{"id":3538,"date":"2007-07-24T06:35:24","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T13:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/07\/24\/some-responses-to-the-easy-mistake-to-make-cartoon\/"},"modified":"2013-09-18T10:24:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T17:24:22","slug":"some-responses-to-the-easy-mistake-to-make-cartoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3538","title":{"rendered":"Some Responses to the "Easy Mistake To Make" Cartoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The cartoon these folks are discussing can be read here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Laurie and Debbie at Body Impolitic<\/a> (a blog I’m a fan of) argue that the cartoon is “the politics of hypersimplification.”<\/p>\n

…The reason the two characters in the cartoon appear to agree is that their positions are hypersimplified. We seem to be living in a time where most political\/social\/gender opinions and expectations have been reduced not just to the sound bite but to the bumper sticker. Oversimplified opinions lead to false agreement and false disagreement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Piny at Feministe<\/a> responds:<\/p>\n

Radical-feminist transphobia is not distinguishable from conservative Christian transphobia because they\u2019re both transphobia. I hate to be as uncharitable as Amp here, but my experience has borne that out in many cases: tap the facade of philosophy and\/or tradition and it cracks to reveal a deep and powerful current of simple hatred. All of the positions argued by the characters in the cartoon are shortened, but they\u2019re not actually all that hyperbolic, and they don\u2019t actually distinguish themselves in the longer version; take the \u201csilencing\/transsexual agenda\u201d concurrence, for example.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the comments at Feministe, Brooklynite <\/a>writes:<\/p>\n

Yes, there\u2019s a lot of transphobia out in the world at large, but it seems to me that the point of this cartoon is that the two characters share an ideological commitment to an essentialist understanding of gender, and that their transphobia is nurtured by, even rooted in, this essentialism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is very much what I was trying to get at in the cartoon.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Littoral Mermaid suggests<\/a> that I’m beating a straw radical feminist. She and I debate the question in her comments. Other comments on this post range from a smart criticism from Cellycel (whose blog <\/a>I like, mainly because it’s well-written, but also because it includes references to role-playing games<\/a> and “Avenue Q<\/a>“) to impressively venal anti-fat bigotry from someone whose name I’ve forgotten.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here’s a quote from my exchange with Cellycel:<\/p>\n

Why compare it to the Christian right? Isn\u2019t transphobia bad because of things like say, oppression and discrimination? Not \u201cBecause Conservative Christians thing it\u2019s bad, so it must be good. Also radical feminists agree with conservative Christians. That makes radical feminists bad.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

I think this is the most substantive criticism of the cartoon I\u2019ve seen so far. (A few people have made it, including my \u201cAlas\u201d co-blogger Maia). The cartoon would have been better if it had somehow closed off this interpretation.<\/p>\n

My intent with this cartoon wasn\u2019t \u201cconservative Christians are bad, therefore anyone who agrees with them on anything is bad.\u201d That would be a ridiculous argument (is giving to charity bad because Christians do it?), and it\u2019s not what I believe.<\/p>\n

My intended point was that transphobia is wrong no matter who the speaker is; and that if these arguments are bigoted when they\u2019re coming out of a conservative Christian\u2019s mouth, then they are still bigoted when they are spoken by feminists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(The cartoon these folks are discussing can be read here.) Laurie and Debbie at Body Impolitic (a blog I’m a fan of) argue that the cartoon is “the politics of hypersimplification.” …The reason the two characters in the cartoon appear … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-transsexual-and-transgender-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17699,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions\/17699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}