*zach, 19, self-identified 'based tradcath zoomer' (destined to be cast out into the outer darkness)*: 'nooo this is heresy. read leviticus'
barb, 76, liberal lutheran from duluth, minnesota (destined for salvation): 'what a nice cartoon! think i'll send it to my granddaughter :) https://t.co/g06j29KvCG— gg lily allen (@lumpen_princess) April 1, 2023
Odds are, given time, ‘Zach’ will end up as a normie with trans coworkers, friends, and family members — someone who remembers his ‘based tradcath’ days the way others remember being 19-year-old stalinists or metalheads. As Dems, we need to remember that the long arc of history bends towards expanding our concept of freedom, not towards frantically trying to force other people to comply with our own terror of change…
"Well theyre just doing it because it's politically convenient."
Every single major media outlet in the nation right now is screaming at Democrats to abandon trans issues. If Biden gave a statement like Starmer did the NYT and Atlantic would crown him King of Sensible Moderates. https://t.co/K3l0SvWHia
— Environmental Services Weedle (@PartyWurmple) April 3, 2023
No one wants to admit the basic reality that whatever handful of rights trans people have in this country is because of Democrats had enough power to overrule their Republican counterparts. The Brits can mutual aid all they want but it won't replace a pro-trans parliament. https://t.co/AKoRsqTtJG
— Slope Slipperer (@agraybee) April 3, 2023
Power doesn't panic.
The far right panicking over the existence of trans people, discussion of systemic racism, or even the mention of LGBTQ people is a sign of weakness, not strength.
They lost the culture and they know it. This is their sad pathetic attempt to force it back.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) April 2, 2023
The under 20 demographic is majority minority with 20% identifying as LGBTQ. They are mostly non religious.
They are the future of the country. No amount of dumb policies attacking “DEI,” “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” or “gender ideology” will change that.
All of these horrible laws targeting LGBTQ people, people of color, education, etc. are a vain and futile attempt to turn back the clock and enforce their world view on a culture that’s no longer theirs. They’ve lost and they know it.
Rather than demonstrating power in their moral panic, the people stoking this are demonstrating their immense weakness. By the end of this decade, they will be irrelevant, culturally and electorally. A vestige of an intolerant past raging against a more tolerant culture.
They’d rather turn to pathetic attempts at authoritarian and fascist politics than relinquish their power over this country. They will fail despite the fact we have a system of government that disproportionately favors their voting base to enable minoritarian political power.
Power doesn’t panic.
The far right has already lost. They will continue to lose their power.
They are in their death throes and that’s why they are panicking.
We are the future. They’ll soon be just another sad, pathetic footnote in the dustbin of history.
piratedan
They are in their death throes and that’s why they are panicking
if only they had signed a DNR, maybe they could die with some dignity….
satby
I loved the cartoon in the first tweet and shared it all over. When I have John and Jane rural older farmer folk telling me quietly how much they appreciate my “I Support Transgender Visibility” sign, the bigots really are in their death throes. And death throes are ugly, but they ultimately end.
eclare
That is a great cartoon.
J R in WV
We fight for beloved friends and family who cannot fight anymore on their own. And for what is moral and right in the world we now live in!
I fight in memory of my dear cousin, Ann, who died of cancer just before Covid started to circulate across the world. She told me how very gay she was one summer afternoon, which was no surprise as we talked about it often, those 45 years ago. Then she hugged me hard and said “But maybe I’m bi, ’cause I love you so very much!”
At the time it was so sweet, back when we were in our 20s… now that she’s been gone so long it often brings tears to my eyes. I fight for her!
J R in WV
We fight for beloved friends and family who cannot fight anymore on their own. And for what is moral and right in the world we now live in!
I fight in memory of my dear cousin, Ann, who died of cancer just before Covid started to circulate across the world. She told me how very gay she was one summer afternoon, which was no surprise as we talked about it often, those 45 years ago. Then she hugged me hard and said “But maybe I’m bi, ’cause I love you so very much!”
