Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Trans-gressions and Kerfuffles on Facebook.

This is the prequel to a post on transgender issues. 

Plot spoiler: I do not think  J.K. Rowling is a -phobe or a hater.


I admit it, I spend too much time on Facebook. I love my simple solo life but have this compulsion to ‘live out loud’.  Somehow I also feel the need to form opinions on matters that do not directly affect me.  I call it Compulsive Comment Disorder, CCD, and suspect that it may come to a DSM one of these days. 


For myself, I have always been cheerfully female and sexually attracted to the opposite sex, exclusively. The idea of sex with a woman just does not appeal.  As Marian Engel put it: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh just can’t get interested.” Which is too bad. Communication is easier with women. I rather envy people who are bisexual. Otherwise live and let live, equal human rights for all, let a thousand ways of being bloom has always been my way.


Let me briefly establish rainbow friendly cred:


Back in 2011 I posted a picture of my offspring with straight son in a rainbow beard and sporting a tutu, with the caption that I was proud to have raised people who marched as supporters in the gay pride parade.  I was not able to attend the wedding of one of my favourite men to his husband, but I sent a present and made sure I was there in spirit by writing a speech. His  mom read it out during the ceremony and it brought tears to his eyes. 

When was the year people donned safety pins to indicate they were an ally to LBGT?

My winter coat sported one. 


Discomfort started creeping in after what one friend called The Great Kerfuffle on Facebook.  (I looked up the dialogue on my timeline.)


The Great Kerfuffle started with an innocent question. At least I thought it was innocent.

After listening to a CBC program on gender diversity I posted this: 

“Somewhere, someone was using the term LGBTQIA.  I get the idea, inclusive yada yada, diverse yadayada, but how long can this list get? Perhaps we could come up with some 

easier vocabulary? How about just plain Queer? Or non-binary?”

At the time I did not know that the terms Queer and non-binary were already in specific use in gender jargon.


The flak! The outrage! You’d think I had asked people to crawl back into the closet. 

This went on for days, with comment threads branching off comments. At the time I had not yet discovered  the Notifications feature on Facebook, which allows one to click straight to a new comment. I wasted several blue summer days scrolling through to see the new bits.


One of the first commenters said it was like saying Europe instead of Holland, which I thought an excellent analogy. So I replied  by saying that there are times for both, and it is handy to have an umbrella term. Sometimes one may want to say Europe, instead of having to list all the countries and then getting pounced upon for forgetting Kosovo. On the other hand, if one were  dealing with the  Kosovo embassy one would want to know the name of its capital.


It was not enough. Some people  I had never heard of, friends of friends, piped in with  their reason for being deeply offended by my lack of respect for their victimhood. 


It was my first experience of an online pile on. A small one as such things go, and thank goodness I have stayed off Twitter. 

But here is  what really got me: the private messages from people who said they agreed with me, but they did not want to say so openly because they did not feel like dealing with the fallout. That could lead to a whole other topic. 


I have been weary of the whole gender scene ever since.  

These days I am so fed up with the general over-correction that I am more like: “Oh rats, another rainbow.”












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