Guest post: If you don’t call attention to it, it dominates all by itself
Originally a comment by Artymorty on Taking all the medals.
My heart breaks to see the Alliance Defending Freedom in there alongside the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s horrifying that the ADF and Reem Alsalem are mentioned side-by-side so casually. And it’s sickening to see so many men and women I thought were allies participating in ADF-organized events.
The ADF are hardcore Christian nationalists who devote massive amounts of effort into recriminalizing homosexuality, and throughout the world, trying to prevent the decriminalization of homosexuality. I don’t hesitate to analogize them as an anti-gay parallel to the KKK. I think they are vile, ignorant bigots of the very worst kind.
There was a time just a few years ago when many — if not most — people online who were vocal critics of gender identity ideology cited their allegiance with gay rights and their fear of a backlash against us as one of the primary reasons they were in this fight.
I guess they had what NASA and the intelligence community call a “failure of imagination“: they didn’t foresee that THEY THEMSELVES would be the ones whose principles would wear down and erode to the point that they became soft on gay rights. But in hindsight it seems kinda obvious: who else would the backlash manifest itself through?
Within GC circles lately I’ve seen gay men called the f-word (the homophobic slur one); I’ve seen arguments that we don’t deserve HIV prophylaxis because AIDS is some kind of necessary moral punishment for promiscuity; that we shouldn’t be allowed to raise children because we’re abnormal and it’s bad for kids; that we’re innately immoral; that we’re pedophlile-adjacent “perverts”…
I don’t know what’s worse, the hardcore GC people who directly engage positively with this bullshit, or the next rung out who shrug and keep their heads down when they see it. I think I might be literally the only person in the GC sphere to be loudly pointing out these awful anti-gay developments that are infiltrating into the core of the movement. And it’s been suggested to me more than once by progressive people that the best way to deal with it is to simply ignore it, lest all that bigotry against gays disillusion me and drive me away from the “greater cause”. The thinking seems to be, don’t call attention to it, or you might make it stronger, because our enemies are watching. But MY thinking is, if you don’t call attention to it, it dominates all by itself no matter who’s fucking watching — y’all are literally giving the game away.
(And as if the natural state of right-wing assholes is to stomp around and make themselves heard, and the natural state of GC liberals is to quietly tolerate them, like to demonstrate our remorse over woke extremism or something?)
My primary cause is gay rights. I’ve suffered so much abuse — even homelessness in my teens and unspeakable other abuses — for no reason other than that I’m a feminine gay man. I cannot ever chill out about anti-gay bigotry and bias. It riles me up. It makes me mad, and it makes me speak my mind. So sue me!
It is in fact my passion for gay rights — as well as women’s rights, having been raised by a feminist single mother who taught me well — that informs my criticism of gender identity ideology. So I get sick to my stomach when I see groups like the ADF holding hands and throwing parties with people who I thought were my fucking friends.
And I’ve just now learned that the ADF are apparently the very group who succeeded in overturning Roe. So I don’t know what anyone is fucking thinking anymore, getting in bed with these assholes.
It seems everyone is being incredibly short-sighted these days. The mind reels…
Of course the very same people who want us to shut up about the homophobia and misogyny of their new bedfellows because “the enemy is watching” tend to be the first to condemn this kind of thinking when the woke use it to tell everyone else to shut up about, say, grooming gangs, the atrocities of Islamism etc. (the “playing into the hands of the Right” argument).
The fact that the enemy is watching is all the more reason to keep your own house clean and not prove them right: “You see! That’s what we’ve been saying all along! The same people who deny trans rights* are also defending pussy-grabbing, homophobia, treating the presidency as a business opportunity, overturning elections, abolishing democracy, and giving Putin free reigns in Europe!”
*Best left unspecified.
This is so much the case with so many causes, and it infuriates me that people want to just let it pass. I am all for the GC cause, but I don’t want to be caught dead next to the ADF. Some of the “bathroom bills” (maybe all of them) have a cause I support at their core, but also carry anti-gay provisions. Can I stand aside for that? No. There needs to be a concentrated effort on the part of the GC feminists to promote sanity about trans and protect gay rights while we’re doing it.
We fuss about how ‘rights’ for trans are inimical to women’s rights, and we know that ‘rights’ for trans are also inimical to gay rights. What we need to do is make sure that women’s rights don’t get in the way of gay rights, especially since there is no rational reason they cannot co-exist without risking harm to women.
Can’t we just say “stopped clock principle” in a lot of cases?
The ADF is usually wrong, but has stumbled into being on the right side of an issue for once.
Trump is occasionally right about things; should he be worked with to accomplish them? Would it been profitable to do so?
No, and likewise most of the so-called GCs are poison incarnate. I don’t need homophobic weirdos to tell me that trannies are lying sacks of shit.
Saying X is usually wrong, but is right in one particular case doesn’t mean working with X on this one case is *necessarily* right. We just acknowledge that we agree with X on this *one* issue.
@Jim Baerg,
But not when the group’s *central* issue is wrong. You can’t say, “We’re happy to work with the KKK because we agree with them about their stance on X, but we disagree about the whole racism business so it’s fine.” Racism *is* the KKK’s whole business, and they wouldn’t exist apart from it, even if they venture to support non-racism-related causes every now and then. Same goes for ADF and their stance on gays and women’s rights: they are not the ADF’s side issues; they are the whole enchilada.