Another college student group hosts a violent, transphobic cupcake party

Remember that time when a college women’s group in New Zealand nearly killed all their trans women students with horribly violent vulva cupcakes? Well, hold on to your hats, because it’s happened again, this time in California, U.S.A! It seems that Scripps College hosted a violently transphobic event called Project Vulva in which participants were invited to….decorate cupcakes and talk about vulvas. As we all know, when a bunch of privileged college students get together to bond over snack foods, trans women literally die.

Let’s look at some highlights from their Facebook event page:

This commenter says “Right like this entire event is so incredibly violent to trans women specifically. I’m so disgusted.”

College students sitting around a table, decorating cupcakes and talking about vulvas…how violent!

“The term ‘transgendered’ is highly offensive, Kelly. There’s nothing wrong with penises. And having one doesn’t make a person more or less powerful than anyone else. Equating genitalia to a person’s gender is and always will be transphobic.”

This person claims that having a penis doesn’t make a person more or less powerful than anyone else. Phew! I’m so glad that people with penises no longer own most of the world’s money and property, hold most of the positions of power in government and business, have the power and ability to control and purchase female bodies…oh wait! They still do. Also, why is the term “transgendered” offensive? Isn’t that what they’re called? I just can’t keep up with all of this violent nomenclature. The word “transgender” is fine but add the “ed” to the end and suddenly it’s HIGHLY OFFENSIVE. (Since when were oppressed people actually oppressed by morphemes anyway?)

“Because instead of saying something about how the wording of this event excludes trans women, and further normalizes transmisogyny and violence against trans women, you’re trying to say that I somehow don’t understand the event description, and are trying to spell it out for me. I don’t need your help parsing out the finer details of this garbage, cis, white event. A trans woman is telling y’all this makes her feel uncomfortable and that’s not enough for you to rethink your stance on this? You’re gross, this whole thing is gross, have fun with your ugly cupcakes.”

You heard it, folks. Vulva cupcakes further normalize transmisogyny and violence against trans women. College students getting together to bond over snack food is “garbage, cis and white.” Now, it’s entirely possible that this event will have a lot of white people at it, and maybe the icing will all be white and pink icing, which could perhaps make this a “white” event. However, we don’t know this for sure, and maybe the organizers actually did make sure they purchased a variety of icing colours in order to make sure women of colour felt included at the event? I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But the word “white” here is most likely being used because males who transgender tend to call women who understand biology “white feminists.” Apparently, an understanding of human anatomy is inherently racist. There is a lot of confusion over what intersectionality means these days. It’s supposed to mean an analysis of the way race and class intersect with women’s oppression, not an excuse to invite people with dicks to every goddamn student gathering at every college on the planet. And I like how he calls this a “cis” event even though the organizers specifically referenced trans individuals with vulvas in their event description. It’s like the very mention of a vulva is automatically “cis,” even though trans men have them. Obviously, the word “cis” means something that doesn’t specifically validate trans women’s identities.

“As someone with a vulva, I think this event was created exactly because people call us “gross” when we talk about them. It can be taken offensively, but it isn’t meant that way. All genders and all vulva-owners and non-vulva-owners are invited! It’s an attempt to normalize and celebrate a body part that is talked about as dirty and disgusting, often. Reproductive systems are really cool, and we should be able to talk about them without tying them to a gender, which this event doesn’t do! The word women is not in the event description. Calling the cupcakes gross kind of underlines the problem this event is trying to fix…vulvas are awesome! Just like all genitalia!”

“I…….am so glad I didn’t end up going to Scripps. There are so many terfs at that horrible school. ^This is a prime example of a trans women exclusionary radical feminist. If your feminism is centered around gendering of genitalia, then it’s surface level and harmful feminism at best. Ariel is a trans woman. And this entire event is focused on excluding women like her and it’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself, Jillian.”

This is just….ludicrous. Here is this woman perfectly adhering to transgenderist dogma by calling women “vulva-owners” and refraining from mentioning that people who have vulvas are female, and it’s still not good enough for trans activist Kasie. Apparently, just talking about vulvas at all, even while refusing to acknowledge the truth about the biological femaleness of that body part, makes someone a TERF. I don’t even get it.

