The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Imperfections of Victimhood

Posted on | April 12, 2014 | 44 Comments

Well, this wasn’t a conversation I was planning to have today, but after some Twitter discussion on the Dana McCallum transgender lesbian rape story — it’s like the Rocky Horror Nightly News Show or something — the misunderstanding exceeded what could be accomplished in 140 characters or less. So I said, “I’ll blog it and get back to you, OK?”

Do I really care what a bunch of San Francisco liberals think about me? I do not. On the other hand, San Francisco liberals are never going to have Second Thoughts if they think that the alternative to their worldview is ignorant bigotry, so occasionally it is worthwhile to demonstrate that our bigotry is not ignorant, and perhaps not even “bigotry” at all. That is to say, one may have entirely logical reasons for disagreeing with liberals and, even if your reasons are emotional or sentimental, it may still be possible to persuade liberals, by means of an articulate discourse.

The accusation that male-to-female transgender Dana McCallum raped her lesbian (biologically female) spouse @MadMelvina is one of those stories that strikes at the intersection of multiple contemporary ideological crusades of the Left:

  1. Rape Culture — This is the idea, popularized by feminists, that rape is not an individual act perpetrated by criminals. Instead, we are told, rape is the result of social attitudes about sex. By this pretzel logic, the person who makes a sarcastic remark about rape is complicit in the crime, because such remarks represent a cultural attitude that makes rape possible.
  2. Anti-Homophobia — As fashionable causes go, fighting homophobia in 2014 is like being a Freedom Rider in 1963 or a draft-card-burning hippie peacenik in 1968. Liberals have convinced themselves that prejudice against gays and lesbians is an existential crisis, and anyone who doesn’t constantly denounce homophobia might as well go join Westboro Baptist Church.
  3. Radical Feminism — Little noticed by the mainstream media, hard-core radical feminism is staging a comeback. And these man-hating lesbian separatists are angry as hell about the attempt of some transgenders to include themselves in feminism. From the radical (“essentialist”) perspective, these XY-chromosome sex-changers are simply men — the Oppressive Patriarchy incarnate! — employing a particularly sneaky way of co-opting the Womyn’s Movement.

It should not be necessary for me to say that I think all of these people are crazy. But all crazies are not created equal and, as crazy as the radical man-hating lesbians may be, they at least have valid science on their side in saying that “female” is a biological category — genetically determined, rather than being a “social construct.”

Readers will recall the January item, “Feminists Accused of ‘Transphobia’: Competitive Victimhood Derby“:

So, RadFem 2013 was a conference in London, which resulted in a gigantic controversy because radical feminists insisted on excluding the “transgendered” from their female-only event, and one of the featured speakers, Australian lesbian feminist Professor Sheila Jeffreys, was about to publish a new book, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism, that was deeply offensive to the “T” people represented in the LGBT acronym.
How crazy did that conflict become? At one point in April, the venue tried to cancel the event after discovering that “certain language was used and some statements were made about transgender people that would go against our equalities and diversity policy.” Another RadFem conference organizer, Cathy Brennan of Baltimore, was meanwhile all over Twitter announcing “transwomen are men” and comparing them to MRAs (men’s rights advocates). . . .
The Competitive Victimhood Derby is ultimately a zero-sum game, you see. There can only be one winner, and the transgender claim to equal victimhood is rejected by radical feminists, who view this as an attempt to usurp their own categorical claim.
It’s like a traffic jam on the Crazyville Road, where two politicized groups of wackjobs are compelled by the implicit logic of their arguments to fight each other for supremacy.

Strange as it is to say, however, I perceive in the RadFem position not only a basic scientific truth about who is a woman, but also an argument for the principle of free association.

What the RadFem organizers are saying is that transgenders wanting to attend their conference are like Nazis wanting to attend a synagogue or Klansmen wanting to attend an NAACP meeting. If the organizers of a feminist conference cannot decide who is invited (and who is not invited), whose essential liberty is being infringed?

