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As a non US person, it's baffling to me that there's this whole background of being "the land of the free", but half the country would want to turn it into Saudi Arabia 2.0, Christian Boogaloo.
That said, anyone of you over there who are opposing these changes, keep up the fight. When one country gets more conservative others will follow. There's no country in earth immune to this.
It's terrifying to witness active dehumanization in a nation that supposedly wants you to live your best life. They'll try to convince the whole nation that trans folk aren't people, aren't human, we can't let them. Once they're not human, they can get away with anything they do to them. If you see these efforts to dehumanize any group, no matter where you are, try to be brave because you never know when you're next.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I'll never forget this poem, it really shaped my perspective on speaking up sooner rather than later. There was another poem that echoed similar sentiments, but I can only remember the line "I will not be an agent of death."
As a trans woman it's really fun getting to be the minority that it's totally okay to just openly hate and dehumanize, the right's newest whipping girl ;-;
Stay strong girl! You have every right to exist in your most comfortable form, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Identity is an innate human right, you deserve the freedom of expressing that identity like everyone else!
<3
Especially when so many pedojacket us which in turn causes trans folks to infight.
It's freaking amazing, and terrifying, how quickly the right wing wackos have been able to demonize a group that almost nobody has even thought about in forever. It's like a case study in finding some marginalized group to vent rage on/about.
Definitely terrifying and can be surprising, but I think it's easier to demonize unfamiliar groups than to demonize a well-known one. I think demonizing and dehumanizing relies on some degree of the unknown to make all the hysteria and fear plausible. If the group is well known by the general public, it's easier to say "now wait a minute, I happen to know many trans people and they're very kind." It creates a strong base of informed allies to speak up on the group's behalf. It's not impossible to demonize a well-known group, I just believe it's easier when your target has no personal interactions to check against the fear mongering.
Definitely terrifying and can be surprising, but I think it's easier to demonize unfamiliar groups than to demonize a well-known one.
This is also why "colleges indoctrinate students" is wrong even though college students do tend to get more liberal. When college students leave their home towns and go to college, they run into people of differing backgrounds. Stereotypes get challenged and broken to pieces. The college kids return to their home towns unwilling to engage in the demonization because suddenly it's not some faceless Other they are railing against, but an actual person that they have interacted with.
You described my college experience to a T, it was hard going home and realizing my family, not just my community, is plagued by hatred of people they never met.
Even worse than the demonizing is how they dehumanize trans people. Don't get me wrong, demonizing a group is bad, but dehumanizing is so much worse.
I learned this lesson during a trip to the Holocaust Museum in DC. I walked through one of the train cars and tried to picture fitting as many people in there as the plaque said were crammed in. I couldn't. Then, I realized that I was trying to fit people in the car. Even though these were imaginary people existing solely in my head, I was still treating them like people. I switched to trying to cram that many human shaped objects in the car and realized it was easy to do.
The right is pushing dehumanization of people they don't like. Once you've accepted a group of people as "not human," all sorts of horrible options open up to deal with them.
Conservatives here have a different definition of "freedom". They want to be free from being bound by the laws yet still be protected by them, whereas minorities should be bound by the laws, but not protected by them. This is how conservatives in this county are both the party of "law and order" at the same time as being the party of "freedom".
Shit is dangerous over here right now in some areas especially...
Of course Riikka is stuck in the red zone. siiiigh
Thanks for posting that anyway. resumes going outside approximately never
You're not alone in this, and it's important to remember that many of these laws are gaining support based on falsehoods and misinformation. Additionally, a lot of people haven't had personal experiences with transgender individuals, but when someone close to them, like a coworker, friend, or family member, comes out, it often leads to a change of perspective and understanding. Personally, I intend to maintain red zone for now, while gradually opening up to others. If things still seem discouraging in a couple of years, I may consider leaving for a better environment. Remember, your well-being matters.
The very concept of "freedom" has been twisted by conservative media and church leaders into a tool of oppression.
Exactly^ the phrase has no meaning anymore.
The best part about this is that the people wanting to turn the country into Saudi Arabia 2.0 have a tendancy to spread conspiracy theories about the other side imposing sharia law...
It's projection. Every single thing they accuse "the woke left" of doing is something they are already doing.
Conservatives have never really been known for their compassion.
Trans folks are just the current target. Gay people, BIPOC folk will be back on the chopping block soon enough. 😔
And Jews, such aa myself. In fact, they're already railing against the Jews even if they hide it behind "Soros," "Globalists," or other code words.
And their "support for Israel" isn't incompatible with their antisemitism once you realize that:
This is because the evangelicals think Jews need to be running Israel before Jesus will return. So it's for the evangelicals, not for the Jews.
