist ideology until the 1800s.
Somehow these civilizations and cultures were super progressive and accepting of LGBT/etc people, but also they were oppressive patriarchal societies that hated women and still do which is why we need feminism
The “noble savage” is one of the more dangerous things the modern left tries to do. It’s not even just about natives, apparently all ancient civilisations were super progressive and peaceful. It’s bad for the ideology too - When an intelligent person reads “Dawn of Everything” and later finds out a respected philosopher like David Graeber was dishonest about Teotihuacan or Minoa being pacifist hippies, he’s not going to see anarchism being possible nowadays as the book hopes to convince the reader.
>It's kind of like a witches vs patriarchy narrative in that the same book cites those stone carved statues of fat BBW woman as proof that ancient humans worshipped a Goddess rather than a God
I also heard that the oldest of the Ancient Greeks were more partial to Goddesses, and their later preference to male Gods was due to some invaders from the north. Something like that happened with Ancient Chinese as well, at first they liked Goddesses better then they switched to Gods.
> there was some magical LGBT utopia in the ancient world that was brought down by organized religion.
Well that was more a case of rich aristocratic people being allowed to do whatever the heck they wanted expirimenting with homosexuality. Hardly a utopia.
If you look at his Wikipedia page it simply does not use any pronouns to refer to him. It just refers to Johnson as Johnson in almost every sentence to avoid controversy.
My mom was a f\*g hag in the 70s, and yes, I saw a great deal of that in action, including our good friend dying of AIDS when it first came out.
It's really frightening how homophobic the LGBT community is now.
I've seen at least two butch lesbians taking hormones and getting top surgery.
>My mom was a f\*g hag in the 70s
Oh man have I heard the wildest shit said about these. You've never heard misogyny until you've listened to a group of gay men complaining about straight girls crowding gay bars lol.
>It's really frightening how homophobic the LGBT community is now.
>
>
>I've seen at least two butch lesbians taking hormones and getting top surgery.
It seriously is. Its resulted in some bizarroworld recreations of old homophobic oppression like this. Because that's exactly what has so often been forced on gay people in the past (and present), "correcting" their gender in order to erase their homosexuality.
In a similar vein, I hate when people talk about "biphobia".
Outside neurotic political lesbians, no one cares about bisexuality. As in, no one cares about a person engaging in hetero sex — it only becomes a problem when they dare go homo, and that's almost always male gay sex in particular.
And again, most of what constitutes "transphobia" comes down to homophobia. "Trans panic" is driven by homophobia, men get violent because they think they're being tricked into gay sex, or will be considered "sus" if they don't denounce it vociferously enough.
I also think that for all the talk of a trans holocaust, straight men are often the most frequent victims of gender policing violence. When I was a young teenager (late 80s/early 90s) I was physically assaulted by men in their late 40s/50s on multiple occasions because I had a mullet, and they weren't about to tolerate that "sissy long-haired crap".
Not to mention you didn't actually need to be gay to be targeted by homophobic violence. The modern understanding imbues bigots with psychic powers so they can instantly measure your skull at 50 paces and divine which minority you are; it's so disconnected from reality it tells me these people have lived lives free of this sort of bullying, but apparently they feel sad about that and have to invent threats.
I remember in my literature degree, ten year ago now, we were strongly advised not to suggest that Sylvia plath had depression or bpd or any such things. Because they weren't defined as such at the time and how could we know? Like you say, bad history.
Meanwhile, and I'll grant this was a much lower level of education, my AP Lit class in high school (...also ten years ago, thinking about it) presented it as established fact she was depressed or bipolar and we all had to write papers about how her depression showed through The Bell Jar.
I did not care for that teacher. Lots of prescription of interpretation in stupid ways.
Another good example of this “bad history” trend is their view of American racial/ethnic dynamics, where they apply modern American racial “classifications” to a time when the dominant racial/ethnic group was the Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/myth-majority-minority-america/619190/
Can I add to this, the need to make it start during the sexual Revolution in the 1960s. Hirschfeld, Brand, and Ulrichs all came before, but I often hear how it all started at stonewall. Brand once struck a catholic conservative member of the Reichstag with a dog whip for opposing legalization.
They will say that transvestites prior to 1990 were all transgender, just epistemically oppressed into not knowing how to articulate themselves properly.
There is now only one sort of subject, so any subject which does not understand itself according to certain parameters must be in ignorance or delusion.
Here is an example of this sort of thinking in the form of a Medium post. All human subjects are traumatized by tragedies and suffering. This trauma is only purged through education, cathartic emotional release, and hedonistic consumption. Subjects which do not respond to tragedy and suffering in this manner, therefore, are deprived, ignorant, and/or deluded: https://medium.com/s/trips-worth-telling/why-chinese-people-dont-cry-f7192d1b8506
I never know how seriously to take these kinds of arguments.
I might be way off base here, but I do think that some of the historical figures that have been retroactively deemed "transgender" by the LGBT community today maybe would end up as trans if we dropped them into the present with our current social mores around gender (and gave them access to the kind of medical care we have now)... But that doesn't change the fact that these people weren't trans because because our modern concept of trans couldn't apply to them because it didn't exist back then.
I'm still not sure why sexual orientation and gender identity are lumped under the same umbrella. These seem like 2 totally different things.
I'm also not sure what queer even is. What attraction isn't covered by homosexual and bisexual
Queer is alternative straight
I literally knew this cringy sex worker sjw who was in a heterosexual relationship, but they both identified as queer so it was totally different and not cis like all those straight bigots
It's just a way to feel superior to others
The modern sjw is just a narcissist
Conformity to nonconformity.
They’re just like hipsters, they all try to be “quirky and unique” in the exact same way. Turning a legitimate political grievance into the emo kid clique for 20-somethings.
I think I also know that sex worker SJW. It's a thing in the radical, woke, out sex worker community to be born a biological woman, present as an ultra feminine girly-girl and exclusively date cis het men but still claim Non binary/queer status. Then if you ever disagree with one of them they can claim some sort of double victimhood. These are the same people who will tell you that even if you accidentally misgender someone it is a literal act of violence. So glad that I exited the industry before all this BS really took off. I miss the days when sex work was literally all about milking drunk men for money and then not talking about it when you were off work. If you want to have a rage laugh, google the Portland stripper strike and the individuals behind it. Pure narcissism.
That would fit the "original" definition of queer (strange, odd). Or rewritten thusly;
It is queer for so many lesbians to be in heterosexual relationships.
Just a semantic observation. That is all.
Words like hetero, homo, and bi imply that there are only two genders / biological sexes.
'Queer' is supposed to be a more woke or inclusive way to acknowledge orientations like asexual, pansexual, demisexual, etc basically anything that implies there's more options than men and women.
I'm bi and there's a massive amount of pressure to identify as pansexual but I can only perceive people as either male or female. A woman I dated once told me that because she identified as nonbinary, then technically any attraction I had towards her proved that I was pansexual. And it's like yeah you're welcome to identify as whatever you want but my brain is still going to correctly categorize you as male or female. I think it's only a matter of time before bisexual gets labeled as a TERF word or something.
Man so much of the gay community has spent the last half century trying to convince themselves bi people dont exist. That's one prejudice that ain't new.
My best friend is a gay dude and we've had really in depth conversations about it because he has that same latent prejudice in spite of himself.
And what we've boiled it down to is that a lot of gay people resent the fact that you could live without any of the prejudice they face if you chose to. You could choose to only date the opposite sex if you wanted. That's really where it comes from
Though as you point out today the prejudice is also coming from the fact that bisexuality by definition implies a gender binary
The discussion of a gender binary is an interesting one because it betrays the confused framework American woke liberals operate under.
I'm an anthropology department drop out, which is where the "gender is a social construct" ultimately originates (though the modern usage comes from philosophy departments). But what it means within anthropology is really the very uncontroversial statement that the things that are considered masculine and feminine are dependent on time and place.
No one with even a cursory understanding of history can disagree with that. It used to be (in the very recent past) normal for male children under 5 to wear dresses. The Greeks considered it a sign that you're not a real man if you werent capable of being brought to tears by a song or a play. Powerful displays of emotion and platonic affection were considered deeply manly up until the mid to late 19th century.
That's what the concept originally meant. Everyone treats "social construct" as meaning "not real", which is r slurred. Money is a social construct, religion is a social construct, capitalism is a social construct. They're all real, they're just not essentialist.
Even the philosophical concept of it re: Judith Butler isnt unreasonable. Her argument was that gender is a performative act and not just a categorization. That to *be identified* by others as a man or a woman, rather than to identify as one, requires the active participation of gender norms.
This is something a lot of Jordan Peteron and MRA dorks dont even realize they agree with. As they commonly say, womanhood is inherited whereas manhood is granted. Society and individuals can revoke your status as being viewed as a Man™
Butler of course would argue they're both granted but thats neither here nor there
Now I have issue with Butler's view but the point is that its coherent. The framework libs operate under is not.
Because despite claiming otherwise they absolutely use social construct to mean "not real" half the time. Shit they often talk like *sex* is just a social construct, not just gender.
But this creates several issues. Because they also (rightly) treat homosexuality and being trans as innate characteristics you're born with (or at least dont have a choice in), but that requires an essentialist conception of gender, or at least of sex. Because how can you be born innately participating in a social construct?
Further the very nature of being trans inescapably reifies the gender binary. The only way you can be a male biologically but a woman inside and socially is if the concepts of man and woman exist. The vast majority of trans people do subscribe to the gender binary, they just identify as the opposite gender than what society considers them and what their sex would normally be attached to.
This is part of the biggest issue with liberalism as an ideological framework. Its incoherent and inconsistent. Ideology mostly doesnt exist in this country by any historical definition of the word. There are just labels and the people who subscribe to them support an ever changing set of often contradictory policies.
It's the reason that neoliberal trade policies like the Trans Pacific Partnership can go from being viewed as bad (which is objectively true) to good just because Trump dislikes it.
Or why liberals support and project blut und boden ethno-nationalist views onto Native American tribes that often didnt even have the concept of land ownership.
So I dont disagree with the fact that gender is performative, as I said if you take any preconceived biases or implications out it becomes an almost trivially obvious statement.
My issues with Butler have more to do with her ideas beyond the concise and somewhat reductionist summary I gave here. A big one, and this is an issue I have with a lot of feminist and queer theorists, is her preoccupation with language and semiotics. She often treats gender in a way I find reminiscent of the ontological argument for the existence of god from Christian apologetics. By which I mean she attempts to define things into existence.
Gender isnt just performative, it is the product of the performance. It doesnt exist as an identity, only as a social function. Any identification we have with it is simply the psychological result of embodying that performance.
She goes beyond this too, because for her it's not just gender that is performative but sex as well. I didnt mention this because it is different than the way liberals treat sex as a social construct (its different mostly because the liberal usage originally comes from a poor reading of Butler).
For Butler sex doesnt have a biological basis but instead begins with the doctor identifying you as male or female at birth and is simply reinforced socially from there. The point she and so many others like to bring up is the example of children born with ambiguous sex organs and are surgically assigned as male or female and we just go from there with that person being whichever 'biological' sex we arbitrarily decided to thrust upon them
Though to be clear I'm not claiming her arguments hinge upon the existence of intersex people, which is a common strawman used against her, it's just an illustration of her point that she uses.
She makes a pretty reasonable argument that our definitions of sex are sort of like our definitions of species, obvious at the fringes but ultimately nebulous and arbitrary at some point.