Therefore, I accept that RadFems (who understandably do not want me and my oppressive patriarchal penis anywhere near their conference) also have the right to exclude XY-chromosome persons who present themselves as pseudo-females. And the only real argument that transgender “feminists” can make in response is that their exclusion from the RadFem conference hurts their feelings.

So what? Since when was it a civil-rights violation to hurt somebody’s feelings? Where do people get the idea that, if you call me a “hillbilly,” I can sue you for not calling me an “Appalachian-American”?

People do not have a “right” to high self-esteem!

OK, so when it was reported that Dana McCallum’s ex-wife had accused her of rape, a radical feminist rejected the categories:

Conservatives don’t usually find themselves nodding in agreement with angry radical dykes, but it’s difficult to deny the basic point here: If radical feminism is about advancing the interests of lesbians, then it is sort of an insult to radical feminists to label Dana McCallum’s (alleged) crime a “lesbian rape.” Such an inaccurate label wrongly shifts the blame from one group (transgenders) to another group (lesbians).

Radical dykes have feelings, too, you know.

Apparently, however, Dana McCallum’s (alleged) victim has an overpowering sympathy for the, uh, transgender community. (The alleged victim’s identity is not a secret, by the way: Anyone can figure out that @MadMelvina is @DanaDanger’s ex-wife.) The rhetoric about McCallum’s gender was upsetting to the alleged victim:

 

Hmmmm. It certainly would have been the wise thing to bite my tongue and say nothing. But my innate propensity for irreverent sarcasm is sometimes just too strong to resist:


 

Was I trying to make a serious point here? Yes, because it would seem like to me that if a woman had been raped by a member of the transgender community, this event might cause her to have Second Thoughts about her sympathies. In fact, maybe this unfortunate experience would cause a victim and her friends to question their entire liberal worldview, which is based on the idea that moral virtue consists chiefly of striking poses of political sympathy toward Oppressed Minorities and Other Victims of Society.

Maybe — and hey, I’m just throwing this out there, OK? — it makes more sense to look at human beings as individuals, rather than as members of collective identity groups. Maybe people who chatter constantly about “critical thinking” could apply some skeptical curiosity to the liberal habit of categorizing people as either (a) Victims of Oppression or (b) Perpetrators of Oppression on the basis of group membership. Is it possible that some gay people, for example, have problems more important than “homophobia”? Yes, I think this is possible, and I even think that if you studied the situation carefully, you would find that the vast majority of homosexuals aren’t really Victims of Oppression at all.

Far be it from me either (a) to foment transphobic bigotry, or (b) to engage in slut-shaming and victim-blaming. However, I would hope that @MadMelvina‘s experience with @DanaDanger might inspire her to reconsider her apparent belief that all transgendered people are Victims of Oppression in every circumstance. After all, if @MadMelvina‘s allegations are true, then she is the Victim, and @DanaDanger is actually the Oppressor. And I will repeat what I said before:

Some people have a “rescuer” tendency that leads them to get involved with damaged personalities. So if McCallum’s ex fled one abusive situation, only to end up in another (allegedly) abusive situation, this is perhaps predictable.

One does not have to be a perfect victim in order to be a victim. When a teenage hoodlum gets gunned down by rival hoodlums, we are not “blaming the victim” (nor are we “pro-drive-by-shooting”) if we say that such crimes illustrate the danger of adolescents becoming involved in youth gang activity. By the same token, when a teenage girl is sexually assaulted after getting passed-out drunk at a party, we are not “pro-rape” for mentioning the role of alcohol in the crime.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the facts of “the incident in question” involving @MadMelvina and @DanaDanger, I am nonetheless predisposed to believe the victim in this case.

Why? Well, a careful reading of Dana McCallum’s August 2013 speech to a high school LGBT group indicates that McCallum has a long history of mental illness. The careful reader with a background in psychology might see elements of pathological narcissism, impulsive behavior and “boundary issues” in McCallum’s story. Would someone like that be capable of sexual assault? Certainly, I think so.

But wait a minute: Aren’t the mentally ill also an Official Victim Group for whom liberals are required to feel sympathy?

And if the alleged rapist is a mentally ill transgender, doesn’t that double victimhood trump the rights of a mere woman?

