Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

This kind of thing is relentless in the British media:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/11/west-busy-woke-rights-combat-russia-life-frontline/

A Ukrainian soldier has warned the West is too busy fighting for transgender and feminist rights when they should be preparing for the threat of Russia invading countries beyond Ukraine.

"Today it’s Ukraine. Tomorrow it’s Poland, Germany. We’ve already destroyed more planes than the British Army has in total and Russia keeps fighting," said Artem, 32, who is just about to join his brigade stationed in Bahkmut.

Adding: "If you will not help Ukraine now, you will fight Russia in five years. If you’re thinking about human rights, transgender, feminists you’re not thinking about your country."

"If you’re thinking about human rights, transgender, feminists you’re not thinking about your country."

is quite the sentence.

Glad to see Artem from Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and the Daily Telegraph agree on that one.

I know the telegraph's rep but wow

The Telegraph has gone completely culture wars batshit in the last few years.

It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible https://t.co/e8aZ5CSrhi pic.twitter.com/2wq3dBnI7Q

— The Onion (@TheOnion) February 17, 2023

“ A Ukrainian soldier has warned the West is too busy fighting for transgender and feminist rights“

He will be so relieved when he finds out the West spends no time at all fighting for these

Glinner is absolutely furious about The Onion right now, so job done there.

lol

Man Cries Over Onion

“Man”

The only actual funny thing he’s done in years is “thanks, another man”. I genuinely use that one all the time even though I’m not a man. Classic although not as he intended it.

Actually, I tell a lie. This was funny too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwVxMJcQDWM

I feel boxedjoy’s post very much, although this part wasn’t my experience:

Nobody ever actively sits you down to teach you these things - you learn them instinctively, as a measure of precaution to protect yourself.

My parents, and the parents of every African-American I know, sat us down at an early age and told us that we were not safe in America and that vigilance was going to be instrumental to our ability to flourish as adults.

I have gotten much more exposure to/information about what happened to Ghey from Twitter than I have from any mainstream US media outlet, which I suppose makes some amount of sense from a regional standpoint combined with the insane number of mass shootings we allow. It’s all terrible though, all of us deserve a much better world than the one we currently have and it’s demoralizing to realize how much some people want things to be like this.

I saw this, from the sister of a trans girl who took her own life after being denied care (the situation in the UK is really horrendous in large part due to constant and vicious lobbying to deny access and also aimed squarely at the rollback of existing rights).

we’re right to name the political conditions of Brianna’s death, and any attempt to paint that as ghoulish or opportunistic is unbelievably cruel. when Alice died my mum was talking about posting her ashes to Rosie Duffield within days

— kate litman (@kate_Iit) February 14, 2023

DJP massively otm, heartbreaking but necessary post

I was at the Brianna vigil on Thursday night outside the department of education and what impressed me was all the young LGBT people I saw there, just these sweet, gawky, nervous kids who were figuring out who they wanted to be and how they wanted to dress, I just wished that when I was 17 I'd known some people like that, the years may have been a bit less lonely. I wouldn't interact with any of them now of course, last thing they need is a middle-age owl man in a suit talking to them, but just seeing them / hearing so many them gave me some hope for the future.

My uni students, many of whom are trans or otherwise queer (art school), give me great hope.

Thanks, all. This thread has lifted me.

Ah, talking of the youth of today - my local started running a casual 'hang out and talk books' book club and half of the members are early-20s queerkids. They're proper adults and that but now that I am super old I feel very protective and proud of them. I also feel like I now have a space where I'm allowed to be queer again, despite always being read as cishet (I am much clearer in my identity as a bi/pan non-binary person these days even if the massive guilt of not being queer enough is still present).

one of the things I really wish had existed when I was 14-17 was a physical local space for LGBT+ teens to hang out in. I mean, yeah it was good to be able to go online and meet people, and the unders disco I went to was a safe space for me to kiss people of the same gender, but that was only three hours on a Saturday evening. I would have loved somewhere where I could have went with the lad I was "dating" and just hang out, holding hands, not worrying about being seen and judged by my peers or even worse "adults." I was always under the impression that LGBT+ Youth Programmes were about activism and visibility and really all I wanted was: a place that didn't have windows.

I don't know if DJP's experience re: being sat down and warned, is better or worse. It's tragic and disgusting that we live in a world where this has to be done but at least you were prepared and equipped for the practical reality of life, I guess? I'd like to know more how that conversation went, if you're happy to say more about it. Was it a general, "this world is bad, be prepared?" or were there more specific examples of behaviours to mask, places to avoid, etc? I say nobody ever sat me down and told me "these things" - I'm referring as much to practical stuff as much as the overall principles I use to maintain personal safety.

one of the things I really wish had existed when I was 14-17 was a physical local space for LGBT+ teens to hang out in. I mean, yeah it was good to be able to go online and meet people, and the unders disco I went to was a safe space for me to kiss people of the same gender, but that was only three hours on a Saturday evening. I would have loved somewhere where I could have went with the lad I was "dating" and just hang out, holding hands, not worrying about being seen and judged by my peers or even worse "adults."