After Jesus returns, he supposedly will toss all Jews into hell. So it's delayed antisemitism.
It gives antisemites a "dual loyalty" trope to use as well as an expulsion plan. I've never been to Israel. I have no "loyalty" to Israel. I'm an American citizen and have lived in the US my entire life. However, many antisemites would love to ship me off to Israel or demote me to second class citizen simply because I'm Jewish.
@Wander Let's not forget the US also has way more influence than any other country. What I've seen so far in my life is that what happens in the US happens a few years later here.
It used to be a 10 year delay, and it was mostly for positive things, like innovations. Now it's more like 2-4 years, and for bad things. The first turning point for the bad, IMHO, was the iraq war and the death of UN Sérgio Vieira de Mello. It was mostly silent but it really changed international cooperation for the worst.
The second big turning point was Trump. It basically told every bigot, racist, ignorant person around the whole world "Now it's your chance". It validated so much of the bad stuff it would soon be felt everywhere.
This recent cascade of drags bans and anti-trans laws being thrown out under the doctrine of "this is obviously unconstitutional and you knew it when you tried to do it" is refreshing
Party of individual rights my fucking ass.
Republicans need to figure out who they are instead of "not democrats"
Nazis. They are Nazis.
Very true, the fascist playbook they ARE using is pretty simple. Find a marginalized community, vilify and lie about them, and push them out of public life. The more marginalized they make said community, the easier it is for them to justify more Draconian ways they can treat them.
And the thing is, there is no "winning a final battle" with fascists like this. Let's say that all their fascist dreams come true. They've eliminated every LGBTQ person from America and made being LGBTQ a capital offense. They're done right?
Of course not. Next, they'll target Muslims, immigrants, BIPOC people, Jews, and too many other minorities to list. Now, say they're successful there. All us minorites are now either dead, imprisoned, or second class citizens with zero voting rights that are tolerated for as long as we're useful to the fascists.
Now are they done? No. Fascists always need an Other. So they'll start to cannibalize. Maybe Christian Group A will declare that everyone in Christian Group B are just pretenders. They've been behind everything all along (since fascists love conspiracies). Now Christian groups will be banned one by one. Or maybe anyone with green eyes or red hair will be declared to be an unfit aberration that must be destroyed.
The only time a fascist would be happy would be if the entire country was populated by clones of himself that are 100% identical in every way and always think alike. Anything short of this and they'll turn every slight difference into a war to be waged.
It's an inherently self-destructive, unsustainable ideology. None of them think that they'll become a victim of their own ideology until the Gestapo knocks on their door.
As a German let me just recite a famous prose about it:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
~ Martin Niemöller
I live in a very rural part of a southern state and the majority of people around me are pro Trump christian conservatives. They went from decrying '1st amendment violations' on old Twitter (even though it's a corporation) to celebrating the recent wave of anti-lbgtq+ legislation sweeping across red states, though it actually does violate the 1st amendment, because 'someone's got to do something about the cultural rot.'
I am very relieved to see the courts not buying it and hope this trend continues.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.
— George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Well, yeah--the Tr*mpies are professional hypocrites. The cognitive dissonance never ceases to amaze me
Sad as it is, I've given up even attempting discourse with them. I always believed that people could come to a mutual understanding given enough honest communication and fact based information. That's before I move to the rural South. Logic holds no power here. Everything always defaults to their own personal interpretation of their religious texts where god is clearly telling them joe biden is in league with satan trying to usher in the antichrist and the rest of the pedo grooming marxist democrats are coming for their children, and then the world, to enslave the human race with global warming taxes and the mark of the beast.... unless they vote trump. I am just... I can't.
Yup. I can't do the discourse either. I know that a small percentage could be talked into a more reasonable perspective, but I don't have the energy any more to play guess who with the ones who will benefit from discussions in good faith, and the ones who are just trying to use their hate to whittle me down. The people that hard drank the koolaid can't be reasoned with--they cherry pick their own rulebook. Ya think Jesus as he's depicted would approve of the shit they're doing? What happened to love thy neighbor, or take the log out of thine own eye first, or not throwing stones in glass houses? Hell, what about not wearing mixed fibers, or eating the wrong kinds of foods? The 'only for thee and not for me' attitude is just....ugh
Hey, I lived there! We were lucky enough to stumble upon the last drag show. It was really powerful, I'm glad to hear the shows can go on!
Hope the young people vote all the Republicans out of office before the US becomes a Christian Nation AND voting is still a thing that can change government.
I vote every election.
Well, certainly glad that the federal judge told them to cut the shit. I feel bad for so many people living in particular states.
Do these violations come with any meaningful punishment?
Probably not, unfortunately
That's what I was wondering