Blocked and Reported Episode 191: A Man in a Dress in a Pile-On
This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss the furor over a self-described autogynephile who wore a dress to a gender conference. Also, Zoomers discover 9/11.
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Nat Geo: “‘The perfect revenge'? Birds are building fortresses from anti-bird spikes”
Yashar with some breaking 9/11 news
Tablet: “The Franklin Prophecy”
Osama bin Laden’s Letter to America
Alice Dreger: “Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar's Search for Justice”
Phil sent Jesse the following as part of a longer email, which we’re going to include for completion’s sake:
Good-Vibe Certification
I'm not surprised that you and others felt no weird vibes from me, as even hardened GCs who have prejudice toward autogynephilic males also agreed that my vibes were fine.
In addition to your three examples, I also submit five more:
From Heather Heying's piece about this:
The night before the conference began, many of us were in the vicinity of the hotel bar, and I saw a man walking around in a dress. I would later learn that this was Phil. I did a double-take. I asked the woman sitting next to me—am I seeing this correctly? She looked, nodded. Yep. I was unnerved. What did I not know? Did this person believe himself to be a woman, or not? Why did the answer to that question matter to me?
The next night Phil approached my table, offered me a copy of his book, which I accepted, and we talked for a bit. I came away with some answers and intuitions: No, he does not think that he is actually a woman. And no, he does not seem like a creep. None of my hackles were raised. I detected no malice, no glint in the eye, no smirk, outer or inner, that he was having one over on all of us. Of course I could be wrong about these things, as anyone’s intuition can mislead them. One of the despicable truths about gender ideology is that women are being told to stop trusting the very intuitions that we have always relied on, when walking alone, when entering a bathroom or a locker room or a parking garage, when approached by a person we do not know. It is not bigoted to cross the street if you feel a tingle at the base of your skull as you see a man approaching you. It is smart. I have traveled far and wide, often exploring places alone that women are expected not to explore alone, and I have honed my intuition, although I am well aware that I can and do make mistakes. Nothing about Phil alarmed me.
Lisa Jones, who I talked with a while one of the nights, officially awarded me zero points on a 10-point scale of creepiness:
Now, some people online are accusing Phil of being a creepy AGP because he wore dresses at Genspect.
On the AGP creepiness scale, I award my doorstep AGP five out of ten stars for moderate creepiness. Phil, by contrast, wins zero stars. I felt no creepiness from Phil Illy.
Laura Becker, the detrans woman who was next to me in the photo that kicked of the controversy, also felt safe around me:
I’m the young female detransitioner in the photo. I have CPTSD from male abuse. I have vulnerabilities, but I never felt vulnerable around Phil. In fact, we had a strong connection discussing sexuality and gender.
How is it that a traumatized young woman like myself can find value in the sexual theory and research of this man’s book, but Genspect gets called unsafe as an organization for allowing him to have discussions about it?
That’s far too broad a brush.
Leslie Elliot, a centrist YoutTuber, also said my vibes were fine:
From the same video, therapist Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, also weighed in. We hung out for a few hours and also shared a ride to the airport. She said that even though she admittedly had some prejudgement about me because I was a man in a dress, she also said I wasn't being creepy at all:
I'm sure there are more examples of people saying my behavior was fine, but I think the point is made: my vibes were officially acceptable.
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