Found this blog post that I really liked. I agree with the sentiment that the author expressed, that publicly demonstrating one’s allegiance to a cause through the Internet can sometimes be more...
Found this blog post that I really liked. I agree with the sentiment that the author expressed, that publicly demonstrating one’s allegiance to a cause through the Internet can sometimes be more harmful than helpful, and should therefore not be demanded, especially if one’s safety in any aspect of life is at risk.
So, while I do think that it’s good to support the causes that one believes in (social justice, protecting the environment, etc.), if one possibly can, I don’t think that publicly and visibly allying oneself with them on the Internet should be a requirement.
In fact, being online at all shouldn’t be demanded to begin with (though that’s a different discussion).
A statement from the post that stood out to me:
It’s not allyship if it demands visibility at the expense of safety. It’s not solidarity if the price of entry is risk your job, your home, your mental health, or your life.
Isn’t that.. like exactly what solidarity is, though? Taking a stand for a marginalized group only when there’s no risk to yourself isn’t solidarity, it’s just support. Support is good! But...
Exemplary
It’s not solidarity if the price of entry is risk your job, your home, your mental health, or your life.
Isn’t that.. like exactly what solidarity is, though? Taking a stand for a marginalized group only when there’s no risk to yourself isn’t solidarity, it’s just support. Support is good! But solidarity only comes from actually standing in the line of fire yourself.
When union workers refuse to cross a picket line in solidarity, they are intentionally taking a risk — putting themselves in the line of fire, in an attempt to share the burden of risk being levied at picketers. To stand in solidarity with a marginalized group is to say “if you want to get to them, you have to go through me first.” And that requires abandoning silence.
Posting performative shit online doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing anything tangible anyway. People could be dead silent online and be handing out supplies to shelters, donating, talking to local politicians, making personal spaces safer; real stuff that doesn’t need to be shouted from the rooftops to be meaningful or have an impact. Some people move in silence.
I have the sense that this author is responding to some specific online experience that I’ve never had, but I don’t think that anyone using “silence is a privilege” in good faith would consider the person described in that paragraph as using their privilege to remain silent. Those are all decidedly loud actions.
Yeah, ultimately the entire point of allyship is to support those who need it. The vast majority of trans people don't have the luxury of choosing whether to be visible, and their safety is...
Yeah, ultimately the entire point of allyship is to support those who need it. The vast majority of trans people don't have the luxury of choosing whether to be visible, and their safety is threatened no matter how vocal they are online. I don't necessarily think that performative online allyship is a strict necessity, at least if we're using those words as I'd describe them, but this topic feels very much like an attempt to insist marginalized people are "asking too much" in an attempt to alleviate any possible negative light to deciding not to vocally support their rights. It comes across as very "I won't support you unless there's zero risk for me, but you also aren't allowed to make me feel bad about it" to me.
If the author is silently taking part in irl organizing for the rights of these minorities, that's good (and much better than posting about it). But are you actually doing that? While there absolutely are people who help "on the ground" without posting about shit online, I think the overlap between those people and the people who write think pieces about how minorities shouldn't "demand" allyship is infinitesimally small. Moreover, such think pieces quickly turn into people also opposing even irl organizing for minorities' rights, as can even be seen in the other comments here on Tildes.
I also think that overly visible allyship is what has led to a lot of the "trans stuff" resonating with a lot of people, even though it's essentially just alt-right propaganda. Yes, it's good to...
I also think that overly visible allyship is what has led to a lot of the "trans stuff" resonating with a lot of people, even though it's essentially just alt-right propaganda. Yes, it's good to let people know what we believe and what we think is acceptable. But I think the left got overly aggressive with fighting for trans rights after Obergefell in a way that really backfired.
You can take the moral high ground and fight the unwinnable battle right now, but you can't be surprised when a short-term mindset doesn't lead to long-term success.
This doesn’t quite feel right to me. Before this decade’s modicum of public support for trans folks, they were all but universally marginalized. Being a trans person was straightforwardly not...
This doesn’t quite feel right to me. Before this decade’s modicum of public support for trans folks, they were all but universally marginalized. Being a trans person was straightforwardly not allowed in public. Having more public conversations about defending their right to exist has forced many folks to actually express their views — views they previously felt no need to voice for their presumed unanimity — but I’m extremely skeptical that it has actually pushed people to be more anti-transgender. The baseline was that basically all of society was anti-transgender.
