Carlos Santana, Alice Cooper, Róisín Murphy, Dave Chappelle, J.K. Rowling, Harry Jowsey, Bette Midler, Macy Gray, Kevin Hart, John Cleese
Ever hear of Institut für Sexualwissenschaft(Institute for the Science of Sexuality)?
The founder had described transgender in the 1880s and performed the first document surgical transition in the 1920s!
It might be more visible and talked about now, but this shit is not new
It would probably be a lot more well understood and normalized in society by now if not for literally Hitler.
It’s not transphobia in general. It’s a misunderstanding of the sudden language shift that trans rights activists created. It doesn’t fit with traditional language and was sudden shift that only existed in niche online spaces.
I’m somewhat convinced that Russian troll farms started it around the time the first bathroom bill came about from some right wing think tank.
Trans activists are just bad at messaging and explaining their position. Many are downright hostile to begin with if you are a standard cis person.
Help me to understand how this is not a disingenuous comment. I only skimmed the article but I completely fail to see where a ‘sudden language shift’ comes into play. There are quite literally slurs in this article.
Sure, these reactions aren’t happening in a vacuum and the author of the article tells people to shut up if they don’t understand trans activism or the attempt at shifting language in the case of Middler. I won’t defend all of these people because I’m not aware of everything they’ve said.
In the case of Chappelle, he’s just capitalizing on the political climate. There’s nothing wrong with criticism and that goes back to what I said prior and my criticism of this author. That activists will attack anybody who doesn’t understand their entire world immediately.
The trans rights movement took off during 2016 and the NC bathroom bill. A bill designed to cause conflict along political lines leading up to the election. At the same time I noticed a shift in rhetoric and it was almost like some obscure corner of Tumblr just went on a rampage across the internet with new talking points about more than two genders, wierd pronouns etc. Many people are not going to understand that kind of thing, especially older people.
Of course this anti-trans rhetoric comes from the far right, but trans activists and people pretending to be them don’t make it easy to see where they’re coming from.
If we look at the gay rights movement, it was much different. Trans people do deserve to be angry about what is happening to them in the untied states, but at the same time if they want to be more widely accepted they need more clear messaging and they need to accept that people don’t understand even the most basic principles of what makes someone trans.
You can’t just shut people out and shout them down when they don’t know what you’re talking about because then they will discard your entire position wholesale.
Of course there are bad faith actors on the right who will pretend to want to ‘debate’ that’s not who I’m talking about. It’s the people in the middle who would accept you if only you would accept them even with their faults.
What “sudden language shift”? There’s nothing new or difficult about it.
And what? It is objectively transphobic. I think people like yourself should be silenced, but if there’s one thing certain about transphobe defenders, it is that you lot never shut the fuck up.
I’m not trans btw, I’m not even a good person, I’m just not a colossal waste of oxygen
I find this kind of article discouraging for two different reasons. First, the initial statement that it makes, what’s on the surface. You see all these people making all these horrible comments and it’s sad.
The other thing that’s just as discouraging to me is the reaction. From what I understand the best way to approach this kind of thing is through education and compassion, ultimately leading to conversion.
You’ll never convince anyone by screaming at them and you’ll just bring yourself “to their level”
What I would like to see instead It’s for everyone to be a little bit more like Daryl Davis. Now I understand that not everyone has the patience of Daryl Davis, but I think this man’s example is the ultimate model to follow.
For those who don’t already know, Daryl Davis is an African American blues musician but spent his free time converting a couple hundred Klan members from being racist. I understand that’s a really clumsy way to say it but I really don’t have a better term for that because people don’t typically believe that people can be converted from racism. This dude did it.
What I find really discouraging is that the anger, the vitriol, the pain at hearing these things come out of people’s faces is fully human, a natural response, a normal response. What I fear is that if we don’t all become like Daryl will none of us survive. What I fear is that it’s not fair to expect many people to become like Daryl at all.
There’s just too much money to be made peddling rage.