The logic of the Competitive Victimhood Derby has led us to this strange place, where a rape victim fears transphobia more than she fears that other women may fall prey to similar crimes.

PSYCHO-TRANNY RAPE RAMPAGE
Women Savagely Assaulted by Sex-Crazed Shemales

Yeah, that’s a tabloid headline that would sell some newspapers. And as crazy as the news has been lately, who knows?

Maybe these musings won’t cause any San Francisco liberals to have Second Thoughts about their worldview, but I hope at least I’ve demonstrated that my bigotry isn’t entirely ignorant.

And perhaps it isn’t really bigotry at all. Think about it.

 

Category: Crime, Feminism, Gays, Sex

Comments

44 Responses to “The Imperfections of Victimhood”

  1. Adjoran
    April 12th, 2014 @ 1:51 am

    It is the perfectly logical conclusion to the long-running chant of the Left that each person should be able to identify themselves in every way, independent of tradition, science, or practical application.

    Who are these cis-lesbians to say the trans-lesbians are any less lesbian? If they can argue DNA, then why can’t society at large argue DNA and refuse the unisex bathroom accommodation?

    Every group on the left has similar identity arguments, though. Black Democrats judge each other by shade in many ways. Hispanics divide by nation of origin of ancestors. Feminists are split between the merely fanatic and neurotic and the full-bore batshit crazy.

    Even the transgendered community (I’m sorry, but that’s such moonbat GoodSpeak as to be a joke term, come ON, is there a trans neighborhood somewhere, really?) is divided into those who go with surgery and those who settle for cosmetics and imagination.

    And as always the Left divides generally between the truly evil, the bloodsucking parasites, and the merely ignorant followers.

  2. Dianna Deeley
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:03 am

    Too tired to say much besides, “Excellent summary of the skeptical inquiry into the circumstances.”

    Goodnight.

  3. Käthe
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:48 am

    “this other feeling I started to have around this time too, this really vague sense that I wasn’t quite part of the world, that I was walking through the world but not really there, this sense of being disconnected.”

    Yeah that’s dissociation/depersonalization. Classic borderline. “Identity instability” is another classic borderline trait. 98% of these cases could be explained by BPD imho.

  4. Anamika
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:12 am

    What the Hell is that big thingy rising up from Stacy’s toga or whatever is wrapped around his loin parts?

    Especially disconcerting is all that fruit on the top of the what??

    Is that that Cornucopia of Infinite Delight & Perfection that Stacy is always promising to deliver personally to all his would-be female and shemale feminist disciples?

    Just wonderin’.

  5. MeasureforMeasure
    April 12th, 2014 @ 4:25 am

    Your earlier picture made McCallum seem almost attractive. In reality, they’re just a man wearing a dress and a wig, a person who hasn’t had surgery and is a rapist, yet formerly a hero in the transgender community simply because they felt like a woman:

    http://tinyurl.com/m4vcqch

  6. bet0001970
    April 12th, 2014 @ 6:19 am

    Like I said…this social justice thing doesn’t work. It’s time to go back to the rule of law.

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:14 am

    “Was I trying to make a serious point here? Yes, because it would seem like to me that if a woman had been raped by a member of the transgender community, this event might cause her to have Second Thoughts about her sympathies. In fact, maybe this unfortunate experience would cause a victim and her friends to question their entire liberal worldview, which is based on the idea that that moral virtue consists chiefly of striking poses of political sympathy toward Oppressed Minorities and Other Victims of Society.”

    The old trusim that the difference between a liberal and a conservative (at least the law and order variety) is being the victim of a robbery or other violent crime? Of course there is some suggestion that there may not have been a rape in this case at all…

    Excellent post and comments however. And I am glad their are no transgendered communities (yet) but give it time, give it time…

  8. From Around the Blogroll | The First Street Journal.
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:39 am

    […] Finally, Robert Stacey Stacy McCain is rather amused by the strange antics of the left when it comes to pronouns. The oh-so-inclusive left want people to refer to “transgendered” people as being the sex they wish to be, rather than the sex which they were born, unless it becomes a problem. After the “transsexual lesbian” Dana McCallum raped “her” lesbian ex-wife — and can you appreciate all of the irony in a statement like that? — a tweet from someone or someones calling herself/ themselves Actual Dykes said: […]

  9. Dana
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:59 am

    The notion that a man male would have his genitals cut off and replaced with some sort of surgically-created skin fold, so that he could become a homosexual and have sex with lesbians . . .