At the time it was so sweet, back when we were in our 20s… now that she’s been gone so long it often brings tears to my eyes. I fight for her!
J R in WV
We fight for beloved friends and family who cannot fight anymore on their own. And for what is moral and right in the world we now live in!
I fight in memory of my dear cousin, Ann, who died of cancer just before Covid started to circulate across the world. She told me how very gay she was one summer afternoon, which was no surprise as we talked about it often, those 45 years ago. Then she hugged me hard and said “But maybe I’m bi, ’cause I love you so very much!”
At the time it was so sweet, back when we were in our 20s… now that she’s been gone so long it often brings tears to my eyes. I fight for her!
J R in WV
So… how did THAT happen, anyways?
Viva BrisVegas
They may be dying off, but they intend to take as many of us with them as they can.
Chetan Murthy
Seeing President Biden standing strong on transgender rights has been …. just …. just …. lovely, inspiring, reassuring, … *warm and cuddly*. I remember when Biden said that civil rights for transgender Americans was the great civil rights struggle of our time. Back in … TWENTY FRICKEN’ TWELVE. 2012. A *decade* ago. Just amazing to think about, that he was that much ahead of the national consensus on that issue. Or maybe he was right there with the national consensus, only we didn’t know it. I remember reading Danica Roem writing about how he supported her first campaign, and when she ran for reelection, he was one of the first to donate to her campaign.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
eclare
@J R in WV: FYWP messes up every night around 2:08 AM Eastern. If you just post once, your comment will eventually post, it just takes awhile.
I saw your comments about being in the hospital, and I hope you’re now home, or at least doing better. Fingers and paws crossed here for a quick and speedy recovery.🙏
Jay
@J R in WV:
It’s a glitch I have run into a couple of times today.
Covid, and life collapsed my circles, but I fight.
Gotta Drag Queens Story hour to attend on Wednesday. Should be fun. Did my research. A couple of the “notorious” attendee’s can’t be there. Convicted sex offenders. Too close to a school.
eclare
@Jay: Isn’t that always the way it works. All I need to see in a headline is “man accused of child porn, etc.”, and I can guess with 95% accuracy what party he belongs to.
Enjoy the show, sounds fun.
Aj
see the Tennessee legislature today.
3 democrats expelled for standing with school children protesting for school safety and gun control.
Out in these states Republicans are simply outlawing democrats and passing laws to control and redraw urban areas so there will be zero dissent allowed in these states.
I wish I could be optimistic but we are being run over out here. One legislator asked “which gun would you rather be shot with”.
American taliban. Where is DOJ where is federal enforcement of our right to exist speak or be represented?
Kent
In my thesaurus, “youth pastor” is a synonym for “groomer”
Msb
A dying mule kicks hardest.
stay away from its hooves.
Jay
@eclare:
old dude, I wear Carharts, baseball cap, (not a trucker cap)
F’s them up, I look like I should be on the “other side”, but I am not, and I bring reciepts,
like how many 100km they went to protest.
Y’all ain’t from around here are you? Y’all got a pretty mouth!
eclare
@Jay: Yeah, I saw a clip from an LA TV station when the BLM marches were starting up. Some reporter went up to a middle-age White guy wearing a golf shirt, etc and asked for his thoughts.
Guy *exploded* with a speech starting with how we treated the Native Americans then moved on to our treatment of Black people and how institutional racism was still a huge problem. Reporter looked like he wanted to piss himself.
Brachiator
@Chetan Murthy:
There is an essential decency to Biden. I am so glad that he is our president.
Blue mouser
One of my favorite lines from Andor : Power? Power doesn’t panic
ColoradoGuy
I think the trauma of the T**** years showed the Democrats who the GOP … every single one of them … really are. They are Team Evil, no nuance, no subtlety, just straight-up fascists, differing only in degree. The GOP jumped from one demonized minority to another, the identity of the victim didn’t matter, cruelty itself was the point. And their base loved them for that. The Party of Lincoln is now an AR-15-armed lynch mob.