Two commenters in this thread have talked about how it’s wrong to “gender” genitalia. Let’s talk about the transactivists’ mantra that “genitals do not equal gender,” shall we?

When trans activists say this phrase, what they really mean is that genitals do not equal sex. They are unable to differentiate gender from sex, but we know what they’re saying here: they’re saying that a person with a penis can be a woman and a person with a uterus and ovaries can be a man.

I would propose that the statement “genitals do not equal gender” is actually a true statement, if you actually understand what gender is. Gender is a social construct. It is the cultural enforcement of masculinity on men and femininity on women. It is true that your genitals do not determine which sex stereotypes you will identify with. But this is not what trans activists are saying. They are not trying to divorce sexed bodies from cultural constructions so that we can all be free from these constraints, they are trying to enforce the idea that anyone who is “feminine” is female and anyone who is “masculine” is male, regardless of their actual sexed body. It turns out it’s actually the radical feminists who are trying to divorce sexed bodies from cultural constructs so that we can all be free to express ourselves as we are. It is the trans activists who are trying to assign sex stereotypes to men and women.

This sentence is such a gem: “If your feminism is centered around gendering of genitalia, then it’s surface level and harmful feminism at best.” What this person is trying to say is that feminism should not acknowledge the sexed bodies of males and females and what it means to be male or female in a patriarchy. Even though feminism is exactly that—it’s fighting back against sex-based oppression, which necessitates naming sex differences. However, if you understand that gender is a harmful social construct that oppresses the sex class female, then you realize that this sentence actually makes perfect sense, from a TERFy point of view. If your feminism involves assigning a socially constructed gender role to genitalia (i.e. biological sex) then it’s harmful. Because assigning a socially constructed gender role to someone based on their anatomy is oppression. It’s the exact oppression that Totally Excellent Real Females are, in fact, fighting.

Men are oppressed by cupcakes and I’m scared for the next generation

The trans movement has brought a lot of misogyny and idiocy to student unions and now even high schools. I just cannot believe what I’m seeing sometimes.

The Auckland University Students’ Association is trying to plan an event called Womensfest at which they want to serve vulva cupcakes. This has caused a huge uproar among people who have bought into trans ideology. Apparently, serving vulva cupcakes creates an unsafe environment for trans women. Reading through the comment threads on this page I have found some comments that are so far removed from reality it is shocking. Serving vulva cupcakes at a women’s event has been described as “not respecting the lives of transwomen,” “a slap in the face to intersex people,” and “contributing to violence and discrimination.” One of my favourite sentences is: “This is literally the primary tenet of trans-exterminatory feminism and that branch of feminism has literally killed trans women.”

Many of the commenters are super confused about biology. Someone claimed that “sex is not dimorphic” and that there is a “spectrum of human sex hormones.” Someone claimed that “cis women aren’t real women.” And one man calling himself Kylie posted an entire biology-denying poem:

“trans women are women.
trans women are biologically female.
trans women are womyn-born-womyn.
trans women are female-bodied.
trans women have female chromosomes.
trans women have female reproductive systems.
trans women’s genitals are female.
trans women’s secondary sex characteristics are female.
trans women have female voices.
trans women are female-socialized.

(source: queerkittenprincess on Tumblr)”

Unpack yourselves.
Stop excluding trans women.
Trans women are dying and you are aiding and abetting in that.
You are complicit in that.
YOU ARE KILLING TRANS WOMEN WITH YOUR BELIEFS.”

One woman innocently asks that since there are already events during Womensfest specifically for trans people, and since most women do have vulvas, isn’t it okay to have vulva cupcakes there? And everyone piles on calling her a TERF. See, it’s not enough for a womensfest to include events designed for men in dresses, the entire festival must actively cater to the feelings of those men.