    Is this the extreme reaction to Windy’s complaint that all penis-in-vagina sex is rape, so this heterosexual man male had to have the offending organ whacked off so he could have non-rape sex with a woman, whom he turned around and raped anyway?

    http://www.coldwinterknights.net/images/FinalIronyMeter.gif

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:41 am

    Boys! What they will do just to get laid.

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:45 am

    Bradley Manning is a trans woman and grand marshall of the Lesbian Gay Bi Trangendered Pride Parade. It is so confusing to keep this straight. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/12/finally-bradley-manning-to-grand-marshal-gay-pride-parade/

  12. Jeanette Victoria
    April 12th, 2014 @ 9:14 am

    I’m old enough to remember when loons like this went to the state hospital or shady acres. Now they get bully pulpits to convince kids their lunacy is normal.

    When did we as a society lose the ability to recognize mental illness?

  13. RS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 9:32 am

    The Victimhood Derby is merely a means of obtaining influence and success without merit. It is not based upon doing but being, and is predicated upon the wrong belief that success, happiness, good fortune, etc. are zero-sum. The fact that Bill Gates invented Microsoft somehow prevented me from becoming filthy rich. Is it any wonder then, that among self-proclaimed “Victims,” their own interactions and hierarchy is also zero-sum? Is it further any wonder that the vast, vast majority of those holding these views (cynical manipulators of these movements excepted) are miserable? After all, there will always be someone higher up on the totem pole. The irony is, in ostensibly seeking to “take back control” of their lives, they forfeit it to a fallacious philosophy.

  14. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 9:41 am

    Just before when the mentally ill ran for political office.

    And won.

  15. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 12th, 2014 @ 9:42 am

    Well said.

  16. Stanley
    April 12th, 2014 @ 9:53 am

    You are not making any sense, Anamika. When folk cease to make sense, I switch off…

  17. Jeanette Victoria
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:12 am

    Word salad

  18. richard mcenroe
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:13 am

    We could call trannies “stealth rapists…”

  19. robertstacymccain
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:16 am

    THANK YOU!

    If you talk to some old-school psychologists — and these are people now retired, or nearing retirement age — they will tell you that lobbying from the LGBT activists has resulted in a situation where it is impossible to describe any (non-criminal) sexual behavior as deviant.

    Yet sexual maladjustment is strongly associated with many forms of mental illness, and this association cannot be made to disappear by defining “maladjustment” out of existence. Similarly, the wish to “destigmatize” mental illness leads to a situation where everybody is supposed to pretend that dangerously crazy people are not dangerously crazy.

    Then you read something like McCallum’s coming-of-age memoir, and you say, “Whoa! This person has some serious unresolved issues.” But the politicization of mental health means that appropriate diagnosis and treatment are practically a hate crime.

  20. richard mcenroe
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:23 am

    The transgender-rights movement is an insoluble problem for progressive feminists. No true progressive can abandon a self-identified oppressed minority, but to accept the transgendered is to admit there is an oppressed class whose victimization trumps their own self-identified victimhood.

    It’s not unlike the stresses progressive academia suffered when the comfortable white liberal professors found themselves competing for a fixed number of tenured seats with womyn’s and ethnic studies professors with ever-sexier and more progressive curricula. The result there of course was to allow the newcomers to self-ghtettoize into new tenured tracks for the new “studies”, but that isn’t possible for political femininists because there is only one society to go around.

  21. Rubix's Cube
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:44 am

    Strangely, Anamika’s fantastic “contributions” seem to have been going nowhere. Maybe there simply aren’t enough spammers or trolls out there in the whole “cornucopia of Infinite Delight” (?) for her penetrating insights to be appreciated and to receive the recognition they deserve. Incidentally, how did you conjure this up? With “Stacy’s toga”?