I wish an older person -- queer or straight -- had sat 16-year-old me down to explain the tangle of feelings. If I had had it sorted in high school, college would've been a better place.

xp this will cover some of it, I'd guess (tho ILX code will probably mangle the URL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_talk_(racism_in_the_United_States)

I wish an older person -- queer or straight -- had sat 16-year-old me down to explain the tangle of feelings. If I had had it sorted in high school, college would've been a better place.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

of course, when we do that we get called "groomers". few things make me angrier than this lie. i see these kids who have been taught to hate themselves, who are hated by their own _parents_, their own _family_, and if i tell them that it's ok for them to be who they are, whoever they are, that they're not broken or sick but they're worthy of love and kindness, the response to that is for these vicious people who don't even love their own children to call me a "groomer", to say that what i'm doing is "social contagion". people who do this _disgust_ me. i have no other word for it.

My first thought after my post, "Well, that's not happening in Florida now!"

Agreed with Kate and Alfred OTM— I really do believe that if my parents had believed me and treated me with love and respect the first time I came out to them, at age 14, I would be a much more well-adjusted person and would have avoided a lot of pain and confusion of my late teenage and early adult years. That so many of these articles completely deny the *fact* that teenagers are individuals who are in tune with their feelings and thoughts around sex, gender, and etc, is completely bonkers to me.

I'm an ally at my school and spend some Monday lunchtimes in the magnificent babble and lunacy of the assigned safe space for queer and trans kids. In a school of 1400 kids, the room is usually full of around 40 kids, at a guess? As a straight bloke, I'm never *quite* sure what my role is. One, for sure, is to get laughed at for being so straight and square and old and white and I'm 100% here for that, but mostly I just circulate and talk about music, books, films, comedy and whatever the hell comes up.

To speak to Alfred's point, I mean, I'm never going to be precisely what anyone needs, but other than the golden rule of being a decent human being, some guidance and training as to what to say would be so useful. School don't offer anything and anyway, maybe I should just stfu, accept the limits of my role and just be around if anyone needs anything.

Xp this should absolutely go without saying but ftr, in my experience and as tabes says, these are some of the most self-aware, articulate, emotionally intelligent kids I ever get to talk to.

Being a decent human being who listens is often all they need, Chinaski. Hugs.

I'm here for it (the decent human being bit. And the hugs).

one of the things I really wish had existed when I was 14-17 was a physical local space for LGBT+ teens to hang out in.

this is really important; in fact, there are no places for teens of any stripe to hangout where I live. cafes all close early, there are no youth clubs, kids just hang out in the park at night which inevitably leads to robberies and people getting jumped and beaten.

I know it's a hard thing for allies to wrap their heads around, sometimes. We just don't get things that other people take for granted. I guess that would be my advice. Try not to take things for granted. A lot of things that are normal and ordinary for you are things we've never had, things we desperately crave. Community. Kindness. Being treated like normal human beings.

And I'll say this, it's not just kids who need this stuff. It's a hard thing for me to explain to people who aren't here, even though we're all fucked up and healthy community is hard for us, how important it has been for me to not be alone. I transitioned in PDX because I _could_.

And they call that "social contagion" I guess. Everybody who knew me before, the first thing they notice is how much _happier_ I am, how much of a positive difference transition has made on my life, and people are afraid of it like it's some disease. It baffles me.

Posted on the "posts you had a second thought" thread in response to something, posting it here, too:

"I probably should have clarified: one of the things that's constantly being thrown into anti-trans rhetoric is that kids are confused and are being unduly influenced/"groomed" by adults, which implies that kids are unaware and have no agency in regards to their own feelings and thoughts around the most intimate aspects of their lives.

But I was told CONSTANTLY as a teenager that I couldn't *possibly* know that I was gay, and all that this did was turn me into a closet-case anorexic who moved from eating disorders to uninhibited drug and alcohol abuse. I had to come out THREE TIMES, for the final time at the age of 23. I lost years of emotional and interpersonal development around intimacy and relationships, and only entered a more healthy relationship stage in my mid-30s under the threat of my own mortality.

The absolute disregard, disrespect, and delegitimization of teenagers' thoughts and feelings is a huge part of anti-lgbtq+ rhetoric, and when so-called "liberals" repeat these sorts of talking points, they're merely showing that they, too, don't actually care about children or the sanctity of life or their professed politics, but only about reinforcing cis heteropatriarchal power structures."

Thanks for posting it here.