Like terrorists anywhere, you can’t negotiate with them, something Obama learned the hard way. That’s what Biden and the vast majority of Democrats now see, while the national media still tries to normalize MAGA, which can’t be done. There are no “moderate” MAGA, just as there are no “moderate” Opus Dei members, or “moderate” Scientologists.
What baffles me is the Left (and even the Center) in the UK. They keep failing to see Tory fanatics intend to destroy the country by attacking one minority after another, while letting Brexit do the heavy lifting of slowly but surely impoverishing the whole society, an Austerity program that never ends. Surely Labour has no future as a center-right party, pretending Brexit isn’t happening, while leaving the Center and the Left wholly unoccupied?
Ten Bears
That is a cute cartoon, I think I’ll include it in my Firstday (Sunday) Basket Full of Nutballs …
JWR
Well, okay then. We agree!
;)
sab
This is really weird. I dropped my twitter account a while back. For the last few days whenever I follow a link to a twitter account a tiny corgi head appears as an avatar while it loads. Is this happening to anyone else?
Central Planning
@sab: I see the same thing. Idk how long that’s been showing up.
prostratedragon
@sab: Yeah, it’s been explained as something to do with a cryptoscam that whatshisname is involved with. Dogecoin or something, which reminds me not of a cute doggie, but of the looting of Constantinople.
eclare
@sab: Yes, it’s happening to everyone. Something to do with Elmu and crypto. Let me find a link, the word crypto puts me in a daze, so I usually don’t read much.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/04/twitter-changes-logo-to-dogecoin-cryptocurrency-image-in-apparent-late-april-fools-day-gag
Tony Jay
Anyone foolish enough to question Sir Keir Starmer’s infallible political wisdom and all-encompassing love for all living things is clearly a donkey-jacket wearing self-hating Tory enabler who loves being in Opposition and is probably a virulent anti-Semite. The Glorious Leader is unapologetic in his determination to drag the Labour Party
as far Right as his billionaire donors tell him totowards the centre of British politics by appealing tothe lowest stereotypes of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bigotrythe average, common-sense working Briton who may have been forced to vote Tory in the past by Old Labour’s extremism, and if you have a problem with that you hate Jews and smell of elderberries.Rest assured, Sir Keir’s whip-smart team of virile sense-gurus have nothing to learn from Sleepy Joe Biden and his Failed Radical Left Cultural Marxist Woke Agenda Thugs… but please don’t tell any of his people we said that. Tarquin and Jemima from the Leader’s Office are up for Atlantic Bridge fellowships this summer and they’d really like to parley that into a few weeks resume-burnishing at the DLC and maybe spend winter in New York networking a job for their alcoholic cousin, Fabian, who went to Cambridge and knows the Spencers socially.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: same here, and not merely do I not have a Twitter account, but I block all twitter.com cookies. And I see that same little doggie head. As @prostratedragon: mentions, I’ve also read someplace that it’s Melon Suk trying to get people interested in some crypto scam. Sigh.
Manyakitty
@sab: yes! I started seeing that yesterday and wondered if my phone caught a virus. Glad it’s not just me.
eclare
@Tony Jay: Did something new happen?
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: Elmu is also being sued by people who bought Dogecoin. How that fits into this I have no idea.
Anne Laurie
You must be special — most of the users I see are complaining the shiba inu head replaced the twitter bird on Monday!
The little dog is a ‘doge‘ avatar, representing the Dogecoin, as part of some complicated Musk-oid ‘joke’, maybe about being sued by the Dogecoin people for screwing up their valuations with dumbarse Musk jokes.
