I’ve never understood this argument (and I get very similar vibes from Dave Chappelle, who has explicitly said stuff along those lines in some of his specials). At the end of the day, most bigotry stems from the same source: being unwilling to question your own held beliefs about others. Introspection, analyzing why you truly feel a certain way about people of a certain group, and examining that belief to see if it holds up to scrutiny or if it should be discarded - this is a difficult and deeply uncomfortable process, especially if some of these ideas get wrapped up with fundamental buildings blocks of your identity, like the way you interpret your faith, or your own gender and sexuality, etc.
But like most things we do, it’s a process that gets easier with repetition.
Someone who stops, examines their homophobic beliefs, and eventually discards them is going to have an easier time doing the same thing with their racist beliefs.
Don’t hold your breath. Some of us keep asking the same question about Buck Angel.
I think their (not given) answer is Laverne should use the Men’s Room because “he” has a penis and so should Buck because he looks like a man and all men are a rape threat.
Yup. It’s why intersectionality is such an important concept: recognizing that there are multiple layers of identity, and that they can be subject to bigotry in different ways, and that they’re still related thematically, is key to adressing bigotry.
But honestly, I don’t know it even reaches that point with her. Even before she hopped on the transphobic choo choo, I remember her being a pretty whackadoodle poster. Disagree with her, and she’d get real personal real quick. Difference was, it would be about things like California water policy or something, an issue that I didn’t know much about and that decent people could have reasonable disagreements about without discarding fundamental respect for human dignity and autonomy.
When she disagrees with folks now, she’s happy to call people sexist or racist or wifebeaters or whatever’s handy as a way to attack them, with little regard for whether it’s accurate. That’s just how she rolls, has nothing to do with her transphobia.
But in the service of transphobia, it’s extra gross.
On the closed Woke thread I found that she declared to be a minority (and a democrat) so she could be able to declare that Woke people are as bad as the anti-woke ones. Even after being shown how the right wing, that is in power in many places, is doing harm by not only branding as “woke” things like social justice, but they are even calling vaccination efforts as “woke” and passing laws against that.“woke” thing.
Of course calling herself a minority was an effort to shut up me and others to justify her position, that did not work because I’m a minority too, so she had to declare that after all the evidence of what the right was doing when using “woke” as a slur, that I was the one ignoring the real world. Not surprised to find that YWTF is also a transphobe,
Didn’t she also claim that all her minority friends were anti-woke and thought that liberals who tried to help were a much greater problem than the conservatives trying to rescind minority rights?
I think she probably actually is both Black and female. And I think she probably actually is feeling threatened by the possibility of having people who she thinks of as male in spaces that have been important to her as female-only spaces of refuge.
But she seems entirely unwilling to pay attention to evidence that she actually is not under threat from the people she’s afraid of; and that the genuine threats to her are coming from those who are attacking trans women, in at least some cases as a deliberate attempt at a divide-and-conquer tactic. I think she’s fallen for that tactic.
We’re all human, so it’s no surprise that we tend to emphasis protection for our own group before worrying about others, but don’t realize that disunity tends to weaken protections for all. And absolutely, the anti-woke brigade use the second piece as a divisive tool. And it’s worked well. I’ve seen African-American Republican politicians basically say “Look, I’ve made it, you’re not working hard enough / it’s those illegal immigrants making it hard on you / the Democrats are cheating you.”
I’ve seen Jewish politicians remain silent on anti-Muslim actions because they don’t want to touch issues on Israeli or Zionist (and they can be different) facing issues. I’ve seen Politicians of all stripes ignoring the huge upswing in anti-Asian violence because of various flavors of “it’s not an issue for my voters.”
We do have to worry about the paradox of tolerance, but overall, the smaller segment of the population you consider “yours” and willing to fight to protect, the more easily you can get swept aside as one of the many ‘others’ by a tide of national extremism.
“You can’t legalize gay marriage between two committed life partners, because this would cheapen and make a mockery of the sacred union I undertook in Vegas when I was married by an Elvis impersonator, and got divorced two weeks later when she discovered that we were going to live in my mother’s basement and live off of her earnings.”
Aaand she’s back to shitting on trans activists, only obliquely enough that somehow she’s getting away with it. I reported her earlier nonsense, and got told that I obviously have issues with her, so I’ve not reported this latest nonsense; is it even worth reporting, or are the mods aware of it and think she’s skirting the rules effectively?
I believe it’s the Great Debates thread titled, “Should people avoid consuming art they enjoy from an artist who they dislike or disagree with on a personal level?”
The thread was about transphobia from the beginning (at least as an example of the concept, specifically Rowling and the very successful new Hogwarts video game) and YWTF has been quite active in it.
I do think the rules are being skirted effectively though. I don’t see any posts by YWTF specifically addressing trans issues directly. It seems like a dangerous balancing act but she hasn’t fallen off the high wire yet.
I actually could use some guidance on allowable discussion in that thread. I mean, the thread is specifically inspired by a criticism from a trans-rights activist about the self-professed “allyship” of people who purchase the Hogwarts video game which indirectly supports the transphobic activism of JK Rowling. So I am discussing the issues in that context, including with YWTF.
However, I don’t want to be in any way “luring” her into discussing a topic on which she’s threadbanned. But she’s participating in that thread voluntarily, I’m not making her reply to me. So, not sure what to do.
If you’re not intentionally luring her into anything then don’t worry about it. You’re not doing anything wrong. Someone else’s topic ban shouldn’t restrict how you post. It’s their ban, not yours.
(This is my opinion as a non-mod, and if you somehow got a note or warning for this I would protest about it in ATMB.)
Yeah, at this point I really want to reply something to a particular post, except that I can’t think of any way to word the reply so it doesn’t look way too much like I’m trying to bait her into violating the topic ban. Different things are different, sure – but I strongly suspect that in this case the relevant difference is in which prejudice is being objected to.
I think I may wind up biting my tongue and not making any reply; and possibly may step out of the thread entirely.
That’s probably what I should do. I have now made the same (IMHO reasonable and valid) objection to her argument twice, and I doubt we’ll get any closer to common ground than we are at present.
Honestly, if someone is skirting this close to a topic ban, to the point where you are afraid to post, I would report them for baiting you into baiting them. Seriously, I’m not making a joke. If a person’s presence in a thread and the way they are posting is becoming disruptive, that’s worth flagging.
If nothing else, you should get a reply from a mod as to whether or not your posting would be considered baiting.
Not surprised to find that YWTF is also a transphobe,