"By the way, there was no such thing as a 'queer' category in her day, since post-modernism and the gay rights movement were decades away. It's anachronistic to use that term in this context."
Thank you! I am a queer-critical gay man who thought he was alone in objecting to the hegemonic nature of the term "queer."
"By the way, there was no such thing as a 'queer' category in her day, since post-modernism and the gay rights movement were decades away. It's anachronistic to use that term in this context."
Thank you! I am a queer-critical gay man who thought he was alone in objecting to the hegemonic nature of the term "queer."
For example, in the late teens the program for a local theater company's production of a one-man show about James Beard referred to him as "queer." It was almost enough to spoil the performance. I suspect Beard was a sweet gay queen in his final years who would have blanched at the thought that someone would think him "queer." As you say, it is an anachronism, but queers don't respect other identities.
At a time when progressive identity-group politics dictates that we split our society into ever-finer affinity groups in the interest of inclusivity, queer is rolling right over lesbians, gay men and, yes, bisexuals like a combine through a hay field and spitting us out in neat blocks stamped "Queer."
For proof of queer hegemony, one need look no further than the Queer Resource Center at the university where I am a post-bac student. The student-funded official organization for what used to be called sexual minorities and for today's synthetic gender identities recognizes only two types: queers and trans. A person will search in vain for the word "gay" in the Center's mission statement. Naturally, there's nothing gay about the queerness there. It's a humorless, strident form of Wokeness that caters to the most marginalized of the marginalized.
Just yesterday the Washington Post ran a story under the headline "How queer went corporate: The 50-year evolution of LGBTQ+ marketing." They got it wrong. Fifty years ago "queer" was a slur. I wish I knew whether the headline writer considers themselves queer or whether they're just another straight media "ally" who wants to signal that they're edgy and with-it.
I hope that there are gay men in the 25-40 age group who recognize queer for what it is (in my view, it's a scene except in its doctrinaire form, in which case it seeks to upset all norms pertaining to sex and the imaginary concept called gender) and are willing to keep the term gay in public circulation.
Dear Ollie, Thanks for sharing your observations. You're on the money and I agree across the board.
I'm 71 and I came out in 1972, when the word "queer" was a slur, like the n-word. We sometimes used the word among ourselves to express irony, but we sure didn't use the word to speak about ourselves. I've never adopted its use and neither have any of my friends. I have a couple of straight friends who tried to use the word in conversation with me, thinking they were being respectful, and I had to set them straight (as it were).
"Queer" started to gain traction in its new sense during the 1980s in the universities. In the early 1990s, I recall having a chat with a lesbian feminist professor who had returned from an academic conference and reported that "they're trying to disappear the lesbians." By this she meant that lesbian students were being told that if they were butch, they had a male gender and they should transition instead of thinking of themselves as women.
The long-term result has been the decimation of lesbian community. There are hardly any lesbians left, especially butches. The bars and bookstores are gone, lesbian culture is a thing of the past, and garden-variety masculine girls (i.e., tomboys) are groomed to identify as trans by teachers and activists.
In terms of the modern definition of "Queer," if you enjoy a theoretical approach, you might get some insight from the writings of James Lindsay. He's not gay, but he's well-versed in the philosophy of critical theory, out of which Queer was invented.
Finally, there's a writer on Substack named Karlyn Borysenko who focuses specifically on Queer, not as a gay thing, but as an umbrella term for subversion of the entire society along Marxist lines. https://karlyn.substack.com/
I empathize and don't envy you this fight. The rabidity of the TRAs is such that they are doing much harm to both the Gay/Bi and Women's Rights communities. No one should have to be erased or diminished for others to flourish. Their zero-sum approach is toxic and can't last. It's just not rational and especially, it is not fair nor kind. I want trans people to flourish, but not at the expense of everyone else.
I feel the same. The zero-sum game they play is authoritarian, narcissistic and misogynist. It's a shame, because I require very little from the trans community: respect women's single-sex locker rooms, prisons and sports. Stop pretending the biological differences between men and women are insignificant and unimportant. Respect women, and receive respect in return.
I hate to make generalizations, because I know for a fact that not all men who identify as women are misogynists, but mostly they keep their mouths shut out of fear of being harassed.
