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Mark Robinson is a stain on the species homo sapiens; to call him a cumberworld would be far too insulting to mere encumbrances to humanity. That is important to get out of the way lest anyone mistake something below for excusing or justifying the taint he has left on North Carolina and the USA.
THIS.
But however bad Robinson is, this does not mean that every criticism of him is valid or accurate. On Thursday, CNN wrote their magnum opus on his wildly awful statements on an internet forum, Nude Africa, that serves largely as a place to discuss porn the way that Wonkette readers use the comments here to discuss the New York Times’s political insights and those cakes we like. And while CNN did provide a valuable service to those of us who don’t wish to wander through porn boards to get the most recent information about the Republican Party’s nominee for North Carolina governor, they fell flat on their faces when attempting to discuss trans people, trans policies, and Robinson’s love of trans porn.
The Nude Africa account that is obviously Mark Robinson’s (and which also Robinson strenuously denies is his, ha ha, good one, Mark) has been quoted saying a hundred thousand horrible things, but much is being made about this one:
“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in! And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”
Sure, a number of people are going to throw up reading Robinson talk like this, but CNN’s analysis of this was at least as emetic.
Let’s start with the fact that CNN’s story masked the word “fucking” with an asterisk, but not the slur “tranny,” because delicate, vulnerable cis people must be protected from language that sounds crass or harsh to the middle-class ear, but trans people just have to up and deal with the cissies who hate us. That tells you up front that CNN doesn’t really care, or think deeply, about trans people harmed by Robinson. And much of the rest that they have to say reflects that lack of thought. The through line is consistently that privately watching porn with trans actors/characters is somehow in conflict with his public politics. Consider these two examples:
Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography […]
And
Many of Robinson’s comments on Nude Africa stand in contrast to his public stances on issues such as abortion and transgender rights. […]
“If you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested, or whatever we gotta do to you,” Robinson said at a campaign rally in February 2024. “We’re going to protect our women.”
But these are far more congruent than contrasting. It’s as if CNN doesn’t understand that porn can be used to dehumanize. (Wonkette is not anti-porn. Wonkette, unlike the authors of Project 2025, does not want to literally outlaw it and put porn producers in jail. But if you don’t know that smut films can be used to degrade their participants, and that sex films are not automatically empowering and liberatory, maybe take a pass on explaining it?)
By Robinson’s own statement, what he likes about porn featuring trans women that have not (or not yet) had surgery, is “tak[ing] the man out while leaving the man in.” There is no appreciation of trans humanity here. He does not look upon trans beauty with the eyes of Siri Dahl in the screenshot above. What Robinson is enjoying is the opportunity to watch porn that includes body parts doing things that he can relate to (and thus vicariously enjoy) without watching a cis man enjoying sexual pleasure — which for Robinson would almost certainly trigger uncomfortable homophobia.
The trans actors in movies he watches aren’t people to Robinson, but an anti-queer means to achieve his selfish ends, and that sounds exactly like his politics.
There are other important aspects to comment on as well. Pornography does not need to be misogynist to be pornography: The two are not synonyms. But sexist objectification of cis women runs riot through most of porn. When Robinson says he wants “to protect our women,” it carries exactly this tone. This man, who in the same forums spoke of his desire to own slaves, doesn’t speak of protecting “women,” but “our women,” i.e. the women Robinson and the patriarchs with whom he associates claim for themselves.
Further, when Robinson speaks of trans porn “leaving the man in,” this is perfectly consistent with his view that trans women are not women and thus should be arrested for entering public bathrooms for women. His alternative suggestion of urinating and defecating outside is also consistent with his view that trans actors “take the man out.” Without sufficient manhood, trans people aren’t entitled to use the men’s room. But without thoroughly eradicating all manhood, trans people are a threat to his property as surely as would be any cis man entering a place where “his women” might be vulnerable.
While Robinson’s world view is full of projection, it’s not actually one of hypocrisy, as CNN and many others would have you believe. There is no indication whatsoever that he truly loves even a single trans person, much less all the trans actors he’s ever seen. If he writes anything of the beauty of being trans rather than the utility of pseudo-manhood in his attempts to escape his own pervasive homophobia, we see none of that in what has been released. Robinson doesn’t celebrate trans people for who we are, but rather exploits us for who we are not.
In short, he denies trans personhood in private while watching porn and denies it in public while talking policy. This is the very opposite of hypocrisy.
And this isn’t unique to how he views trans people. Cis actors, too (“girls” in his repugnant, infantilizing language), are objects for his sexual pleasure, not fully competent human beings with their own thoughts, choices, and desires. And his policies with respect to cis women are consistent with this misogyny as well.
Watching cis porn does not require one to be misogynist, and watching trans porn does not require one to feel seething trans hatred. But CNN and too many others are engaging in the opposite fallacy: They assume that watching trans porn is proof that the viewer loves trans people. That is manifestly not the case.
Imagine if CNN used cis porn in an attempt to prove that Robinson was not misogynist, that in fact he loved and cared for women. Imagine if CNN said that watching porn was enough to prove one’s feminist bona fides. That’s what CNN would be implying if they insisted that watching porn is in conflict with banning abortion. CNN is thinking and writing just as badly here, yet somehow most of the conversation around the internet has accepted their flawed premise as true: that treating trans people as sexual objects is equivalent to caring about our humanity and thus in conflict with anti-trans rhetoric, law and policy.
Porn exists that portrays trans people as beautiful and human and vulnerable and loving and independent. For one example, you can search out that scene between Siri Dahl and Daisy Taylor. But Robinson isn’t interested. His desire is for trans people to be men and not be men at the same time, and that is the dangerous contradiction. To be and not be is impossible. To Robinson and his fellow travelers, trans people are of the world of fantasy and imagination only. To see us escape into reality is the crisis of Enchanted the wrong way round, and their most fervent desire isn’t to watch real trans people fuck, much less to express and share love with even one trans person, but to return all trans people to non-existence.
CNN might have realized that if they thought about trans people from our own perspective.
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Your friendly neighborhood Crip Dyke also writes other perverted stuff!