  22. robertstacymccain
    April 12th, 2014 @ 11:55 am

    You are correct to identify academia — and particularly the “[Blank] Studies” departments at universities — as the source of this insanity.

    We have made radicalism a professional qualification, so that there is what we might call The Feminism-Industrial Complex, involving many hundreds of university professors, as well as thousands of graduate students who aspire to being professors, with a career investment in these radical ideologies. Beyond the campus, there is a galaxy of non-profit groups, devoted to “Women’s Rights” and “Gay Rights” and “choice,” which raise millions of dollars annually by their agitprop activism on behalf of such ideologies.

    These professional radicals are organized, both formally and informally, in networks of activism and communication. At a signal — “War on Women!” — these networks are mobilized into action, and all their allies in liberal news organizations help to promote the message.

  23. Anamika
    April 12th, 2014 @ 1:01 pm

    Now the victimhood thing is a very big issue, imo, and if I harp on anything, as a theme, or method to my madness, is the absolute necessity of taking full 100% responsibility for our whatever weal or woe befalls us, and refrain totally from blaming others for the lack of satisfaction, fulfillment, and permanent well-being in our lives.

    So let’s get this perfectly clear.

    If you really and truly want to be a progressive liberal you will have to get it fully that YOU ARE ALWAYS RIGHT and everyone else is totally wrong and that everyone else is to blame for everything that is wrong, not you.

    Example, all the stuff posted by RSM. Politics, Obama Drones, Economy. Always someone else is responsible. You better get that otherwise your progressive cult will never have a fighting chance. So take it as axiomatic that you are always right and everyone else is full of shit!

  24. Anamika
    April 12th, 2014 @ 1:13 pm

    Close. Actually, that thing I was wondering about Stacy…that’s one mighty manly fruit salad!

  25. daleyrocks
    April 12th, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    Sorry about your dick, Anamika.

  26. Phil_McG
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:34 pm

    The Radfems have no business whatsoever excluding trannies from their carpet munching shindigs. Feminists are militantly intolerant of freedom of association for men, they can’t abide male only golf clubs and so on, so they don’t deserve any freedom of association for themselves.

    I hope the trannies sue the pantsuits off them for discrimination.

  27. Adjoran
    April 12th, 2014 @ 4:17 pm

    I believe in equal opportunity.

    Hang ALL the traitors.

  28. Adjoran
    April 12th, 2014 @ 4:20 pm

    Even suggesting the possibility of dysfunction is considered a hate crime now.

    Another aspect of our modern society that future generations will look back upon and say, “Huh? What were they thinking?”

  29. Adjoran
    April 12th, 2014 @ 4:28 pm

    It seems this particular “transgendered individual” may not have had the surgery. He just decided to dress as a woman and become a “lesbian” because that is what turns him on, or whatever.

    So he still has a penis, however it is now considered a “feminine penis,” whatever that is. But he stuck it in his “wife” so it is “rape-rape” on the Whoopi Scale.

    Dana’s lawyer claims it was consensual, they are getting divorced, and it’s all about money.

    Turns out “following your bliss” doesn’t always work out so well.

  30. concern00
    April 12th, 2014 @ 6:34 pm

    No transgendered communities? What about Transexual Transylvania?

  31. concern00
    April 12th, 2014 @ 6:36 pm

    She’s starting to read like a text generating robot. A few of these used to haunt Clash Daily. Surely, you all remember JANET!

  32. concern00
    April 12th, 2014 @ 6:39 pm

    The true challenge is whether the left can hold together this coalition of deviance and mental illness long enough to destroy society.

    I have reasonable confidence that there will be some gun toting Christians left to pick up the pieces.

  33. Finrod Felagund
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:19 pm

    Heck, I remember Mark V Shaney. Well, not quite, because that was before my time even, but I remember the aftermath.