On the other hand, I know several people who would have and did make derisive comments about transgender people 10 years ago that have completely come around to supporting transgender rights. That swing is 100% due to the public conversations being had about those rights, and the consequences of withholding them. All it took was to see people whose values they respect taking a stand for trans folks, and they were able to take a look and see that actually their values aligned with that stance, too.
the left got overly aggressive with fighting for trans rights after Obergefell
This just feels… bad. Like, it feels like, in 1960, someone could have very easily said:
The left got overly aggressive with fighting for Black rights after Plessy v. Ferguson
In fact, I’m certain that very many people did say such a thing in the 60s. But that’s wrong — I’m skeptical that there’s such thing as being overly aggressive in fighting for the rights of a marginalized group, but if there is, the divided and meager defense of trans rights by the American left is not it.
You can take the moral high ground and fight the unwinnable battle right now, but you can't be surprised when a short-term mindset doesn't lead to long-term success.
I think this is backwards. We’re seeing the short-term regressions now — fighting for human rights is a long-term battle. And when you have a long-term mindset, you know that there will be setbacks in the short-term, and you push through those setbacks. This is what human rights movements have always done.
In many Western countries, it is harder to medically transition now than a decade ago. Some countries have new, restrictive laws making it impossible for minors to access essential healthcare....
In many Western countries, it is harder to medically transition now than a decade ago. Some countries have new, restrictive laws making it impossible for minors to access essential healthcare.
While transgender people were certainly marginalized, people also cared a lot less. There was less personal vitriol and hate in my experience. Even if trans people were treated as an oddity and a punchline, it was easier to educate someone ignorant but well meaning; nowadays, every transphobe is already an 'expert'...
I think this is just the natural course of removing discrimination against a certain minority from a society. Discrimination is normal. You can tell hateful and ignorant jokes about <minority> at...
I think this is just the natural course of removing discrimination against a certain minority from a society.
Discrimination is normal. You can tell hateful and ignorant jokes about <minority> at work and nobody bats an eye. Some think this is wrong, but they won't say anything because this is as normal as brushing your teeth and only crazy people start arguments about normal behaviour.
More and more people speak out against discrimination/racism. When you tell a discriminating/racist joke, the chance you get some backlash is getting higher. At first, only the weirdos will get in your hair, but over time more and more moderate people are slowly shifting and agree with the weirdos. You have to be more careful where you tell your jokes.
Not discriminating against <minority> is now the new normal. You will get into serious trouble for telling jokes that were totally fine when you were in your teens. Most people will accept this, even if they think it's stupid, because this doesn't affect them at all. But a small but significant percentage of the population are fighting back hard because they feel their identity threatened.
The diehards have either given up or died out. There are young adults that don't understand how it was once normal that farmers are sold together with their fields, women cannot vote or kissing a man lands you in jail. There is no more discrimination against <minority>.
In my (relatively short) life time, we went from stage 1 to 4 when it comes to gay men. Not even Trump can touch their rights anymore because being gay is totally normal. You're not a weirdo if you get upset about bad gay jokes, you're a weirdo if you tell them.
I think we are at stage 2 or 3 regarding trans rights. Things look bad because reactionary morons somehow wiggled their asses into power, but I think a large majority is either on the right side or doesn't care. They just need some more exposure to trans people so they become the new normal, like gay people are now as normal as brushing your teeth, and who wants to start an argument about that kind of stuff.
That’s a good point (and deeply upsetting). Progress has not been straightforward, and there are a lot of people who might be worse off now than a decade ago. And this does vary dramatically from...
That’s a good point (and deeply upsetting). Progress has not been straightforward, and there are a lot of people who might be worse off now than a decade ago. And this does vary dramatically from state to state, and even city to city (within the US). Part of my perspective is personal anecdata:
I live in the town I grew up in. When I went to school here, there were precisely zero trans kids who were out. That’s not to say that there were zero trans kids — people that I went to school with have since come out as trans. But none of them even had a chance to be denied access to medical treatment — they weren’t even in a position to ask for it.
