Hoo yoo aw
The ACLU is still beating the silly drum.
Imagine being a kid and watching adults in positions of power attack your right to be who you are and threaten your family, health, safety, and life.
Imagine being the ACLU and wording your calls for support in such a sloppy deceptive way. Nobody is attacking “trans kids'” right to be who they are. Some people are resisting the ideology that tells trans kids to alter their bodies in an effort to be who they are not. Men can’t become women any more than humans can become dolphins. Nobody is threatening the family, health, safety, and life of “trans kids.” Some people are trying to rescue them from this poisonous destructive ideology.
What is “TRANS YOUTH BELONG” supposed to mean? Nobody is trying to exile them or shun them. Some of us question some of their claims about themselves, that’s all. If ACLU staff claimed to be dolphins we would question them too, but that’s not the same thing as trying to exile or shun them.
The trans cult has made the ACLU so childish. It’s cringey.
I’m sure you’re getting tired of me beating this drum, Ophelia, but it really is necessary, especially when you’re critiquing the (admittedly) slovenly misuse of language by the ACLU and similar orgs that have been subjected to institutional capture. Saying, “no one” is threatening trans kids’ lives, safety or family is simply a categorical error. GCFs are not doing so, it’s true, but if you’re telling me that Greg Abbott wouldn’t nod cheerfully as a group of high school bullies beat up even a slightly effeminate boy to the point of ending up in the hospital, then you seriously underestimate the malice of the socio-religious conservatives.
No one else is remembering that this is a three-sided battle, so it is all the more imperative that we ~must~.
Parents resist their child’s efforts to be who you are all the time. My father-in-law was determined my husband would be a lawyer; that was not who he was, but he wasted a year of his life in law school. My mother was determined I would go into the ministry (when I was four, I said I wanted to; since a four year old knows exactly who they are, I needed to be affirmed, right?). That is not who I am. She resisted my efforts to go into science, even though that is “who I am”.
it is an age-old tradition for parents to resist children’s announcements of who they are. I find it refreshing when parents resist an ideology that tells them to be who they aren’t.
Hm. Maybe Greg Abbott would nod cheerfully as a group of high school bullies beat up an effeminate boy – and I’m certainly not claiming he’s better than that – but is he in fact threatening to beat up such a boy himself? I don’t think I’m omitting anything of value by not including a hypothetical.
It’s not even that parents resist children’s efforts to be who they are all the time. It’s that guiding children from who they are to who they ought to be is a parent’s job.
The ACLU of today would bitterly oppose the ACLU of my youth.
Freemage, I see no evidence suggesting that any such attacks are because the kids believe themselves to be the sex they are not. Because they don’t uphold sexist stereotypes or societal norms, yes, but that is hardly unique to being “trans”… whatever that means nowadays, that umbrella’s so large that it might as well be “non stereotypical human”.
The “petition” itself is ludicrously vague: “DEFEND TRANS LIVES. Lawmakers across the country are doing real harm to transgender youth by creating “solutions” to “problems” that don’t exist. The ACLU will relentlessly defend the rights of transgender people and fight for a country where everyone can live as their true and authentic selves.”
Wut? Is there more in it that I’m not seeing? What “solutions” are they talking about? Because to me that reads as though they’re claiming that cosmetic mutilation of children isn’t a problem.
Pure projection. Labelling kids “trans” and putting them on a life-long path of medicalization and sterility sure sounds like “doing real harm” and ‘creating “solutions” to “problems” that don’t exist.’
It’s turning into a vicious cycle. Children who identify as trans are encouraged to violate boundaries and use the bathrooms, showers, sports teams, etc that they feel “comfortable” in. There are then people (including other children) who resist this and some of them do so violently, say by beating up a “trans girl” in the girls’ locker room. It’s safe to say that in that particular situation the catalyst wasn’t that a boy was behaving in an effeminate manner, but that a trans-identified male was in the girls’ locker room. They were attacked “for being trans.”
Yet they wouldn’t have been attacked if they hadn’t been where they shouldn’t. This recognition of truth sounds like victim-blaming and an excuse for violence. It’s not. They shouldn’t have been attacked regardless. But here we have adults who have created a situation which involves passive aggression by the future victim of active aggression. Denying that the first part is aggression is part of the setup. The children are being used in a rescue drama.
