There is an “it’s always sunny in Philadelphia “ episode that captures this exactly . Actually it’s the last season when they go to Ireland ; When Mac decides he is gay and how he needs to explain to the gang his identity , and how the gang doesn’t actually care either way what he is , gay, straight , Irish , Dutch .
The New Homophobia
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: The New Homophobia
#22Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)? Meanwhile the remaining 90% of us are under the attitude of "equal rights for all, do and/or call yourself whatever you want as long as it brings no personal harm to others". Personally, for every gender non-binary person I've encountered (there have been multiple), w…
We could all mostly ignore it if there wasn't a bunch of idiots in government passing laws every chance they get to ensure it continues being a very real human rights issue. The right initiates all this non-sense, they do some oppressing and the left has no choice but to react, because you can't just let that stuff slide, so both sides end up completely consumed by an issues most people aren't effected by.
It's unambiguously safer and easier to be trans in America now than at any time in history. I haven't been anywhere I felt unwelcome; I can drop into places like Dallas or rural PA and interact with strangers just fine.
The only ongoing drama I can see being credibly interpreted as a human rights issue is the stuff with very young children.
I came out ten years ago, and I didn't get to learn about transness until that process started. If you came up in the nineties you'd see The Crying Game in your early teens and not know the difference between a trans woman and a "hermaphrodite" (intersex person) until your twenties. Nowadays, kids develop alternative lives on the internet much earlier than my cohort did, and they learn not just that trans people exist, but what it means to transition and what leads people to transition, before they get to middle school in many cases.
The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information—much like with sex and drugs in the teen years, it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. I don't think this is a human rights issue—I think we've misplaced our wariness of abusive parenting and allowed it develop into a skepticism of nuclear-family parenting in general.
Much of the nonsense is initiated by the right, yes—bathrooms and ID laws and whatever else—but what everyone's talking about _right now_ has to do with a change in our understanding of The Family, initiated by the left, that I expect will play out in increasingly interesting ways over the next 20-30 years.
Re: The New Homophobia
#23There's no end to how many ways to categorize someone. It's even worse when you realize people change. What's the point of coming up with new ways of creating divisions among the populace, and then trying to use them as if it meant something? It will only ever cause harm.
We are all one, we are all life.
There must always be freedom for thought. There must always be freedom for speech. There must always be freedom for life. But there most not be freedom for abuse. Do something against life, then forfeit yours. Do something against speech, then forfeit yours. Do something against thought, then forfeit yours.
Re: The New Homophobia
#24Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)? Meanwhile the remaining 90% of us are under the attitude of "equal rights for all, do and/or call yourself whatever you want as long as it brings no personal harm to others". Personally, for every gender non-binary person I've encountered (there have been multiple), w…
What you're describing is basically how it works in the real world, for the most part. People have far more important things to do, and are profoundly uninterested in making an issue out of other individuals' personal identities.
But:
Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)?
I don't really feel this way, to be honest. I think this is a cliché culture war issue that is driven primarily by one "side", and that's the conservative one. I don't doubt for a second that there are terrible people who'll describe themselves as "progressive" trying to insert themselves into this discussion – these people are indeed the dumb extremes. But they're also not the group driving the conversation or enacting the laws, and ascribing a kind of "both sides" responsibility is not correct in my view.
The thing is, I remember personally experiencing exactly the same shit as a gay man growing up in the 90s, and it's alarmingly familiar. This was a result of the UK moving to repeal "Section 28" – a law similar in intent to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" legislation.
I remember exactly the same tactics being used – the talking heads and the campaigns and the billboards and the newspaper articles talking about the danger of predatory gay men who were pushing a "pervert's agenda", hoping to worm their way into schools so they could find children to abuse. Scare stories about paedophiles waiting in the wings, getting ready to groom children into homosexuality – and the same tactic of spotlighting extremist views at the fringes of that movement and claiming them as mainstream.
It was a shitty tactic then and it's shitty now. The thing that angers me most is to see so many people fall for exactly the same playbook this time around.
Re: The New Homophobia
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated. Crikey. Anecdote, for sure, but I’m 47 and can’t think of a single person I interact with in my age group (and that’s the majority of my colleague…
Same here, though I’m considerably older than you. We might both be in a bubble though.