One person said “the only good thing about terfs is that they dont have feelings so its ok to kill them whenever you want.” Someone said that “cis women” have more social, political, and institutional power than “trans women.” Someone said “This strong association of vulvas with womanhood makes it unsafe for literally every non-cis or intersex person ever to attend.” So Womenfest is being asked to agree that women have institutional power over men, that women who understand our own bodies are making the event unsafe for men, and that women don’t have feelings and it’s okay to kill them. What I’m seeing here is the same old MRAs who have trolled every feminist event since the beginning of time.

It is so idiotic to claim that snack foods are oppressing people I am just shocked that people are making this claim with a straight face. The only way you can truly believe you are being oppressed by cupcakes is if you are privileged enough that you have no idea what oppression actually is. Oppression is institutional power harming a group of people and limiting what they can do in life. Oppression is groups of people with power forcibly extracting resources from people with less power. Slavery is oppression—both economic slavery and sexual slavery. Widespread police violence against Black people is oppression. Theft of land and genocide perpetrated by colonizers against Indigenous people is oppression. Male control over women’s bodies and reproductive capacity is oppression. Snack foods? Come on! And by the way, this event is a university event, and there are tons of people in the world who will never have the privilege of higher education. The people whining about these cupcakes are some of the most advantaged people in this world. And the idea that a correct understanding of biological facts is “killing people” is so ludicrous that I don’t understand how people don’t reach “peak trans” immediately upon reading this.

As for the biology-denying poem above, that doesn’t stand up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Trans women have XY chromosomes. So if trans women have female chromosomes, as the poem states, then does that mean all human chromosomes are female chromosomes? Both XY and XX are female? And if XY chromosomes are female chromosomes, and most men have XY chromosomes, then that means most men are women, right?

And then there’s Lila Perry over in the U.S, a teenage boy who has decided to wear dresses and a wig to school. His school has been very accommodating of his non-compliance with the clothing choices that are normally expected for males. They have provided him a separate washroom to use to keep him safe from the bullying that comes from violent males who try to enforce masculinity on all men. Tweets by Lila reveal that he is interested in dating men, so he is either a gay man or is bisexual, but he is not referring to himself as such–he prefers to call himself a girl. He is so invested in the idea that he really is a girl that he has insisted on using the girls washroom and change room instead of the gender-neutral one that was provided for him. The girls at his school do not wish to share their private spaces with a boy and have made this known. I don’t blame them a bit because Lila is nothing like a girl at all and they have no reason to take his gender feelings seriously. Lila has all the male privilege and entitlement that any other boy has and he has no regard for girls’ boundaries or feelings. Even though the girls have clearly stated they are uncomfortable having a boy in their change room, he does not think they really are uncomfortable. He has decided for them what they feel. He believes they simply do not understand the concept of transgender and that they are bigoted but that their own words saying they are uncomfortable are not true. He only cares about himself and the validation that he really is female. In videos of Lila he appears as a male wearing a wig and he tries to adopt stereotypically “feminine” mannerisms. Unfortunately he has not taken any steps to make sure his male genitals do not become visible in the dresses he wears. The girls at his school are understandably alarmed. Girls do not want to share intimate spaces such as locker rooms and washrooms with males who wear dresses and leave their penises in full view. This is uncomfortable and upsetting for girls to have to deal with since this behaviour strongly suggests that he is an exhibitionist and exhibitionist males are frightening and abusive toward females. Also, the fact that he is acting out the mannerisms that our society has assigned to females makes his classmates feel he is imitating and mocking them. He is stereotyping and violating his female classmates.

I hope that this gay or bisexual teen boy can grow out of having to pretend he really is a girl and can grow into a respectful and mature gay man. Wearing dresses and makeup is fine, but insulting and violating your classmates is not okay. There have been drag queens in every generation because it is totally normal for gay/bi men to want to try on or wear femininity. I can’t help but think Lila is experiencing internalized homophobia and is using the trans cult as a way to avoid dealing with it.

When teen boys insist on disrespecting girls so much, and when cupcakes are oppression, I feel really scared for the next generation. Please, people, break out of this cult!