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.
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
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.
You could easily change the headline to “Out of touch old people you forgot about and still think it’s 1975”
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?
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.
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
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).
The only comment that did not surprise me from this list was the one from Macy Gray. I loved her music a lot when her first album dropped; then made the mistake of going to one of her shows. I was pretty disappointed by her behaviour on stage due to some of her comments, which let’s just say were less than kind for some people in the audience.