I’m sure there’s an aspect of that. That said, I include in my claim a raft of friends I’ve had since my teens, or others met through football (UK definition; I’m a Brit in southern England) - many of whom live pretty different lives to mine. And we have plenty of disagreements about other stuff - just not “treat folk how they wish to be treated”!
Re: The New Homophobia
#26This might be incoherent It's hard to talk about this for myself as a trans woman, and especially for cis gays, as liberal queer ideology has taken over the discourse, but it's worth having more queer people speak up about it so we can develop a language for it that leaves things open to good-faith debate. I'm not against blockers to delay puberty until someone is old enough to develop an informed understanding of th…
That last line is the key, isn't it? Sex used to(?) mean something. People were exposed to each other, vulnerable, sharing themselves. It was even intensely powerful, in the sense that new life might actually spring out of it. But this is basically treating another unique, unrepeatable human person as a toy, and not even an exceptional one. I can't help but think we've lost something important and are that much the p…
You can expand this to pleasure-seeking in general. Narcissism is central not just in the proliferation of identity markers but of micro-celebrities, micro-genres, fandom communities, DTC + targeted advertising, a whole bunch of things that make it hard to thrive unless you treat yourself as the main character. There's that self-care meme with the text that goes something like "Sorry but I don't have the capacity to help you with your breakdown, can you reach out to someone who's emotionally available?". Advertising, the revolt against organized labor, and the financialization of the economy have all come together, knocked down a ton of load-bearing dominoes in our society, and interacted with the media landscape in a way that's eroded any tangible sense of community and made people incredibly self-interested, fearful, reactive, and unable to form an inner life that gives one the strength to give and accept real love and criticism
Re: The New Homophobia
#27Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)? Meanwhile the remaining 90% of us are under the attitude of "equal rights for all, do and/or call yourself whatever you want as long as it brings no personal harm to others". Personally, for every gender non-binary person I've encountered (there have been multiple), w…
Using the pronoun that someone demands rather than the correct pronoun for the person’s sex can contribute to material harm for others. You’re trying to be nice, but, as often happens, you are contributing to injustice in doing so.
Lia Thomas’ acceptance by the officials in charge as a woman swimmer has harmed an entire generation of actual female swimmers. Calling him “she” contributes to the pretense that he’s a woman, and helps to legitimize the injustice against these athletes.
Re: The New Homophobia
#28There's no end to how many ways to categorize someone. It's even worse when you realize people change. What's the point of coming up with new ways of creating divisions among the populace, and then trying to use them as if it meant something? It will only ever cause harm. We are all one, we are all life. There must always be freedom for thought. There must always be freedom for speech. There must always be freedom fo…
Trans people are included in the push for equal rights for gay people because they make up too small of a percent of the population to get consideration on their own. Also, insisting that trans people are considered separately from gay people is itself a form of division; it's essentially saying that we should be considerate of only X, Y and Z people instead of being considerate simply to all people. Such efforts to divide the LGBT community is an old tactic from the bigotry playbook. If we can talk about 'spouses' instead of husbands and wives then we can be considerate of trans people and their prefered pronouns.
Re: The New Homophobia
#29Article summary: "I care about gay rights because I'm gay, but I don't care about trans rights because I'm not trans."
The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse trans people of being such a burden on us when they simply want to be considered by their self-identified gender?
Re: The New Homophobia
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could all mostly ignore it if there wasn't a bunch of idiots in government passing laws every chance they get to ensure it continues being a very real human rights issue. The right initiates all this non-sense, they do some oppressing and the left has no choice but to react, because you can't just let that stuff slide, so both sides end up completely consumed by an issues most people aren't effected by.
It's unambiguously safer and easier to be trans in America now than at any time in history. I haven't been anywhere I felt unwelcome; I can drop into places like Dallas or rural PA and interact with strangers just fine. The only ongoing drama I can see being credibly interpreted as a human rights issue is the stuff with very young children. I came out ten years ago, and I didn't get to learn about transness until tha…
>it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling.
thing is though: Texas, Florida, Idaho, couple others, have declared that child abuse.