And what happens if the children of trans activists become gender critical?
That’s such a good point, Sastra.
[…] a comment by Sastra on Hoo yoo […]
@Colin Day –
I think that would be the basis of a good sitcom. Call it “Family T’s.”
Let me put my objection this way:
It’s accepted around these parts that there’s ample evidence that homosexual kids are being urged to transition. Well, SRCs tend to regard ANY trans girl, even those small numbers who actually do suffer from actual sexual dysphoria, as just another flavor of f*****. These kids aren’t being targeted for being trans in the sense that the ACLU is talking about, but because they ARE a subset of non-heterosexual kids, one easily identified, they’ve been making political hay out of attacks against them with their rabidly homophobic base.
And as is almost always the case with these assholes, they’ve been doing so with language that forms the basis of stochastic terrorism–language designed to provoke violence. Sure, the adults in these kids’ lives have been massive failures on all fronts. But when you use broad statements that “no one” is threatening these kids,then all the TRAs have to do to discredit you is find someone who is, in fact, making such threats.
(FREX: I recall a state rep who made a speech, back when I was still drinking the Kool-aid, about how he’d ‘stomp a mud-puddle in the chest’ of any transwoman in the women’s dressing area in a store. In the intervening years, I’ve been persuaded that the TW has no business being there, but that doesn’t mean that the violent GOP thug was ‘right’ in making his assertions, nor that they were not designed to encourage active violence against transwomen.)
GOP lawmakers who pass bills that are designed to limit trans activities are very much not doing so because they give two flying fucks about women and girls. They are doing it because they see it as a way to discredit every legitimate progressive position on sex, sexuality and gender. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is a flat-out error, one that could easily come back to bite the GC movement on the ass.
Sorry but I don’t know what SRCs are or what another flavor of f***** is.
I do however understand the part about the radically different motivations of the GOP lawmakers, and agree. I guess I could try to remember to include a “Trumpy Republicans apart” to such claims in future.
The intervening minutes were spent seeing what MTG has been up to today. Calling for Civil War 2, that’s what.
Freemage is referring to another name for a cigarette or English dumpling and presumably SRC is supposed to be socially conservative Republican with some reordering.
I’m assuming Abbott might actually balk at watching an effeminate boy attacked in front of him no matter his personal opinions; being evil doesn’t require a universal lack of empathy.
“being evil doesn’t require a universal lack of empathy.”
It’s amazing how easily they overcome that human sense of empathy with religious doctrine and group think. Just like TAs threatening to rape feminists with “girl d%^cks”
I don’t know if we can underestimate how much the use of this kind of language is concealing a disturbing reality from the casual reader/hearer. Here’s an example from Australia:
https://www.outinperth.com/petition-against-kellie-jay-keen-removed-after-legal-threats/
‘Keen, who appears online using the moniker Posie Parker, is a self-described women’s rights campaigner who argues that transgender people should not be allowed in single-sex spaces, and that transgender youth should not be able to access medical treatments.’
Neither Keen nor, as far as I know, any feminist or GC spokesperson, argues any such thing. This statement is completely false. And yet it’s probably commonly accepted among people who aren’t paying attention.
If I’m reading past the asterisks and opaque acronym correctly, I believe that Freemage is dead wrong.
If everybody believed that all the “trans girls” were homosexuals, they’d have less of a problem with them. But the fact is they’re not, and furthermore the fact is that right-wing opponents of transgender ideology don’t believe they are either. A significant subset of these kids are just heterosexual creeps getting in on the latest perv racket early, and these are the guys really causing concern. Just look at the Loudon County case. People aren’t worried their daughters might be sharing makeup tips in the bathroom with a sissy, they’re worried their daughters might be raped in the bathroom by a boy in a skirt.
Sorry, I usually try to use the full phrase “Socio-religious conservative” at least once before defaulting to “SRC”.
Papito@20:
I’m fully aware of why Gender Critical Feminists are against TiMs in women’s spaces, and I agree. However, I also have seen no evidence showing that Republican politicians share those concerns about sexual assault. Rather, they just prefer a different venue–the church youth group instead of the girl’s locker room.
