* Note to the males who like to frequent this blog: I am not Cathy Brennan. I don’t even really know Cathy Brennan. What I do know is that she’s an activist whom I admire, and she’s a fellow female, a fellow dyke and I will always speak out in solidarity with women who don’t drink the “gender Kool-Aid misogynist bullshit” our culture forces down women’s throats every single day.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I want to talk about yet another image created by an MRA “trans activist,” in which Brennan is targeted. On principle, I have to talk about this because THIS is evidence of the bullshit women have to constantly endure. This is a visual representation of the rhetoric handed to women, lesbians in particular, when they are critical of men:
Let’s start with the conceit of the piece: if the mean lesbian was nice to everyone, then everything would be fine. To quote the graphic, “The beauty of womanhood is the ability to love.” (As an aside: that is seriously the most asinine string of words I’ve ever seen strung together.) Given that this was created by a male who worships gender, I’m not entirely surprised that he has embraced the notion that women should “be nice to everybody.” Indeed oppressive gender constructs mandate that women/girls be groomed from day one to “be nice to everybody,” to “be nice and love” – love your abuser, your oppressor, your own oppression.
Women who aren’t “nice to everybody” are punished. This is gender in action. Guess what? Women don’t fucking have to be nice to everyone. Women don’t have to love everyone. Women don’t owe their kindness, their affinity to anyone, contrary to what gender worshippers (males, trans, most heterosexuals) will have you believe. Women don’t have to protect your feelings and FEMINISM (which this dude seems to know SO MUCH ABOUT) has nothing to do with protecting the fragile male ego. (I know this fact inconveniences a great many males.)
Secondly, being critical of oppressive constructs is not “being mean.” A woman using her intellect to see past the smoke screens of “ladybrain,” “woman as a feeling,” and “innate gender” is not a woman being “mean.” Will a woman’s critical thinking skills sometimes hurt male feelings? You bet. Males don’t want women to think critically. MtT’s especially don’t want women to think critically because when we do, it becomes blatantly obvious to us that their insistence that they are female and deserve access to female bodies and female designated space is not part of an innate identity, but a fetish-fueled compulsion rooted in gender stereotypes (i.e. “women should always be nice,” “women should love everyone”).
Secondly, and perhaps most reprehensibly, this graphic preys upon Brennan’s reproductive health problems – problems that she has publically spoken of on her blog. The violence and woman-hating at the core of this rendering is palpable and frightening. And maybe this is what really galls me about this graphic – that a male, who has never known the agony of female health issues, “mocks” the pain in order to further regressive gender stereotypes so that his fetish, his misogyny may live on, unquestioned. As a woman first, as a female cancer survivor second, I am outraged that a male would have the audacity to use another woman’s acute suffering as a means of parody.
But you know what? I really shouldn’t be surprised. Men do this all the time. Men trivialize women’s suffering – they trivialize our fear, they trivialize our lived experience, they parody us and insist that we alter our behavior to support their parody, they feel entitled to use our health issues as “comic” relief (though this “artist” – I’m using that word rather liberally – is decidedly unfunny; I mean, a thirteen-year-old boy might get a kick out of his humor? I guess?).
Trans activists, like the author of this graphic, claim to want dialogue, to want civility, but sisters, let their actions, their renderings disabuse all women of these false claims – they do not want dialogue; they want women to shut up and accept males as females, they want women to turn off their brains and play make-believe along with their fetish. Any woman who refuses to play along is going to be vilified, shouted down, mocked.
This ain’t nothing new, sisters. This ain’t our first time at this rodeo.
We will not be bullied into submission. Not this time, fellas.
Hypotaxis 
Reblogged this on You think I just don't understand, but I don't believe you..
They hate Cathy Brennan so much. The hatred against lesbians coming out of this trans activism is astounding although, I guess, not really surprising.
males truly, openly hate us. and that fact is what makes me a radfem. i understand this material reality and stand with my sisters. thank you.
Thanks for taking this comic apart and for condemning this abusive MRA/trans activist. You do wonderful and important work, augustus!
And, to Cathy: I’m so sorry you’re being targeted in this spiteful and idiotic way. For whatever it’s worth, we are watching what these guys are doing, we understand the ways they lie and abuse, and we will defend you, online, whenever we can.