I'm grateful to trans activists like Blaire White and Corinna Cohn, who go the extra mile to defend women's sports and single-sex prisons and advocate for restrictions on the transitioning of children until they reach the age of majority.
You and I are in total accord on this. Stop pretending that male bodies don't have advantages over women's bodies in sport - even hormonally weakened male bodies are dominating. Some commenter I encountered asserted that there was no data to support the supposition that trans women will dominate women's sports. Well, the data is building and at some point, they will have to admit that it's incontravertible. As they will have to admit that increasing rapes and pregnancies in women's prisons point to a problem there.
Unlike 10 or so years ago, I deeply believe that an increasing percentage of trans women are male posturers seeking gain. They are not truly dysphoric at all. They are using the current, hysterical moment as cover to feed their egos and/or predatory urges. I can't prove this but my intuition is screaming at me.
In a few cases, TRAs are defending the right of convicted sex predators having access to women only spaces. It's a bit insane. How do they justify this?
The commenter "asserting there are no data to support the supposition that trans women will dominate women's sports" is not a serious person. Trans women are already dominating women's sports. Lia Thomas moved from a ranking of # 554 in the 200 yard freestyle (in men’s swimming) to #1 (in women’s swimming). Cycling is a sport where men are consistently beating women, to the extent that women are leaving the sport. Weightlifting...another sport where males consistently outperform females regardless of how they identify. Even once-in-a-generation tennis superstar Serena Williams has made it clear that she stands to gain nothing by attempting to compete against men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzHBsvj6C0
And here's just one study, done by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which discusses the minimal change in performance by men identifying as women after a year of testosterone suppression:
"Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage"
Finding: "Longitudinal studies examining the effects of testosterone suppression on muscle mass and strength in transgender women consistently show very modest changes, where the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength typically amounts to approximately 5% after 12 months of treatment. Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”
There is no justification for allowing male sex offenders to be housed in women's facilities, but this hardly matters. And your belief that an increasing percentage of trans women are male posturers seeking gain makes perfect sense to me. Why wouldn't they, if they can get away with it? There's no vetting of any kind.
Have you read or heard Helen Joyce on this issue? She's terrific. I'll leave you with this short clip from a full-length interview, which I urge you to listen to as well:
Sorry...I get carried away sometimes, because I'm retired and have too much time on my hands, but mainly I'm in a permanent state of fury about what transgender ideology is doing to women and children. Hopefully somebody will read my little litany of evidence and learn something they didn't know.
Don't sweat it. Passion is good in my book. And your/our concern is justified. We are leading our kids down a toxic garden path and permanently damaging some of their lives. Body chopping should not be a twee "fashion." And many are treating it as if it is. The great escape from dull and boring binary lives. Step right up and pour your money into our gender enabling pouch! Make us rich while we make you feel special and fuck you over at the same time. Cynically trading on kids' need to matter and the gender confusion many experience during puberty. Great biz model.
And I get it. I grew up during a time when the left appeared to be about fairness for everyone and inclusion in the healthy sense of that word. Peak self-determination, peak individual freedom, if you will. Someone on another board labeled us "Free to Be You and Me Feminists." As much as I despise labels, I'll take this one - especially over TERF. Anyone who calls me that is going to get a fat lip.
I had no idea the seeds of our own destruction were being planted in academia via all of these theories. In "Intellectuals and Society", Sowell talks about how people who make their living by peddling ideas rarely have to pay for their mistakes - like doctors and engineers do. And one of the flaws of the left is that they prioritize being on the side of the angels over actual real world change. I agree with him on this. TBF, his stuff can be a bit polemical but it's typically an interesting read.
And don't even get me started about the fake self ID grift. Since 1858, women have been fighting to be taken seriously as fully empowered human beings and not just wombs. That's over 160 years now. And now, faux trans women are leveraging their innate male aggression to claw some of those gains back. Acting exactly like alpha males - selfishly dominating every space they inhabit and never considering the needs of others. "Look at me! I can beat a woman with my male body! I'm so fucking special. Grovel at my feet, bitches!" This is SO masculine. Most women aren't like this. We are nurturers and caretakers and consider the whole when we make choices. These faux trans women are extraordinarily UNLIKE women in their behavior and all of the clothing and lipstick in the world can't hide that.
