I thoroughly expect this post to get many people's knickers in a twist. You know what? I don't care. I may or may not have too many years to live. Do you think I am afraid of being cancelled? I've been an outsider all my life. I've been in emergency rooms with people telling me that I nearly died. That's, like, the ultimate cancellation right there. Grim Reaper may cancel me tomorrow, forever. So read on and cancel me if you want, or agree with me. I don't give a shit, because I live in the US and it's a free country.
Here's the backstory. I got permabanned for hate speech in r/politics on reddit.
(Context: are transgender activists too strident?)
Decades ago, there was a televised Q&A with MLK, and one white woman asked MLK if he thinks that the black advocates are asking for "too much too soon" and that it's hurting their cause.
It's an argument as old as time. 'Don't ask for all of your rights at once. Can't you just ask for SOME of them for now?'
It's a specious argument. When MLK said those words, cops were siccing dogs on black people and beating them for peacefully protesting. You don't negotiate with a system like that, because it very much wants to kill you and it is proving it every day.
I myself am a marginalized person. I'm blind. I have literally had a woman tell me that she would not rent to me because all she had were second story units and blind people can't safely walk up and down a flight of stairs.
Even so, I wouldn't dare to compare my struggle to the struggle of black people like Dr. King. Because there just ain't no comparison between "some idiot won't rent to me, but a bunch of other people sure will" and "police might well murder me."
And from where I'm sitting, as a guy who knows history and has faced discrimination over the years himself, I see transgender people arguing about pronouns and bathrooms and the right of "transgender"[1] children to permanently alter their bodies, and I'm like "I can't even." Someone called you the wrong pronoun? Try being refused a roof over your head.
Oh and the bathroom thing? I was assaulted in a boy's bathroom by another boy when I was 8. I don't call it sexual assault, because there damned sure wasn't anything sexual about it. I don't care whether I'm in a bathroom labeled "men's" or a bathroom labeled "women's." I want to be in a single-occupancy bathroom where I can do my business in privacy.
And let's talk about women. There was a time that they couldn't even have bank accounts. And now, they're being told that they have to accept biologically male folks -- even ones with external male reproductive organs -- into their women's only spaces? Some of them are pissed, and I don't blame them for it.
I do not hate transgender people; I try to treat them (as individuals) with empathy. I in fact try to mind my own business. It's a real struggle right now, the minding my own business part.
[1] I put quotes around "transgender" children because, while I know for a fact that truly transgender kids do exist, I suspect that the vast majority of them are just kids struggling to figure out who they are in this crazy world of ours.
I'm sick and tired of people being compared to Nazis or segregationists or whatever for objecting to trans women in women's only spaces. I'm tired of it being acceptable for so-called progressives to use misogynist language against the so-called "TERF". Trans people are not being denied the right to exist. Bull Conner isn't siccing dogs on them or beating them with hoses or whatever. If you live in the US, you have the right to pump yourself full of opposite-sex hormones, or mutilate your wee wee, or do whatever the fuck you want to do as long as it doesn't impinge upon others' rights. You have the right to "identify as" however you like, and I'll defend that right with my life if need be. You can identify as Thomas the Motherfuckin' Choo Choo Train for all I care. I'll even call you Tom. What you don't have the right to do is force me to ride you around on the railroad tracks.
I guess I'd call myself a TERF, except that I don't call myself a male feminist. "Male feminist" has always struck me as a label someone applies to himself as a cheap ploy to get pussy, and I don't need artifice for that. So I'm a friend of TERFs.
I think we've made amazing social progress over the last century. We have the potential of making a lot more of that. But we're at an inflection point right now. We need to fix massive wealth inequality. We need to make society work for everyone, not just pander to marginalized group du jour. We need an actual Left in the US. One that is working to ensure that no one is living hand to mouth. A Left that fights for things like affordable housing.
That's why I voted Democrat. Not because I thought that the Harris-Walz ticket was perfect; I didn't. I did think they were a step in the right direction and that Trump wasn't.
Unfortunately, a good many of my fellow citizens -- a majority of the voters, in fact, -- thought otherwise. Because Trump was perceived as the one talking about economics, and the Democrats were perceived as the party making a big fuss about pronouns and silly neologisms like Latinx.
You know, I have a great deal of respect for Elizabeth Warren. I think she's a smart lady with a really big heart. But the first time I heard her say "Latinx", I was like whoa, it is going to be a real struggle for me to take you seriously now.
I'm thankful that "Filipinx" never really took off, because it sounds like a shady enlargement drug that one might buy from www.dickpillpharmacy.com.
Anyway, the digression is over; let's go back to that inflection point I mentioned. If your first priority is making sure that people have a roof and aren't living hand to mouth, the cultural progress is going to follow naturally. It worked during the years between 1933 and 1980. The Democratic Party has a choice. They can choose a universal message like "a chicken in every pot", and cultural progress will be a natural consequence of that succeeding, or they can choose a message of tribalism.
But my expectation is that they won't do the needful and we're in for a serious backlash.