On the mend
The National Review has more information on Fred Sargeant:
Fred Sargeant, 74, an early advocate for gay rights in the U.S. who participated in the 1969 Stonewall riots, said trans activists at Sunday’s parade in Burlington grabbed his signs, shoved him, poured coffee on his head, smacked him, knocked him to the ground, and stole his property because he held a sign and handed out pamphlets critical of the trans movement.
Sargeant told National Review that after the attack he was briefly sent to the hospital, where he underwent a CT scan, but is now home in central Vermont and “on the mend.”
That’s good to know.
In recent years, Sargeant has become an outspoken critic of the gender identity movement that he believes has taken over the gay rights movement. On Sunday, he said, he attended the Burlington Pride parade to protest what he believes has become “an exclusionary parade and a venue for groups dedicated to discrimination within the same-sex community.”
“The concern I have is that the movement that I knew, the gay liberation movement, has metamorphosized into a gender identity movement that is quite misogynistic, homophobic – values that I can’t share,” he told National Review. “I don’t recognize it any longer.”
Sargeant, who is now affiliated with the LGB Alliance – a gay rights group critical of transgender and queer ideology – said he was at the parade holding a sign that compared people presenting as the opposite gender to people in black face. “For some reason in society today, while no one would dare go in black face and expect to be taken seriously in the future, drag is celebrated, and I think that’s wrong,” Sargeant said. “I think it’s disrespectful for women.”
This is what I keep wondering, endlessly. Why is it acceptable for men to cosplay women while other versions of appropriation like that would be loudly denounced?
Fred stood facing the march holding the sign, and a trans woman came up to him and took it. He got it back, but then more people confronted him.
Video posted to Sargeant’s Facebook page shows a woman fighting with him, trying to take his sign. “Somebody dumped coffee on my head. A number of people were smacking me on the back of the head,” said Sargeant, who has been kicked off Twitter for allegedly misgendering trans people. “Eventually, toward the end of the march they knocked me to the ground.”
Solidarity forever eh?
I can’t imagine beating up and assaulting an old man, no matter how much I disagreed with their politics or world view. Shameful. Just thugs and bullies.
@1 I agree, the chickenshit bastards.
Oh, but Rob, don’t you see? The mere presence of this man and his sign is LITERAL VIOLENCE against the trannies. Had they not bravely confronted him, someone could have been KILLED (LITERALLY!) right there, by the words on that sign. I think the mechanism is somewhat analogous to spontaneous human combustion?
[laughs in cynical bleakness]
Yes, people did blame Fred for using words
Should we be calling them trannies though? Been “misgendering” for ages but I’m still mulling that one over… How much base civility is sensible? I don’t have the answer.
And, of course, the fact that this was in National Review is going to bring out all the “you’re right wing fascist terfs”
crowd. Because if we agree on one thing, even for different reasons, we must agree on everything, right?
Blood Knight #6
I never used that term because, well, I just never used it.
But I won’t give them what they want — the appearance of being a victim.
I will just keep calling them men who claim to be women because it is the truth, and nothing enrages them like the truth.
In the spirit of keeping tabs on recently injured progressives, I tried to look for updates on Salman Rushdie’s condition, but news outlets seem to have decided his recovery is not newsworthy. I find nothing more recent than about August 15. He also seems to be an infrequent tweeter.
As for tranny, I don’t use it partly because it was never really a part of my habitual vocabulary, and partly because I try to avoid namecalling. It reminds me of the schoolyard, and the likes of SilentBob, Abbeycadabbra, WMDKitty (etc.); they really seem to enjoy it. I leave that to team TRA if that is the look they want to evoke.
Fred is such a sweet guy, too, as well as having a core of absolute iron. I’ve spoken to him once or twice on the social medias and he’s smart, funny, fierce and…well, nice.
And he tells a hell of a story. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3DFJC0try0
I’m not a person who thinks it’s OK to punch people I’ve decided are nazis, but even if you were, could you imagine punching someone like Fred?
It’s not part of my habitual vocabulary either. Point taken about the namecalling, though.
I don’t use the word “tranny” because I find it would be an insult to all the wonderful, kind trannies I have known in my life to use that word to refer this new, violent bunch of men trying to get away with hatred, violence, and rape by pretending to be women.
Holms @ 9 – I try periodically to find updates on Rushdie but also with no success. His older son Zafar is on Twitter but hasn’t reported any news since mid-August. Nothing on Salman’s Facebook (other than horrified posts from friends). Reporting a month ago was that it’s going to be a long slow process to heal.