It is desperately unfair. The whole woke platform is so horribly about revenge - not healing, not reconciliation, not positive change for the people they purport to defend. Blame and shame is the game. And they are ruining not only lots of good people's lives, but the very country that enables us to be a free people.
I blame the religious right. If they hadn't practiced such a toxic form of weaponized religion, if they hadn't focused on excluding, jailing, and killing/diminishing blacks and browns, gays, trans for centuries (for both propriety's sake and greed), then the left wouldn't have needed to replace established religions with this toxic stew of cultish belief that has no redemption, no atonement, no grace - just original sin forever and ever, amen. We can't live like this. Such a system will destroy everything good that has transpired since the Enlightenment if we don't find a way back to rationality and dare I say it - love.
Plus, for me, this whole thing is personal. I struggled for years to overcome horrible child abuse that destroyed my spirit and my self-concept with brainwashing and neglect. It has taken me 40 years of study and struggle to overcome this to achieve a sense of self esteem, self respect, and wholeness as a human being. And now, our twee little woke collective is telling me that I am evil because I am a white woman and have never suffered the specific types of microaggressions that all of the intersectional specialty groups have. And, to top it off, whatever reversals and harms I have suffered don't matter because my privilege cancels it all out. I just got out of the box. And now, they are saying, "back in box bitch! You don't have a right to a full humanity. Why? Because we say so!" "Conform, or be cast out." —Rush
What a clever power grab this is! Clever, clever, clever. The cherry on top is that it is mostly being driven by the most privileged, most affluent, whitest fucking children in the country. I say children because these people are NOT adults. Okay? Why are they driving this? Guilt over the one kind of privilege that they are trying to make invisible in this country, and honestly the only one that matters: MONEY. They want to be good people so badly that they are sucking up this narrative being peddled by agenda-driven academics and parroting it for all they are worth to score sanctimonious brownie points and prove they are on the side of the angels as a sort of penance for being so privileged. Weak-minded moral scolds. Think about it. Who are the most virulent peddlers of this stuff? Elite high schools and colleges. Elite institutions like media, arts, publishing, government, and corporations.
Keep the faith, my friend. Oliver Cromwell only lasted 9 years. This will take longer, but no one wants to live a humorless, puritanical life. Most of us DO want to live in a society where people get a fair shake. I strongly believe that this desire will win in the end. It is scary right now, with insitution after institution being captured. The ACLU was a bellwether for me, in particular (and a deep, deep disappointment). But, it can't last. We haven't reached peak woke just yet, but it's coming. It's sad that the right is so - what's the word? Prissy? Arrogant? Idiotic? Reactionary? (I just read and anti-feminist article the other day that exhorted women to give up their jobs, have lots of kids and worship their menz. Oh, and feminists are ebil, doncha know? Bitches, all of them.) They are no salve to this situation, that's for sure. The solution is going to have to come from within the left - those of us who have not drunk the koolaid and still believe in human rights for all individuals and not this toxic cocktail of intersectional preference. And also, I believe there are some in the working class - old school Dems who care about the little guy - that could be allies in a coalition against woke predation. We'll see what happens. I know one thing for sure. I'll take a bullet before I ever genuflect to these idiots. I've made up my mind about that.
Anyway, now I've given you MY rant and we are even. LOL! 🤣 Hope is your armor, my dear. Don't let it go. Remember, history flows in cycles and they all pass - eventually.
Lightwing, thanks for sharing your philosophy with me. Like you I'm a lifelong feminist, and I'm beyond disappointed in the ACLU, as well as Planned Parenthood. Where we may differ is that I don’t blame the right more than the left. Everybody is guilty, that’s my take. But it doesn’t matter. I love hearing your story of recovery and self-preservation, and I appreciate how long and hard that process can be.
I saw this mess coming in the mid-1970s. I was there the first time a man came to our lesbian social group in Buffalo, demanding to be admitted because, obviously, he was a lesbian. This was a new one on us. Now I know he was a garden-variety autogynephile. He'd been married to a woman and was coming out as trans in mid-life. Of maybe 30 women, there was only one other besides myself who voted against him. I never found out who she was. I did feel sorry for him because of the suffering his coming out had caused his family, and I admired his courage in going public. His neighbors were not impressed and someome had burned a cross on his lawn. Then his adult son killed himself...who knows what that was about?