Now, there are one or two trans kids in the district every year. They are out, and (because of the state I live in) they have access to gender-affirming care. Specifically, care is available through CHOP’s gender and sexuality development clinic, which opened in 2020.
This stuff happened because of the push for trans rights. It doesn’t feel right to put the blame for the subsequent rise in public anti-LGBT sentiment on the people fighting for those rights, especially when a more straightforward culprit is right there: Republican politicians. Republican politicians found a convenient new target for their fear-driven power grabs, and launched a MASSIVE campaign to make them public enemy #1. The federal government is threatening to withhold all federal funding from the state of Maine if they don’t implement anti-trans rules regarding school sports that would affect two children in the whole state. Trump doesn’t care about trans women in women’s sports — Trump doesn’t care about women’s sports! Or women, for that matter!
I think this is a much more compelling explanation for the right’s increase in anti-LGBT sentiment than the idea that it’s because the left supports them too much.
You're absolutely right about the support existing now that didn't exist a decade ago. But a decade ago, people weren't concerned that the government was going to try to eradicate them, either....
You're absolutely right about the support existing now that didn't exist a decade ago. But a decade ago, people weren't concerned that the government was going to try to eradicate them, either. The point isn't that trans people are accepted more in ***SOME PARTS*** of society now than they were ten years ago. The point is that we have a government in place that is likely to try to roll back much of that and set trans rights back several decades. A higher percent of people actually believe that a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth than the percent 8 years ago (I can't find stats for 2015). I think that means that even if the Republicans are out in four years, it will be more difficult for Democrats to revert MAGA policies.
Basically, ten years ago, everybody thought trans people were a bit icky, whereas in 2025, a third of the country thinks they're evil monsters destroying our country's moral fiber. I firmly believe that if Democrats had just pushed for trans rights without demanding it of everyone all at once, trans people would be accepted much more today.
This just feels… bad. Like, it feels like, in 1960, someone could have very easily said:
The left got overly aggressive with fighting for Black rights after Plessy v. Ferguson
No, it would not be like that whatsoever. The point is that on June 25, 2015, the Left was fighting for gay rights and it was largely accepted, if not always appreciated, to make gay jokes. Then, suddenly, on June 26, everyone had always loved gay people and the fight immediately moved to trans rights--something basically no one had talked about whatsoever in the public eye until just two months earlier when Caitlyn Jenner came out. It was all so sudden and it moved from one fight to another basically overnight. That's what was so disorienting for your average citizen who was politically indifferent and watched whichever news channel they remembered first.
It was a classic overextension. They'd just scored a major LGBT rights victory, they were the cool side that was winning the battle of public opinion, so they kept pushing more and more, and eventually the support--that was not as solid as they believed--died down and the other side was able to take the advantage, masking propaganda with "common sense" strawmen ("someone who grew up as a man shouldn't be able to compete against women!", "kids shouldn't have litter boxes in their school bathrooms!"). This is a large part of why Trump was able to win! People thought those crazy Democrats only cared about fringe issues and not their immediate concerns.
I'm promise I'm not trying to be combative, but this is pretty inaccurate. LGBT coalition-building and advocacy in the US explicitly included trans people well prior to 2016 (I'm saying this as...
Exemplary
The point is that on June 25, 2015, the Left was fighting for gay rights and it was largely accepted, if not always appreciated, to make gay jokes. Then, suddenly, on June 26, everyone had always loved gay people and the fight immediately moved to trans rights--something basically no one had talked about whatsoever in the public eye until just two months earlier when Caitlyn Jenner came out. It was all so sudden and it moved from one fight to another basically overnight. That's what was so disorienting for your average citizen who was politically indifferent and watched whichever news channel they remembered first.
I'm promise I'm not trying to be combative, but this is pretty inaccurate.
LGBT coalition-building and advocacy in the US explicitly included trans people well prior to 2016 (I'm saying this as someone who was involved in advocacy work in the late 00s and early 10s). See the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2009 and beyond:
In 2009, following Democratic gains in the 2008 elections, and after the divisiveness of the 2007 debate, Rep. Barney Frank introduced a transgender-inclusive version of ENDA. He introduced it again in 2011, and Senator Jeff Merkley introduced it in the Senate. On November 7, 2013, Merkley's bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support by a vote of 64–32. President Barack Obama supported the bill's passage, but the House Rules Committee voted against it.
