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After more than 24 hours, a comment I posted on a post on Glass Castle still hasn't been approved (as I expected), once again confirming my doubts about the commenting policy. I will thus repost it here.
The original post is titled "On privilege and transphobia" and talks about Changi Village and bapoks (transsexuals/ah guas). It also carries the following "warning": "This post contains possibly disturbing references to transphobia, including derogatory slurs."
In particular, reference is made to an occasion where a guy pretended to be a policeman and felt up a transsexual, and when the transsexual realised what he was doing, he called his other transsexual friends over and they near-lynched the guy.
Reference was also made to a previous exchange about heterophobia, where I said that "I should've been born a black, female, lesbian, post-op transsexual".
Addendum: My ideal Secret Weapon is a lesbian, black, working class, Muslim, post-op transsexual from a Third World post-colonial country. If I get one of these, then I will be untouchable in Liberal circles.
Comments follow (notice how they degenerate and reinscribe the image of self-declared feminists as bra-burners):
Me: Thank you for the link.
I would say that that discussion was not similar, because in the linked discussion, identical acts by so-called cisperson and a transperson were treated differently (a straight wishing a non-straight was straight vs a non-straight wishing a straight was non-straight).
Whereas here, at least in the second example, in the second example, like is being compared with like (the feeling up of: a so-called ciswoman vs a transwoman) and evaluated as being the same.
Furthermore, your analogy is wrong. The transsexuals in Changi Village are there to solicit customers for sexual services. So the correct analogue to feeling up a transwoman would be feeling up a prostitute.
Jolene: If masquerading as a policeman to sexually assault a (cis) sex worker would be considered differently from masquerading as a policeman to sexually assault any other ciswoman, I would regard this as evidence of devaluing the humanity and bodily autonomy of (cis) sex workers by comparison to other ciswomen.
"She was a sex worker" is not a justification for non-consensually touching someone or obtaining fraudulent consent to touching someone, and this comments thread will not entertain discussion suggesting the contrary.
The discusson to which I linked is entirely relevant, because the last line equates the burden of being asked to think for a moment before speaking with the burdens of living with (for instance) societal transphobia and homophobia. In other words, the same dynamic of the blindness of privilege is illustrated.
Me: Where "the blindness of privilege" prevents us from treating like cases alike, it is indeed something we must be aware of.
If countering "the blindness of privilege" requires the supposedly-privileged to be subject to higher standards than the supposedly-marginalised, then this is against what movements for equality (supposedly) stand for.
Jolene: I've just realised that it says nothing at all in the Changi Village anecdote about the woman concerned being a sex worker soliciting for custom. Your initial comment was based wholly on transphobic stereotypes. I had initially assumed there was more information in the entry than I had seen, but I realise now that you simply made it up. Please do not post such bigotry here in the future - it will not be published.
And the comment that wasn't approved:
Me: This comment does not jump to conclusions or contain gratuitous accusations of intolerance and prejudice
This is ridiculous.
You claimed that I was saying that all sex workers could be freely molested, when I was merely pointing out that you were making erroneous comparisons (comparing the molestation under false pretences of a transsexual to the same thing done to a normal woman, rather than that of a prostitute)
It is well-known that transsexuals hang out at Changi Village in order to solicit sex. If you saw someone in the streets wearing a police uniform, it would be reasonable to assume he was a cop (even if he was off-duty). If I go to a gay bar, it is reasonable for gay men there to assume that I am gay and looking for a night of fun, and then try to pick me up. I do not scream "GET YOUR PAWS OFF ME, YOU FILTHY FAGGOT" at a mere brush of my sleeve.
There isn't much detail on the blog post, but from what there is, it seems they were in a group and reasonably close together (such that a cry for help could summon everyone).
Unless you think they were a group of hungry transwomen there for Nasi Lemak, it's a very reasonable assumption that they were soliciting sex.
In fact, I did a straw poll, and a vast majority thought it reasonable to think the transwoman was soliciting for sex (~20 thought so, only 2
You can scream and call us bigots as much as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that reasonable people (i.e. not feminists) conclude beyond reasonable doubt (let alone a balance of probabilities) that a transwoman in Changi Village is soliciting sex.
"A bigot is anyone winning an argument with a liberal"
Feminists in Glass Castles should not throw stones.
The above is good evidence that feminism drives you bonkers.
Someone: the thign abt that blog story is
the bapoks were wrong what.
when normal women kena grope
they are traumatized, yes, and my sympathy is fully with them
i think that indian lad was scum
but, look, it IS fucking hilarious how those bapoks reacted
and the bapoks were wrong to take it out on the indian lad's innocent friend
so those bapoks were fucking laughable anyway
oh and condemnable
did i say condemnable?
no i didn't
well i'll say it now then
is it condemnible or condemnable
i think the former
ah whatever
