Also, the trans community isn't bullshit.

[amw]

I mean, we're not a monolith. There are left wing trans people and right wing trans people and activist trans people and politically disinterested trans people and religious trans people and nonreligious trans people. There are all sorts. We don't agree on much. But there is one thing that i think most of us agree on, and it's that we all sometimes

Comments

[motodraconis]

This speech in parliament from SNP party MP Mhairi Black was doing the rounds recently. It's about how Trans People are being deliberately targeted for shitty political control and manipulation reasons and well worth a look.

Here.

[amw]

This is excellent.

I just had to go through this during a "discussion" last night, when i expressed frustration that in the past few years trans issues have "mysteriously" became a major right wing talking point, and then i was shut down by the guy saying "i'm not right wing, i'm left wing, stop being tribalistic". Like yeah dude you're so fucking nuanced, please listen to some more Sam Harris or Joe Rogan or whoever while you jerk off to your raging nuance. Like, it feels like this is the new tactic, to assume some kind of imaginary neutral point of view so that you can shut down any conversation that could be perceived as politically biased. I consider myself somewhat "centrish" and generally more tolerant of different points of view than most lefties, but i still think it's piss-weak to dismiss what someone is saying as partisan just because it references actual bad behavior on the right.

[nahele_101]

Trans stuff is the new dog whistle the GOP uses to create division, and make an enemy. Instead of actually making policies that help people, they tend to make ones that hurt people while diverting attention to "scary/new/different" people. Make the people focus elsewhere while you take their money out of their pockets, or roll back the rights they say they so dearly cling to.

It's good to call out transphobia. It's bullshit. Trans folks get beaten, harassed, and killed for expressing themselves while not hurting anyone. It's bullshit.

I will say here, in the 808, that overwhelmingly trans people are pretty accepted. We call them "mahus", and there is a long history of them here in Hawaii.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/make-right/2015/07/27/what-native-hawaiian-culture-can-teach-us-about-gender-identity

[amw]

It's so fucking exhausting being in the middle of these exchanges between allies on the well-meaning left and "just asking questions" guys somewhere on the center left who have fallen hook, line and sinker for transphobic right wing talking points. It's almost more exhausting to deal with this stuff than the actual right wingers who honestly fear and hate us, because at least those guys are shameless bigots. It's so much more frustrating to deal with people who are parroting bigoted rhetoric but then get oh-so-offended when someone calls them out as a bigot

[nahele_101]

"I wish my left wing allies wouldn't immediately shoot down the "just asking questions" guy, because that just ends up driving them further into the arms of the right wing. It never results in them changing their mind."

Well fucking said. This falls into the risk of "being cancelled" because you asked a question that you didn't know or understand. It shuts down honest discourse, and learning which may lead to a new ally for the oppressed.

[geminiwench]

I think the bathroom fear stuff is actually pearl-clutching over both men and women who REALLY DO THINK (yet have trouble admitting) that people with penises... are rapists and dangerous and the sanctity of the 'women's only' bathroom is to protect people who probably don't have vaginas, from people who probably do.
That's why they're NOT scared of born-as-female using men's restrooms, right...unless they wanted "something" to happen...? That sorta thinking. You'd THINK the patriarchy would be more about keeping the name of men clean, but really... men are scared as fuck by other men... and that includes men who are now women... yet not so much women who are now men....?

[amw]

Yeah, it's very telling that trans men never even get to be part of the conversation with these people. Not in the context of toilets, locker rooms, prisons, sports, any of the hot talking points. But trans men have to face a different problem, and that's the accusation that they've fallen prey to "social contagion". And really this is just the fucking patriarchy all over again. Because anyone born a man must implicitly be aggressive and violent and a rapist-at-heart, barely able to contain themselves. And anyone born a woman must implicitly be meek and gullible and easily swayed by the opinions of her friends. Like, way to reinforce the status quo.

I can deal with it when it's right-wingers who are making that case, since basically it's just more of the same. At least their views are based on some consistent view of the world as black and white. But it's when leftists or self-proclaimed "independent thinkers" going there i'm like... really? You really buy this idea that all men are rapists and all women are victims? Fucking hell.

[geminiwench]

I don't know if you know who Rachel Dolezal is but she is from my city and she was a white lady passing-for-black for something like 15 years.... she was a sociologist so she was like, "Race is a social construct anyways, so... whats it to you?" when she was

[dadi]

Sigh, indeed.