Another example: the Human Rights Campaign, the leading queer advocacy organization of the time, underwent pretty heavy criticism from their own constitutents in the early 2010s for treating trans issues as ancillary or disposable. This article from 2013 has a good quote about the temperature of trans advocacy at the time:
Increasingly, these activists, particularly those who are younger and have come into activism through more modern and forward-thinking organizations, consider trans support, inclusion and issues unquestionably intrinsic parts of the agenda that they want to pursue. As recently as just a decade ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of progressive civil rights organizations that considered trans inclusion and our rights important and something that they supported as a part of their larger mission, even if not a direct focus, but now it's much harder to find those that don't.
Now, I'll temper what I'm about to say with the fact that I appreciate your presence here on Tildes, updawg, and I'm not attempting to put you or your perceptions down by any means. That said, I think you've been significantly misled on all of this.
Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is not happening because the left went "too far" with pushing for things. Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is happening specifically because it plays on people's prejudices. The idea that it's a sane reaction to an insane left is itself a right wing falsehood that attempts to mask their cruelty behind a veneer of reasonableness.
Just this year there are already 857 bills across the US targeting trans people: hundreds of attempts to codify anti-trans beliefs into law. That is the real overreach: legislating away people's rights and dignity. Our pro-trans pushes look almost insignificant in comparison.
The pivot you identified post-2015 wasn't the product of a strategic error on the part of LGBT activists. It was a product of people shifting the target of their discrimination. The anti-trans falsehoods I hear thrown about right now are nearly identical to the anti-gay ones I heard in the 90s -- straight out of the same playbook. They shifted from gay people to trans people because, as you identified, gay people's stars had risen pretty quickly in the preceding years and it became less politically salient to use them as a target of hate. They needed someone new to target.
This targetting is buttressed by propaganda that causes everyday people to see the targets as subhuman or evil. This makes hatred of the targets come across not as cruel but as righteous and vindicated. It gives people engaging in cruelty the perception of having the moral high ground even as they directly engage in distinctly immoral acts (like hatred and denying people their rights). That's why anti-trans rhetoric is almost always couched in dishonest and inflammatory language about "saving children from mutilation" or whatnot. It gets everyday people fired up and scared, and it makes trans people sound like absolute monsters who would hurt little innocent children (which, again, is a direct echo of the "gays are pedophiles" umbrella I grew up under).
We know that this is false, but it's making its way around the world all while we're still lacing up our shoes. We live in a media environment that pushes these messages constantly and consistently. Also, as I mentioned earlier, they also try to escape accountability by framing the issue as a "look what you made me do" situation. The lies are so egregious that it makes acting against them seem rational and sane.
This is why so many people think "the left has gone too far!" It's part of the lie and acts as an accountability dodge for deliberate cruelty. When I said you've been misled earlier, this is what I'm talking about, and it's not a criticism of you in the slightest. Hearing that sort of messaging is, unfortunately, inescapable, and it's been going on for decades now. Conservative media in particular has perfected the art of it and is in fact so good at it that it spreads well beyond those circles. Here's an angry rundown of that phenomenon that I wrote in frustration after the election.
I implore you to consider the reality that anti-trans forces are the big movers here. They're not happening because the left is going too far. In fact, the left is rather impotent on these issues at the moment. It's a very scary time to be trans or support trans people.
I promise you I'm sorry to negate part of what you wrote and not respond to the rest, but I'm going to bed and I see you responded 34 seconds before I opened your comment lol and I know I'll be...
I promise you I'm sorry to negate part of what you wrote and not respond to the rest, but I'm going to bed and I see you responded 34 seconds before I opened your comment lol and I know I'll be thinking about this instead of sleeping if I don't say something, so hopefully I will have a chance to actually read the bulk of your comment tomorrow and respond to it.
And like you, I want to acknowledge that we're on the same side here and I want to express we're disagreeing largely over semantics, but I believe we both think these are important semantics.
But when I said "the Left" was doing xyz, I was really referring to the tens of millions of Democratic voters and the group that most politically inactive/ambivalent people think of when they think of "the left." Yes, I know a lot of hard work was going on for trans rights already, but to your average Joe (or perhaps Ken Bone would be more appropriate), the people who they viewed as "the left" (i.e., virtue signalling corporations, celebrities, Twitterers, visible politicians, etc) had suddenly shifted.