Many people are saying that it was intended as an April Fools Day joke that couldn’t be implemented on time, since Musk has gutted so much of his implementation team. This would mean it was a joke on Musk, which would *absolutely* be appropriate!
sab
@eclare: Boy am I old and out of touch. Apparently it is the Doge bitcoin logo and it is a shiba inu not a corgi. Of course if one’s multibillion dollar purchase is floundering it always helps things to rub everyone else’s face a reminder of how weird one is when they get anywhere near.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
Just responding to the tweets pinned at the top of the thread.
That said, there’s always some new example of Nu-Lab fuckery to shake your head at. They literally can’t go a single day without providing the Tories cover with a bit of spiteful Lefty-baiting and/or pitiful cowering before the thrones of Our Press Overlords.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@eclare: Sounds more like a needed release of snark pressure. Snark can be bad for your health if it builds up too much.
eclare
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Hahaha…yes, healthier to let it out in small drips than one gigantic burst. Why yes, my mother did use a pressure cooker, how did you know?
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy:
I agree with your sentiments re UK Labour, but they are also having to struggle with a first past the post system, together with having lost a large part of their traditional vote in Scotland to the SNP.
However the difference between the US Dems and UK Labour is instructive. ISTM that US liberalism is far more socially and politically ‘muscular’ than its UK counterpart, doubtless due to both US political institutions’ roots in the 18th century, and the enormous struggles against slavery, Jim Crow and racism that have been and continue to be a feature of US politics.
UK liberals are both smug and elitist in ways that are cringe making from here.
Biden’s essential decency on this and so many other issues has been, and will continue to be the secret sauce that I believe makes him the most successful President in my political lifetime. His decency is good in itself, but I am convinced it can be intuited by people even if they don’t pay much if any attention to politics.
It also permits his mastery of retail and high end parliamentary politics to fly under most people’s radar rather than being flaunted.
It is by far the most potent combination in modern politics, and is a good example of the necessity of deep political experience for leaders at that level.
eclare
@Tony Jay: Gotcha.
Bill Hicks
Can anyone explain the tweeted comments (not the cartoon, that is easy to understand)? I am guessing it is too late to get a response, but I really am confused by everything in the tweet except the cartoon. I think I get the zach/barb stuff at the top of the tweet, but not very well as I think it is supposed to be humorous. The whole “liberal christians have insane cooking abilities” though confuses the crap out of me. Is Jesus taking the trans sheep home to eat it? It does kind of look like he is going to eat it. Is that antiJesus? Enquiring minds want to know.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
I have resigned myself to the hope that Starmer, should he actually manage to win the next election, will be slightly less awful than he currently appears to be. As it is, I have stopped looking for his interviews and the like. I just can’t stand his nasally adenoidal pandering to the worst of the lace curtain brigade in the UK. It makes my physically ill.
That goes also for the Shadow Treasurer. They are both cringey and embarrassing. I get the difficulties they face, but I can’t believe the UK electorate is as reactionary and stupid as their performances suggest they think it is.
rikyrah
As I posted yesterday.
We fight for trans people because the other side means genocide on them.
There is no middle ground with people who want genocide.
It’s that simple.
rikyrah
Folks been watching what the GOP is doing in Tennessee to those Democrats who had the audacity to exercise free speech and get in there with the peaceful protests?
Phucking ridiculous 😡
Aussie Sheila
@rikyrah:
Indeed. And it speaks volumes about the differences between the US version of liberalism and the UK.
In this country, the anti trans jihad has been attempted by our liberal national party coalition in both federal and state elections. To say it has landed with a ‘thud’ would be an understatement. For their pains, these reactionary Aholes have ensured that there is not one, not one conservative government on the mainland, and the conservatives hold a pitiful few urban electorates, where all elections are won or lost in Oz.
They are trying this reactionary BS everywhere. Thankfully it is being resisted in the US and has failed utterly to gain traction down here, in sunny, relaxed Australian. The fact that the UK Labour Party appears to be pandering to it is very bad. And surprising. The UK is nowhere near as socially reactionary as electorally significant parts of the US. It makes me despise the UK even more.
eclare
@rikyrah: YES! I am going to call my rep today to ask what, if anything, I can do. Very nice man, lives in my neighborhood. I once called his office, and he picked up the phone and said hello. TN House District 88.