So the group pitied him, because homophobia was rampant and we'd all been victims. They wanted to be kind. Besides, how many of them could there be, anyway? was the mantra (and it was a mantra...you'll see). Don’t ask me how, but I knew it wouldn't end well for us. He wasn't a woman, wasn't a lesbian, wasn't a “sister,” and was taking advantage of women in order to locate a new place to put his penis because his wife had left him. That much seemed obvious.
Recently, my sister expressed skepticism about men in women's prisons being a problem. She too wanted to be kind, because she believes that trans people need special protection and besides, “how many of them could there be, anyway?” I gave her some food for thought: "What would be an acceptable number of rapes in a women’s jail? One a month? a week? a day? At what point would we say, okay, that’s enough raping for awhile?" That shut her up. What the F is wrong with us women?
I’m not a hopeful person, but I appreciate your hopeful talk. I’m sure you’re right…everything changes, a reckoning will come, and there will be a massive cohort of mutilated adults, most of them gay and lesbian (if that's still allowed)…who are furious and want to know why the adults didn’t do their job.
Sorry you had to field that. Sounds like you had a front row seat to the precursor to this craziness. And honestly, I'm foe to anyone who dehumanizes - right or left. If we can't treat each other fairly and decently, there's no point. Self-righteousness is an evil drug. Ruins people. Makes them ruin others. Very sad.
Funny - I grew up 60 miles south of Buffalo. Whole different country down there. Not my vibe. Had to leave. Too much of a free spirit to conform. I live in Cali now and I have a wonderful husband. There is still love and heart left in the world. Don't give up.
There are many who see clearly, many who crave balance. The answer is to put aside sanctimony, practice some tolerance and find common ground - a human coalition. We can do it. We have to be brave and speak out. More and more are doing so all the time. Critical mass will happen.
"By the way, there was no such thing as a 'queer' category in her day, since post-modernism and the gay rights movement were decades away. It's anachronistic to use that term in this context."
Thank you! I am a queer-critical gay man who thought he was alone in objecting to the hegemonic nature of the term "queer."
For example, in the late teens the program for a local theater company's production of a one-man show about James Beard referred to him as "queer." It was almost enough to spoil the performance. I suspect Beard was a sweet gay queen in his final years who would have blanched at the thought that someone would think him "queer." As you say, it is an anachronism, but queers don't respect other identities.
At a time when progressive identity-group politics dictates that we split our society into ever-finer affinity groups in the interest of inclusivity, queer is rolling right over lesbians, gay men and, yes, bisexuals like a combine through a hay field and spitting us out in neat blocks stamped "Queer."
For proof of queer hegemony, one need look no further than the Queer Resource Center at the university where I am a post-bac student. The student-funded official organization for what used to be called sexual minorities and for today's synthetic gender identities recognizes only two types: queers and trans. A person will search in vain for the word "gay" in the Center's mission statement. Naturally, there's nothing gay about the queerness there. It's a humorless, strident form of Wokeness that caters to the most marginalized of the marginalized.
Just yesterday the Washington Post ran a story under the headline "How queer went corporate: The 50-year evolution of LGBTQ+ marketing." They got it wrong. Fifty years ago "queer" was a slur. I wish I knew whether the headline writer considers themselves queer or whether they're just another straight media "ally" who wants to signal that they're edgy and with-it.
I hope that there are gay men in the 25-40 age group who recognize queer for what it is (in my view, it's a scene except in its doctrinaire form, in which case it seeks to upset all norms pertaining to sex and the imaginary concept called gender) and are willing to keep the term gay in public circulation.
Dear Ollie, Thanks for sharing your observations. You're on the money and I agree across the board.
I'm 71 and I came out in 1972, when the word "queer" was a slur, like the n-word. We sometimes used the word among ourselves to express irony, but we sure didn't use the word to speak about ourselves. I've never adopted its use and neither have any of my friends. I have a couple of straight friends who tried to use the word in conversation with me, thinking they were being respectful, and I had to set them straight (as it were).
"Queer" started to gain traction in its new sense during the 1980s in the universities. In the early 1990s, I recall having a chat with a lesbian feminist professor who had returned from an academic conference and reported that "they're trying to disappear the lesbians." By this she meant that lesbian students were being told that if they were butch, they had a male gender and they should transition instead of thinking of themselves as women.