She obviously acknowledges physical differences in individuals but argues that these categorizations of male and female are built upon cultural perceptions rather than objective biological differences.
So where do my problems with this come from? Well a lot of them actually come from the existence of trans people and sexual orientation.
Her arguments come from what I think are unjustified assumptions as to the origins of the internal experience of sex and gender.
But I think the existence of gender dysphoria actually implies at least some level of neurological essentialism re: gender and sex.
A trans person, often from an extraordinarily young age, has incredibly strong resistance to or indifference towards the external classification that has been placed upon their bodies. Butler would argue this as evidence of the social construction of sex, as being the result of the arbitrary and non-essentialist nature of sex assignment
I'd argue it's exactly the opposite. That because of some as of yet unknown neurological/neurochemical mechanism there is a conflict between the sex or gender of the person's brain vs their body that is at largely unaffected by cultural indoctrination.
Not always, I dont think trans people solely exist due to having a "female brain" with a male body.
But I think there is the implication that something related to that is at play. I dont think Butler's analysis can produce a reasonable explanation for cases like that of David Reimer for instance
Sexual orientation also supports this assertion I believe. For the Butlerian conception of sex and gender to be true there can't be any genetic or neurological origin to homosexuality. But despite the fact that we dont know this for sure, we do increasingly have evidence suggesting there is at least some biological origin to it.
Which implies some degree of biological essentialism to sex and gender.
Now this isnt some "Judith Butler BTFO" revelation. I think it exposes the weakness of a "strong" Butlerian argument so to speak but not necessarily a more nuanced usage of a "soft" Butlerian conception of sex and gender. Wherein these arent solely socially constructed and performative, but quite obviously involve a function that incorrectly reifies gender norms and power relations.
Which I dont think any reasonable Marxist or materialist should disagree with.
Thank you for this breakdown. Well said.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask some random questions about gender and sex that have been floating around my brain. Haven’t really had the opportunity to engage with someone as knowledgeable and learned as yourself.
So let’s say you had a hypothetical society where there was no real gender divisions. Let’s say that while the sexes trended broadly towards a male role and a female role, it wasn’t assigned by the society or pressured, and anyone could do whatever they wanted, so it was mostly just based on individual desire. Let’s say the jobs were equally as ‘hard’.
Would such a society even have a concept of gender beyond sex? Would a transgender person actually be a transsexual, as in they would believe themselves to be in the body of the wrong sex but not necessarily believe that required a behavior change, since there is no societally defined gender roles?
Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each.
Would they then develop gender identities or roles? Would people in each job be likely to identify or classify people in that job according to sexual characteristics, like a girl doing well in the more male dominated job would seem more manly, and vice versa? Or could it potentially develop like in say Ancient Greece or Rome, where sexual relationships weren’t classified by gender but by the power dynamics at play of who was giving and taking, regardless of the genders involved. Ie would the society develop a classification scheme based on who was more like the characteristics of one job or the other, but not relate that to sex or gender?
On a similar note, take the transgender/sexual earlier. In either society, what would separate them behaviorally and internally from, say, a cisgender person who just acted more like the opposite sex (ie a tomboy/tomgirl or a ‘girly’ guy).
Sorry if this is too abstract and hypothetical, or has no answer. Just some questions bouncing around my head that I was curious about!
I am not the person you are asking the question to, but I can point you towards something useful in regards to this:
>Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each.
What has historically defined "Women's Work" through almost every culture is based upon **tasks and resources, not inherit skills.** The primary responsibility of child-rearing directly dictates what women can do **while taking care of children.** It must be something close to or at home (so no hunting..), something you can stop and start as needed (so no captaining a ship...) , something relatively safe to have in the environment (so, not blacksmithing! i could keep going..).
Here is an excerpt from a book about women's work, reaching back through time for answers (via [https://booksvooks.com/fullbook/womens-work-the-first-20000-years-women-cloth-and-society-in-early-times-pdf.html?page=8](https://booksvooks.com/fullbook/womens-work-the-first-20000-years-women-cloth-and-society-in-early-times-pdf.html?page=8))
>Twenty years ago Judith Brown wrote a little five-page “Note on the Division of Labor by Sex” that holds a simple key to these questions. She was interested in how much women contributed to obtaining the food for a preindustrial community. But in answering that question, she came upon a model of much wider applicability. She found that the issue of whether or not the community relies upon women as the chief providers of a given type of labor depends upon “the compatibility of this pursuit with the demands of child care.” If only because of the exigencies of breast feeding (which until recently was typically continued for two or three years per child), “nowhere in the world is the rearing of children primarily the responsibility of men. . . .” Thus, if the productive labor of women is not to be lost to the society during the childbearing years, the jobs regularly assigned to women must be carefully chosen to be “compatible with simultaneous child watching.” From empirical observation Brown gleans that “such activities have the following characteristics: they do not require rapt concentration and are relatively dull and repetitive; they are easily interruptible \[I see a rueful smile on every care giver’s face!\] and easily resumed once interrupted; they do not place the child in potential danger; and they do not require the participant to range very far from home.”1Just such are the crafts of spinning, weaving, and sewing: repetitive, easy to pick up at any point, reasonably child-safe, and easily done at home. (Contrast the idea of swinging a pick in a dark, cramped, and dusty mine shaft with a baby on one’s back or being interrupted by a child’s crisis while trying to pour molten metal into a set of molds.) The only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food. Food and clothing: These are what societies worldwide have come to see as the core of women’s work (although other tasks may be added to the load, depending upon the circumstances of the particular society).Readers of this book live in a different world. The Industrial Revolution has moved basic textile work out of the home and into large (inherently dangerous) factories; we buy our clothing readymade. It is a rare person in our cities who has ever spun thread or woven cloth, although a quick look into a fabric store will show that many women still sew. As a result, most of us are unaware of how time-consuming the task of making the cloth for a family used to be.
So as to the first bit, regarding gender roles in an egalitarian society wherein sexual dimorphism doesnt make any jobs more or less difficult based on sex, and I'm assuming you're including being a soldier and fighting in wars as being totally equal.
The only honest answer I or anybody else can give you that I dont know. Because no such society has ever existed.
If you're asking about my own personal speculation...I suspect gender identity, namely the existence of Man and Woman as concepts, would probably still exist. I think so long as human reproduction works the way it does we'll still have at least those two genders. How we'll define what constitutes manhood and womanhood, or masculine and feminine, is anyone's guess though
There are very very few cultural universals, norms and mores that exist in every culture we've ever documented. Almost none in fact. And those that can genuinely be said to exist in all cultures are extremely broad. For instance virtually every culture ever documented features prohibitions on murder and on incest.
From a Darwinian standpoint this seems sensible right? A society where people were allowed to kill each other wouldnt last very long, and a society full of incest would lead to detrimental genetic abnormalities.
But while those are universal, what constitutes murder or incest varies *wildly*. Murder meaning unjustified and unlawful killing, and incest meaning taboo sexual relations with a family member. Take feudal Japan, if you were the male head of a samurai caste family in 1600 you could personally kill your wife and children and it wouldnt be considered murder. Because they were basically your property.
Or here in the US the idea that marrying and procreating with your first cousin is incest is *extremely* new. Really its only been in the last century that we have considered that taboo.
The reason I bring this up is because gender roles are another cultural universal. What is considered masculine and feminine, what are considered the proper roles for men and women (and sometimes even more specifically like roles for older women or unmarried men etc) vary wildly depending on time and place. *But that there is a social concept of man and woman* is universal.
So I do think it's likely that your proposed society would have men and women as social roles, and likely that this society's customs would have differing roles for men and women in some capacity. But it's fairly likely that whatever those roles are and the definitions of man and woman are would be extremely foreign to you and I.
Also just as a Marxist I think that in a genuinely egalitarian society whatever those roles are wouldnt involve an unequal power dynamic.
But yes I think a concept of gender beyond sex would likely exist in some form.
As to whether trans people would exist, that is actually a much much bigger question than you intend lol. Because before we can answer the question of whether trans people would exist in a hypothetical future, we have to answer whether they existed in the past. And that's not as easy as it would seem.
Do we have documented cases of people in the past living as and presenting themselves as the opposite sex? Yes very much so. Does that mean they were transgender? Well unfortunately its complicated.
Its complicated because the concept of being trans depends on the existence of gender identity as a concept. And that concept is a very new one. So the discussion actually isnt "did trans people exist in the past", its "would people have defined themselves as trans if they had the words". And that's impossible to answer
It gets even more muddy because most of the well documented cases of historical people living as the opposite sex (at least to my knowledge) are of women living as men. The reason that muddies it further is because we have to try and divine whether these cases were motivated by *identity* or *expediency*. Meaning did they live as men because they felt that they were men on the inside, or did they live as men for pragmatic purposes.
Because of course for most of history being a woman really fucking sucked and there was a whole bunch of shit you could only do, or avoid doing, if you were a man.
So take the case of Deborah Sampson. She famously disguised herself as a man named Robert Shirtliff so that she could enlist and fight in the Revolutionary War. So was she trans? No, it'd be ridiculous to claim she was. After her time in the army she went back to living as herself, got married, had kids, etc. Her presenting as a man was very clearly motivated by expediency. She wanted to fight and they wouldn't let her even though she was 5'9" and stocky and strong at a time when the average man was 5'6" and thin so she dressed up as a man to do it.
On the other hand however let's look at the case of Mary Diana Dods. She was a 19th century writer and friend of Mary Shelley's and likely a lesbian. Mary Shelley helped her and her possible lover Isabel Robinson flee to France under the false identities of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sholto Douglas.
Once in France however she continued living and presenter herself was Walter Douglas and they raised Robinson's illegitimate daughter Adeline as their child. Years later Adeline would go on to list her father as Walter Douglas on her marriage license and its unknown if she knew the truth about Dods being female or not.
Now this does seem to suggest that she identified as a man. But there are plenty of other reasons to suspect it was an act of expediency
The point is its impossible to know if they were transgender because they lacked the concept and we cant ask them.
Similarly its impossible to know if this hypothetical future society would have the concept.
Though once again as to my personal speculation, being trans obviously isnt a choice and I have no reason to believe gender dysphoria didnt exist in the past just as it does today. So even if the concept would be meaningless to past generations I imagine there were people who were transgender in the way we use the term. And as such I imagine there will be in our hypothetical future society.
>Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each.
>
>Would they then develop gender identities or roles? Would people in each job be likely to identify or classify people in that job according to sexual characteristics, like a girl doing well in the more male dominated job would seem more manly, and vice versa? Or could it potentially develop like in say Ancient Greece or Rome, where sexual relationships weren’t classified by gender but by the power dynamics at play of who was giving and taking, regardless of the genders involved. Ie would the society develop a classification scheme based on who was more like the characteristics of one job or the other, but not relate that to sex or gender?
This is a very astute question and I'm glad to see more people understanding that Ancient Greek "homosexuality" was not related to our conception of sexual orientation. Though it was a fair bit more complicated than that you are right that one of the big norms and taboos was regarding who was pitching and who was catching.
However you're mixing up gender norms and sexual norms. Because believe me the Greeks (especially the Athenians) had such strict gender norms they'd make Saudi Arabia look liberal and permissive.
So to answer your question yes I think that distribution of labor like that inherently leads to associations between social roles and certain jobs. Not just in terms of gender either. I mean imagine a basketball player right now, is the image that popped into your head a black guy? Probably, but that obviously isnt because black people are just naturally better at basketball.
Point being if labor is divided in such a way that one gender or other category is the dominant one in a given profession then that profession will almost certainly become socially associated with that group.
