I feel a bit disconnected today. I know I have a bit of a fondness for schoolboy ‘humour’ and crudity, but I’m at a bit of a loss how to go about describing a couple of things that have been highlighted this week.
There’s a sense of the surreal as I type the words “bonus hole”. It’s the sort of thing that the schoolboy crude part of me might fnarr, fnarr about
(From the Urban Dictionary)
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that one day I would find myself in the position of having to write something serious about such a phrase.
Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust describe themselves as the UK’s leading charity for cervical cancer. I know nothing about them, but I’m sure they do some great work supporting those who have to deal with this cancer.
They’ve partnered with the LGBT Foundation to create a glossary of terms when dealing with trans men and/or non-binary people.
There’s been a fair bit of, erm, hoo hah about this, as you can imagine.
The first thing to note is that it does not seem they are referring to the class of entities formerly known simply as ‘women’ here, but one of these new-fangled things that come with the descriptor trans man (an actual woman) or non-binary (and one can only assume they mean an actual woman who describes herself as being non-binary).
I’m not sure whether it is (logically) possible to be both a trans man and non-binary - but I’m sure there are people out there who would have no issue with the contradiction in using both terms for a single individual.
NOT covered here are people born as men. Well isn’t that a surprise? Presumably it’s because these people weren’t assigned a cervix at birth. Funny how biology is kinda important isn’t it?
Now I won’t say there are none, but I strongly suspect that the number of (actual) women in the world (who still want to be women) who describe their vaginas as “bonus holes” could all fit into the unisex toilet at Doris Dingbat’s café in Little Humping.
I am not a huge fan of the concept of some “internalized” ism - but in this instance I can only imagine that if a trans man (i.e. woman), presumably still possessing a vagina, described their vagina as a “bonus hole” then we’re seeing a fair degree of internalized misogyny on display. They must really hate being women to be able to use this term about their own bodies.
More to the point I think it shows they have some degree of negativity towards womanhood in general in using this term. What, if anything, are they thinking? I have a vagina, but I’m going to insult women everywhere by describing it as a bonus hole.
I’m not sure who’s running the PR campaign for the QWERTY people these days, but they ought to be fired because this is atrocious optics.
I’m going to stop there, otherwise my writing might venture off into places where the sun doesn’t shine.
Also causing a bit of recent ruckus has been the promotion of a guy with a baby seemingly suckling at his man tit.
The humane and compassionate side of me wants to recognise the feelings of someone (a man) whose deepest dream is to become a woman and who wants to experience the same things women do - and who might, in particular, want to experience the joys of motherhood. I really do feel for you, but biology, sadly, isn’t your friend here.
But for fuck’s sake please, please, please, don’t try to ‘feed’ your baby with trans tit junky juice1. I’ve no idea what this chest fluid actually is, but it sure as shit isn’t breast milk.
You can read the Twitter thread here, but here’s a few quotes from a recent paper (peer-reviewed and all) on male lactation.
The use of heteronormative and cisnormative language in breastfeeding literature and language further reduces the ability of transgender persons, particularly trans women from accessing support leading to marginalization and social exclusion.
Future research will be important to further characterize such barriers and to determine an optimal hormonal regimen for lactogenesis in trans women. Furthermore, breastfeeding plays a unique role in the female gender experience.
In summary, lactation induction is likely beneficial for gender identity, irrespective of milk production outcomes
There’s really only one comment one can make here
I do apologize for the bluntness and the nastiness here - but who the fuck are these people who want to use a child, for fuck’s sake, as some sort of prop for their narcissism? How dare they? I don’t really want to use religious imagery here but these self-obsessed a-holes are treading on sacred ground and desecrating something very special, profound, and unique about women. And what (good) parent puts themselves before the wellbeing of their kids?
The gender crackpots are locked into a competitive cycle. Every vacuous, attention-hungry idiot has to be more bizarre than his equally attention-hungry peers. If he loses that edge, he's a nobody. So, escalation is built-in and it keeps going until the evil farce collapses under the weight of its own cruel logic. A lot of people get badly hurt along the way.
I'll say it again: re-open Bedlam Asylum. That's an end to it.