Wow, did you nail this! At a little over two months on HRT, I have never felt so comfortable with my self and terrified with where this may be headed. I try to stay hopeful that everything will be turned to the better, albeit very slowly. It makes me question if I should even be exploring this avenue of my life, then something brings some more euphoria. Thanks for bringing this awful feeling to words that can help address the issue.
I struggle with this so much. With wanting to spend my non-existent energy screaming as loud as my voice carries that this is what's happening and this is why it's harmful and just trying to get people to see, understand, and stand with us. But I know that we can't do that work if we don't tend to our own stress cycles first. So. The helplessness.
I forget that tending to others in our community, helping people flee places they can no longer stay, simply existing as trans, that is the work too.
The one place I'd like to disagree is here: "The people who elect these politicians know that the election, the issues, aren’t really about whoever-it-is who’s the villain of the week. They just think they’re in on the con, and stand to profit from it personally. Sometimes, they even do. Usually? They’re hurt by it too."
As someone who used to be passionately anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ+ until I finally woke up, I can say that I believed the lies spouted by these politicians 100%. And I believe that most of the people around me believed them, too. And I suspect that many of the politicians and leaders also believed their own lies. This is why these lies are so dangerous and take generations to extinguish.
I hear you, and I think there are a good number of people like that who honestly Believe, with all their hearts, in what they're saying. But I know *so many* for whom it all comes down to power, and the ability to, as Granny Weatherwax put it, treat people as things.
That's the allure of supremacy culture. The ability--the right--to punch down and know you're immune to consequences. And that's why they're howling so hard as we challenge it.
You paint the minority-of-the-moment strategy as cynical and opportunistic, and it usually is.
Many of the politicians who attack us, or whoever the target of the moment happens to be, are knowingly doing it to win votes. Many of the voters who elect them don't particularly care about all the heated rhetoric, maybe even feel uncomfortable with it, but they want their team to win, and they want their privilege preserved.
But often it's also sincere, and that's why it's so dangerous.
Consider people like Anita Bryant crusading against gay people in the 1970s, Helen Joyce crusading against trans people today, and Bull Connor literally beating Black people nearly to death in 1965. They're not just opportunistic; they're true believers. They really, really hate the people they're persecuting. They want their victims back in the closet, hidden away from society. Or they want them poor and broken and economically desperate, so they'll provide cheap labor. Or they want them dead.
And too many of the voters who elect them respond to that hate.
The good news is that *eventually* the populace as a whole sees the hate clearly and rejects it. Things get better. The bad news is that process can sometimes take a very long time, and we're always in danger of backsliding.
I get where you're coming from. I just don't really see a difference between the ones who see the man behind the curtain, so to speak, and the ones who just see the results--crushing people to provide cheap labor, or to delight in their deaths. The Kansas City Shuffle only demands that the mark be wrong about what the con is, and that their wrongness is what leads them into the snare. It doesn't need them to be wrong in any consistent way.
And even these True Believers? What they think they get out of it, aside from superiority and a compliant, subservient workforce, is more people at their churches.
That means more tithes. More converts. More political power.
Wow, did you nail this! At a little over two months on HRT, I have never felt so comfortable with my self and terrified with where this may be headed. I try to stay hopeful that everything will be turned to the better, albeit very slowly. It makes me question if I should even be exploring this avenue of my life, then something brings some more euphoria. Thanks for bringing this awful feeling to words that can help address the issue.
I wish I didn't have to, but the world is pretty hostile right now.
We'll get there.
I struggle with this so much. With wanting to spend my non-existent energy screaming as loud as my voice carries that this is what's happening and this is why it's harmful and just trying to get people to see, understand, and stand with us. But I know that we can't do that work if we don't tend to our own stress cycles first. So. The helplessness.
I forget that tending to others in our community, helping people flee places they can no longer stay, simply existing as trans, that is the work too.
Amazing post, as usual.
The one place I'd like to disagree is here: "The people who elect these politicians know that the election, the issues, aren’t really about whoever-it-is who’s the villain of the week. They just think they’re in on the con, and stand to profit from it personally. Sometimes, they even do. Usually? They’re hurt by it too."
As someone who used to be passionately anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ+ until I finally woke up, I can say that I believed the lies spouted by these politicians 100%. And I believe that most of the people around me believed them, too. And I suspect that many of the politicians and leaders also believed their own lies. This is why these lies are so dangerous and take generations to extinguish.
I hear you, and I think there are a good number of people like that who honestly Believe, with all their hearts, in what they're saying. But I know *so many* for whom it all comes down to power, and the ability to, as Granny Weatherwax put it, treat people as things.
That's the allure of supremacy culture. The ability--the right--to punch down and know you're immune to consequences. And that's why they're howling so hard as we challenge it.
You paint the minority-of-the-moment strategy as cynical and opportunistic, and it usually is.
Many of the politicians who attack us, or whoever the target of the moment happens to be, are knowingly doing it to win votes. Many of the voters who elect them don't particularly care about all the heated rhetoric, maybe even feel uncomfortable with it, but they want their team to win, and they want their privilege preserved.
But often it's also sincere, and that's why it's so dangerous.
Consider people like Anita Bryant crusading against gay people in the 1970s, Helen Joyce crusading against trans people today, and Bull Connor literally beating Black people nearly to death in 1965. They're not just opportunistic; they're true believers. They really, really hate the people they're persecuting. They want their victims back in the closet, hidden away from society. Or they want them poor and broken and economically desperate, so they'll provide cheap labor. Or they want them dead.
And too many of the voters who elect them respond to that hate.
The good news is that *eventually* the populace as a whole sees the hate clearly and rejects it. Things get better. The bad news is that process can sometimes take a very long time, and we're always in danger of backsliding.
I get where you're coming from. I just don't really see a difference between the ones who see the man behind the curtain, so to speak, and the ones who just see the results--crushing people to provide cheap labor, or to delight in their deaths. The Kansas City Shuffle only demands that the mark be wrong about what the con is, and that their wrongness is what leads them into the snare. It doesn't need them to be wrong in any consistent way.
And even these True Believers? What they think they get out of it, aside from superiority and a compliant, subservient workforce, is more people at their churches.
That means more tithes. More converts. More political power.
It's still a Kansas City Shuffle.
THIS!!
I joke I picked a hell of a time for my egg to crack. And that there are people who want me and my transmasc son dead simply for who and what we are.
Is is scary? Damn right it is. Does it mean my wife and my loved ones fear for me? Yes.
But I can do one of two things. Let the fear consume me. Or fight what I can, and find joy in my school, my hobbies, and my life.