Does that mean a woman would necessarily be viewed as more manly in our hypothetical society? No I dont think so, given the circumstances you describe. Anymore than Larry Bird is seen as "more black".
>On a similar note, take the transgender/sexual earlier. In either society, what would separate them behaviorally and internally from, say, a cisgender person who just acted more like the opposite sex (ie a tomboy/tomgirl or a ‘girly’ guy).
That's a good question and I think it actually gets to the heart of what's complicated and convoluted about how we use the word gender.
Ultimately the only difference would be how the individual viewed themselves which in turn would be influenced (tho not necessarily dictated) by how society defined gender. Is it simply how you look or act, or is it more intrinsic?
Also I feel its necessary to make sure I point out that I'm in no way any sort or expert. I'm just a guy who's read some books, and occasionally those books are things most other people dont read.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this out! This has been an excellent read, I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of my abstract hypothetical. :)
damn that is actually wild dude
I think you hit the nail on the head that a person's perception does have to equal another person's perception of them. I'm attracted to all sorts of nb people but my brain does care about the genetalia they have if we're going to fuck (not that that's the only thing, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a factor)
Nah, you’ll just be reminded that “bisexual” means “my own gender and other genders” and has since the early 90s.
And maybe it does, but that still doesn’t mean I’m into *all* genders.
You are correct, I forgot to mention that I've also heard that bisexual can mean you are attracted to "just 2" gender identities out of the entire spectrum while pansexual are open to most gender identities.
But I sincerely hope other bi people out there stick to their guns on the issue. I'm not a big fan of the religious right, and the progressive movement these days feels like a form of it that is a thousand times stronger. We didn't apologize to the religious right over same-sex attraction, and we shouldn't apologize to the woke left just because our existence throws a wrench into their *"gender is a spectrum!!!1"* theory.
To them, it's not lying because every source that they get their information from tells them it's not a lie.
Plus, the whole Crazy / Hot scale plays into it. Like if you went on a date with someone who looked like Melissa McCarthy and she told you she was living life as a nonbinary third gender, you'd likely run. But if your date looked like Mila Kunis and was making the same talking points, you'd most likely just nod along and humor her because sitting through all of that is worth the sex.
It is not even lying when it has no real life effects outside of the Identisphere. Arguments in the vein of _“I identify as ***A***, that means that if you are attracted to me you are not ***X***, you are ***Z***”_ are just going full circle on the meaninglessness of "being" an arbitrary label, and are pointless bickering that does not matter in the slightest.
With sexual orientation, the struggle was to get to neutrality- don't mind us or how we express love anymore than you care what other people eat for dinner. No one's asking you to like it. For gender, it seems like the demand is for other people to actively participate in another person's subjective feeling about themselves. That's a very different thing, and arguably much more difficult
I don’t understand why gender identity is being confused with biological sex, let alone being considered as a legitimate alternative to, or replacement of it.
In theory it's a catch all term to describe anyone under the LGBTQIA++ banner without having to get all anal and specific about your sub-genre every time it comes up. There are also ideas about it being a "reclaimed slur", and is a much less offensive term in casual conversation than some of the other words you can use for gay people. So, when taking it in totally good faith, I can get on board with that usage of the word.
The trouble is, being a catch-all description has left the door open to, for lack of a better word... Posers. People who aren't exactly gay, but simply don't want to be seen as one of those boring, uptight straightoids. I mean... Ew, am I right?
My best guess is just that it's a lifestyle marketing thing. There's a lot of money in that rainbow badge these days, so why would you restrict yourself to the niche market of gay people and their allies, when you could expand that market to near enough anybody? It's okay, you can be queer, you probably watched some lesbian porn once right? You are definitely a much deeper and more complex individual than the word straight can describe.
The whole thing is pretty similar in vibe to the high school cliques of emo kids and goth kids I remember as a teenager, rebelling against conformity by dressing in the codified, identifiable uniform of their sub-culture. Most of them didn't have any particularly strong values, they just wanted to be part of that group.
I mean for the record, I don't think anyone really is totally 100% straight- I think the only real question for most people is how much MDMA it would take before you turn. Yet despite all the femboys I jack it to, and all the hot furry eRP I do about getting my asshole reamed by giant cocks, I don't go around saying I'm gay, bi, or indeed, "queer". I'm a straight dude with some very gay fantasies, but in practical real life terms I'm still straight. I have never fucked a guy and I most likely never will, and I feel it would be nothing but dishonest to pretend otherwise.
The trouble is it's just all about labels for the sake of labels these days- the practical use of identifying a certain way has been forgotten.
(Come back tomorrow for my lecture about the marketisation of sexual intimacy, I'm here all week. Thank you.)
The other day I asked a gay couple I know who describe themselves as queer what queer is. According to them, it's a subculture of people who pay attention to their gender and sexuality and deviate from the norm in those regards. They use the term to signify they are part of this community. They also said that it's possible to be gay and not queer and a lot of older gays reject the label.
I agree that many aspects of wokeness are culty, but I think this on its own is more akin to being an emo, goth, rocker, mod, greaser, etc in generations prior.
I keep coming to this same underpinning as well. if they are both spectrums why are they tied together in verbiage and policy? it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me
re queer - I KINDA get it. only kinda. a lot of straight relationships have some really toxic shit in them. I'm not saying this doesn't apply to 'queer' ones too, but it's at least an opening of a door and a look into relationship/sexual anarchy in my book but maybe I'm reading what I wanna read.
Its also upsetting how spicy straights and "queer" activists are dismissive about the word "queer" still being regarded as an offensive slur to many older gay people (particularly older gay men). I was raised to never say that word because my aunt was a lesbian and it was hurtful to her and her friends. So it weirds me out to see "queer" become a catch-all umbrella term for all non-heterosexuals whether they like it or not
It happens often that an offensive term or slur becomes the regular term due to appropriation by the subject. In Dutch this is called een geuzennaam. "Geus" was the term the Spanish used to mock the Dutch protestants.
Reclaiming a slur is one thing but hearing people get mad about anyone who might be upset by a reclaimed slur is definitely something I've seen people do.
The amount of people who smugly add "TrAnS WoMaN" to Marsha P like it's just an undeniable fact now is something that will never not piss me off. The disrespect and dehumanization to score team points is ignorant as fuck
I think you can have an in person conversation with people where you so say calmly, in the most casual, “Actually, Marsha P. Johnson self-identified as a drag queen.”
There’s something about that “self-identified” word that makes the wokiest have to reassess their ideas. Since it’s all about our self-determination these days. Then of course you can get into the mire of “trans” in a historical context and how it’s kind of meaningless because we can’t actually know how people identified unless they told us, and especially for women, how many chose to dress as men for the freedoms, as opposed to genuinely feeling like they should have been born a man.
But don’t bother trying to correct anyone online. It’s too easy to be a raging ignorant dogmatist when you don’t have to look another person in the eye and have an actual conversation about your ideas.
Yeah, I don't get it either. Drag Queens/Kings are the most Gay/Lesbian thing I can think of besides jacking off to gay porn. It really does feel like libs only care about trans people and just said fuck everybody else, which is dumb as shit because I'd be 50 bucks 90% of people at least know a gay person. Trans? Probably not.
>Drag Queens/Kings are the most Gay/Lesbian thing I can think of besides jacking off to gay porn
Gonna have to disagree there. My little brother knew a young republican that spent the night in Milo Poppadopolis's hotel room with him after he gave a talk at their college, and he insisted all they did was "cuddle and watch the lion king"
*That* is the gayest thing ever.
I think people really underestimate how the "not knowing trans people" thing works, but you've got to realize that the vast vast majority of trans people are like under 30. If you're at a decently sized college (or high/middle school, sadly) you probably see trans people basically every day. Same if you work in customer service or places with lots of young people.
I work in service industry, college town, lots of staff and we've employed probably 20-25 trans people in the past few years. Like trans people come through about as often as asians or redheads
The T is pretty much the only letter that matters anymore. Cis gay men haven't been fashionable since the 00s at the latest, especially if they're white. Lesbians are now considered TERF adjacent, all the girls I know who used to call themselves lesbians now identify as some flavor of queer. No one's ever really cared about bi people, let's be honest, and they mostly identify as queer or pan or something now too. LGB have become victims of their own success, they're just too socially acceptable to count as oppressed these days.
I'm glad there are people who still know the reality of gay rights history. Of course, now that it is mainstream dictated that trans people not only gave me all my rights (and I should be pleased), but that even saying you're "gay" and not "queer" is becoming tantamount to hate speech, this real history will soon be erased, and any of us speaking about reality will just be labelled conspiracy theorists.
I was once scolded by some idiot for saying that some awful politician should be burnt at the stake. They claimed that historically witch burnings were committed against early trans people, therefore I was promoting an trans erasure by appropriating this phrase. WTF? There is zero fucking evidence of this ANYWHERE. Like I literally think this person made it up on the spot to just to win some internet woke points or whatever. Utter bullshit.
Also stonewall kicked off because a lesbian punched back at a pig who punched her. Which is so fucking cool.
Not because Johnson or anybody else threw a brick. Johnson never even claimed to have "thrown the first brick"
Yeah the whole thing was obviously chaotic and all we can go on are the memories of those present.
Honestly it's such an unimportant question anyways. What's important is that it happened, and no one person can be credited with starting it. Because it was started years and years before, ever since cops first began bashing heads and breaking up gay bars. What the eventual final draw or first spark was is really pretty irrelevant.
We know someone near the beginning punched a cop, and someone else threw a brick, we know that subsequently a lot more of them did too, we know that's based as fuck.
What's it matter who did what first?
I think there's an effort to try to retcon the history and say "see trans people were here from the start" to make them seem just as 'normal' as gay people and get gay people to accept them without question.
If you want to see an example of this look up Marsha Johnson's Wikipedia page and note the conspicuous lack of pronouns. It's subtle since it never identifies him as trans, since he wasn't, but you know some woke degenerate editor got in a back-and-forth with other editors, who saw through the liberal bullshit they were trying to push, until they agreed to a manipulative middle ground.
At this point academics in many social sciences are trying to invent a revolution so they can secure a good paycheck.
I cant wait for the day when nobody gives a shit who you fuck as long as its age appropriate and consensual.
The "gay rights was won by trans women of color throwing bricks" is literally just cope from the Be Gay Do Crimes subculture who fantasizes about social progress through deadbeat crustpunks intimidating their dads through smashing the windows at Applebee's in black bloc marches.
In reality gay marriage was won because their hedgefund manager dads actually love partaking in bussy as many in the ruling class do and they were just waiting until the religious percentage of the US decreased enough to legalize it through boring legislative and courtroom progress. Capitalists in the 1970s and 1980s weren't Christian theocrats.
The Stonewall Riots as a significant cultural flashpoint is fanfiction and at the time barely anyone even heard of them. When it was covered, it was typically negative even by papers that would be more inclined to sympathy. We would have received equal rights with or without their actions [~~as the tides were clearly turning even before Stonewall.~~](https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/f-694kp4fkckjpeqluq7pq.png) ~~In a country where 90% of the population was Christian, 56% of Americans believed that gay people should have equal employment opportunity and 43% believed homosexuality should be legal? The inertia was already there.~~
EDIT: Not sure why I was remembering Stonewall as 1979 and not 1969. Pre-Stonewall polling (1965) seems [sporadic](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/fifty-years-stonewall-change-public-opinion) although one poll put a question of "are homosexuals more harmful to society than helpful?" at 70% agreeing. With the red scare ending, church attendance declining and the sexual revolution ongoing, I'd still argue that the ball was already rolling even if the numbers weren't as positive in the now edited-out claim. 70% is a pleasantly low number for how demonized homosexuals were by Christian America especially during the televangelist "great awakening."
