Why Don’t I Come Here More Often, Again? June 27, 2006 piny So, do you get to assume widespread bigotry towards transsexuals if a metafilter thread starts out musing on social reception of transsexuality and ends up debating the ethics of aborting your freaky fetal ass?
Metafilter, the blue (as opposed to Metatalk, the grey, or AskMetafilter, the green), seems to attract a special number of trolls and crazines. I wouldn’t consider it a large or representative sample of the general population.
Metafilter, the blue (as opposed to Metatalk, the grey, or AskMetafilter, the green), seems to attract a special number of trolls and crazines. I wouldn’t consider it a large or representative sample of the general population. Were the thread reasonable discussion plus trolling, I’d buy that. Since it’s a civil discussion that just sort of edges further and further into a discussion of the worth of my existence, I’m not sure if I can. I’ve seen discussions like this in spaces as friendly as Alas; the craziness of metafilter (undisputed, mind) doesn’t seem to be the reason.
Metafilter threads tend to end up hugely sexist on every topic except for gay rights, and the support for gay rights is generally in a “this is anti-fundie! whoo! I’m so liberal!” way. I don’t think they attract a lot of crazies. There are just a lot of sexists out there, and maybe it becomes more prominent in a mostly-liberal-mostly-male site like that. They can have interesting discussions about anything else and even provide varied viewpoints – but any topic about sex and gender is full of guys proudly proclaiming that they’re “pigs” and that feminists just need to get over themselves already. It’s scary. I’d search for all threads tagged with “feminism” to prove my point but I don’t want to puke.
sigh. I just got back from my denomination’s big meeting and gee, according to them, we have come sooo far on trans issues. rah rah. I left depressed and frustrated. Even though, as far as religious communities go, mine is doing pretty well. Just not nearly as well as they want to believe.
Piny, have you read Unspeakable Conversations? It’s by an attorney and disability rights activist named Harriet Johnson and her interactions with Peter Singer. He insists he doesn’t want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child. It has nothing to do with me. I should not feel threatened. I highly recommend it.
Piny, have you read Unspeakable Conversations? It’s by an attorney and disability rights activist named Harriet Johnson and her interactions with Peter Singer. Yup. I particularly liked the part where she debates the justice of debating with him with her sister. I’m gonna buy her book one of these days. One of the threads I was thinking of–this whole, “Now let us discuss your right to remain alive,” thing was actually about disabled people rather than trannies.