The long-term result has been the decimation of lesbian community. There are hardly any lesbians left, especially butches. The bars and bookstores are gone, lesbian culture is a thing of the past, and garden-variety masculine girls (i.e., tomboys) are groomed to identify as trans by teachers and activists.
However, you're not alone in your views, Ollie. Check out Gary Lucia's work here on Substack. https://flashinggreen.substack.com/p/queer-is-the-real-dont-say-gay
There's an organization called Gays Against Groomers...maybe you're familiar with them. https://www.gaysagainstgroomers.com/
In terms of the modern definition of "Queer," if you enjoy a theoretical approach, you might get some insight from the writings of James Lindsay. He's not gay, but he's well-versed in the philosophy of critical theory, out of which Queer was invented.
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-theory/
Finally, there's a writer on Substack named Karlyn Borysenko who focuses specifically on Queer, not as a gay thing, but as an umbrella term for subversion of the entire society along Marxist lines. https://karlyn.substack.com/
I empathize and don't envy you this fight. The rabidity of the TRAs is such that they are doing much harm to both the Gay/Bi and Women's Rights communities. No one should have to be erased or diminished for others to flourish. Their zero-sum approach is toxic and can't last. It's just not rational and especially, it is not fair nor kind. I want trans people to flourish, but not at the expense of everyone else.
I feel the same. The zero-sum game they play is authoritarian, narcissistic and misogynist. It's a shame, because I require very little from the trans community: respect women's single-sex locker rooms, prisons and sports. Stop pretending the biological differences between men and women are insignificant and unimportant. Respect women, and receive respect in return.
I hate to make generalizations, because I know for a fact that not all men who identify as women are misogynists, but mostly they keep their mouths shut out of fear of being harassed.
I'm grateful to trans activists like Blaire White and Corinna Cohn, who go the extra mile to defend women's sports and single-sex prisons and advocate for restrictions on the transitioning of children until they reach the age of majority.
You and I are in total accord on this. Stop pretending that male bodies don't have advantages over women's bodies in sport - even hormonally weakened male bodies are dominating. Some commenter I encountered asserted that there was no data to support the supposition that trans women will dominate women's sports. Well, the data is building and at some point, they will have to admit that it's incontravertible. As they will have to admit that increasing rapes and pregnancies in women's prisons point to a problem there.
Unlike 10 or so years ago, I deeply believe that an increasing percentage of trans women are male posturers seeking gain. They are not truly dysphoric at all. They are using the current, hysterical moment as cover to feed their egos and/or predatory urges. I can't prove this but my intuition is screaming at me.
In a few cases, TRAs are defending the right of convicted sex predators having access to women only spaces. It's a bit insane. How do they justify this?
The commenter "asserting there are no data to support the supposition that trans women will dominate women's sports" is not a serious person. Trans women are already dominating women's sports. Lia Thomas moved from a ranking of # 554 in the 200 yard freestyle (in men’s swimming) to #1 (in women’s swimming). Cycling is a sport where men are consistently beating women, to the extent that women are leaving the sport. Weightlifting...another sport where males consistently outperform females regardless of how they identify. Even once-in-a-generation tennis superstar Serena Williams has made it clear that she stands to gain nothing by attempting to compete against men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzHBsvj6C0
Here's a good article:
https://womenssportspolicy.org/the-womens-sports-policy-working-group-and-champion-women-praise-world-athletics-new-rules-affirming-the-womens-sport-category/
And here's just one study, done by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which discusses the minimal change in performance by men identifying as women after a year of testosterone suppression:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/
"Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage"
Finding: "Longitudinal studies examining the effects of testosterone suppression on muscle mass and strength in transgender women consistently show very modest changes, where the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength typically amounts to approximately 5% after 12 months of treatment. Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”
https://reduxx.info/italy-trans-identified-male-takes-home-eighth-womens-running-championship/
There is no justification for allowing male sex offenders to be housed in women's facilities, but this hardly matters. And your belief that an increasing percentage of trans women are male posturers seeking gain makes perfect sense to me. Why wouldn't they, if they can get away with it? There's no vetting of any kind.
https://womensliberationfront.org/letters-from-incarcerated-women/he-had-no-intention-of-getting-rid-of-his-penis
Have you read or heard Helen Joyce on this issue? She's terrific. I'll leave you with this short clip from a full-length interview, which I urge you to listen to as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuZreA8JOE
Thanks. Knew about everything except the Italian athlete. I have the video bookmarked.