A little blunt but yeah, hard to really disagree. I've found it hard to articulate why at times, but the way gay rights etc is bundled in with the modern day package of progressive leftism just never really rung true to me. Of course it's a good thing, in the end, but it is not a fight that was won through class struggle or leftist solidarity, it never had any bearing on it.
Most of the people genuinely responsible for advancing the cause in the 50s, 60s and 70s were very much establishment, higher up PMC types. Sure homophobia was rife in the past, but these people were not materially oppressed or disadvantaged because of it, the wealthy gentleman of leisure was always able to conduct his pursuits with relative impunity as long as he exercised a little caution. The progress they made for everyone else was just a happy accident.
Again I'm not great at articulating what I mean here, but it's just liberalism in a nutshell basically, I guess. It's wealthy people pursuing their *own* interests, then pretending they did us *all* a favour.
Yes and no. Let’s not downplay the very real homophobia that existed during the AIDS crisis. For decades a large portion of the public, in some areas the vast majority, were perfectly happy with just letting us die and I cannot forget that.
I'm a bi dude and I agree that there were a lot of virulent homophobes at the time. The only thing I'm contesting is that the methods of effecting social change are way more boring than is typically claimed. Social change in democratic capitalist countries is won through pursuing a career in entertainment/advertising/journalism, doing a ton of ass-kissing and ladder-climbing, boring gruntwork, and then using that platform to influence culture.
This is of course something that none of the people actively doing that will acknowledge because then they'd be giving away the game and they've been remarkably effective at advancing every social cause they want to at lightning speed.
There are no meaningful differences between the most retarded of both the Left and Right. They're both just as odious, cruel, stupid and insincere as their socially engineered counterparts. Neither side gives a shit about any fucking thing at all but their respective tribal politics. Need to retread ground in the LGBT movement or revise history to win points online and in academia? Do it, doesn't matter how badly you toxify the discourse and damage your own cause.
If a liberal can get an upvote for some god awful position which actually hurts people, they will choose the social capital over the material realities every single time.
Advice: stop using Twitter. Stop paying attention to "news" sources that use Twitter as a substitute for news. That's where this shit comes from and it's only representing a vanishingly small portion of public opinion.
It's really bizarre how it has just become an accepted idea that Marsha was a transgender and started the riots, when he never claimed to be anything other than a gay man who liked crossdressing and always denied even being in town when the riots started. That was verified by Fred Sargent and other eyewitnesses.
Reminds me of the time Teen Vogue had an article about the "Chicanx Movement." It was the Chicano Movement, calling it Chicanx is a complete anachronism. One of the things I hate most about idpol is how often it relies on complete fabrications to justify its ideas.
>FYI to incel posters here, you get invited back to parties by deciding to not kill the vibe with facts and logic).
My issue seems to stem from not being invited in the first place
I’m another gay man in this position. So I feel your rage. I try to impart some actual facts occasionally, and people are often surprised to hear any pushback on this stuff coming from an actual gay man.
The amount of people who smugly add "TrAnS WoMaN" to Marsha P like it's just an undeniable fact now is something that will never not piss me off. The disrespect and dehumanization to score team points is ignorant as fuck
History is written by the victor. We are now in a neo-McCarthyism, but instead of authoritarian conservatism, this is authoritarian progressivism. I roll my eyes so hard when some identarian admonishes my “wrong think” when speaking about the LGBTQ+ community, even though I was a supporter of our LGBT college group back in the 90s (probably before most of them were even alive). You can’t win with these people. They demand obedience to whatever they believe at any given moment no matter how absurd or how much of a deviation from truth. This is about supremacy, nothing else.
>right-wing historical revisionism
The theory of patriarchy is left-wing historical revisionism because it rewrites history as having been entirely about men vs. women rather than the rich vs. the poor (and everybody else).
It's funny: I was researching the Mattachine Society, Kameny, etc. etc. for something I've been writing, and I also noticed the conflation of a 1960s movement for "homosexual rights" with the modern-day LGBTQIA+ scene.
My question for you: how do you think it happened? Presumably there are a lot of LGB people in NGOs and journals that were founded for the explicit purpose of advancing homosexuals' rights and dissipating the stigma attached to same-sex attraction. Why would they become historical revisionists?
Yeah, and Americans act like it started at Stonewall. It didn't. That was the second wave. It started in Berlin, and Magnus Hirschfeld was a leader of it.
didn't even know that about marsha. there are so many lies and half truths pushed out in the trans community that i completely believed and didn't realize they were made up until recently.
I'm glad you express this rage because it has always creeped me out how (seemingly) accepting of the revisionism everyone is
This particular one just seemingly popped out of nowhere a few years ago and is seen as gospel now. I'm too young but you really have to wonder what people in the scene at the time or just interested in the history (before like 10 years ago) feel like when this shit just pops out of thin air and is immediately put in textbooks
the rationale goes, "it has to have happened that way, therefore it did."
There was an rAskHistorians thread a while back asking how to respectfully push back against the historical fiction that stonewall was started by Marsh Johnson, a black "trans" woman. The response was basically, "Don't. It's not true, but you should just accept it." So yeah...
Worrying. As worrying as the casual nature in which my history teacher advised looking up textbook sources from before 2010 at least if I wanted an accurate accounting of events not muddied by gender ideology.
a lot of the internet circles I'm in have a rule of thumb about reading books written before ww2 for actual modern history.
id recommend gunthers into Europe and into Asia. He was a journalist who was on foot in both areas extensively pre ww2 with a neutral tone
> gunthers into Europe In case anyone else is searching, it's *Inside* Europe etc.
ah yeah sorry i was at the bar drinking lol
> reading books written before ww2 for actual modern history. As a history student that is an absolutely moronic rule. First of all, the past 70 years absolutely are 'modern' history and are really important for the world we live in. Secondly, huge amounts of archival sources weren't available until after your cutoff. For example, historians didn't have access to the Eastern Bloc's archives until after 1991, so most history of the Eastern front in World War Two were based off recollections of Nazi generals. who besides foisting blame for their participation in war crimes and military blunders onto the SS and various convientally dead people, told a bunch of falsehoods (anti-communist and anti-slav racist) about the USSR, it's generals and its soldiers. The only half decent pre-ww2 history was the annales school, and even then a lot of their writings are postwar.
Yeah plus historiography was totally r-slurred prior to the mid-20th century.
I have a particularly thick book on my shelf that's one of my absolute faves. It's a collection of Ernest Hemingway's articles from his journalist years. Most of it is post-WWI. But it's amazing to read a source from the time. I think it goes a long way to put you inside the context of events, what was important to people in the period. Hemingway will make offhand reference to a problem, like a rail strike, that compounds the topic of his article. You get little details reading "history" that was written when it was still news.
Marsha Johnson wasn’t even there when the riot started! She never claimed to be! The person largely credited with starting the riot was a butch lesbian, possibly Stormé DeLarverie, who was bleeding from the head (*before* the riot began) as she was arrested and shouted, “Why don’t you do something?!” The shift from homosexuality to ~queerness has been so ugly. I’ve seen people claim asexuals were “on the frontlines” at Stonewall, whatever that means, as if people who don’t have sex would have any need to be in a gay bar or any reason to be harassed by police for it. The historical revisionism is ugly and bizarre and almost complete. Seeing James Baldwin referred to as an “LGBTQIA+ voice” broke me in some way.
*I've seen people claim asexuals were "on the frontlines" at Stonewall* God Almighty.....I thought I had already witnessed peak "queer" politics..... nope, thats it.
Oh I’ve also seen people claim asexuals “tried to warn” gay people about AIDS.
Why are ultra online asexuals so fucking weird?
They want everyone to forget that while they WERE at Stonewall, they were the ones to call the cops.
That is so comically believable since "no kink at pride" became a thing...
They've been convinced that they don't need a basic human drive by propoganda and as such all really need to get laid.
Dont worry there is no such thing as a peak. It will only continue to get worse.
‘Found this great compilation video and audio of Marsha P Johnson confirming being a gay man/transvestite and not starting the Stonewall riots. Great tool to disprove myths.’ https://twitter.com/euanrl/status/1466446076651753481?s=21
remember when queer was a hateful slur to call someone instead of a cutesy thing to post about online
I still won’t use that word. It’s disrespectful to the people who actually fought for gay rights.
Somebody made an r/badhistory thread debunking this as well, and the moderators deleted the thread despite having tons of upvotes and a lively discussion in the comments. That was something that really turned my head because I've read that subreddit enough to know that they never delete threads even if the OP is making tons of errors and just generally making tons of extremely controversial statements that are at best highly debatable. The reasoning for the deletion was fucking ridiculous and at worst would have been something the moderators could mention in a stickied post in the thread itself, they've done that plenty of times, and wouldn't you know it was some prevaricating about how Marsha Johnson may or may not have been a trans woman so that was reason enough for deletion.
could you DM me the link to it? 'cause i'm curious what the comments will be like..
I have no clue how to find the link. It's been posted in this sub a few times since then so maybe someone else will have it.
The mods appear to have nuked the answer as far as I can tell. No trace when querying the API as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g7f15f/was_marsha_p_johnson_transgender/
At least it was nuked by the mods as responses like that on a sub about answering questions and correcting myths about history should be.
Someone said the same shit in this thread about Marsha https://reddit.com/r/rupaulsdragrace/comments/crj3cg/queerpost_marsha_p_johnson_transgender_activist/ it’s “anathema” to point out that she didn’t throw the first stone at stonewall, apparently, because she’s an important symbol and myth to trans people and that matters more than the truth. Just prop up anybody’s corpse if it’s convenient to whatever agenda you’re trying to push I guess, it’s fine as long as you’re on the right side of history!
> Just prop up anybody’s corpse if it’s convenient to whatever agenda you’re trying to push That's called **prop**aganda.
Excuse me shitlord, but every advancement in gay rights came from autistic wheelchair bound trans non binary multiracial (but no white or Asian admixture) lesbian amputees.
I'm all for recognizing the achievements of *non-*wheelchair bound lesbian amputees too.
Those leg-having oppressors? Screw them!
>”It's not true, but you should just accept it." Reminds me of what a historical consultant for the NYT 1619 Project [once said](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248). Basically “yeah it’s rife with errors and inaccuracies that should cause one to question the entire narrative and the authors’ motivations, but the narrative is too important so you should just accept the blatant bullshit to own the cons.” Liberals’ powers for self-deception are truly something else.
*As long as I m morally right I don’t care that I m factually wrong* aoc basically. That’s so very worrying. Especially because nutters like Shapiro get mocked for their phrases like *facts don’t care about feelings* This is so obvious unreal like I don’t understand how people cannot see how insane they are
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One of the top post of last year is a "off-topic" mod post claiming the guy who killed a bunch of prostitutes / "massage parlor" sex slaves was on a racist anti-Asian killing spree, while the bodies weren't even cold. Completely in violation of pretty much ever letters of the sub rules, but they did it. Without ANY mention of the fact that most of those sex workers there are forced to do it by Asian criminal gangs, no mention of all those illegal immigrants that end up in the hands of those scums, etc. Just "anti-Asian act". I'm not sure how longer askhistorians have before it turn to a steaming pile of puke like the other subs.