Aussie Sheila
@rikyrah:
Yes it is terrible that the Tennessee republicans are doing their best to expel duly elected legislatures. Terrible. But every day I see some hope that younger people are being galvanised to get organised and to get voting. That is the last hope for winning against the most dangerous political formation in the world- the U.S. Republican Party
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
It isn’t that reactionary and stupid, and they don’t really think it is, but the faction of the electorate they’re after might well be, so everything is geared towards pandering to them.
The Labour Right have staked a bet that they can finally purge their Party of any lingering taint of ‘Hard Left’ ideology and replace the part of the electorate they lose by lunging Right with a large tranche of disillusioned Tory voters. Personally I think it’s a lunatic strategy driven as much by spiteful hatred of the Labour membership (and the country as a whole) that rejected Blair (personally) in 2005 and Blairism (as an ideology) in 2010 and 2015 as it is by any deep thinking on social trends, but it’s what they’re going for anyway.
So you get what we had last week, the utterly shameful diktat against Corbyn and the easily avoidable fuck-up over taxation, where Sir Plastic said one thing only to be immediately big-footed and contradicted by his creepy little Shadow Chancellor. They don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know how to get there, and they definitely, definitely, definitely don’t want to say what they’re aiming for out loud because “We’re lying to everyone about everything, aren’t we clever little things?” doesn’t focus-group so well.
Shorter – They think they’re playing eleventh-dimension chess while balancing multiple balls in the air and simultaneously satisfying their lover orally. In reality they’re just being factional wreckers and playing kebab for the People With Da Money until the Tories get their act together again.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Yes I think you are right. The only hope for the future, if UK Lab wins, is for PR to be introduced. I gather the trade unions are becoming more supportive of this. I hope that next election the UK Labour Party is forced into some kind of coalition, even with the Lib Dems heaven help us, and that they are forced to adopt this reform.
Otherwise, it’s round and round you go again.
p.a.
We’re at mirror world Cleek’s Law: whatever conservatives puke out daily, liberals will never be wrong simply doing the opposite.
prostratedragon
Zero Hour
RedDirtGirl
@Bill Hicks: me too!
Kay
Disagree. Power panics constantly. Just look at economic issues- they panic every time another Starbucks organizes or wages go up 40 cents an hour. They’re absolute ninnies- whether or not they panic has absolutely nothing to do with reality and/or size of the threat.
Gvg
The problem with counting on demographics is it looks like the most extreme conservatives have decided to kill their way out of the problem. Seriously, we have said genocide about some of their policies, but have you looked at how many really are? For that matter the extreme denial of abortion rights to the point that not even the mothers life is causing ANY rethinks, even when it’s white married Christian women makes me think some of them are trying to kill women too. Well terrorize would make more sense, but what they are doing is killing. Worse healthcare. Guns everywhere which while women can own them, really results in more dead women and children. Refusal to protect kids (guns). And look at who has been imprisoned at a higher and higher rate for decades? Minorities. Now they are using eliminationist language about trans people and others after anti semantic attacks have made a comeback in the prior years….the pattern seems to me to be that some of them really are thinking about killing large numbers of people so they can have their way again. We need some serious investigations and arrests, not just Trump, but also some of these background people, agitators we may think of as kooks and propaganda spreaders. This stuff is now serious. Especially the ones introducing legislation.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, I noticed that power and authority often causes people to see threats everywhere.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Hicks: forget it, Bill it’s Twittertown.
Anne Laurie
I assume it’s just a riff on the saying ‘they’re cooking with gas’ (to do something very well).
The cartoon points out, very efficiently, that the ‘christians’ who expel trans individuals are *not* living up to the precepts of the god they’re supposed to be worshipping!
Kay
There could be 11 trans people and the NYTimes would panic because they’re rigidly conventional, stodgy people who panic anytime there is the slightest threat- no matter how remote- to the status quo or their own careers. They’re still powerful although they are also ninnies. They can be both.
