Strong Female Protagonist (No Relation to Hark! A Vagrant!)

Tone down your second wave, girl. It hurts to watch. -_-

I just want a safe space! That's why I need to treat you like garbage!

I'm the victim! Stop triggering me!

It's something that definitely happens. I've known husbands of women in the military who've found that all of the "military spouse" groups make them unwelcome because they're male. This also sort of reminds me of the tendency of some parts of the homosexual community to see bisexual people as not one of them. Of course, this also falls under the same wheelwell as the people complaining about pre-op (or no-op) MTF transexuals who want to be let into the female bathrooms.

Oh, don't question it for a bleeding minute. What goat lady is selling here is exactly the kind of thing feminists with zero self awareness will spiel.

If there's one things members of oppressed groups are good at, it's shitting on smaller oppressed groups.

If goat lady doesn't get punched into the stratosphere on the next page I will be super peeved I tell you what.

edited 23rd Aug '16 9:58:24 AM by Mr.Badguy

Yeah I'm hoping for some verbal evisceration.

edited 23rd Aug '16 10:08:01 AM by Adannor

Goatlady is a TERF . Well not quite but close enough. I mean she probably is a TERF too.

edited 23rd Aug '16 10:25:21 AM by phantom1

TERF was the label I was thinking of. Though not entirely accurate it's still fitting for what she's trying to do here.

I reiterate my desire for her to be punched into the stratosphere.

edited 23rd Aug '16 11:35:03 AM by Mr.Badguy

Truly a worthy goal yes

She's swearing off the TER Fness via Some of My Best Friends Are X right there though. Which isn't sounding very credible.

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:29:45 PM by Adannor

No, but she's still dismissing someone for being bigender on the grounds of "trigger me timbers."

And, well, "I'm fine with X minority but not Y" is actually pretty common.

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:51:30 PM by Mr.Badguy

Nowhere in the conversation did anyone bring up triggers or trigger warnings. Nor did anyone imply something about triggers or trigger warnings. Can we please criticize Mean Goat Lady without making fun of people who need trigger warnings?

Goat Lady is trying to bar a bigender person on the grounds of making her "uncomfortable", and that's basically par for the course of that kind of victimhood mentality I've seen. Trigger warnings can be necessary and appreciated but it's also been a pretty heavily misused term at times, and trying to bar someone because she wants a safe space kinda sorta falls exactly into that for me.

Also it's probably residual antipathy from that time 'body' was treated as a triggering word.

Yes, and easily the worst misuse of the term is turning it into a demeaning meme and dismissively putting things like "TRIGGERED" and "Trigger me timbers" on everything. Let's avoid contributing to that.

As far as the actual comic: Goat Lady looks impassioned here, but her argument seems pretty disingenuous to me. It's difficult to believe she can grasp and accept being bigender but not being genderfluid. It's pretty TERFy even if she's not a literal TERF.

edited 23rd Aug '16 2:50:45 PM by StateOfBedlam

It is possible to mock the worst elements of a good movement without tarnishing the entire thing. Heck I thought for sure someone was going to bite my head off for my earlier comment about "feminists with zero self awareness."

Anyway, Goat Lady ain't literally a TERF, but she's doing the same thing. Kiele is bigender, and thus does not fit into Goat Lady's definition of acceptable queerness.

edited 23rd Aug '16 2:57:34 PM by Mr.Badguy

Well given how emotionally she's dissing the shapeshifter, "triggered" would be pretty appropriate for her.

edited 23rd Aug '16 4:11:24 PM by Adannor

Seriously though, goat lady might as well be saying "I just want a white neighbourhood! Why can't I just have one?!"

While I disagree with the woman, I don't think she's an awful human being who needs to be punched in the face, or whatever shit like that. She believes the specific meeting was one specifically for women, and when Kiele became male, he no longer belonged in that specific meeting, because he was no longer a woman. She wants Kiele to have safe spaces of their own, and mentioned groups they could join for that purpose, it's just that one meeting she thinks it was inappropriate for them to sit in on. Because a meeting of women suddenly having a male in the middle of it is weird to them.

I think she's being unfair because, despite becoming male halfway through the meeting, Kiele still routinely experiences life as a dynamorphic woman. I think Kiele probably did deserve to remain in that meeting. Of course, given the point of the conference is ultimately about letting people feel comfortable when society tries very hard to make sure they can never feel comfortable, it does become awkward figuring out where to draw those lines. If a number of the women in the meeting were uncomfortable with Kiele's presence when they were male? Well, it becomes really complicated.

My hope is that Kiele and Teresa hug it out. That Teresa accepts Kiele and promises to find ways to make sure they're comfortable at the conference, as well. Because, again, I don't think Teresa's a bad person. I don't think she even has any real problem with Kiele, outside of the specific meeting being discussed. So it'd be nice to see this conflict friendshipped away.

Kiele is not just a man, though. Kiele's gender identity shifts between the two, related to their powers or not. Kiele even says outright that the reason they shifted into a male form is because Goat Lady yelled at them, so for all we know they were identifying as female while in the group and are being harassed now for being bigender.

Goat Lady is punching down. For all her whining about a safe space Kiele is in dire need of it more than her, and Goat Lady decides they can't have this one because it's hers.

It's why a support group for women could justifiably remove a man (even though I think this is a far more complex issue than can be summed up here, and we should also make things more comfortable for men to seek out support groups), or why a support group for trans women could justifiably remove a cis woman, but removing a trans woman from a woman-oriented support group would be terrible garbage.

Side note: Unless I'm mistaken, isn't what Kiele is describing genderfluidity and not bigender? Like, it's not that they identify as both at the same time, they shift gender identities depending on some form of variable.

If I'm totally wrong on this please feel free to correct me.

edited 24th Aug '16 6:12:03 AM by Mr.Badguy

I'm not sure I agree 100% there with you, because making it about power distribution turns it into a confrontation, and easily leads to finger pointing. I would rather make it about the purpose of the group gathering: if it's about allowing women to express their most vulnerable emotions regarding men, then having a man there could make that impossible. There is nothing inequitable about that- one could easily imagine the same circumstance in relation to a male support group (i.e. if they are there to discuss their most vulnerable emotions regarding women, then having a woman there might make that impossible). That way, we don't have to define who is "punching up" or "punching down" at any particular time (in fact punching need not come up at all).

That said, I dont know that Kiele violates that criteria, because he/she isn't simply a "man". Unless the other women gathered there for the purpose of discussing the problems they are having with genderfluid people, they should consider letting him/her in.

edited 24th Aug '16 6:21:07 AM by DeMarquis

Kiele doesn't deal with the same privileges of being a man the same way that trans men don't either. I am a man all the time. Kiele is only a man sometimes. Other times they identify as a woman.

It's punching down in this case because Kiele is from a group that is more harshly treated and they're being turned away for not fitting into Goat Lady's brand of acceptably queer.

I'm not disagreeing with you on either point, I'm just saying that the first one is a more useful guide to action than the second, because there are always arguments on the other side, and sorting all that out could be impossible.

I mean it's a bit more complicated than if Kiele was a transwoman, but they experience being a woman some of the time and no one else seems to find it a problem so Goatlady is being jerkish.

Yeah. I think Teresa's probably in the wrong here, but I don't think she's actually a bad person. I don't think she hates or resents Kiele. I think she's giving physical gender more weight than it really deserves. But I'm hoping she can be convinced to be more accepting of Kiele in women's spaces, regardless of their physical gender at any given moment.

Okay fine, but I don't know it's hard to do that, if you've known people who have been hurt by that line of reasoning.

Spoiler: Goat Lady still sucks.