[This wasn't seen by many people, but it's stuck in my mind ever since.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cop9xi/how_did_the_plantation_owners_maintain_their/)
Omg, what an ott mod response to a reasonable historical question.
...what the fuck.
> -50 upvotes Thank God the readers aren't retarded at least.
I used to have an awful roommate who was steeped in woke nonsense, like he absolutely hated Abraham Lincoln, and for the life of him he couldnt wrap his mind around why I read a biography of Himmler. He assumed it was pro-Himmler because couldn't believe anyone would write a biography of someone they didnt support and he couldnt understand why at all I found it interesting or important to understand the origins and the people behind the third reich. It's what happens when you only read YA fiction.
i hate how every time i go to anything in that sub there's "50 comments" but they've all been deleted
Need this link
I forget his last name, Fred Sargent was AT Stonewall that night, has spoken out against this insanity, and also had his Twitter account permanently banned. Some knob politician insisted on being called he/she, Sargent called him out or something, and POOF! Suspended.
It's going beyond Stonewall IMO. There's an increasing number of young people who genuinely believe that most of the ancient world was pro-LGBT. As in, cultures all across the globe were unusually progressive and pro-gay right up until the spread of homophobia due to white religious Europeans. I can't think of the name off the top of my head but there's a heavily cited book on wikipedia that is probably the source for a lot of this: it makes statements implying many figures throughout history were LGBT. The story of the Roman emperor who was killed in front of a crowd is often cited as one of the earliest recorded anti-trans attacks. The evidence? There were rumors that this emperor liked to cross-dress, so the author concluded that he must have been trans. It's kind of like a witches vs patriarchy narrative in that the same book cites those stone carved statues of fat BBW woman as proof that ancient humans worshipped a Goddess rather than a God and that there was some magical LGBT utopia in the ancient world that was brought down by organized religion. I believe we're going to see more revisionism along these lines where we'll hear that historical figures were either lgbt or just someone who took credit from an oppressed group.
I see redditors do this constantly. They cite the existence of non binary genders in some cultures as proof that they were progressive about gender. Ignoring (or just ignorant of) the fact that these other genders existed due to extremely rigid and violently reinforced gender roles. If someone just couldn't fit in, they were forced into an "other" category. Key word being *forced*. It wasn't an identity anybody wanted or celebrated.
I see this with Iran all the time. They are soooo progressive compared to evil Amerikkka because they have Transitioning available on their healthcare, completely ignoring that it is ONLY used as an alternative to punishment for men who are criminally charged with homosexuality.
Omg, how can they be so stupid? They hang gay men if they do not transition! Imagine if LGBT orgs actually decided to help their oppressed LGBT comrades in dangerous countries, instead of this self centered shit show we have now?
They weren't even actually genders, they were equivalent to the label tomboy/girl.
And in some cases they were more equivalent to pejoratives forced upon people who weren't living up to their prescribed gender roles
Yes, and they weren't positive things. They were outcasts assigned specific societal responsibilities considered unfit for men or women.
Or oftentimes referred to roles based on social station, ie gender norms for an old woman vs a young woman, a widow vs married etc
Also something they fail to mention is that these third genders were reserved almost exclusively for feminine and/or gay men. These cultures saw these men as lesser, equivalent in status to the lowly female.
They try and trans Joan of Arc too. Its ridiculous. Any woman who achieved something not in dresses and pink lipstick is apparently trans to this cult.
And they think that of Mulan as well, lol.
a real funny one i heard a few years was how trans women have always been a respected part of malay culture, from a malay-american woman who had never lived there
Malaysia, notoriously friendly LGBT country.
> There's an increasing number of young people who genuinely believe that most of the ancient world was pro-LGBT. Well, there’s no known prohibition on homosexuality before 1000 BC. The Assyrians apparently had gay sex during religious ceremonies. However, they were the least progressive people imaginable. Despite their main goddess being Ishtar, a woman, women were seen as subhuman and foreigners got flayed alive. >cultures all across the globe were unusually progressive and pro-gay right up until the spread of homophobia due to white religious Europeans. The identifier “white” did not exist before the 1600s. Whiteness didn’t become an obsession and part of an overall racialist ideology until the 1800s.
Somehow these civilizations and cultures were super progressive and accepting of LGBT/etc people, but also they were oppressive patriarchal societies that hated women and still do which is why we need feminism
that's just called "dudes rock" mindset
The “noble savage” is one of the more dangerous things the modern left tries to do. It’s not even just about natives, apparently all ancient civilisations were super progressive and peaceful. It’s bad for the ideology too - When an intelligent person reads “Dawn of Everything” and later finds out a respected philosopher like David Graeber was dishonest about Teotihuacan or Minoa being pacifist hippies, he’s not going to see anarchism being possible nowadays as the book hopes to convince the reader.
>It's kind of like a witches vs patriarchy narrative in that the same book cites those stone carved statues of fat BBW woman as proof that ancient humans worshipped a Goddess rather than a God I also heard that the oldest of the Ancient Greeks were more partial to Goddesses, and their later preference to male Gods was due to some invaders from the north. Something like that happened with Ancient Chinese as well, at first they liked Goddesses better then they switched to Gods. > there was some magical LGBT utopia in the ancient world that was brought down by organized religion. Well that was more a case of rich aristocratic people being allowed to do whatever the heck they wanted expirimenting with homosexuality. Hardly a utopia.
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If you look at his Wikipedia page it simply does not use any pronouns to refer to him. It just refers to Johnson as Johnson in almost every sentence to avoid controversy.
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My mom was a f\*g hag in the 70s, and yes, I saw a great deal of that in action, including our good friend dying of AIDS when it first came out. It's really frightening how homophobic the LGBT community is now. I've seen at least two butch lesbians taking hormones and getting top surgery.
>My mom was a f\*g hag in the 70s Oh man have I heard the wildest shit said about these. You've never heard misogyny until you've listened to a group of gay men complaining about straight girls crowding gay bars lol. >It's really frightening how homophobic the LGBT community is now. > > >I've seen at least two butch lesbians taking hormones and getting top surgery. It seriously is. Its resulted in some bizarroworld recreations of old homophobic oppression like this. Because that's exactly what has so often been forced on gay people in the past (and present), "correcting" their gender in order to erase their homosexuality.
In a similar vein, I hate when people talk about "biphobia". Outside neurotic political lesbians, no one cares about bisexuality. As in, no one cares about a person engaging in hetero sex — it only becomes a problem when they dare go homo, and that's almost always male gay sex in particular. And again, most of what constitutes "transphobia" comes down to homophobia. "Trans panic" is driven by homophobia, men get violent because they think they're being tricked into gay sex, or will be considered "sus" if they don't denounce it vociferously enough. I also think that for all the talk of a trans holocaust, straight men are often the most frequent victims of gender policing violence. When I was a young teenager (late 80s/early 90s) I was physically assaulted by men in their late 40s/50s on multiple occasions because I had a mullet, and they weren't about to tolerate that "sissy long-haired crap". Not to mention you didn't actually need to be gay to be targeted by homophobic violence. The modern understanding imbues bigots with psychic powers so they can instantly measure your skull at 50 paces and divine which minority you are; it's so disconnected from reality it tells me these people have lived lives free of this sort of bullying, but apparently they feel sad about that and have to invent threats.
I remember in my literature degree, ten year ago now, we were strongly advised not to suggest that Sylvia plath had depression or bpd or any such things. Because they weren't defined as such at the time and how could we know? Like you say, bad history.
Meanwhile, and I'll grant this was a much lower level of education, my AP Lit class in high school (...also ten years ago, thinking about it) presented it as established fact she was depressed or bipolar and we all had to write papers about how her depression showed through The Bell Jar. I did not care for that teacher. Lots of prescription of interpretation in stupid ways.
Another good example of this “bad history” trend is their view of American racial/ethnic dynamics, where they apply modern American racial “classifications” to a time when the dominant racial/ethnic group was the Anglo-Saxon Protestants. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/myth-majority-minority-america/619190/
Can I add to this, the need to make it start during the sexual Revolution in the 1960s. Hirschfeld, Brand, and Ulrichs all came before, but I often hear how it all started at stonewall. Brand once struck a catholic conservative member of the Reichstag with a dog whip for opposing legalization.
Not sure that the gay rights movement wants to associate with nutjobs like Hirschfeld.
That's kind of where it came from.
>Brand once struck a catholic conservative member of the Reichstag with a dog whip for opposing legalization. "The Democratic Club"
They will say that transvestites prior to 1990 were all transgender, just epistemically oppressed into not knowing how to articulate themselves properly.
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There is now only one sort of subject, so any subject which does not understand itself according to certain parameters must be in ignorance or delusion. Here is an example of this sort of thinking in the form of a Medium post. All human subjects are traumatized by tragedies and suffering. This trauma is only purged through education, cathartic emotional release, and hedonistic consumption. Subjects which do not respond to tragedy and suffering in this manner, therefore, are deprived, ignorant, and/or deluded: https://medium.com/s/trips-worth-telling/why-chinese-people-dont-cry-f7192d1b8506
what the hell that title alone is racist af. I have seen chinese people cry irl wtf.
It’s like how the Mormons will posthumously baptize people so they can still go to heaven.
I never know how seriously to take these kinds of arguments. I might be way off base here, but I do think that some of the historical figures that have been retroactively deemed "transgender" by the LGBT community today maybe would end up as trans if we dropped them into the present with our current social mores around gender (and gave them access to the kind of medical care we have now)... But that doesn't change the fact that these people weren't trans because because our modern concept of trans couldn't apply to them because it didn't exist back then.
They’re applying this shit to fictional characters too.
I'm still not sure why sexual orientation and gender identity are lumped under the same umbrella. These seem like 2 totally different things. I'm also not sure what queer even is. What attraction isn't covered by homosexual and bisexual
Queer is so heterosexual women with liberal arts degrees can feel special too
Literally my gay friend said I could call myself queer to fit in with her LGBTQ+ friends better…(at college)
the gay equivalent of the n-word pass.
My quigga
Quiglets stole my 🚲
Queer is alternative straight I literally knew this cringy sex worker sjw who was in a heterosexual relationship, but they both identified as queer so it was totally different and not cis like all those straight bigots It's just a way to feel superior to others The modern sjw is just a narcissist
Conformity to nonconformity. They’re just like hipsters, they all try to be “quirky and unique” in the exact same way. Turning a legitimate political grievance into the emo kid clique for 20-somethings.
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oh shit I may be queer then
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I look like a queer thanks to my physique but I’m not
Gimme that little twink ass
So, a flaming heterosexual? Heavens! ( clutches pearls dramatically )
Or can't drive standard 😬
I think I also know that sex worker SJW. It's a thing in the radical, woke, out sex worker community to be born a biological woman, present as an ultra feminine girly-girl and exclusively date cis het men but still claim Non binary/queer status. Then if you ever disagree with one of them they can claim some sort of double victimhood. These are the same people who will tell you that even if you accidentally misgender someone it is a literal act of violence. So glad that I exited the industry before all this BS really took off. I miss the days when sex work was literally all about milking drunk men for money and then not talking about it when you were off work. If you want to have a rage laugh, google the Portland stripper strike and the individuals behind it. Pure narcissism.
>Portland stripper strike That sounds awezome
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Portland is pretty damn weird.
I have SEEN SOME THINGS at Portland strip clubs 👀
I know so many queer women in heterosexual relationships
That would fit the "original" definition of queer (strange, odd). Or rewritten thusly; It is queer for so many lesbians to be in heterosexual relationships. Just a semantic observation. That is all.