Baud
@Gvg:
What the right is doing to people is horrible, but if it’s a numbers game, the right isn’t killing near enough people to affect trends.
We shouldn’t count on demographics because people aren’t reliable enough to count on demographics.
Kay
@Baud:
Low wage workers gained a slight bit of market leverage for the first time in 40 years and half the highly paid columnists lost their shit and decided no one wanted to work anymore and everyone under 40 is a Communist. They can’t handle the slightest shift or change of any kind.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
You are correct. Constant panic and alarmist rhetoric is the way the Right tries to mobilise its base. Real power is being able to bat it away. The US centre left is not quite there yet. But there is hope, particularly in the younger generation. The anti trans BS in Oz is instructive in this regard. It has been tried, and has failed, spectacularly.
Thanks to our overwhelming detestation of god botherers of all stripes. Most secular democracy in the world. That means everybody is safer.
I agree with you re wages and interest rate hikes. The Biden administration must try to stop this crap. It is designed to undermine working class power, nothing else. Our government has twigged to this shite, and has created an Inquiry into our Reserve Bank.
The reality is that the economy of advanced capitalist democracies are undergoing restructuring akin to the 80s. This time, we must make sure it favours the working class, and it’s middle class allies.
Baud
@Kay:
A lot of columnists are conservative in the traditional sense, while people who are called conservative are now reactionary and fascist.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Many people are economically ‘liberal’ and socially more conservative than more educated cohorts. The trick is to not sacrifice marginalised minorities, while appealing to the economically more expansive conservative base. It can be done, but not if liberals preach, rather than teach with actions.
lowtechcyclist
Joe Biden continues to be the best President of my lifetime.
And this 69 year old Jesus freak loves that cartoon, and is looking forward to sharing it. If I were still in a cubicle, it would be posted on my cube wall.
Kay
@Baud:
That’s good. A good way to think about it. 15 million people got kicked off Medicaid this week- including teenagers- and the ninnies have been screeching for four years about 10,000 teenagers getting gender affirming care.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Ok.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
This hasn’t been my experience with working class people and I’m wondering when it became “truth” – it’s just as likely they’re economically conservative as that they are socially conservative. It’s this after the fact way for the Left to explain why they haven’t made more inroads there – it’s the social issues- but I’m not as confident of it as others. I don’t think it’s true of working class young women, for example. I’d bet on that.
Kay
Who can forget the steely, calm resolve of our financial/tech wizards who absolutely lost their shit when their stupid crony bank failed and immediately started screaming for government life boats. None of them were drowning but they MIGHT drown, some of the glassware clanked in the galley on their yachts and they ran screaming to the deck threatening to jump in the water.
Power panics almost by definition. They’re the biggest scaredy cats in the world.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
I know you think socially conservative people are irredeemable. I don’t. That is because I have worked for over 40 years in circumstances where I have been far more socially liberal than the people I have worked with, and have formed good, lasting relationships and enduring organisations with people of all stripes.
You might try it some time.
Bill Hicks
Thanks Anne Laurie, I think you may be on to something from the gist of the twitter comments. I had varying thoughts including that the best dishes come from liberals at church potlucks so liberal christians are good, which was my last best guess, or that Jesus and liberal christians like to eat lambs so liberal christians are bad (or maybe good depending on your lamb eating ethics). The twitter post (as opposed to the cartoon which is pretty easy to get) reminded me of New Yorker cartoons, I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand it.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
You apparently believe that socially conservative people are a better class of people than economically conservative people. That’s fine. I don’t share that view.
Jerry
Cook, cookin, cooked in this context means that liberal Christians can speak/spit truth/fire, do good, do righteous acts.
Hope that helps.
Also, I didn’t know I was supposed to stop listening to metal as I got older. My old ass metalhead friends apparently forgot to do that as well. Shit, I guess I’ll take my Cough t-shirt off and throw it away.
