Having spent a sizable portion of my time recently, being intellectually skull fucked by the notorious WXLUP, I would like to extract something positive from the experience.
I initially thought of creating an app – The WXLUP generator – which would, on demand, produce the type of overlong sentences he seems to favour. This is not a real quote, but one from the generator…
It is the thing therein, therefore, which reflects the essential reductionist dimension of the fetish’s chief quality: that of being simultaneously constructed within both the microcosm and the macrocosm of latent…
Seeing little commercial application for such a generator – other than to induce migraines – I have shelved my plans and settled for a philosophical learning. Which is…
When it comes to transgender philosophy the emotion leads the intellect, making some disputes impossible to resolve. This is because the people involved have formulated an intellectual version of what is, essentially, a strategy to cope with a previous or ongoing gender crisis. Giving up their intellectual position, therefore, would collapse their coping strategy and cause them suffering.
There is no greater example of this than the current debate raging on the crossdreamer Reddit, which I thought was linguistic, but now realize is emotional, and impossible to reconcile.
Just in case you don’t know what this fucking boring debate is about (though, I must admit it was me who started it)… it’s very simple: some people don’t want other people on the Reddit to refer to crossdreaming as a fetish and some people do.
Now, instead of going through the usual debate about linguistics and sexuality which will surely call into action both the Conrad and WXLUP generators, let’s conduct an emotional analysis.
The two sides in the argument reflect the two types of visitors to the crossdreamer Reddit.
1) Those who think cross gender arousal is just a fetish and anything that results from it (transgender desire etc) just an outgrowth of that fetish.
2) Those who see crossdreaming (in differing degrees) as an expression of a deeper female self.
Both sides have a clear emotional investment in their position WHICH THEY WILL NEVER GIVE UP because they represent two common ways of interpreting and dealing with cross gender fantasies. Humans need to cognitivise stuff, they need to understand themselves, and once that understanding is reached no amount of argument will dislodge it.
The two methodologies for coping with cross gender desire are…
1) To downplay its importance as just an embarrassing, but harmless fetish.
2) To up-play its importance and see it as a sign of a deeper, transgender psychology.
You would think, though, that if they are coping strategies it should be easy to switch strategies if you see one working better than the other. This is rarely the case, however.
Why?
Because they are, in turn, reflections of a deeper emotion about transgenderism. You see, whatever his or her final verdict on their cross gender desires, there will always come a moment where the individual has to question their gender. They never have to ask the question… is this sexual? (they already know that because they’ve been getting a boner about it their whole life). But at some point, a new, testing question emerges: am I transgender? From here it’s easy to see the evolution of the two responses. In fact, three responses.
1) A person who hates the ideas of being transgender will decide the whole thing is a ‘fetish’. In fact, he will enjoy the negative connotation of the word fetish because it shows just how silly it is. He will therefore develop all the concepts and ideas that prove HE’S DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER… and anyone that calls him trans will be offending him.
2) Someone who can’t quite make up their mind whether they want to be transgender or not will spend their whole life, hovering around the middle, not knowing whether it’s just sexual or something deeper. They remain in a permanent intellectual limbo that means… THEY ARE DEFINITELY MAYBE TRANSGENDER, and depending on the cycle of the moon or whatever else controls their constant turn-coating, may or may not see the fetish label as offensive.
3) Someone who embraces their transgender feelings – sexual, emotional, cerebral – will want to go the whole hog towards the gender they identify with. They will therefore interpret their cross gender arousal as just another example of the fact that they DEFINITELY ARE TRANSGENDER… and anyone who refers to fetishes will offend them.
Conclusion
There I was, thinking that if I could just explain to the fetishists about the origins of the term, and how it offends some people etc… that they would stop using it. BUT THEY CAN’T. Despite they’re talking about the removal of any stigma from the word fetish they kinda like it because it proves that the whole thing is just sexual and that they ARE DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER.
Okay, guys… we get the message…YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER. (Sorry to take the Mickey out of the fetishists, because we are all doing the same – turncoats and transgender: allowing our emotions to guide our intellect.)
We can conclude, therefore, that any intellectual debate about cross gender arousal with a person who experiences cross gender arousal, is a complete waste of time. You can have a much speedier, efficient discourse if you start with the simple question…
Would you like to transition and live as a girl? yes, no, or maybe.
With that one word answer you’ll already know if they’re a fetishist, a turncoat or a die-hard, and that they believe all the resulting philosophies that goes with those things. And you also know that they’ll never change their mind.
Knowing this simple trick in advance can literally save you hundreds, if not thousands of hours of wasted conversations, Reddit exchanges and forum interactions, with people who WERE NEVER GONNA CHANGE THEIR MIND… NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAID. It’s literally… extra hours of life. Now, all you need to do is take that previously dead-weight time and use it to move your career forward, and you’ll soon be generating extra cash!
And on that note, I’m happy to announce that it’s time for me to leave my musings in transgender philosophy for a couple of months, to work on other projects. I leave you in the hands of Electra.
See you in January…
Mua…
Tell me when it’s your birthday and I’ll make sure Felix sends you a card from the generator… 😉 Hang out here with me… you will never be badgered… only hugged and forced to make sand castles.
Hey there. Person who made the /r/crossdreaming forum here (even though my name isn’t on the “created by”).
I haven’t been on there for a long while…but I’m having a REAL good laugh at the generator you made. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference from the real thing. He was literally almost the death of the sub, with his incessant obsession with being intellectually superior to everyone else…and something about a fetish? I dunno, I struggle to remember. =P
But after playing whack-a-mole with dummy accounts, calling him out publicly, having a range of support from the user base (from completely apathetic at the beginning, to completely supportive at their best), it became far more demanding than it was worth. Being trans myself, and constantly being badgered, belittled and completely invalidated by his specific brand of toxicity was not my favorite thing in the world.
(Not to mention that he was much more blunt in private messages. This is from his first ban. http://i.imgur.com/WPHHxxV.png)
Jack Molay was very interested in taking over moderation of the sub, and while I was eager to move on, I wanted to make sure that there was an equal representation of BOTH sides of this argument represented in the new mod team. We succeeded in doing that. Now I rarely check the subreddit and my sanity is much the better for it. I certainly hope that the mods don’t allow one view or another to become too dominant…but at the same time, I’m done caring.