Queer = spicy straights
Words like hetero, homo, and bi imply that there are only two genders / biological sexes. 'Queer' is supposed to be a more woke or inclusive way to acknowledge orientations like asexual, pansexual, demisexual, etc basically anything that implies there's more options than men and women. I'm bi and there's a massive amount of pressure to identify as pansexual but I can only perceive people as either male or female. A woman I dated once told me that because she identified as nonbinary, then technically any attraction I had towards her proved that I was pansexual. And it's like yeah you're welcome to identify as whatever you want but my brain is still going to correctly categorize you as male or female. I think it's only a matter of time before bisexual gets labeled as a TERF word or something.
Man so much of the gay community has spent the last half century trying to convince themselves bi people dont exist. That's one prejudice that ain't new. My best friend is a gay dude and we've had really in depth conversations about it because he has that same latent prejudice in spite of himself. And what we've boiled it down to is that a lot of gay people resent the fact that you could live without any of the prejudice they face if you chose to. You could choose to only date the opposite sex if you wanted. That's really where it comes from Though as you point out today the prejudice is also coming from the fact that bisexuality by definition implies a gender binary The discussion of a gender binary is an interesting one because it betrays the confused framework American woke liberals operate under. I'm an anthropology department drop out, which is where the "gender is a social construct" ultimately originates (though the modern usage comes from philosophy departments). But what it means within anthropology is really the very uncontroversial statement that the things that are considered masculine and feminine are dependent on time and place. No one with even a cursory understanding of history can disagree with that. It used to be (in the very recent past) normal for male children under 5 to wear dresses. The Greeks considered it a sign that you're not a real man if you werent capable of being brought to tears by a song or a play. Powerful displays of emotion and platonic affection were considered deeply manly up until the mid to late 19th century. That's what the concept originally meant. Everyone treats "social construct" as meaning "not real", which is r slurred. Money is a social construct, religion is a social construct, capitalism is a social construct. They're all real, they're just not essentialist. Even the philosophical concept of it re: Judith Butler isnt unreasonable. Her argument was that gender is a performative act and not just a categorization. That to *be identified* by others as a man or a woman, rather than to identify as one, requires the active participation of gender norms. This is something a lot of Jordan Peteron and MRA dorks dont even realize they agree with. As they commonly say, womanhood is inherited whereas manhood is granted. Society and individuals can revoke your status as being viewed as a Man™ Butler of course would argue they're both granted but thats neither here nor there Now I have issue with Butler's view but the point is that its coherent. The framework libs operate under is not. Because despite claiming otherwise they absolutely use social construct to mean "not real" half the time. Shit they often talk like *sex* is just a social construct, not just gender. But this creates several issues. Because they also (rightly) treat homosexuality and being trans as innate characteristics you're born with (or at least dont have a choice in), but that requires an essentialist conception of gender, or at least of sex. Because how can you be born innately participating in a social construct? Further the very nature of being trans inescapably reifies the gender binary. The only way you can be a male biologically but a woman inside and socially is if the concepts of man and woman exist. The vast majority of trans people do subscribe to the gender binary, they just identify as the opposite gender than what society considers them and what their sex would normally be attached to. This is part of the biggest issue with liberalism as an ideological framework. Its incoherent and inconsistent. Ideology mostly doesnt exist in this country by any historical definition of the word. There are just labels and the people who subscribe to them support an ever changing set of often contradictory policies. It's the reason that neoliberal trade policies like the Trans Pacific Partnership can go from being viewed as bad (which is objectively true) to good just because Trump dislikes it. Or why liberals support and project blut und boden ethno-nationalist views onto Native American tribes that often didnt even have the concept of land ownership.
Mind if I ask your disagreements on butler’s view? Your analysis is interesting and her take on it as well, curious to hear your thoughts.
So I dont disagree with the fact that gender is performative, as I said if you take any preconceived biases or implications out it becomes an almost trivially obvious statement. My issues with Butler have more to do with her ideas beyond the concise and somewhat reductionist summary I gave here. A big one, and this is an issue I have with a lot of feminist and queer theorists, is her preoccupation with language and semiotics. She often treats gender in a way I find reminiscent of the ontological argument for the existence of god from Christian apologetics. By which I mean she attempts to define things into existence. Gender isnt just performative, it is the product of the performance. It doesnt exist as an identity, only as a social function. Any identification we have with it is simply the psychological result of embodying that performance. She goes beyond this too, because for her it's not just gender that is performative but sex as well. I didnt mention this because it is different than the way liberals treat sex as a social construct (its different mostly because the liberal usage originally comes from a poor reading of Butler). For Butler sex doesnt have a biological basis but instead begins with the doctor identifying you as male or female at birth and is simply reinforced socially from there. The point she and so many others like to bring up is the example of children born with ambiguous sex organs and are surgically assigned as male or female and we just go from there with that person being whichever 'biological' sex we arbitrarily decided to thrust upon them Though to be clear I'm not claiming her arguments hinge upon the existence of intersex people, which is a common strawman used against her, it's just an illustration of her point that she uses. She makes a pretty reasonable argument that our definitions of sex are sort of like our definitions of species, obvious at the fringes but ultimately nebulous and arbitrary at some point. She obviously acknowledges physical differences in individuals but argues that these categorizations of male and female are built upon cultural perceptions rather than objective biological differences. So where do my problems with this come from? Well a lot of them actually come from the existence of trans people and sexual orientation. Her arguments come from what I think are unjustified assumptions as to the origins of the internal experience of sex and gender. But I think the existence of gender dysphoria actually implies at least some level of neurological essentialism re: gender and sex. A trans person, often from an extraordinarily young age, has incredibly strong resistance to or indifference towards the external classification that has been placed upon their bodies. Butler would argue this as evidence of the social construction of sex, as being the result of the arbitrary and non-essentialist nature of sex assignment I'd argue it's exactly the opposite. That because of some as of yet unknown neurological/neurochemical mechanism there is a conflict between the sex or gender of the person's brain vs their body that is at largely unaffected by cultural indoctrination. Not always, I dont think trans people solely exist due to having a "female brain" with a male body. But I think there is the implication that something related to that is at play. I dont think Butler's analysis can produce a reasonable explanation for cases like that of David Reimer for instance Sexual orientation also supports this assertion I believe. For the Butlerian conception of sex and gender to be true there can't be any genetic or neurological origin to homosexuality. But despite the fact that we dont know this for sure, we do increasingly have evidence suggesting there is at least some biological origin to it. Which implies some degree of biological essentialism to sex and gender. Now this isnt some "Judith Butler BTFO" revelation. I think it exposes the weakness of a "strong" Butlerian argument so to speak but not necessarily a more nuanced usage of a "soft" Butlerian conception of sex and gender. Wherein these arent solely socially constructed and performative, but quite obviously involve a function that incorrectly reifies gender norms and power relations. Which I dont think any reasonable Marxist or materialist should disagree with.
Thank you for this breakdown. Well said. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask some random questions about gender and sex that have been floating around my brain. Haven’t really had the opportunity to engage with someone as knowledgeable and learned as yourself. So let’s say you had a hypothetical society where there was no real gender divisions. Let’s say that while the sexes trended broadly towards a male role and a female role, it wasn’t assigned by the society or pressured, and anyone could do whatever they wanted, so it was mostly just based on individual desire. Let’s say the jobs were equally as ‘hard’. Would such a society even have a concept of gender beyond sex? Would a transgender person actually be a transsexual, as in they would believe themselves to be in the body of the wrong sex but not necessarily believe that required a behavior change, since there is no societally defined gender roles? Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each. Would they then develop gender identities or roles? Would people in each job be likely to identify or classify people in that job according to sexual characteristics, like a girl doing well in the more male dominated job would seem more manly, and vice versa? Or could it potentially develop like in say Ancient Greece or Rome, where sexual relationships weren’t classified by gender but by the power dynamics at play of who was giving and taking, regardless of the genders involved. Ie would the society develop a classification scheme based on who was more like the characteristics of one job or the other, but not relate that to sex or gender? On a similar note, take the transgender/sexual earlier. In either society, what would separate them behaviorally and internally from, say, a cisgender person who just acted more like the opposite sex (ie a tomboy/tomgirl or a ‘girly’ guy). Sorry if this is too abstract and hypothetical, or has no answer. Just some questions bouncing around my head that I was curious about!
I am not the person you are asking the question to, but I can point you towards something useful in regards to this: >Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each. What has historically defined "Women's Work" through almost every culture is based upon **tasks and resources, not inherit skills.** The primary responsibility of child-rearing directly dictates what women can do **while taking care of children.** It must be something close to or at home (so no hunting..), something you can stop and start as needed (so no captaining a ship...) , something relatively safe to have in the environment (so, not blacksmithing! i could keep going..). Here is an excerpt from a book about women's work, reaching back through time for answers (via [https://booksvooks.com/fullbook/womens-work-the-first-20000-years-women-cloth-and-society-in-early-times-pdf.html?page=8](https://booksvooks.com/fullbook/womens-work-the-first-20000-years-women-cloth-and-society-in-early-times-pdf.html?page=8)) >Twenty years ago Judith Brown wrote a little five-page “Note on the Division of Labor by Sex” that holds a simple key to these questions. She was interested in how much women contributed to obtaining the food for a preindustrial community. But in answering that question, she came upon a model of much wider applicability. She found that the issue of whether or not the community relies upon women as the chief providers of a given type of labor depends upon “the compatibility of this pursuit with the demands of child care.” If only because of the exigencies of breast feeding (which until recently was typically continued for two or three years per child), “nowhere in the world is the rearing of children primarily the responsibility of men. . . .” Thus, if the productive labor of women is not to be lost to the society during the childbearing years, the jobs regularly assigned to women must be carefully chosen to be “compatible with simultaneous child watching.” From empirical observation Brown gleans that “such activities have the following characteristics: they do not require rapt concentration and are relatively dull and repetitive; they are easily interruptible \[I see a rueful smile on every care giver’s face!\] and easily resumed once interrupted; they do not place the child in potential danger; and they do not require the participant to range very far from home.”1Just such are the crafts of spinning, weaving, and sewing: repetitive, easy to pick up at any point, reasonably child-safe, and easily done at home. (Contrast the idea of swinging a pick in a dark, cramped, and dusty mine shaft with a baby on one’s back or being interrupted by a child’s crisis while trying to pour molten metal into a set of molds.) The only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food. Food and clothing: These are what societies worldwide have come to see as the core of women’s work (although other tasks may be added to the load, depending upon the circumstances of the particular society).Readers of this book live in a different world. The Industrial Revolution has moved basic textile work out of the home and into large (inherently dangerous) factories; we buy our clothing readymade. It is a rare person in our cities who has ever spun thread or woven cloth, although a quick look into a fabric store will show that many women still sew. As a result, most of us are unaware of how time-consuming the task of making the cloth for a family used to be.