Sorry...I get carried away sometimes, because I'm retired and have too much time on my hands, but mainly I'm in a permanent state of fury about what transgender ideology is doing to women and children. Hopefully somebody will read my little litany of evidence and learn something they didn't know.
Regards, B.
Don't sweat it. Passion is good in my book. And your/our concern is justified. We are leading our kids down a toxic garden path and permanently damaging some of their lives. Body chopping should not be a twee "fashion." And many are treating it as if it is. The great escape from dull and boring binary lives. Step right up and pour your money into our gender enabling pouch! Make us rich while we make you feel special and fuck you over at the same time. Cynically trading on kids' need to matter and the gender confusion many experience during puberty. Great biz model.
And I get it. I grew up during a time when the left appeared to be about fairness for everyone and inclusion in the healthy sense of that word. Peak self-determination, peak individual freedom, if you will. Someone on another board labeled us "Free to Be You and Me Feminists." As much as I despise labels, I'll take this one - especially over TERF. Anyone who calls me that is going to get a fat lip.
I had no idea the seeds of our own destruction were being planted in academia via all of these theories. In "Intellectuals and Society", Sowell talks about how people who make their living by peddling ideas rarely have to pay for their mistakes - like doctors and engineers do. And one of the flaws of the left is that they prioritize being on the side of the angels over actual real world change. I agree with him on this. TBF, his stuff can be a bit polemical but it's typically an interesting read.
And don't even get me started about the fake self ID grift. Since 1858, women have been fighting to be taken seriously as fully empowered human beings and not just wombs. That's over 160 years now. And now, faux trans women are leveraging their innate male aggression to claw some of those gains back. Acting exactly like alpha males - selfishly dominating every space they inhabit and never considering the needs of others. "Look at me! I can beat a woman with my male body! I'm so fucking special. Grovel at my feet, bitches!" This is SO masculine. Most women aren't like this. We are nurturers and caretakers and consider the whole when we make choices. These faux trans women are extraordinarily UNLIKE women in their behavior and all of the clothing and lipstick in the world can't hide that.
It is desperately unfair. The whole woke platform is so horribly about revenge - not healing, not reconciliation, not positive change for the people they purport to defend. Blame and shame is the game. And they are ruining not only lots of good people's lives, but the very country that enables us to be a free people.
I blame the religious right. If they hadn't practiced such a toxic form of weaponized religion, if they hadn't focused on excluding, jailing, and killing/diminishing blacks and browns, gays, trans for centuries (for both propriety's sake and greed), then the left wouldn't have needed to replace established religions with this toxic stew of cultish belief that has no redemption, no atonement, no grace - just original sin forever and ever, amen. We can't live like this. Such a system will destroy everything good that has transpired since the Enlightenment if we don't find a way back to rationality and dare I say it - love.
Plus, for me, this whole thing is personal. I struggled for years to overcome horrible child abuse that destroyed my spirit and my self-concept with brainwashing and neglect. It has taken me 40 years of study and struggle to overcome this to achieve a sense of self esteem, self respect, and wholeness as a human being. And now, our twee little woke collective is telling me that I am evil because I am a white woman and have never suffered the specific types of microaggressions that all of the intersectional specialty groups have. And, to top it off, whatever reversals and harms I have suffered don't matter because my privilege cancels it all out. I just got out of the box. And now, they are saying, "back in box bitch! You don't have a right to a full humanity. Why? Because we say so!" "Conform, or be cast out." —Rush
What a clever power grab this is! Clever, clever, clever. The cherry on top is that it is mostly being driven by the most privileged, most affluent, whitest fucking children in the country. I say children because these people are NOT adults. Okay? Why are they driving this? Guilt over the one kind of privilege that they are trying to make invisible in this country, and honestly the only one that matters: MONEY. They want to be good people so badly that they are sucking up this narrative being peddled by agenda-driven academics and parroting it for all they are worth to score sanctimonious brownie points and prove they are on the side of the angels as a sort of penance for being so privileged. Weak-minded moral scolds. Think about it. Who are the most virulent peddlers of this stuff? Elite high schools and colleges. Elite institutions like media, arts, publishing, government, and corporations.
