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[–] 50 points 6 months ago (66 children)
  • [–] 29 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    Page 28 of the document you linked says that although Bushnell identified Lilly and used she/her pronouns on some suspected accounts. On other accounts, Bushnell identified as Aaron and was comfortable using he/him pronouns. It is possible that Bushnell was comfortable with both gender identities.

    If Bushnell was Lilly, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t Aaron; she could have been both.
    Very true. As discussed above, Bushnell may have had a sufficiently expansive gendered self-
    concept that both the gender she expressed online and the gender she expressed offline were
    fully integrated, fully embraced aspects of who she actually was. She might, for example, have
    been bigender or pangender. I did not interpret C1’s remark that she was “gender fluid” as
    referring to the specific gender identity, but she could indeed have been literally genderfluid
    stricto sensu (insofar as any shared subjective experience can have a strict sense).

    The document also says that Bushnell identified as Aaron in documents posted during the act of self immolation. The document also points out that there were entirely separate but both active internet accounts. The account 'acebush1' on reddit was active and used the name Aaron until the time of death. Last activity from acebush was February 24, death on February 25.

    The document does not present the case that Bushnell was uncomfortable with using he/him pronouns or the name Aaron. I think it would be fair to say Bushnell used multiple gender expression.

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  • [+] 58 points 6 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)
  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago* (5 children)

    You are not making a logical statement. You say that the majority of people who are transgender began as a separate online account. That does not mean that the majority of people who have separate online account with different gender presentation go on to become transgender. The entire reason that transgender people start by experimenting with an online identity is because it is not a commitment. Some people try a thing and decide that they don't want to do it. Some people make fake identities on the internet for no reason at all. Some people make fake identities on the internet for the purpose of deception.

    I am not doing erasure. I think it is fine to speculate that Bushnell was experimenting with gender expression. The document says that it is impossible to confirm that Bushnell was committed to being transgender. We do not know. We know that Bushnell used both identities and was seemingly comfortable with both identities.

    Bushnell was raised in some kind of weird Christian cult and only came out as an anarchist like a couple years before doing the immolation. I think that Bushnell was probably trying out many new things during the period after leaving the Christian cult.

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  • [–] 34 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Null hypothecis strikes again. Your dedication to cis-by-default-unless-proven-otherwise-by-overwhelming-evidence is fucked up. To transphobes, no evidence will ever be enough, why carry water for them?

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  • [–] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    I did not say that Bushnell is cis man. The acebush1 reddit account identified as a cis man in 4 comments and the document mentions this. I said that we do not know. You are presenting a binary, that Bushnell must either be a cis man or a transgender woman. Bushnell could have been gender fluid, nonbinary, or something else. We don't know.

    I respect every person's gender identity. I don't think a person's gender is something that should be investigated by other people. I believe that a person's gender is whatever that that person tells me their gender is. I respect whatever someone tells me that their name is.

    In the self immolation video, Bushnell says "My name is Aaron Bushnell" at the start of the video.

    I respect whatever people tell me that their name is. I don't try to prove that someone is something else.

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  • [–] 38 points 6 months ago

    i don’t disagree with you. i do think it is significant that the event was live-streamed on an account called ‘Lilly Anarkitty’. the paper also describes Bushnell using a masculine name and pronouns on LinkedIn and Facebook, and a feminine name and pronouns on Mastodon, YouTube, Discord, and Twitch. to me, one of those groups is more representative of a person’s actual identity. and as the paper says on page 4, “There is a reason it would matter. Trans decedents are often subject to violence even in death; there is a saying that “they call it a deadname … precisely because the people in your life bury you under it”. Given that reality combined with the fact that trans people face a tremendously elevated likelihood of premature death from all causes, death and the treatment of the dead occupy a little-discussed yet central position in the current consciousness and culture of the transgender community. Our perception was that if Bushnell was transfeminine, then we had a communal obligation to take care of her in death.”

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  • [+] 12 points 6 months ago (47 children)
  • [+] 48 points 6 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (16 children)
  • [+] 12 points 6 months ago (13 children)
  • [+] 26 points 6 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (11 children)
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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    I agree with you about that being a bad choice of words (real bad tbh) but also I kind of feel like people are arguing about something that doesn't really matter and that we don't really have knowledge of, like yeah you can speculate that Bushnell was probably trans but like, that's it, unless there's some further confirmation from Bushnell. With what Ive seen posted so far, like, yeah, they could have been comfortable with either gender representation. Personally I agree that it's most likely Bushnell was trans and would have preferred she/her pronouns (based on the comment re: the use of Aaron/He/Him in public social media vs Lilly/She/Her in private social media, which i agree is a big indicator) but like, idk, who the fuck knows, do we need to fight each other over it

    and when i say it doesn't really seem to matter it's like idk, the gender of a person who martyred themself to stand against genocide matters about as much to me as the gender of whoever is piloting the drones doing the genocide

    P.s. i haven't read the reddit link that claims to support bushnell was not trans and i don't plan to

    P.p.s. sorry if this means i need to self crit but i promise you i am very critical of myself every moment of every day contrary to the arrogance i convey

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  • [–] 22 points 6 months ago* (29 children)

    personally, i think there are few things more disrespectful than denying names to the dead. a grave marked wrong is little different from an unmarked one.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago* (28 children)

    How do you square that with this from the last statement: "I want to be identified as Aaron Bushnell". Are you the one denying the name they chose to be remembered by?

