Trans Rights - Too much, too soon?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Paul_in_Qatar

You will have to explain that to me. The population is nothing but a lot of people. Calling people names and shouting rarely changes hearts.

Social ostracism is a thing. Make it clear that a particular attitude is outside of the mainstream and that folks who express that attitude suffer social penalties, and it gets expressed less, and held less.

As for MLK, maybe he didn’t call racists a bunch of assholes, but he also pushed back pretty hard against condemning violent rioters.

@MLK

I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
…
It may well be that shouts of Black Power and riots in Watts and the Harlems and the other areas, are the consequences of the white backlash rather than the cause of them.

I’m unable to find quotes where he condemns violent rioters anywhere near as harshly or judgily as you’re condemning namecallers.

He’s not on your side on this one.

[Banquet_Bear]

@Paul_in_Qatar

You cannot win over the population without winning over people. You will not win over people by screaming at them and calling them names. Doing those things makes victory harder.

…you keep repeating this. But you’ve provided zero evidence that it is true. Trump screams at people and calls them names. There is a very good chance he will be victorious at the next election. There is objective evidence to show that what you claim is simply incorrect. We also have a pit threads where Trump is called every insulting name under the sun. But if Trump wins again are you going to blame it on the people that insulted him and ignore the insults that Trump hurls out on a daily basis?

And you are evidence that it doesn’t matter. You support trans-rights even when fellow supporters of trans rights call trans-exclusionary radicals monsters. You aren’t going to turn someone like Graham Linehan around by “debating him politely.” You won’t turn him around by calling him names. Calling him a “monster” isn’t about trying to change his mind. Linehan is a monster. Trump is a monster. I have no qualms about saying either of these things. And if saying those things drive people over to the trans-exclusionary crowd then they probably were never on “our side” in the first place.

There is a very good reason to call them monsters. Because the gender critical crowd spread hate. They intentionally mis-gender. They doxx. They mass-report and get trans people banned from social media. These “monsters” are very specific people and they deserve that title. I suspect you’ve never personally encountered them, you’ve never had to deal with them, you’ve never had your life ruined by them. But they exist.

You will have to explain that to me. The population is nothing but a lot of people. Calling people names and shouting rarely changes hearts.

Who is doing the “shouting?” Are you seriously still talking about “monsters?”

And who do you think is being “shouted at?” Again specifics? The target of most of the shouting are specific members of the gender critical crowd. Those people aren’t changing their minds. Can you stop being so generic and tell us who you are talking about?

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Have a swell day. Bye-bye.

[Ludovic]

@Ludovic

Yes you can, given enough time.

@Paul_in_Qatar

You will have to explain that to me. The population is nothing but a lot of people. Calling people names and shouting rarely changes hearts.

The people who oppose trans rights will die off.

[Miller]

@Paul_in_Qatar

Have a swell day. Bye-bye.

Have a nice day! Thanks for the tone policing!

[l0k1]

@Ludovic

The people who oppose trans rights will die off.

I don’t think trans people should have to wait that long to pee.

[KidCharlemagne]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Counterpoint: Youngstown’s black working-class voters are full of economic anxiety, and not for Trump.

Lewis was one of those people who did not vote for president, for the first time in his adult life. He has plenty to say about why he finds Donald Trump appalling: his comments about women, his deportation of a local Jordanian business owner, his petty feuds. But he found little to like in Hillary Clinton; he told me that he felt she was hiding something. Other black voters in Youngstown told me they didn’t like her stance on trade or abortion, or remembered her “superpredators” speech, or her husband’s crime and welfare bills.

“They need to give a sense of reality, not false hope,” said Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, when we spoke on the phone about how the Democrats could counter Trump’s appeal in the county. “The reality is we have tough economic issues. But in a place like Youngstown, Ohio, we don’t just want a campaign speech every 3½ years.” I asked the mayor which presidential candidates he liked, and he did not hesitate: “Tim Ryan” —the local congressmen, who is currently polling at 0.5 percent. “He understands what we’re going through.”

[…]

The bad news is that no one had voted in the city’s recent primaries for local elected office. Turnout was about 10 percent. Helen Youngblood, a longtime leader of the AFSCME local, remembered talking to a friend about this: “When I ask, ‘Why can’t we get these people out to vote?,’ the person says to me, ‘Helen, when you get up in the morning and you don’t know if your baby is going to have milk, then your priority of the day isn’t getting out to vote.’ ” Poverty, she reasoned, was crushing people’s will to participate in the political process.

But several people I spoke to said there is also reason to blame Democrats, or as Sybil West called them when I paid a visit to her east side home on a recent afternoon, “the wimpocrats.” The party has been as absent here as Donald Trump is present, West told me, and the state’s GOP-led gerrymandering and poverty have further sapped people’s enthusiasm. “Most people are feeling apathetical,” she surmised, “because they’re saying, ‘It’s not going to do any good.’ ”

(The article is from either today or yesterday, depending on your time zone.)

This is the kind of voter we’re not reaching. Voters who look at what the democrats have to offer and say, “What’s the point, they’re not going to do anything to help us anyways”. And they’re a lot more likely to vote dem than the voters who fell down the far-right rabbithole in 2016.

I’m not sure how this relates to our discussion - really, I’m not being flip. Are you saying we need to target African-Americans (as opposed, or in addition to) the white middle class or are you suggesting we need a more progressive candidate to rally the left (or something else entirely)? I’m not suggesting we vote for a centrist candidate to appeal to the center - I’m merely suggesting we vote for the candidate most likely to beat Trump (and if that’s a centrist, I can live with it.) It just so happens Biden is–or at least was until recently–polling best.