Kay
The citizen protestors were really young, looking at the photo. Everyone looks young to me now so maybe they were in their twenties but I think a lot of them were teenagers.
So when the GOP compares them to J6, which they’re ridiculousy already doing, one can point out that the J6 protestors were majority middle aged – in fact, a lot of the Right wing radicals are kind of old. It used to be accepted in criminal justice that crime was a young man’s game but the elderly criminals of the GOP are proving that wrong.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
If you think that’s what I believe, you need reading compression classes. Lol!
You have no idea.
Princess
@Aussie Sheila: Oh don’t worry. Plenty of Dems are smug and elitist too. They don’t hang around here so much, and fortunately Biden and most of our elected aren’t. Same in Canada and worse, they’re split between two parties.
Princess
@Gvg: it’s not that they’re hoping women will die, but maternal death in childbirth is God’s way of providing pious Christian men with new sex partners.
Betty
@sab: Apparently Elon again. What a sad sack.
MisterDancer
When you’re in a group those folx find acceptable, that’s possible.
When you’re not, it’s not as easy.
I was in a group for over a decade who’s membership, it turned out, was more conservative than I realized. Esp. since I was adjacent to Islamic culture, I came to see, slowly but surly, how my Blackness and that connection made people — especially post-9/11 — turn from friendships I had thought were for a lifetime.
Like the mentor who I had to cut off until he was in his last days, because he turned Islamphobic, including sending me toxic writings in emails. Or the old friend who, when he started similar on Facebook, angrily cut me off when I offered to explain to him my understanding of a lot of what he was saying was how hateful Islam “is”. Or the other friend of decades, who fell into the QAnon pile, and explicitly and repeatedly hitting a very personal trigger point in his posting about it. He utterly ignored me when I pointed out why it caused me deep personal pain, based on a traumatic moment in my life.
(I should not I Am Not Muslim or Arabic, and this was well known by them.)
I gave them all the grace and goodwill I could spare, and I got NOTHING BACK.
So no, it’s not always possible to have these friendships, and maintain who you are, on a fundamentally ethical POV. And sometimes, that’s because you’re in, or close to, a group they have been told must be destroyed, and they made the call, not you, to follow through on that and burn that bridge.
And I had to make a choice that’s no choice — to speak up and defend those being victimized, at the cost of those friendships.
Tony Jay
I have a friend who has a theory about the British Establishment’s unwillingness to tolerate Trans equality. He’s working-class, white, ex-military, with a specialist engineering job that benefits from lower taxes for higher earners, so basically the target demographic for Kulturkampfer othering of the Not Like You communities. He couldn’t care less, though. He flirted with being a bit nationalist in his 20s, but thanks to his lifelong interest in muscular men in brightly coloured lycra and dislike of bullies, he’s now firmly in the “Burn down the Class System” camp, and he’s absolutely convinced that the products of our private school system and the socio-economic milieu they’ve established around themselves really, really like the idea that Trans people, especially male to female are somehow dirty, and whether for reasons of personal kink, or because it makes them easier to blackmail and threaten, or just plain old fear of people that are different from them, they want to keep it that way.
Or as he puts it, if you can enjoy your ‘ladyboy weekends’ without being worried they’re going to turn up at the next Church social, threaten them into silence without being worried they might go to the Police, pressurise their ‘friends’ into feeding you scoops without fear of pushback, or just call them names and beat them up without courting social backlash, why would you ever want them to be your equals?
RepubAnon
@piratedan: This time, let’s pound a stake in the Conservative Party’s heart and pack the coffin full of garlic and holy water – just to be sure.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
I guess so. But crikey that sounds like some kind of social pathology all of its own right there. Whew!
Going out on a limb here, but I am not convinced Trans people present quite the social threat to UK people in the broad that the reactionary press and the execrable Starmerites believe they do. The UK is closer to Australia than the US in broad social attitudes, and the issue of Trans people’s rights is not broadly controversial at all here. Despite the best efforts of Murdoch tv and nutters on the right in the conservative Party aka, the Liberal National Party.