Keep the faith, my friend. Oliver Cromwell only lasted 9 years. This will take longer, but no one wants to live a humorless, puritanical life. Most of us DO want to live in a society where people get a fair shake. I strongly believe that this desire will win in the end. It is scary right now, with insitution after institution being captured. The ACLU was a bellwether for me, in particular (and a deep, deep disappointment). But, it can't last. We haven't reached peak woke just yet, but it's coming. It's sad that the right is so - what's the word? Prissy? Arrogant? Idiotic? Reactionary? (I just read and anti-feminist article the other day that exhorted women to give up their jobs, have lots of kids and worship their menz. Oh, and feminists are ebil, doncha know? Bitches, all of them.) They are no salve to this situation, that's for sure. The solution is going to have to come from within the left - those of us who have not drunk the koolaid and still believe in human rights for all individuals and not this toxic cocktail of intersectional preference. And also, I believe there are some in the working class - old school Dems who care about the little guy - that could be allies in a coalition against woke predation. We'll see what happens. I know one thing for sure. I'll take a bullet before I ever genuflect to these idiots. I've made up my mind about that.
Anyway, now I've given you MY rant and we are even. LOL! 🤣 Hope is your armor, my dear. Don't let it go. Remember, history flows in cycles and they all pass - eventually.
Lightwing, thanks for sharing your philosophy with me. Like you I'm a lifelong feminist, and I'm beyond disappointed in the ACLU, as well as Planned Parenthood. Where we may differ is that I don’t blame the right more than the left. Everybody is guilty, that’s my take. But it doesn’t matter. I love hearing your story of recovery and self-preservation, and I appreciate how long and hard that process can be.
I saw this mess coming in the mid-1970s. I was there the first time a man came to our lesbian social group in Buffalo, demanding to be admitted because, obviously, he was a lesbian. This was a new one on us. Now I know he was a garden-variety autogynephile. He'd been married to a woman and was coming out as trans in mid-life. Of maybe 30 women, there was only one other besides myself who voted against him. I never found out who she was. I did feel sorry for him because of the suffering his coming out had caused his family, and I admired his courage in going public. His neighbors were not impressed and someome had burned a cross on his lawn. Then his adult son killed himself...who knows what that was about?
So the group pitied him, because homophobia was rampant and we'd all been victims. They wanted to be kind. Besides, how many of them could there be, anyway? was the mantra (and it was a mantra...you'll see). Don’t ask me how, but I knew it wouldn't end well for us. He wasn't a woman, wasn't a lesbian, wasn't a “sister,” and was taking advantage of women in order to locate a new place to put his penis because his wife had left him. That much seemed obvious.
Recently, my sister expressed skepticism about men in women's prisons being a problem. She too wanted to be kind, because she believes that trans people need special protection and besides, “how many of them could there be, anyway?” I gave her some food for thought: "What would be an acceptable number of rapes in a women’s jail? One a month? a week? a day? At what point would we say, okay, that’s enough raping for awhile?" That shut her up. What the F is wrong with us women?
I’m not a hopeful person, but I appreciate your hopeful talk. I’m sure you’re right…everything changes, a reckoning will come, and there will be a massive cohort of mutilated adults, most of them gay and lesbian (if that's still allowed)…who are furious and want to know why the adults didn’t do their job.
Sorry you had to field that. Sounds like you had a front row seat to the precursor to this craziness. And honestly, I'm foe to anyone who dehumanizes - right or left. If we can't treat each other fairly and decently, there's no point. Self-righteousness is an evil drug. Ruins people. Makes them ruin others. Very sad.
Funny - I grew up 60 miles south of Buffalo. Whole different country down there. Not my vibe. Had to leave. Too much of a free spirit to conform. I live in Cali now and I have a wonderful husband. There is still love and heart left in the world. Don't give up.
There are many who see clearly, many who crave balance. The answer is to put aside sanctimony, practice some tolerance and find common ground - a human coalition. We can do it. We have to be brave and speak out. More and more are doing so all the time. Critical mass will happen.
Thanks for sharing and hang in there! 🌼