I don't think it was the people who were actually politically active in advocating for trans rights who were demanding allyship in this manner; I think it was basically everyone who hadn't been fighting before and was just riding the wave of whatever the hot topic was at the moment.
Anyway, I'm going to go to sleep, but hopefully I'll get a good chance to read the rest of your comment tomorrow.
Yes, I agree with this. But I think that the right's propaganda resonated with so many people because the left overextended. They started putting a big focus on a group that, frankly, most of the...
Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is not happening because the left went "too far" with pushing for things. Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is happening specifically because it plays on people's prejudices. The idea that it's a sane reaction to an insane left is itself a right wing falsehood that attempts to mask their cruelty behind a veneer of reasonableness.
Yes, I agree with this. But I think that the right's propaganda resonated with so many people because the left overextended. They started putting a big focus on a group that, frankly, most of the country didn't care about. They were certainly doing the moral and ethical thing—trying to build protections into the system for a group that has always been at risk and casually discriminated against by I'd say a majority of the population in word or deed.
But it was a largely invisible group and one that most people didn't actually see as being discriminated against. Shining a light on this was a good thing, but they didn't really have a defense to the right responding "but trans people are icky!" This meant that the right was able to win where they strategically needed to win by making up lies that sounded believable to an, at best, uninformed segment of society.
I honestly see your response as a typical idealistic liberal response. Yes, the Right are the ones doing the bad things. No, this is not in any way a grassroots movement to stop the icky trans agenda. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a strategic failure by the Left that opened the door for the Right to get a foothold and attack. In fact, that supports the strategic failure perspective.
In war, if a salient gets cut off and encircled, you don't say "well, it's not their fault. They were doing what they were supposed to and the evil enemy overwhelmed them with evil." You admit that they overextended and gave the enemy an opportunity to attack.
If the Left hadn't pushed so visibly for people and companies to (realistically) virtue signal their support of trans people (because I'd argue, for example, that most people calling Caitlyn Jenner the greatest hero of all time in 2015 weren't being genuine), the right wouldn't have been able to capitalize on it. And this is for the same reason they're able to capitalize on it today—trans people were nearly totally invisible in 2015 and are still largely invisible today (only 25% of Americans have a trans acquaintance).
If a highly visible part of your agenda is supporting something most people have never seen, a lot of people are going to be confused. That leaves room for the Right to act like the Left is crazy—and that provides an opportunity for a highly strategic group (the Right) to sow the seeds of demonization.
So I do think that the Right would have moved on to this scapegoat even if the Left had totally ignored trans people. That's how the Right operates. But I don't think it would have resonated with such a large segment of the population if there wasn't such a visible push in 2015 to support trans rights. Obviously it's good and right to support human rights, but that doesn't mean the best way to make a lasting change is to make such a large and high-visibility push.
When you're dealing with the Right, you have to know that they will take every opportunity they get to attack you with lies. And, as the saying goes, when you fail to prepare for that, you prepare to fail.
I don't think such things should be demanded. Not because I have any personal safety I am protecting, Im willing to admit its just pure apathy on my part. Moreso because I feel its maybe becoming...
I don't think such things should be demanded. Not because I have any personal safety I am protecting, Im willing to admit its just pure apathy on my part.
Moreso because I feel its maybe becoming counterproductive. At a certain level of engagement you might be putting people off to a greater degree than you are engendering support. I've seen reporting that states that there is rising support for the right among young men, and I wonder if that is the reason.
Young men are the demographic Id expect to be online more than any other, and making up the biggest proportion of the online discourse surrounding politics. So these are the people who are spending a lot of time in these online spaces, immersed in the kind of activist messaging that seeks to push people toward political engagement. I wonder if maybe they are a first indicator of people being oversaturated by that kind of messaging, getting sick of it, and turning to reactionary politics out of spite.
I kind of feel that I have experienced this myself. I mean, Im not really young enough to be considered part of that demographic anymore, but I do feel that I have a lot more political apathy than when I was younger and enjoyed keeping up with current events.
Found this blog post that I really liked. I agree with the sentiment that the author expressed, that publicly demonstrating one’s allegiance to a cause through the Internet can sometimes be more harmful than helpful, and should therefore not be demanded, especially if one’s safety in any aspect of life is at risk.