This makes Starmer et al all the more craven and dishonourable. I just don’t believe it’s a deal breaker in the UK.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
It’s dog-whistle politics. Or rather, political Blankety-Blank (did you get that show in Australia? Seems like something Aussies would have liked).
By tacking Right on Trans issues, Nu-Lab hope to avoid being slotted into the first empty space in the phrase “I can’t vote for [BLANK], because they care about [BLANK] more than they care about me.” This is the phrase that allows people to square the cognitive-dissonance of voting for tax cuts for the rich on the grounds that the other Party on offer just generally can’t be trusted anyway.
By pushing hard on Kultur issues, the Tories hope to slot Nu-Lab into the same empty space. The second space is there for whichever ‘other’ group the WWC are being told they should blame for the results of decades of thievery by the People Wid Da Money.
Sir Plastic Panderer and his mob are effectively trying to park their tanks on the Tory Party’s front lawn… only they haven’t got any tanks and all of their rifles are just wooden poles with BANG BANG scrawled on them with the blood of Leftwing activists.
Peke Daddy
@Gvg:
Just look at the shrinking life expectancy caused by all those excess deaths among the young.
Aj
@Aussie Sheila: did they pass laws telling you what you cannot say do or be? Did they pass laws to keep your doctor from saving your life? From leaving your state to get medical care?
All the while expelling legislators DAs you elected, making laws to reorganize local governance so you cannot elect a representative that represents your community, defunding public libraries, threatening teachers with laws forbidding speech history biology?
No they are not nice people: when 2 us senators,a us representative, election board official, state AG,state school superintendent, gop state party head all cozy up and get support from “christian dominionists” that are not church but a PAC and proclaim ” we have divine right to rule”=they are not nice people. Jim Crow wasn’t nice either. It took federal interventions to stop discrimination and under representation. And there was a civil war in 1860s…
Aj
@Aussie Sheila: did they pass laws telling you what you cannot say do or be? Did they pass laws to keep your doctor from saving your life? From leaving your state to get medical care?
All the while expelling legislators DAs you elected, making laws to reorganize local governance so you cannot elect a representative that represents your community, defunding public libraries, threatening teachers with laws forbidding speech history biology?
No they are not nice people: when 2 us senators,a us representative, election board official, state AG,state school superintendent, gop state party head all cozy up and get support from “christian dominionists” that are not church but a PAC and proclaim ” we have divine right to rule”=they are not nice people. Jim Crow wasn’t nice either. It took federal interventions to stop discrimination and under representation. And there was a civil war in 1860s…
karen marie
@Kay: They can if the change is the lives of the hoi polloi getting incrementally more difficult.
I don’t get the cartoon at all.
If it has to be explained, it doesn’t work.
Sister Golden Bear
@Tony Jay: Definitely agree. You won’t be surpised to learn which states in the U.S. have the highest rates of viewing trans porn — which is one of the larger sub-genres. And “chasers” are notorious for being socially conservative.
But also one reason they freak out about trans people/non-binary folks (and LGB people before us) is that we’re living proof that one doesn’t need to live in their lives in rigid boxes — not only at a personal level, but also at a societal level, and a social hierarchy/social caste level. All three absolutely terrify them.
At the risk of what’s undoubtedly an imperfect and over-generalizing analogy, it’s a bit like the Brahmins freaking out over the concept that Dalits should be treated equally. For them if the rigid societal structure can be ignored, and disregarded, then it’s like all that is solid melts into air.
Sister Golden Bear
@rikyrah: Thank you again.
Likewise trans people fight for women because the other side wants to forced second-class citizenship on them. (FWIW, a number trans people have been vocal in the fight for abortion rights.)
Trans people fight for BIPOC because the other side wants to force second-class citizenship, apartheid and modern apartheid on them.
There is no middle ground with people who want either.