“Funny” office emails – and why they’re not funny

Picture the scene: It’s the Friday before a long holiday weekend and everyone in the office is skittish, ready for home, even though it’s only 2.30pm.

So one of the guys (and it’s always “one of the guys”, isn’t it?) sends round a “funny” email to make everybody laugh and wind down ready for 5.30pm and the end of the working day.

The email has the title “For those who are thinking of buying a bicycle” and the text says “When you purchase your bike, make sure the colour of the bike seat is taken into consideration!” And this image is attached:

Oh how everyone giggled. Everyone except Helen, the humourless trans harpy. She didn’t think it was very funny at all, because she recognised the cissexist thinking behind it.

It goes like this: Oh! That woman looks like she has a penis. That’s funny, because women don’t have penises. Not real women, anyway. So it’s funny because she’s obviously not a real woman. And because she’s not a real woman, then it’s fine to laugh at her, because she’s clearly less than a woman. A joke. Unimportant. A freak. Disposable.

It’s the kind of thinking that underpins the idea that any woman with a penis is not “really” who they say they are, that her identity is somehow a fraud, that her lived experience counts for nothing and therefore she can’t expect to be treated equally with everyone else. So it’s okay to harass her, abuse her, beat her, rape her, murder her. Because she’s worthless. Because she’s a woman with a penis.

Sometimes it’s hard not to hate cis people.

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ETA: And I don’t want to hear one word about how I’m being oversensitive, or how I just enjoy being offended, or that I’m taking things too personally, or any of that shit, okay?

A journalist writes

The Guardian newspaper, well-known in many sections of the UK trans community for its willingness to give a platform to some of the vilest anti-trans hate speech in the country, seems to be continuing its tradition with this piece about the city of Brighton and why the writer (for a change, it’s not Ms Bindel) loves it so.

So-o-o… Do tell us why you love Brighton, then, Mr Petridis. Is it because “the constituency of Brighton Pavilion has elected Britain’s first ever Green MP, in the shape of party leader Caroline Lucas“? No? Well then, is it “the Brightonian nonconformist attitude or love of a theatrical gesture”? No? Is it the beach, or is it “Brighton’s panoply of celebrity residents”, perhaps? Still no? Oh, all right, I give up. Tell me why you love Brighton:

No, when I think of why I love Brighton, it’s The World’s Least Convincing Transvestite that springs to mind.

I walk past The World’s Least Convincing Transvestite every day, on the way to my office. A man who has made the bold fashion decision to sport a jaw-dropping combination of earrings, eyeshadow, stubble and shaving rash on a daily basis, he has all the bewitching femininity of a rugby league prop forward in a pencil skirt; by comparison, Grayson Perry is the absolute spit of Audrey Hepburn. Judging by his clothes – demure court shoes, tights, pussy-bow blouse – he’s en route to a clerical job in an office. For all I know, he might be facing yet another day of bruising homophobia and derision from his colleagues, but it doesn’t look like it. He just looks like an ordinary bloke on his way to an ordinary job, albeit dressed as a woman. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion his workmates just let him get on with it. And if they do, that would be very Brighton.

Ah, okay, I get it. You love Brighton because it lets you give free rein to your trans-misogyny⁽¹⁾. Gosh, that’s hil-ar-ious. And you get paid for writing this stuff? Amazing.

No wonder newspaper sales are declining.

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1 The writer, performer, trans activist and biologist Julia Serano identifies trans-misogyny as follows:

When a trans person is ridiculed or dismissed not merely for failing to live up to gender norms, but for their expressions of femaleness or feminity, they become the victims of a specific form of discrimination: trans-misogyny. When the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on “men wearing dresses” or “men who want their penises cut off,” that is not transphobia – it is trans-misogyny. [Via]

This is not a trans woman

A humourless trans harpy writes

A video posted on the website of The Onion (link here) seems to have gone viral, at least in the small corner of the web that I frequent. It’s a spoof TV news report suggesting that, in the U.S. the easiest way for gay couples to circumvent the legislation against same sex marriages is for one of the partners to undergo a “quick sex change”.

I understand full well that the joke is trying to have a dig at absurdities inherent in the legislation around SSMs, but it makes me decidedly uncomfortable that the writers chose to use transitioning as their vehicle for satire. Because to my mind, it simply perpetuates cliched stereotypes and ends up mocking trans people, and not the right wing reactionaries it targets.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s trans-misogynistic; nothing more and nothing less.

So Helen has no sense of humour and can’t take a joke. So sue me.