So, while I do think that it’s good to support the causes that one believes in (social justice, protecting the environment, etc.), if one possibly can, I don’t think that publicly and visibly allying oneself with them on the Internet should be a requirement.
In fact, being online at all shouldn’t be demanded to begin with (though that’s a different discussion).
A statement from the post that stood out to me:
Isn’t that.. like exactly what solidarity is, though? Taking a stand for a marginalized group only when there’s no risk to yourself isn’t solidarity, it’s just support. Support is good! But solidarity only comes from actually standing in the line of fire yourself.
When union workers refuse to cross a picket line in solidarity, they are intentionally taking a risk — putting themselves in the line of fire, in an attempt to share the burden of risk being levied at picketers. To stand in solidarity with a marginalized group is to say “if you want to get to them, you have to go through me first.” And that requires abandoning silence.
I have the sense that this author is responding to some specific online experience that I’ve never had, but I don’t think that anyone using “silence is a privilege” in good faith would consider the person described in that paragraph as using their privilege to remain silent. Those are all decidedly loud actions.
Yeah, ultimately the entire point of allyship is to support those who need it. The vast majority of trans people don't have the luxury of choosing whether to be visible, and their safety is threatened no matter how vocal they are online. I don't necessarily think that performative online allyship is a strict necessity, at least if we're using those words as I'd describe them, but this topic feels very much like an attempt to insist marginalized people are "asking too much" in an attempt to alleviate any possible negative light to deciding not to vocally support their rights. It comes across as very "I won't support you unless there's zero risk for me, but you also aren't allowed to make me feel bad about it" to me.
If the author is silently taking part in irl organizing for the rights of these minorities, that's good (and much better than posting about it). But are you actually doing that? While there absolutely are people who help "on the ground" without posting about shit online, I think the overlap between those people and the people who write think pieces about how minorities shouldn't "demand" allyship is infinitesimally small. Moreover, such think pieces quickly turn into people also opposing even irl organizing for minorities' rights, as can even be seen in the other comments here on Tildes.
I also think that overly visible allyship is what has led to a lot of the "trans stuff" resonating with a lot of people, even though it's essentially just alt-right propaganda. Yes, it's good to let people know what we believe and what we think is acceptable. But I think the left got overly aggressive with fighting for trans rights after Obergefell in a way that really backfired.
You can take the moral high ground and fight the unwinnable battle right now, but you can't be surprised when a short-term mindset doesn't lead to long-term success.
This doesn’t quite feel right to me. Before this decade’s modicum of public support for trans folks, they were all but universally marginalized. Being a trans person was straightforwardly not allowed in public. Having more public conversations about defending their right to exist has forced many folks to actually express their views — views they previously felt no need to voice for their presumed unanimity — but I’m extremely skeptical that it has actually pushed people to be more anti-transgender. The baseline was that basically all of society was anti-transgender.
On the other hand, I know several people who would have and did make derisive comments about transgender people 10 years ago that have completely come around to supporting transgender rights. That swing is 100% due to the public conversations being had about those rights, and the consequences of withholding them. All it took was to see people whose values they respect taking a stand for trans folks, and they were able to take a look and see that actually their values aligned with that stance, too.
This just feels… bad. Like, it feels like, in 1960, someone could have very easily said:
In fact, I’m certain that very many people did say such a thing in the 60s. But that’s wrong — I’m skeptical that there’s such thing as being overly aggressive in fighting for the rights of a marginalized group, but if there is, the divided and meager defense of trans rights by the American left is not it.
I think this is backwards. We’re seeing the short-term regressions now — fighting for human rights is a long-term battle. And when you have a long-term mindset, you know that there will be setbacks in the short-term, and you push through those setbacks. This is what human rights movements have always done.
In many Western countries, it is harder to medically transition now than a decade ago. Some countries have new, restrictive laws making it impossible for minors to access essential healthcare.
While transgender people were certainly marginalized, people also cared a lot less. There was less personal vitriol and hate in my experience. Even if trans people were treated as an oddity and a punchline, it was easier to educate someone ignorant but well meaning; nowadays, every transphobe is already an 'expert'...
I think this is just the natural course of removing discrimination against a certain minority from a society.