This comic says absolutely nothing about Cathy, and everything about its creator. In fact, I think that walking, talking dink is a self-portrait of the artist. I’m not joking: it stands, symbolically, for how this particular trans-activist, and many others, view the women who critique them. They objectify women in all ways possible, including as disconnected, isolated body parts–so nicely illustrated here.
We understand very well that trans-activists DO, indeed, reduce people to their reproductive systems and genitals (else, why would they need, ostensibly, to “match” psychologically?); we understand that they then project this biological essentialism onto feminists who, being rational people, understand that male and female are meaningful categories, because reproductive roles are intertwined with gender hierarchy and women’s oppression.
Anyway, I fully agree with your analysis of the comic. What the artist has created here is a very traditional, very male supremacist, prescription for how women should behave. Women should be grateful for their reproductive capacities, shut their mouths, be always gentle and sweet, and never ask for more, because MEN have determined that this is “female power,” that this is “a gift.” It begins and ends there.
Any exercise of female intellectual capacities, especially in service of criticizing patriarchal institutions, is excessive liberty, it’s greediness. And, as he has demonstrated, it’s also punishable. With physical and emotional pain. This prescription for female gratitude has a religious flavour, as if it were spoken from on high. That’s where the artist has positioned himself–on top of and above women, an authority on womanhood–and, frankly, that’s where the system has firmly placed him (even though his plastic breasts, laced up tight in a bodice, is a clever disguise for a male agent). He’s such a man through-and-through that his misogyny is quite invisible to himself. It’s as natural to him as breathing. But, WE can see it plain as day; we can read it and we can feel it.
The trans cult is transparent to us as just another adaptation of male supremacist structures. And this comic nicely reveals the inner-workings of trans “activism.” Jesus, what a fool he is to put the truth of their woman-hating right there, on the surface! It’s too bad so many so-called feminists can’t see these males for who and what they are: just a variation on the constant theme of keeping women available to meet men’s needs, psychically paralyzed, pliant and silent.
Morag99 — thanks for this thoughtful, insightful reply. You are so on point in everything you’ve said here. I couldn’t agree more.
Thank you for deconstructing that hateful crap. And to Morag for further deconstruction.
One added item to note is how they call Cathy “Buck” much as the Tumblr trans warriors will use a male-themed epithet against radical feminists and lesbians. It’s fascinating to me that they are utterly blind OR indifferent to the bald hypocrisy of that behavior. What’s behind that? The worst thing you can say about a woman is that she’s really like a man? Other than not making any sense on the face, isn’t that what being trans is all about, the ability to cross the gender divide? And not just cross it, but be lauded for it. But we know that it’s really just hatred of lesbians and the trope of the butch lesbian wanting to be a man. But there’s also the obvious, internalized hatred of trans men (because female, of course) to the degree that, oops, they forget that they’re supposed to care about them, too. There’s even a famous trans man, Buck Angel. It’s openly disrespectful of the real Buck to use that name for someone opposed to the gender religion of which the real Buck is a true believer. But a male transgender wouldn’t know or care about that because, wait for it, female.
Their hatred of all things authentically female is a conflagration in their brains; as Morag said, that’s why the artist pictures Cathy that way. Unlike her, this artist’s entire (minimal) intellectual capacity is consumed by that blazing fire of hatred.
I wonder what you think of feministing.com ‘s behavior. They have elected a transwoman as one of their three executive director, and now, about 30% of their main articles are about transwomen-related issues.
Such as a transwoman being arrested for trying to illegally enter Canada (worth waaaaaay more space than, I don’t know, all the women crossing borders or the women dealing with immigration), or such as “health care” being denied to transwomen, when really, it is a specific set of medical procedures not being covered by insurance (I don’t get why it can’t be generalized to all cosmetic surgery. It’s unfair to women’s free choice). They’ll still get coverage when they get cancer from taking hormones or any other health issue.
I’m non-european, and I am annoyed as hell to know that “english-speaking feminism” is a big US-brainfuck where transwomen are more important than any other women…
You’re absolutely right, Cheval. It’s a huge brainfuck, and most feminist outposts (in the US, at least) have been hijacked by the trans agenda. As a result, very few publications discuss anything that has implications for women. Sad, but true.
I’m surprised the lesbophobia in this comic hasn’t been pointed out yet. The idea that Cathy’s body actually WANTS to accept a penis, she’s just fighting it because she… enjoys being mean or has no capacity to love or whatever. AND its not even a “female-identified” penis, its name is Richard! Implication? Angry lesbians are really just craving some dick. Fantastic.