Some of you might have noticed that I’ve changed the tag line for this site to ‘Bucking the Backlash,” replacing the old tag “Misogyny, Tracked and Mocked.” This is both a reflection of what’s been going on with the blog already and where I see it going in the future.
While my primary focus remains misogyny, I’ve been writing about the broader backlash for some time. Now I’m planning on upping my coverage of LGBTQ+ issues, particularly the increasingly scary attacks on trans people — not only from “gender crits” but also, from the entire spectrum of the right, ranging from neo-fascist goons to “mainstream” Republicans.
We’ve seen the Proud Boys disrupting Drag Queen Story Hour (which they consider a trans thing) and scaring the hell out of the kindergartners there to hear stories. We’ve seen a U-Haul full of Patriot Front thugs stopped on their way to attack a Pride parade. We’ve seen a flood of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in red states across the country. We’ve seen an increasing amount of plainly genocidal statements from right-wingers as well as endless attempts to equate trans and LGBTQ+ people with pedophiles and “groomers.” This morning someone apparently set fire to several houses in Baltimore festooned with Pride decorations. It goes on and on.
Trans writers and allies have been beating the drums trying to warn people about this dangerous backlash but too often their warnings have gone unheard.
In a substack essay with the blunt title “The anti-LGBTQ right is going to get people killed” trans writer Parker Malloy rings the alarm:
Things are getting really bad for LGBTQ people out there, and I just don’t see how it’ll get any better. … Republicans and their allies in right-wing media are going on the attack. Their goal is to create reasonable-sounding arguments (“No, you see, I just really care about fairness in women’s sports!”), and then use that to wipe out LGBTQ people. There are already people on the right arguing that being trans should be illegal (not just “you’re not protected by non-discrimination laws,” but flat out, “It should be illegal to be you”) …
And what’s particularly frustrating is how little any of this seems to be sinking in with Democrats and the general public. Democrats … have essentially given Republicans the green light to attack LGBTQ people with impunity. Meanwhile, the average person thinks that things are awesome for LGBTQ people because Time magazine put Laverne Cox on its cover in 2015.
[P]eople need to wake up. I’d say that this seems like it’ll end with people getting killed, but I’d be lying if I said I thought that anti-LGBTQ militia violence will end with just one death. They’re going to marginalize and attack us until we disappear. If we have allies, we really need them to stand up for us in this difficult moment.
AllI can say is that I’ll do my best.
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@Alan Robertshaw: Alas, the videos are region blocked.
@ nequam
Oh, that’s a shame. The videos are really sweet.
Do any of our more tech literate peeps know how to get round that?
@Alan Robertshaw, You can get around region blocked youtube videos by using proxies or VPN’s. Here’s a webpage that gives you some additional ways to do it:
https://www.fossmint.com/watch-blocked-youtube-videos/
The new Texas GOP platform is… interesting.
@ jono
Ah, thank you for that. Hopefully that will help any non Brit friends who want to check out the Corrie videos. Which I do recommend.
A bit belated but I am pleasantly surprised at the expansion of WHTM’s blog subject focus and I welcome it; I do suppose that it may be inevitable given the rapid surge of Reactionary Right Wing political machinations the past 11+ years that are only compounding as of late.
It also makes a fair deal of sense to expand focus for the blog given that a lot of the issues dealing with Incels, MGTOW’s and other Miysogenist movements are also tellingly co-morbid with other bigotry and reactionary right wing ideologies.
Trying my best to be a more informed person and better ally to my friends and the peers who are being targeted by the hate mongers. Doing my best to not be ignorant even if I admittedly have a few stumbles and fumbles trying to navigate the landscape to being a better ally to those who are marginalized and now being actively targeted.
The bigots going after women, POC and LGBT folks and a lot of other minority groups are just another, worse form of bully’s. And I have beef with bully’s.
So our ‘favorite’ cult leader Jordan Peterson is on an anti-Pride campaign on Twitter, using the tagline, “Remember when pride was a sin?” On the plus side, Twitter’s format forces him to be clear and concise (he deadnames and misgenders Eliot Page and makes a gross comment about his body in one short sentence), making it harder for his minions to scream “You’re taking it out of context!!” at his critics.
Thank you, David ❤️