Discrimination is normal. You can tell hateful and ignorant jokes about <minority> at work and nobody bats an eye. Some think this is wrong, but they won't say anything because this is as normal as brushing your teeth and only crazy people start arguments about normal behaviour.
More and more people speak out against discrimination/racism. When you tell a discriminating/racist joke, the chance you get some backlash is getting higher. At first, only the weirdos will get in your hair, but over time more and more moderate people are slowly shifting and agree with the weirdos. You have to be more careful where you tell your jokes.
Not discriminating against <minority> is now the new normal. You will get into serious trouble for telling jokes that were totally fine when you were in your teens. Most people will accept this, even if they think it's stupid, because this doesn't affect them at all. But a small but significant percentage of the population are fighting back hard because they feel their identity threatened.
The diehards have either given up or died out. There are young adults that don't understand how it was once normal that farmers are sold together with their fields, women cannot vote or kissing a man lands you in jail. There is no more discrimination against <minority>.
In my (relatively short) life time, we went from stage 1 to 4 when it comes to gay men. Not even Trump can touch their rights anymore because being gay is totally normal. You're not a weirdo if you get upset about bad gay jokes, you're a weirdo if you tell them.
I think we are at stage 2 or 3 regarding trans rights. Things look bad because reactionary morons somehow wiggled their asses into power, but I think a large majority is either on the right side or doesn't care. They just need some more exposure to trans people so they become the new normal, like gay people are now as normal as brushing your teeth, and who wants to start an argument about that kind of stuff.
That’s a good point (and deeply upsetting). Progress has not been straightforward, and there are a lot of people who might be worse off now than a decade ago. And this does vary dramatically from state to state, and even city to city (within the US). Part of my perspective is personal anecdata:
I live in the town I grew up in. When I went to school here, there were precisely zero trans kids who were out. That’s not to say that there were zero trans kids — people that I went to school with have since come out as trans. But none of them even had a chance to be denied access to medical treatment — they weren’t even in a position to ask for it.
Now, there are one or two trans kids in the district every year. They are out, and (because of the state I live in) they have access to gender-affirming care. Specifically, care is available through CHOP’s gender and sexuality development clinic, which opened in 2020.
This stuff happened because of the push for trans rights. It doesn’t feel right to put the blame for the subsequent rise in public anti-LGBT sentiment on the people fighting for those rights, especially when a more straightforward culprit is right there: Republican politicians. Republican politicians found a convenient new target for their fear-driven power grabs, and launched a MASSIVE campaign to make them public enemy #1. The federal government is threatening to withhold all federal funding from the state of Maine if they don’t implement anti-trans rules regarding school sports that would affect two children in the whole state. Trump doesn’t care about trans women in women’s sports — Trump doesn’t care about women’s sports! Or women, for that matter!
I think this is a much more compelling explanation for the right’s increase in anti-LGBT sentiment than the idea that it’s because the left supports them too much.
You're absolutely right about the support existing now that didn't exist a decade ago. But a decade ago, people weren't concerned that the government was going to try to eradicate them, either. The point isn't that trans people are accepted more in ***SOME PARTS*** of society now than they were ten years ago. The point is that we have a government in place that is likely to try to roll back much of that and set trans rights back several decades. A higher percent of people actually believe that a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth than the percent 8 years ago (I can't find stats for 2015). I think that means that even if the Republicans are out in four years, it will be more difficult for Democrats to revert MAGA policies.
Basically, ten years ago, everybody thought trans people were a bit icky, whereas in 2025, a third of the country thinks they're evil monsters destroying our country's moral fiber. I firmly believe that if Democrats had just pushed for trans rights without demanding it of everyone all at once, trans people would be accepted much more today.
No, it would not be like that whatsoever. The point is that on June 25, 2015, the Left was fighting for gay rights and it was largely accepted, if not always appreciated, to make gay jokes. Then, suddenly, on June 26, everyone had always loved gay people and the fight immediately moved to trans rights--something basically no one had talked about whatsoever in the public eye until just two months earlier when Caitlyn Jenner came out. It was all so sudden and it moved from one fight to another basically overnight. That's what was so disorienting for your average citizen who was politically indifferent and watched whichever news channel they remembered first.
