It shows up for me now. I must have just connected in the middle of when it was being published.
I think I like it. I’m still mulling it over.
It’s important to me to treat people with respect, to call them by the names they’d like to be called, etc. but it’s also important to accept and tolerate people being intentionally outrageous and offensive.
It’s a tough line; the one thing I feel sure about is there’s no “one true way” and anybody trying to force everybody else to adhere to the one true way is probably wrong.
I don’t care. I’m still voting him president.
post-disruption journalism? wtf does that even mean?
That sounds like the Rapture of the Journalists.
Molloy’s specialty is trafficking in outrage, the basest coin of the internet, and Advocate.com is harnessing Molloy’s background as a search engine marketer in its current deathmatch with HuffPo Gay Voices.
Being straight I don’t hang out on LGBT sites much, but I can assure you that this is not an LGBT issue. Unfortunately it’s the new status quo.
First, let me preface with a few credentials: I’m a trans woman who has been hosting an Internet radio show for LGBT people with a focus on trans people and issues for about 12 years, and I’m also a longtime contributor to the Bilerico Project and HuffPo Gay Voices. In short, I’ve been trans media since before there was anything that could credibly be called trans media. Also, just for the record, I was also one of those who spoke out when Calpernia was being misgendered by straight media after Barry WInchell’s murder.
To to be blunt, I think you and Calpernia are being completely unfair and frankly, unnecessarily mean to Parker. She’s young, she’s new, and she’s going to make a few honest mistakes, just as I did and I’m sure you did at that age. It doesn’t mean she’s got an anti-drag agenda. I’ve called out RuPaul too, and I’m still doing it. For that matter, so is more and more of the community as time goes on. What’s he’s doing is wrong, it’s deeply offensive to people who have been persecuted and treated like crap enough in our lives, thank you very much, and it needs to stop,
I’ve gotten to know Parker a little, and while sure, she still has a lot to learn about our community and the people in it, it doesn’t mean she’s a separatist (seriously?) or out to defame anyone who hasn’t done the same to us first.
I have great respect for you and your place in trans history, Andrea. If you have any respect for mine (and I know you may not know me or my work, but just Google), than I hope you’ll trust me when I say that the motives being ascribed to Parker here are not fair nor supported by the evidence.
I would encourage both you and Calpernia to stop seeing this as an attack and instead as an opportunity to educate. Don’t assume ill intent as is being done here. Offer Parker the same benefit of the doubt you’d hope to receive yourself. I suspect that if you reached out on that basis, you’d find a more receptive audience overall.
Thanks for listening.
Becky Juro
Really, sorry here but RuPaul’s use of those slurs is beyond the pale. He has been told repeatedly how insensitive and awful they are and just laughs of the complaints. I don’t care what tactics her opponents use; defending his use of those words is an awful position to take.
I have to say- I love Boing Boing. I think they have great staff and great content. But this article is awful. It invalidates entire groups of trans women who have legitimate concerns over someone misrepresenting our existence as just PC trolling- which it’s not.
Look, Andrea- I respect you and I respect that you have been around for a while. But just because some of us are fairly new doesn’t invalidate our concerns over things like Ru Paul. Also- comparing trans women being uncomfortable with drag queens to ‘lesbian separatists’- which I read as TERF’s, correct me if I am wrong- is insulting at best, definitely a huge oversimplification, and at least to me- down right incorrect.
We aren’t all perfect. But I think we can agree that Ru Paul appropriates from us, and helps lead social misconceptions. He puts down his identity at the end of the day. Our’s is who we are.
Definitely agree with you. There is also a huge difference between personally uncomfortable with drag- which a lot of trans women, myself included, are, and saying they shouldn’t exist.
I know drag was how I started working on my own gender identity issues, and it was a invaluable path along the road to figuring it out. But if you throw around stuff like ‘she male’ and ‘tranny’ - especially in the public eye, where you may be the only impression of gender non conformity that they see- is NOT ok.
I want to know this: was this article written by a trans person, or a cis person? I don’t know jack about Parker Malloy, but this article seems to express the very same kind of unthoughtful hate that it’s trying to assert Parker expresses. My suspicion is that this wasn’t written by a trans person, and if this is true then I’m pretty disappointed that Boing Boing would publish this crap that - in disdain - expresses what ways it ins’t okay for trans people to feel and respond to transphobic slur usage. Please stfu.
It seems her verbage is definitely first hand- lots of ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘our’, so yes I believe she is. Still doesn’t mean she can just invalidate huge swaths of trans women or our concerns regarding a problematic public performer.
The byline says “Filmmaker, writer, and trans activist Andrea James.”
If she is indeed trans, then I withdraw my ‘stfu’ comment completely. I don’t want to be one to tell other trans voices to be silent. Nonetheless the article’s still pretty disconcerting.
Ta, I missed that little bit.
As a cis person keenly interested in trans rights and issues, I’m continually appalled by LGBT people (and progressives in general) who would rather savage each other over points of doctrine than address our real common enemies.
I’m genuinely not sure who’s on which side of that line in this article, though.
I had to go back and look myself, halfway through the article, when some turn of phrase made me think “wait, is she trans?” and there it was, in italics and everything. You’d think it would be hard to miss…
The most relevant link to ‘post-disruption’ in a google search was this very article.
As another cis person who is interested, and concerned, about LGBT issues, with a special emphasis on the issues transgender people face for personal reasons, nothing pains me more than debates between members of a community that is already far too vulnerable because it’s small, diverse, and poorly understood by outsiders.
And debates such as this one remind me that the reason it pains me so much is that I don’t want to discount or dismiss the opinions of any transgender person, even when disagreements arise. I’ve never described a transgender person as “hypersensitive” in any situation because, considering what so many of them go through, what might seem like an out-of-proportion reaction to me might be very different in the context of that person’s experience.
I’m not really sure what I’m getting at here, except to say that I think such debates have their purpose. I’d rather they not be used as fodder by prejudiced cis people, but as long as people hold prejudices they’re going to find something. And while I feel extremely uncomfortable, as a cis person, wondering if I should take a side in an issue between transgender people, I appreciate the reminder that the transgender community is not monolithic, because it is made up of people.
My one real complaint about Ru Paul is that his schtick is nothing but shock and spectacle.
He’s just out there to make a scene, to stir up shit, to drop some “draaaamaaaa!”, and that he essentially is out to make money by being crass and camp and really just championing the sort of shallow behaviors that I’ve always felt have been unhealthy for anyone to possess, regardless of their sex, gender, identity, or anything else.
He’s on the same level as Judge Judy in my book. I don’t give a damn about how he lives, what his politics are, what his sexuality or self identity are - I mean, why should I? What I care about is that his show is all about being cattish and cloying and prissy and phony and bitchy and judgemental and competitive and just… ughh…
Hell, I don’t even care if he’s all those things in his own private life! Doesn’t hurt me any. But that he succeeds by having his show be all these things? My beef is that people are still “entertained” by the whole “Camp Comedy” bullshit of “Oh, look at me, I’m a sexual or gender deviant, aren’t I so wacky and flamboyant and emotional and petty? Laugh, my pretties, laugh! It’s okay! We just want your money! Tra-la-lah!”