Consider the ‘don’t say gay” bills. Often, their sponsors are pushing the idea that these are to protect kids from being brainwashed into being trans, because there’s enough folks who haven’t fallen for the dog-and-pony show that that plays well–but when you get into the texts, they also invariably cut out all support for gay kids, discussions of birth control, and even basic sex-ed. Tossing out all of these kinds of programs just to prevent the kids from even hearing the word ‘trans’ is essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and it absolutely is their long-term goal.
That’s really it, isn’t it? It all comes down to hating women. Not just birth control, but the whole package.
Gay men are too “girly”. Lesbians are…well, women. Transmen are women. Transwomen are men, but they are acting in a way interpreted to be women. Every single part of this comes down to hating women.
The desire to control women is strong. It cuts across religions, political ideals, political boundaries, and in fact every other type of barrier to control. Now the libs have found a way to express their distaste for women while still being politically correct. The right, on the other hand, are trying to mask their hatred for women in a concern for women (which they also did – and are probably still doing – in the south to control men of color).
Hating women is the national pastime – of all known nations.
It’s worth remembering that a whole big range of people are against TiMs in women’s spaces. These people are diverse both on the left and on the right. Radical feminists, liberal feminists, people who don’t think they’re feminists at all, conservatives, religious types, gays and lesbians, and parents of all persuasions. One of the biggest mistakes that the TRAs make is assuming there is one big unified agreeable group of people called “TERFs.” We shouldn’t also make that mistake.
I think Republican politicians are, by and large, a bunch of sleazy grifters. I don’t believe, however, that even they are monolithic, let alone the voters who put them in office. One of the most fascinating social developments of my lifetime has been the shift in social acceptance of gay people. Some members of older generations continue to have difficulty catching up to the rapidity of this change. Republican, as well as Democratic, politicians had to be dragged – by soldiers and officers – into realizing that there was no problem with gay people in uniform, and that the bigger problem was caused by the prohibition of gay people in uniform. The greater acceptance of gay people came up from the people, it wasn’t pushed down on them. Most people – rich, poor, black, white, rural, urban, Democrat, Republican, don’t hate gay people. That’s not to say nobody does, it’s just not most people, of any sort.
The voters who put Glenn Youngkin into office, significantly changing the management of Virginia, did so not because they hate gay people but because they hate sexual assault of children.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/28/sexual-assault-schools-virginia-governor-race-517481
“The gays are coming” would not have been enough. Everybody knows someone gay, everybody works with someone gay, everybody who is in the service serves with someone gay. It’s just not enough to really make a lot of people upset anymore.
Gay kids in school? Gay teachers? That’s a big yawn from most voters. But a boy in a skirt in the girls’ bathroom, raping girls? And school officials lying about it? That’s enough to get voters riled up. That was the singular issue that got Youngkin elected.
And yeah, when the sleazy creeps who rise to the top of Republican politics harvest electoral power, they will put it to use doing idiotic things like removing all the books from schools except for those on a limited whitelist. Or ending sex ed. And that does hurt a lot of kids. But it’s not because the _kids_ are being targeted, not the gay kids, and not the “trans kids.” It’s because it’s easy for Republicans to sell the idea of adult predation on children. And it’s made a hell of a lot easier when the trans activists – doctors, online ‘glitter moms,’ lobbyists – are actually engaging in predation on children.
It’s easy to imagine it’s still the seventies, and the biggest threat to gay kids is the church, or normal everyday bigots. We’ve got around the bend, though, and the biggest threat to gay kids is now the trans activists, both by telling them they have to castrate themselves or they’ll never be happy and by getting them caught in the crossfire aimed at them.
Eh, I’m not convinced that kindergarten to third grade is really a place that contraception needs to be addressed. Same goes for security and sex education in general.
It’s very easy to let imprecise language and partisan bias occlude facts inconvenient to our righteous indignation. I had MSNBC on in the background while doing some wiring at my mother’s house recently, and Hot Reid was talking to Ibram X Kendi about book censorship in schools. She asked what it meant that “knowing about these issues and their history would be illegal”. Of course, that’s as big a distortion as saying that feminists want to ban trans people from sports.