  34. muusk
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:23 pm

    In real life, Dana doesn’t look quite so cute:

    http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/384167369_640.jpg

  35. RadFems vs. Trannies: Will Feminists Let ‘Gender Queers’ Boss Them Around? : The Other McCain
    April 12th, 2014 @ 11:44 pm

    […] conflict between radical feminists and transgender activists, which I first noticed in January and revisited last night in the context of the Dana McCallum rape case, has escaped the notice of mainstream liberal journalism. Liberals tacitly side with the […]

  36. Charles G. Hill
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:39 am

    Well, of course they aspire to be professors. What else can they possibly do? There’s that infamous Heinlein list of things humans should be able to do, specialization being for insects and all, and the worst of the lot might be able to manage one of them.

  37. K-Bob
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:43 am

    Heh.

    I’m not a very religious person, but for some reason the old story about building houses on sand comes to mind. The left is all about shifting, vacuous, incoherencies.

    Sand.

    Out where I live, it’s fairly obvious that nothing short of a nuclear war (or SMOD, or actual End Times) is going to shake these people off their land.

  38. concern00
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:45 am

    Well you can still be gun toting then!

  39. K-Bob
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:48 am

    Heck, out here if you don’t have a gun, you ain’t properly dressed for courtin’ and such.

  40. K-Bob
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:51 am

    I thought traitors deserved attention from the special services division of the Guild of Executioners.

  41. cmdr358
    April 13th, 2014 @ 3:02 am

    THIS!

  42. The Daley Gator | The epic battle for the ages begins!
    April 13th, 2014 @ 11:39 am

    […] between radical feminists and transgender activists, which I first noticed in January and revisited last night in the context of the Dana McCallum rape case, has escaped the notice of mainstream liberal journalism. Liberals tacitly side with the […]

  43. Behind_You1
    April 13th, 2014 @ 11:35 pm

    I saw Psycho-Tranny Rape Rampage open for Marilyn Manson in 2000.

  44. Piquette
    April 15th, 2014 @ 2:22 am

    You can enjoy watching trannies sue the pantsuits off the feminists, but your pleasure might be short-lived. Because this isn’t some discrete war that is without implications for the wider society in which you live. There’s a bigger picture here.

    This is about much more than a bunch of men in frocks stomping their high heels and breaking their nails on the doors some mean feminists have closed in their faces. These men probably hate radical feminists as much as you do, yet they still demand to be let in. Because they can. And because they get sympathy and support for their cause. Transgenderism is becoming widely accepted as a practice and identity deserving legal protections, and more and more, those protections are granted.

    For instance, incarcerated murderers and rapists, when they identify as women, can receive state-funded hormone treatments and surgeries, and demand to be housed in women’s prisons. In Canada, men who identify as women are protected by Toby’s Law, which allows them to receive services in women’s DV or homeless shelters and rape crisis centres, as well as to access women’s fitness centres, locker rooms, and public restrooms. This law allowed Christopher “Jessica” Hambrook, a cross-dressing pedophile and rapist, to find more vulnerable, disabled, female victims in women’s homeless shelters. See: “Shocking case proves ‘Toby’s Law’ is flawed.”

    Private spaces that are segregated by biological sex–for the safety, privacy and comfort of men and women, of boys and girls–can now be used by the opposite sex. Gender “identity”–a subjective feeling–trumps biological reality. In an elementary school in California, little girls were squatting over the urinals in the boys washroom because they identify as boys. The little boys (who don’t want their own mothers in the bathroom when they pee) were uncomfortable using a private room that should really be designated for them only. The school plans to put up partitions between the urinals to protect the rights of “trans boys.” The girls washroom stalls can, of course, be used by “trans girls” (boys who identify as as girls).

    Adolescent girls and boys are being diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder and prescribed cross-sex hormones by 16. Children as young as 3, 4 and 5 are being “identified” as gender non-conforming and, by 10 or so, given dangerous puberty blockers to prevent sexual maturation, followed by hormone therapy, which renders them permanently sterile. All before they can meaningfully consent to these irreversible treatments. Then, the parents of these mutilated and poisoned children are lauded for their acceptance and liberal open-mindedness, instead of condemned, along with the doctors, for psychological and medical child abuse.

    ALL of these issues related to trans politics are important to radical feminists, but these are hardly issues of interest ONLY to feminists.