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  • [–] 26 points 6 months ago

    do you have a source? the politico article doesn’t mention that, and neither does the time article and neither does the jacobin article. saying “i am [deadname]” in a prepared statement is a different claim then “i want to be remembered forever by my deadname”.

    the self-immolation was live streamed on an account called ‘LillyAnarkitty’, which had been changed from ‘acebush1’ two years before. if you read the paper i linked, you would see that she used he/ him and she/ her pronouns, and that she preferred she/ her in online spaces. this is not a real life space, so i do not feel like “i am denying the name they chose to be remembered by”. this isn’t even getting into speculation about media coverage. A non-service member self-immolated in Atlanta months before, and no one covered it or cared. Do you honestly think a single person would talk about the members of the military being fed up with genocide if they could run the trans angle?

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Bigender and genderfluid people exist. I am AMAB, generally comfortable with being labelled a man but sometimes I identify and present myself as a woman, I even go by the name Alice on certain social medias. It is far from a black and white topic.

    Also possible she was just conflicted or just scared to make her gender public, given she mainly used the name Lilly and she/her pronouns on less public accounts.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    For some reason i feel like I shouldn't portray myself as femme online but it isn't really due to lack of comfort with that presentation and more that like, idk, it feels like I'd be stealing trans/genderqueer valor or something? Like i think it might be good for 'op sec' to use all them pronouns every now and then but it feels like id be doing something wrong

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  • [+] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (23 children)
  • [–] 27 points 6 months ago* (22 children)

    This is absolutely wild to say imo. What is even the motivation to argue over the gender of a dead person who isn’t here to speak for themselves…?

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  • [+] 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (8 children)
  • [–] 25 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Trans erasure is unfortunately a real and serious issue. The fact that Dave Carter (who was privately transitioning when she died and had intended to publicly come out) or Quentin Crisp (who flat out SAID right before she died in her autobiography that she was a trans woman and regretted not transitioning) were transgender is just completely ignored.

    Wikipedia even acknowledges that Carter had privately come out as a trans woman yet still refers to her with he/him pronouns sadness-abysmal

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

    I find doing transvestigations on unconsenting people bizarre regardless of the motivation shrug-outta-hecks

    If you don’t see how absolutely out of pocket it is to post-hoc unilaterally decide that a dead person was in “denial” about their gender identity then I just don’t think we can find agreement on this tbh.

    I’m not even saying you’re wrong about what Bushnell’s identity was btw.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    Calling a trans person a transvestigator is despicable shit, especially when transvestigation is premised on erasing trans identity, a practice that you are more closely aligned with. Absolutely abysmal thing to do, to try to leverage language developed by the trans community against trans people who have needed to carve a historical narrative of themselves through an oppressive history that refuses their legibility.

    So much of our history rests on finding connection beneath the surface layer of the hegemonic "truth," finding throughlines that transcend linguistic limitations and cultural understandings that are in constant flux as they navigate a status quo that seeks their assimilation. Joan of Arc was executed for wearing men's clothes, refusing to apologize for it, and saying that she would rather die than dress as a woman. Hatshepsut was often depicted as a masculine figure, with beard, short hair, and without breasts, and used masculine language to describe herself. Ashurbanipal was describes spending a great deal of time wearing women's clothes. Elagabalus used feminine pronouns, dressed in women's clothes, and preferred likenesses to be feminine.

    Traditional historical accounts would say that Joan simply wanted to fight, so the clothing was armour, not cross-dressing. Hatshepsut fostered a masculine identity to be accepted by the patriarchy. Ashurbanipal and Elagabalus were described as effeminate as a way to attack their characters.

    We can't know for sure, of course, and modern linguistic ideas of transness can't apply across time and space. But that it is only acceptable to default to cisness, that transness can only ever be established through indisputable evidence, that any evidence of transness is first explained away, is a time-honoured traidition of insecure cis scholars who use language of impartiality and empiricism, logic and rationale, as a way of erasing the possibilities of trans lives and denying trans people the space to find connection through history that cis people are allowed at all times.

    And frankly, to compare that desire to allow for a potential trans life to be honoured, preserved, and entered into the tenuous and besieged trans historical record to transvestigation of all things (when, by the way, you could conversely be accused of transvestigating a person who has documented evidence of using a feminine name and feminine pronouns by trying to prove this person wasn't really trans because there isn't "enough evidence") is disgusting. The fact is, whether Aaron/Lilly was a trans woman, the bare minimum of evidence would show someone who used two names, and used two sets of pronouns, which is definitionally trans.

    So quite honestly, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself on subjects that you don't actually know anything about, and stop insulting trans people with your bad faith usage of a term we coined to point out the nasty behaviour of cis people who deny our selves.

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