I once got into an argument with someone regarding whether or not to “flee” or “stand one’s ground”. He went on and on about how one HAD to stand and FIGHT for one’s home, and that’s how his ancestors survived.
I pointed out that all of my family that tried that tactic died and were erased from the planet, the only members of MY family that survived were those who had abandoned home and land and possessions and run literally half way 'round the planet.
All of this to say that in dire circumstances you have choices to make, and you can’t know in advance which tactic will or won’t work for that particular situation and you. All you can do it make your best guess and do your best.
I will not criticize or judge you for taking whatever measure you deem best to protect you and yours. It is no sin to lie in the face of fascism, genocide, and terror. Is it noble to fight the good fight? Sure. It is also noble to survive. Those of us who are the children of the desperate and of refugees know that sometimes it take great courage to avoid the fight, as sometimes that is the only way to survive long enough to spit on the graves of your oppressors.
Pick your fights, don’t let anyone else pick them for you.
Don’t forget, though, that a lot of the rest of us non-trans people are energized because we know it’s our fight too. The worse things get for transgender people, the more dangerous things get for anybody else whom an ignorant transphobe might possibly mistake for a transgender person.
Make no mistake: one of the ways that the current perfect storm of transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny is going to play out is as an ongoing public referendum on female attractiveness, with bullets as the booby prizes (so to speak).
When a militant armed transphobe busts into a ladies’ room to “protect” its “rightful” users, and sees a middle-aged not extremely feminine-looking woman like me who doesn’t appeal to him groinally, he’s not going to pause and request to look at my birth certificate before assuming that I’m transgender. He’s going to think AHA! A BIOLOGICAL MALE PERVERT ABOMINATION!! I GOT ONE!!! and empty the magazine into me.*
* Fortunately, at least this will be taking place in a space with easy-clean surfaces. On the other hand, a lot of women will need to find a different restroom while the cops have the SoC closed off. Pros and cons, I guess.
I may be a cockeyed optimist, but I think the GOP is starting to overplay their hand. When they started out harping on bathroom access and women’s sports they could gain the support of the woefully uniformed who make up the majority of our country and whose vote represents the tie breaker between left and right. Those voters followed the “common sense” that binary birth genital based distinctions were there for a good reason and transgendered people were trying to cheat the system.
The GOP took this success and pushed by their base assumed that this early success meant more virulent anti-trans proposals would mean even more electoral success. But there is a big gap between I don’t feel comfortable in a restroom with a trans woman, versus I don’t think that trans people shouldn’t get healthcare, should be forcibly removed from their parents, and that dressing in drag should be banned. This turns the perception of transgendered people from being cheaters of the system to being victims of the system, which may garner them sympathy and further brand the GOP as the party of cruelty. Along with this underdog status may come more willingness to consider the possibility that the restriction of the rights transgendered individuals to bathrooms and sports might also have been motivated by cruelty rather than prudence.
I think that’s a bit shortsighted. It’s not my fight because I might someday be mistaken for transgendered. It’s my fight because transgendered folk are, like me, people.
They didn’t “overplay their hand” after Woe vs Wade. They didn’t “overplay their hand” opposing gun laws. They didn’t “overplay their hand” with CRT, or banning books.
They established a new baseline for “normal.” And in the extremist states, we have a new normal. And with the Democrats unlikely to be able to dislodge the state-level power structures, that new normal is the new way of life there, even if the majority of people disagree.
Don’t play this game. The only way to beat them is to fight them, and to actively protect trans people. Because they aren’t going to magically stop otherwise. This is who they are.
This is real.
They don’t want trans people to exist.
They are passing laws so that trans people won’t exist.
This is genocide. This is what they want. This is what they are doing. Stop being a “cockeyed optimist”. They are counting on that. Because that is how they win.
It’s been pointed out before, but it’s worth continuing to do so. Just look at the proposed bathroom law. It will require people to use the bathroom that matches their assigned sex at birth.
This typically gets justified as protecting women from men coming into the women’s bathroom.
Yet, it requires men to use the women’s bathroom. For example, this guy would have to use the women’s room in Florida.
It’s so ridiculous that it makes it obvious that the point of the law is to just make using a “public”* bathroom while trans illegal. So then trans people will not be able to be out in public much, which is the ultimate goal.
*By the way, there’s language that requires businesses to have gender segregated bathrooms and the law would apply there too. So even businesses that want to be supportive, can’t.
It’s clear to me that the majority of the people demonizing trans people are going after the trans women and largely ignoring the existence of trans men. Not that they wouldn’t be happy to oppress them, too, if a handy opportunity arose but it’s the trans women they’re keen to hunt down and eliminate.
…was tossing this up to see if it belonged either in the Musk thread or here, thought I’d put it here. But this is the current state of Twitter. A relatively high-profile blue tick with well over 300,000 followers, asking whether or not people would support public executions of doctors, therapists, teachers, guidance counselors, etc, who might help a child transition.
Hundreds, probably more than that (but I’m not going to look) , people say yes. Yes to public executions. Twitter isn’t taking any action. The initial posts (and those replying) are still up. They will get bolder than this.
In Montana the GOP haven’t allowed rep Zooey Zephyr to speak all week. They are openly misgendering her. They are voting on kicking her out today.
If you are still a “cockeyed optimist”…then snap the fuck out of it. They are openly calling for executions. And most people are looking away. Trans people I follow are shit-scared. This isn’t a debate about bathrooms anymore. We are so far beyond that now. This might just be a dog-whistle for much of the GOP, but its out of their control now.
The goobergater-incel-anti-vax-qanon-engineers-for-truth-tea-party-proud-boys are all over this now. This is their new mission, their fight, they are feeling righteous, they’ve been preparing for this for over a decade.
Message received. I think I’ll step back from the trans threads for a while, and just lurk rather than post, so as not to put my foot any further in my mouth than it already is.
They are currently oppressing trans men, even if they aren’t focused on them. A trans man now has a choice of breaking the law by using the “wrong” bathroom – the one that matches their gender – or using the legal one, and risking outing themselves and getting beat up, shot, or arrested.
Not only that, but they are oppressing all trans-masculine and gender nonconforming women, who will face increased harassment and gatekeeping around bathrooms. The law is meant to make us hide and be quiet, and stay home.
It’s really fucking crazy. And she’s such a hero. I can feel in my body what it feels like when people treat you like that. And she has just kept advocating.
I really think we are headed into Idiocracy. I don’t know how we as a country can come back from this level of just openly jettisoning democracy.
I’m starting to see the secession of the red states as not only possible, but preferable. I may not stick to that, but it’s just becoming such a free-for-all right now, with LGBTQ people in the crosshairs. Almost literally.
I’ve been calling Balkanization as the endgame here for a while. The extremists states are not going to stop being extreme. There has to come a point where some of the other states say, “that’s enough.” If they aren’t going to act at a federal level to stop this nonsense, and if the GOP have set themselves up so they can’t lose elections in those states, then there really isn’t much left.
Biden needs to mobilize the National Guard to escort Zephyr to the state legislative chambers. This is both a fight for civil rights and a fight for democracy.