As I may have said, my eldest child is an enby teenager who is the absolute light of my life. I also have hope for the youths.

I spent much of this weekend volunteering at a color guard event with 400 or 500 teenagers. I strive to keep appropriate distance while respecting the people with whom I interact, but: per my casual observations there are a heck of a lot of trans folx here, and also pretty universal respect and inclusion. In this realm at least. A good sign, I hope - for Sky and for their peers.

They're making the world they want to live in and I think that's awesome.

The intelligence, compassion, and ability to think their way through the complexity of matters of gender and sexuality that I regularly see my (queer and non-queer) university-aged students display definitely gives me hope, but I still see a lot of queer twentysomethings struggling with a lot of the same crap that I did 20+ years ago, which is less encouraging. What really blows my mind is that my 13-year-old niece already has a few queer friends--including one trans kid--and just how normal (for lack of a better word) all this stuff is to them. A few years ago my niece even made my husband and I "Pride cupcakes" for June.

Anyway, it should go without saying that anyone who fights these developments, or tolerates those who do, are truly the worst trash on earth.

just for the record, i am very much in favor of dreaming the culture forward by all means necessary and it is heartening how much the baseline has moved... though the rapidity of that shift seems to be sparking the current flurry of freakout from trans/homophobes seeing the world change faster than they can handle. Nina's advice about "going slow" still applies.

I signed the NYT Letter, but credit where it's due, this piece is good at laying out how the wave of anti-trans legislation is affecting families of trans kids:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/opinion/trans-gender-missouri.html

though the rapidity of that shift seems to be sparking the current flurry of freakout from trans/homophobes seeing the world change faster than they can handle.

respectfully disagree, the personal lives of trans people have such little impact on the daily lives of cis people, you have to go out of your way to be transphobic.

no, you're right. more accurate framing would be "political media depiction of that shift seems to be sparking" etc

There's a lot of hard work going on right now to make sure being transphobic isn't such a niche interest.

What I'm seeing of it in the U.S. may or may not be different than the political/cultural path it's taken in the U.K. It seems to me that here it's mostly being used as a way to resuscitate the broad anti-LGBTQ agenda that took a serious hit with the Obergefell decision and general growing public acceptance of queer people (as measured by opinion surveys etc). For a few years it was hard to get any traction with anti-gay legislation, and North Carolina got so much shit for its bathroom bill that other states kind of backed off temporarily. But by focusing on kids specifically and riding the coattails of LibsofTikTok and Matt Walsh, they've found a way to recycle all the old pedophile/coming-for-your-kids gay-bashing that had become harder to sell.

Which is to say, it very much is a specifically anti-trans/transphobic agenda, but it's also a stalking horse for the anti-gay culture war that has been right-wing bread and butter for decades.

I'd love to disinter the Atwood-influenced memo suggesting to shift the fight from "anti-gay" to "protecting your kids."

Yeah, and that's always been the rallying cry going back to Anita Bryant's Save Our Children. It just became politically difficult to sell as more and more people knew more and more gay people. But reframing from "gays are pedos" to "trans people and drag queens are pedos" has more currency because fewer people know trans people or have even seen a drag show.

they've found a way to recycle all the old pedophile/coming-for-your-kids gay-bashing that had become harder to sell.

this is how I see it and why it seems so absurd because I remember it the first time around ... but it's also scary af because it's happening again

There’s a long list of stuff the right has tried to protect your kids from over the decades:

Drugs
Rock lyrics
Mixed race pregnancies
Demonic possession
Liberal professors
Rainbow parties
Choosing to be gay
Mask wearing
Online schooling
The Knockout Game
White slavery at Ikea
Pronouns

Must be hard to remain ever vigilant

there’s also the LGB Alliance/Gays Against Groomers bullshit to try to sell the idea that reasonable gay people understand that trans rights are totally different from gay rights, and it’s just a weird coincidence that you can do find-and-replace for the scare tactics of 30 years ago.

Also of course anyone who knows any actual teenagers in the 2020s knows that they are far and away the most queer-accepting age group on the planet. Both of my kids have many classmates in their Tennessee public schools who are gay, trans or nonbinary (and fwiw my own oldest kid identifies as asexual, which he's found a lot of reassurance in as a guy on the autism spectrum). So the idea that these are the kids being "protected" by a bunch of pearl-clutching Baptists is as funny as it is infuriating.

It does give hope that being said!

When I told my younger son, who was in middle school at the time, about the Florida "Don't Say Gay" bill for elementary schoolers, he snorted and said, "Well those kids are gonna be confused when they get to middle school and a quarter of the kids are gay or trans." (I think he was exaggerating the number, but it showed his sense of things.)

I hoped for one day without thinking about Don't Say Gay

(Not your fault, tips! Florida sucks)