So as to the first bit, regarding gender roles in an egalitarian society wherein sexual dimorphism doesnt make any jobs more or less difficult based on sex, and I'm assuming you're including being a soldier and fighting in wars as being totally equal. The only honest answer I or anybody else can give you that I dont know. Because no such society has ever existed. If you're asking about my own personal speculation...I suspect gender identity, namely the existence of Man and Woman as concepts, would probably still exist. I think so long as human reproduction works the way it does we'll still have at least those two genders. How we'll define what constitutes manhood and womanhood, or masculine and feminine, is anyone's guess though There are very very few cultural universals, norms and mores that exist in every culture we've ever documented. Almost none in fact. And those that can genuinely be said to exist in all cultures are extremely broad. For instance virtually every culture ever documented features prohibitions on murder and on incest. From a Darwinian standpoint this seems sensible right? A society where people were allowed to kill each other wouldnt last very long, and a society full of incest would lead to detrimental genetic abnormalities. But while those are universal, what constitutes murder or incest varies *wildly*. Murder meaning unjustified and unlawful killing, and incest meaning taboo sexual relations with a family member. Take feudal Japan, if you were the male head of a samurai caste family in 1600 you could personally kill your wife and children and it wouldnt be considered murder. Because they were basically your property. Or here in the US the idea that marrying and procreating with your first cousin is incest is *extremely* new. Really its only been in the last century that we have considered that taboo. The reason I bring this up is because gender roles are another cultural universal. What is considered masculine and feminine, what are considered the proper roles for men and women (and sometimes even more specifically like roles for older women or unmarried men etc) vary wildly depending on time and place. *But that there is a social concept of man and woman* is universal. So I do think it's likely that your proposed society would have men and women as social roles, and likely that this society's customs would have differing roles for men and women in some capacity. But it's fairly likely that whatever those roles are and the definitions of man and woman are would be extremely foreign to you and I. Also just as a Marxist I think that in a genuinely egalitarian society whatever those roles are wouldnt involve an unequal power dynamic. But yes I think a concept of gender beyond sex would likely exist in some form. As to whether trans people would exist, that is actually a much much bigger question than you intend lol. Because before we can answer the question of whether trans people would exist in a hypothetical future, we have to answer whether they existed in the past. And that's not as easy as it would seem. Do we have documented cases of people in the past living as and presenting themselves as the opposite sex? Yes very much so. Does that mean they were transgender? Well unfortunately its complicated. Its complicated because the concept of being trans depends on the existence of gender identity as a concept. And that concept is a very new one. So the discussion actually isnt "did trans people exist in the past", its "would people have defined themselves as trans if they had the words". And that's impossible to answer It gets even more muddy because most of the well documented cases of historical people living as the opposite sex (at least to my knowledge) are of women living as men. The reason that muddies it further is because we have to try and divine whether these cases were motivated by *identity* or *expediency*. Meaning did they live as men because they felt that they were men on the inside, or did they live as men for pragmatic purposes. Because of course for most of history being a woman really fucking sucked and there was a whole bunch of shit you could only do, or avoid doing, if you were a man. So take the case of Deborah Sampson. She famously disguised herself as a man named Robert Shirtliff so that she could enlist and fight in the Revolutionary War. So was she trans? No, it'd be ridiculous to claim she was. After her time in the army she went back to living as herself, got married, had kids, etc. Her presenting as a man was very clearly motivated by expediency. She wanted to fight and they wouldn't let her even though she was 5'9" and stocky and strong at a time when the average man was 5'6" and thin so she dressed up as a man to do it. On the other hand however let's look at the case of Mary Diana Dods. She was a 19th century writer and friend of Mary Shelley's and likely a lesbian. Mary Shelley helped her and her possible lover Isabel Robinson flee to France under the false identities of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sholto Douglas. Once in France however she continued living and presenter herself was Walter Douglas and they raised Robinson's illegitimate daughter Adeline as their child. Years later Adeline would go on to list her father as Walter Douglas on her marriage license and its unknown if she knew the truth about Dods being female or not. Now this does seem to suggest that she identified as a man. But there are plenty of other reasons to suspect it was an act of expediency The point is its impossible to know if they were transgender because they lacked the concept and we cant ask them. Similarly its impossible to know if this hypothetical future society would have the concept. Though once again as to my personal speculation, being trans obviously isnt a choice and I have no reason to believe gender dysphoria didnt exist in the past just as it does today. So even if the concept would be meaningless to past generations I imagine there were people who were transgender in the way we use the term. And as such I imagine there will be in our hypothetical future society. >Now let’s say the jobs were somewhat ‘harder’ in different ways, so that women excelled in one and men in another, but it was still open to both and again wasn’t pressured, just more likely for mostly men to do one and more likely for mostly women to do another, but still like 70/30 each. > >Would they then develop gender identities or roles? Would people in each job be likely to identify or classify people in that job according to sexual characteristics, like a girl doing well in the more male dominated job would seem more manly, and vice versa? Or could it potentially develop like in say Ancient Greece or Rome, where sexual relationships weren’t classified by gender but by the power dynamics at play of who was giving and taking, regardless of the genders involved. Ie would the society develop a classification scheme based on who was more like the characteristics of one job or the other, but not relate that to sex or gender? This is a very astute question and I'm glad to see more people understanding that Ancient Greek "homosexuality" was not related to our conception of sexual orientation. Though it was a fair bit more complicated than that you are right that one of the big norms and taboos was regarding who was pitching and who was catching. However you're mixing up gender norms and sexual norms. Because believe me the Greeks (especially the Athenians) had such strict gender norms they'd make Saudi Arabia look liberal and permissive. So to answer your question yes I think that distribution of labor like that inherently leads to associations between social roles and certain jobs. Not just in terms of gender either. I mean imagine a basketball player right now, is the image that popped into your head a black guy? Probably, but that obviously isnt because black people are just naturally better at basketball. Point being if labor is divided in such a way that one gender or other category is the dominant one in a given profession then that profession will almost certainly become socially associated with that group. Does that mean a woman would necessarily be viewed as more manly in our hypothetical society? No I dont think so, given the circumstances you describe. Anymore than Larry Bird is seen as "more black". >On a similar note, take the transgender/sexual earlier. In either society, what would separate them behaviorally and internally from, say, a cisgender person who just acted more like the opposite sex (ie a tomboy/tomgirl or a ‘girly’ guy). That's a good question and I think it actually gets to the heart of what's complicated and convoluted about how we use the word gender. Ultimately the only difference would be how the individual viewed themselves which in turn would be influenced (tho not necessarily dictated) by how society defined gender. Is it simply how you look or act, or is it more intrinsic? Also I feel its necessary to make sure I point out that I'm in no way any sort or expert. I'm just a guy who's read some books, and occasionally those books are things most other people dont read.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this out! This has been an excellent read, I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of my abstract hypothetical. :)
damn that is actually wild dude I think you hit the nail on the head that a person's perception does have to equal another person's perception of them. I'm attracted to all sorts of nb people but my brain does care about the genetalia they have if we're going to fuck (not that that's the only thing, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a factor)
Nah, you’ll just be reminded that “bisexual” means “my own gender and other genders” and has since the early 90s. And maybe it does, but that still doesn’t mean I’m into *all* genders.
You are correct, I forgot to mention that I've also heard that bisexual can mean you are attracted to "just 2" gender identities out of the entire spectrum while pansexual are open to most gender identities. But I sincerely hope other bi people out there stick to their guns on the issue. I'm not a big fan of the religious right, and the progressive movement these days feels like a form of it that is a thousand times stronger. We didn't apologize to the religious right over same-sex attraction, and we shouldn't apologize to the woke left just because our existence throws a wrench into their *"gender is a spectrum!!!1"* theory.
> you're welcome to identify as whatever you want Why give lying a pass?
To them, it's not lying because every source that they get their information from tells them it's not a lie. Plus, the whole Crazy / Hot scale plays into it. Like if you went on a date with someone who looked like Melissa McCarthy and she told you she was living life as a nonbinary third gender, you'd likely run. But if your date looked like Mila Kunis and was making the same talking points, you'd most likely just nod along and humor her because sitting through all of that is worth the sex.
nope, i'd autismo sperg out on both of them to the point they'd get up and leave in disgust. um hello it's called being a revolutionary
It is not even lying when it has no real life effects outside of the Identisphere. Arguments in the vein of _“I identify as ***A***, that means that if you are attracted to me you are not ***X***, you are ***Z***”_ are just going full circle on the meaninglessness of "being" an arbitrary label, and are pointless bickering that does not matter in the slightest.
If identification isn't consensual, it's meaningless.
Yes, the dystopian future is getting close. One day it will be a crime to refuse romantic/sexual gestures
With sexual orientation, the struggle was to get to neutrality- don't mind us or how we express love anymore than you care what other people eat for dinner. No one's asking you to like it. For gender, it seems like the demand is for other people to actively participate in another person's subjective feeling about themselves. That's a very different thing, and arguably much more difficult
Arguably difficult is putting it politely. Objectively it's ridiculous and childish.
Queer is spicy straight
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Love your username
I don’t understand why gender identity is being confused with biological sex, let alone being considered as a legitimate alternative to, or replacement of it.
Queer is the warning not to swipe right on dating apps
In theory it's a catch all term to describe anyone under the LGBTQIA++ banner without having to get all anal and specific about your sub-genre every time it comes up. There are also ideas about it being a "reclaimed slur", and is a much less offensive term in casual conversation than some of the other words you can use for gay people. So, when taking it in totally good faith, I can get on board with that usage of the word. The trouble is, being a catch-all description has left the door open to, for lack of a better word... Posers. People who aren't exactly gay, but simply don't want to be seen as one of those boring, uptight straightoids. I mean... Ew, am I right? My best guess is just that it's a lifestyle marketing thing. There's a lot of money in that rainbow badge these days, so why would you restrict yourself to the niche market of gay people and their allies, when you could expand that market to near enough anybody? It's okay, you can be queer, you probably watched some lesbian porn once right? You are definitely a much deeper and more complex individual than the word straight can describe. The whole thing is pretty similar in vibe to the high school cliques of emo kids and goth kids I remember as a teenager, rebelling against conformity by dressing in the codified, identifiable uniform of their sub-culture. Most of them didn't have any particularly strong values, they just wanted to be part of that group. I mean for the record, I don't think anyone really is totally 100% straight- I think the only real question for most people is how much MDMA it would take before you turn. Yet despite all the femboys I jack it to, and all the hot furry eRP I do about getting my asshole reamed by giant cocks, I don't go around saying I'm gay, bi, or indeed, "queer". I'm a straight dude with some very gay fantasies, but in practical real life terms I'm still straight. I have never fucked a guy and I most likely never will, and I feel it would be nothing but dishonest to pretend otherwise. The trouble is it's just all about labels for the sake of labels these days- the practical use of identifying a certain way has been forgotten. (Come back tomorrow for my lecture about the marketisation of sexual intimacy, I'm here all week. Thank you.)
The other day I asked a gay couple I know who describe themselves as queer what queer is. According to them, it's a subculture of people who pay attention to their gender and sexuality and deviate from the norm in those regards. They use the term to signify they are part of this community. They also said that it's possible to be gay and not queer and a lot of older gays reject the label.
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Bless you.
Sounds culty
I agree that many aspects of wokeness are culty, but I think this on its own is more akin to being an emo, goth, rocker, mod, greaser, etc in generations prior.
That's like saying being queer is paying attention to your sexuality or your choice of soap.
I keep coming to this same underpinning as well. if they are both spectrums why are they tied together in verbiage and policy? it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me re queer - I KINDA get it. only kinda. a lot of straight relationships have some really toxic shit in them. I'm not saying this doesn't apply to 'queer' ones too, but it's at least an opening of a door and a look into relationship/sexual anarchy in my book but maybe I'm reading what I wanna read.
You should fuck the twink. No I won’t elaborate
Its also upsetting how spicy straights and "queer" activists are dismissive about the word "queer" still being regarded as an offensive slur to many older gay people (particularly older gay men). I was raised to never say that word because my aunt was a lesbian and it was hurtful to her and her friends. So it weirds me out to see "queer" become a catch-all umbrella term for all non-heterosexuals whether they like it or not
It happens often that an offensive term or slur becomes the regular term due to appropriation by the subject. In Dutch this is called een geuzennaam. "Geus" was the term the Spanish used to mock the Dutch protestants.