Ok well while they do that, they’re still voting and spreading their ideas to like minded individuals. I’m not saying we normalize their behavior. Fuck that backwards shit. But your dismissive attitude only serves to alleviate your own burden of interacting with them and entrenching them further in their hatred of those with other options.
Feel free to disagree, because I definitely understand the mental difficulty of dealing with people that just want to hate. So I’d love an alternative. But treating people as disposable ain’t it, I’m afraid.
What I would like to see instead It’s for everyone to be a little bit more like Daryl Davis. Now I understand that not everyone has the patience of Daryl Davis, but I think this man’s example is the ultimate model to follow.
damn that was an interesting read.
The guy is just downright fascinating. I don’t know how he managed to get himself to the place where he could just go sit down in a bar with some klansmen and just be like “hey dude you want to have a drink?” but in my mind, this is what the transphobic hateful Christians do not understand about being christ-like. It’s this guy. Daryl. This guy is the epitome of the phrase “forgive them for they know not what they do”.
And if you don’t like Christianity that’s fine don’t call him Christlike, call him the ultimate humanist. He’s seeing the human, he seeing the person, he has the ability to differentiate the opinion from the human being that’s sitting in front of him spewing out the vitriol.
That, my friend, is some next level shit right there.
This guy is the epitome of the phrase “forgive them for they know not what they do”
Yeah! And he seems to do it with such simplicity. Also its cool he has a podcast, I might listen to that.
Makes me wonder- could the same be done with alt right types?
Social change is created by social friction. It always has been and always will be.
And you’re right, we won’t change the bigots and pull them out of bigotry. But they’re not the point. The goal is to challenge the social norms that they are creating, because it’s those norms that create new bigots.
The existence of those norms makes bigotry possible, but I really don’t think that the norms are the biggest driver here. I believe that we are being intentionally pitted against each other. I think that is the real cause .
Again, I will point out that social friction is how social change is brought about. Always. Every single time.
What you’re asking for is to sustain the status quo, and that status quo wants us dead.
You could easily change the headline to “Out of touch old people you forgot about and still think it’s 1975”
I have a little bit of sympathy for people who are from another era, and are stubborn but not intentionally hateful or dismissive. The Bette Midler quote is the only example from this article. Before, she’d never come across as someone who judges people or wants to treat them like second class citizens.
She should have kept her mouth shut, at least. Although making an uninformed remark is quicker and easier than educating yourself, I wish she had taken the time.
Santana, however, can kiss my ass.
I have a little bit of sympathy for people who are from another era
I don’t. Trans people are a new thing for me too, they didn’t “exist” in my formative years. I grew up in Oklahoma surrounded by conservative Bible-belt redneck N-word-spouting family, at a public school where “gay” and “hermaphrodite” were used as gym insults. I’m a straight-passing white cis male with pretty blue eyes, the least oppressed motherfucker out here and a perfect candidate for growing up to be a shitty supremacist.
Yet I’m the farthest thing from one, because all it actually takes is asking myself “Why should I have a problem with this? Does it affect anyone other than the person being made happier?” When the answer comes up as “no,” it’s A-OK in my book. And don’t get me started on the pricks who think “but I’m Christian!!!” is an excuse for anything, God is supposed to judge us, not my asshole neighbor Karen who grew up on leaded gas and cigarettes.
Cool. Maintaining flexibility is hard. I wish more people were better at it.
Part of my “cut them a bit of slack” attitude comes from personal experience. I’ve been watching an otherwise good person shift gradually further right. Since retirement, they watch TV almost constantly, which unfortunately includes Fox News (I was going to say “too much Fox News”, but any amount of that crap is too much).
Oh, I’m sure she’s still very pro-LGB. Most TERFs are (for now at least). It’s the T part of the equation that they think it’s acceptable to hate
This feels like giving these people—some of whom you haven’t otherwise thought of in years—free press for being pieces of shit.
Why not do write ups on people not sucking?