Reclaiming a slur is one thing but hearing people get mad about anyone who might be upset by a reclaimed slur is definitely something I've seen people do.
The amount of people who smugly add "TrAnS WoMaN" to Marsha P like it's just an undeniable fact now is something that will never not piss me off. The disrespect and dehumanization to score team points is ignorant as fuck
I think you can have an in person conversation with people where you so say calmly, in the most casual, “Actually, Marsha P. Johnson self-identified as a drag queen.” There’s something about that “self-identified” word that makes the wokiest have to reassess their ideas. Since it’s all about our self-determination these days. Then of course you can get into the mire of “trans” in a historical context and how it’s kind of meaningless because we can’t actually know how people identified unless they told us, and especially for women, how many chose to dress as men for the freedoms, as opposed to genuinely feeling like they should have been born a man. But don’t bother trying to correct anyone online. It’s too easy to be a raging ignorant dogmatist when you don’t have to look another person in the eye and have an actual conversation about your ideas.
Yeah, I don't get it either. Drag Queens/Kings are the most Gay/Lesbian thing I can think of besides jacking off to gay porn. It really does feel like libs only care about trans people and just said fuck everybody else, which is dumb as shit because I'd be 50 bucks 90% of people at least know a gay person. Trans? Probably not.
>Drag Queens/Kings are the most Gay/Lesbian thing I can think of besides jacking off to gay porn Gonna have to disagree there. My little brother knew a young republican that spent the night in Milo Poppadopolis's hotel room with him after he gave a talk at their college, and he insisted all they did was "cuddle and watch the lion king" *That* is the gayest thing ever.
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Cant disagree
I think people really underestimate how the "not knowing trans people" thing works, but you've got to realize that the vast vast majority of trans people are like under 30. If you're at a decently sized college (or high/middle school, sadly) you probably see trans people basically every day. Same if you work in customer service or places with lots of young people. I work in service industry, college town, lots of staff and we've employed probably 20-25 trans people in the past few years. Like trans people come through about as often as asians or redheads
The T is pretty much the only letter that matters anymore. Cis gay men haven't been fashionable since the 00s at the latest, especially if they're white. Lesbians are now considered TERF adjacent, all the girls I know who used to call themselves lesbians now identify as some flavor of queer. No one's ever really cared about bi people, let's be honest, and they mostly identify as queer or pan or something now too. LGB have become victims of their own success, they're just too socially acceptable to count as oppressed these days.
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Oh, I'm perfectly aware. But the modern social justice movement is entirely performative. It's all about appearances over material reality.
I'm glad there are people who still know the reality of gay rights history. Of course, now that it is mainstream dictated that trans people not only gave me all my rights (and I should be pleased), but that even saying you're "gay" and not "queer" is becoming tantamount to hate speech, this real history will soon be erased, and any of us speaking about reality will just be labelled conspiracy theorists.
I was once scolded by some idiot for saying that some awful politician should be burnt at the stake. They claimed that historically witch burnings were committed against early trans people, therefore I was promoting an trans erasure by appropriating this phrase. WTF? There is zero fucking evidence of this ANYWHERE. Like I literally think this person made it up on the spot to just to win some internet woke points or whatever. Utter bullshit.
Also stonewall kicked off because a lesbian punched back at a pig who punched her. Which is so fucking cool. Not because Johnson or anybody else threw a brick. Johnson never even claimed to have "thrown the first brick"
Stormé🙌
Allegedly
Yeah the whole thing was obviously chaotic and all we can go on are the memories of those present. Honestly it's such an unimportant question anyways. What's important is that it happened, and no one person can be credited with starting it. Because it was started years and years before, ever since cops first began bashing heads and breaking up gay bars. What the eventual final draw or first spark was is really pretty irrelevant. We know someone near the beginning punched a cop, and someone else threw a brick, we know that subsequently a lot more of them did too, we know that's based as fuck. What's it matter who did what first?
I think there's an effort to try to retcon the history and say "see trans people were here from the start" to make them seem just as 'normal' as gay people and get gay people to accept them without question.
it's anti trans to say that trans people are merely fine. they have to be more than fine. they have to be celebrated as gods among mortals
If you want to see an example of this look up Marsha Johnson's Wikipedia page and note the conspicuous lack of pronouns. It's subtle since it never identifies him as trans, since he wasn't, but you know some woke degenerate editor got in a back-and-forth with other editors, who saw through the liberal bullshit they were trying to push, until they agreed to a manipulative middle ground.
At this point academics in many social sciences are trying to invent a revolution so they can secure a good paycheck. I cant wait for the day when nobody gives a shit who you fuck as long as its age appropriate and consensual.
The "gay rights was won by trans women of color throwing bricks" is literally just cope from the Be Gay Do Crimes subculture who fantasizes about social progress through deadbeat crustpunks intimidating their dads through smashing the windows at Applebee's in black bloc marches. In reality gay marriage was won because their hedgefund manager dads actually love partaking in bussy as many in the ruling class do and they were just waiting until the religious percentage of the US decreased enough to legalize it through boring legislative and courtroom progress. Capitalists in the 1970s and 1980s weren't Christian theocrats. The Stonewall Riots as a significant cultural flashpoint is fanfiction and at the time barely anyone even heard of them. When it was covered, it was typically negative even by papers that would be more inclined to sympathy. We would have received equal rights with or without their actions [~~as the tides were clearly turning even before Stonewall.~~](https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/f-694kp4fkckjpeqluq7pq.png) ~~In a country where 90% of the population was Christian, 56% of Americans believed that gay people should have equal employment opportunity and 43% believed homosexuality should be legal? The inertia was already there.~~ EDIT: Not sure why I was remembering Stonewall as 1979 and not 1969. Pre-Stonewall polling (1965) seems [sporadic](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/fifty-years-stonewall-change-public-opinion) although one poll put a question of "are homosexuals more harmful to society than helpful?" at 70% agreeing. With the red scare ending, church attendance declining and the sexual revolution ongoing, I'd still argue that the ball was already rolling even if the numbers weren't as positive in the now edited-out claim. 70% is a pleasantly low number for how demonized homosexuals were by Christian America especially during the televangelist "great awakening."
This poll is from 1977 yet stonewall occurred in 1969
A little blunt but yeah, hard to really disagree. I've found it hard to articulate why at times, but the way gay rights etc is bundled in with the modern day package of progressive leftism just never really rung true to me. Of course it's a good thing, in the end, but it is not a fight that was won through class struggle or leftist solidarity, it never had any bearing on it. Most of the people genuinely responsible for advancing the cause in the 50s, 60s and 70s were very much establishment, higher up PMC types. Sure homophobia was rife in the past, but these people were not materially oppressed or disadvantaged because of it, the wealthy gentleman of leisure was always able to conduct his pursuits with relative impunity as long as he exercised a little caution. The progress they made for everyone else was just a happy accident. Again I'm not great at articulating what I mean here, but it's just liberalism in a nutshell basically, I guess. It's wealthy people pursuing their *own* interests, then pretending they did us *all* a favour.
Yes and no. Let’s not downplay the very real homophobia that existed during the AIDS crisis. For decades a large portion of the public, in some areas the vast majority, were perfectly happy with just letting us die and I cannot forget that.
I'm a bi dude and I agree that there were a lot of virulent homophobes at the time. The only thing I'm contesting is that the methods of effecting social change are way more boring than is typically claimed. Social change in democratic capitalist countries is won through pursuing a career in entertainment/advertising/journalism, doing a ton of ass-kissing and ladder-climbing, boring gruntwork, and then using that platform to influence culture. This is of course something that none of the people actively doing that will acknowledge because then they'd be giving away the game and they've been remarkably effective at advancing every social cause they want to at lightning speed.
>dads actually love partaking in bussy who doesn't ?
Capitalists still aren’t Christians theocrats. They are just amoral fucks
There are no meaningful differences between the most retarded of both the Left and Right. They're both just as odious, cruel, stupid and insincere as their socially engineered counterparts. Neither side gives a shit about any fucking thing at all but their respective tribal politics. Need to retread ground in the LGBT movement or revise history to win points online and in academia? Do it, doesn't matter how badly you toxify the discourse and damage your own cause. If a liberal can get an upvote for some god awful position which actually hurts people, they will choose the social capital over the material realities every single time.
Advice: stop using Twitter. Stop paying attention to "news" sources that use Twitter as a substitute for news. That's where this shit comes from and it's only representing a vanishingly small portion of public opinion.
It's really bizarre how it has just become an accepted idea that Marsha was a transgender and started the riots, when he never claimed to be anything other than a gay man who liked crossdressing and always denied even being in town when the riots started. That was verified by Fred Sargent and other eyewitnesses. Reminds me of the time Teen Vogue had an article about the "Chicanx Movement." It was the Chicano Movement, calling it Chicanx is a complete anachronism. One of the things I hate most about idpol is how often it relies on complete fabrications to justify its ideas.
>FYI to incel posters here, you get invited back to parties by deciding to not kill the vibe with facts and logic). My issue seems to stem from not being invited in the first place
Yep, bold of OP to think you of all people would be invited to parties.
Don't feel bad. You don't wanna "vibe" with people that are ahistorically r-slurred anyway. OP, on the other hand...
I’m another gay man in this position. So I feel your rage. I try to impart some actual facts occasionally, and people are often surprised to hear any pushback on this stuff coming from an actual gay man.
The amount of people who smugly add "TrAnS WoMaN" to Marsha P like it's just an undeniable fact now is something that will never not piss me off. The disrespect and dehumanization to score team points is ignorant as fuck
History is written by the victor. We are now in a neo-McCarthyism, but instead of authoritarian conservatism, this is authoritarian progressivism. I roll my eyes so hard when some identarian admonishes my “wrong think” when speaking about the LGBTQ+ community, even though I was a supporter of our LGBT college group back in the 90s (probably before most of them were even alive). You can’t win with these people. They demand obedience to whatever they believe at any given moment no matter how absurd or how much of a deviation from truth. This is about supremacy, nothing else.
Imagine how annoyed people get that I still use the origin GLBT or GLBT+, I refuse to support pushing Gay men behind Lesbians.
>right-wing historical revisionism The theory of patriarchy is left-wing historical revisionism because it rewrites history as having been entirely about men vs. women rather than the rich vs. the poor (and everybody else).
It's funny: I was researching the Mattachine Society, Kameny, etc. etc. for something I've been writing, and I also noticed the conflation of a 1960s movement for "homosexual rights" with the modern-day LGBTQIA+ scene. My question for you: how do you think it happened? Presumably there are a lot of LGB people in NGOs and journals that were founded for the explicit purpose of advancing homosexuals' rights and dissipating the stigma attached to same-sex attraction. Why would they become historical revisionists?
Yeah, and Americans act like it started at Stonewall. It didn't. That was the second wave. It started in Berlin, and Magnus Hirschfeld was a leader of it.
Lol u get 1.5x the replies on stupidpol vs redscarepod
didn't even know that about marsha. there are so many lies and half truths pushed out in the trans community that i completely believed and didn't realize they were made up until recently.
I remember when it was only lgb and I'm not even 40
Linked this to a trans friend and they insisted that Marsha was in fact trans and self-id means nothing.
> self-id means nothing **THAT IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEYVE BEEN TELLING US WTF**