It was a classic overextension. They'd just scored a major LGBT rights victory, they were the cool side that was winning the battle of public opinion, so they kept pushing more and more, and eventually the support--that was not as solid as they believed--died down and the other side was able to take the advantage, masking propaganda with "common sense" strawmen ("someone who grew up as a man shouldn't be able to compete against women!", "kids shouldn't have litter boxes in their school bathrooms!"). This is a large part of why Trump was able to win! People thought those crazy Democrats only cared about fringe issues and not their immediate concerns.
I'm promise I'm not trying to be combative, but this is pretty inaccurate.
LGBT coalition-building and advocacy in the US explicitly included trans people well prior to 2016 (I'm saying this as someone who was involved in advocacy work in the late 00s and early 10s). See the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2009 and beyond:
Another example: the Human Rights Campaign, the leading queer advocacy organization of the time, underwent pretty heavy criticism from their own constitutents in the early 2010s for treating trans issues as ancillary or disposable. This article from 2013 has a good quote about the temperature of trans advocacy at the time:
Now, I'll temper what I'm about to say with the fact that I appreciate your presence here on Tildes, updawg, and I'm not attempting to put you or your perceptions down by any means. That said, I think you've been significantly misled on all of this.
Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is not happening because the left went "too far" with pushing for things. Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is happening specifically because it plays on people's prejudices. The idea that it's a sane reaction to an insane left is itself a right wing falsehood that attempts to mask their cruelty behind a veneer of reasonableness.
Just this year there are already 857 bills across the US targeting trans people: hundreds of attempts to codify anti-trans beliefs into law. That is the real overreach: legislating away people's rights and dignity. Our pro-trans pushes look almost insignificant in comparison.
The pivot you identified post-2015 wasn't the product of a strategic error on the part of LGBT activists. It was a product of people shifting the target of their discrimination. The anti-trans falsehoods I hear thrown about right now are nearly identical to the anti-gay ones I heard in the 90s -- straight out of the same playbook. They shifted from gay people to trans people because, as you identified, gay people's stars had risen pretty quickly in the preceding years and it became less politically salient to use them as a target of hate. They needed someone new to target.
This targetting is buttressed by propaganda that causes everyday people to see the targets as subhuman or evil. This makes hatred of the targets come across not as cruel but as righteous and vindicated. It gives people engaging in cruelty the perception of having the moral high ground even as they directly engage in distinctly immoral acts (like hatred and denying people their rights). That's why anti-trans rhetoric is almost always couched in dishonest and inflammatory language about "saving children from mutilation" or whatnot. It gets everyday people fired up and scared, and it makes trans people sound like absolute monsters who would hurt little innocent children (which, again, is a direct echo of the "gays are pedophiles" umbrella I grew up under).
We know that this is false, but it's making its way around the world all while we're still lacing up our shoes. We live in a media environment that pushes these messages constantly and consistently. Also, as I mentioned earlier, they also try to escape accountability by framing the issue as a "look what you made me do" situation. The lies are so egregious that it makes acting against them seem rational and sane.
This is why so many people think "the left has gone too far!" It's part of the lie and acts as an accountability dodge for deliberate cruelty. When I said you've been misled earlier, this is what I'm talking about, and it's not a criticism of you in the slightest. Hearing that sort of messaging is, unfortunately, inescapable, and it's been going on for decades now. Conservative media in particular has perfected the art of it and is in fact so good at it that it spreads well beyond those circles. Here's an angry rundown of that phenomenon that I wrote in frustration after the election.
I implore you to consider the reality that anti-trans forces are the big movers here. They're not happening because the left is going too far. In fact, the left is rather impotent on these issues at the moment. It's a very scary time to be trans or support trans people.
I promise you I'm sorry to negate part of what you wrote and not respond to the rest, but I'm going to bed and I see you responded 34 seconds before I opened your comment lol and I know I'll be thinking about this instead of sleeping if I don't say something, so hopefully I will have a chance to actually read the bulk of your comment tomorrow and respond to it.
And like you, I want to acknowledge that we're on the same side here and I want to express we're disagreeing largely over semantics, but I believe we both think these are important semantics.
But when I said "the Left" was doing xyz, I was really referring to the tens of millions of Democratic voters and the group that most politically inactive/ambivalent people think of when they think of "the left." Yes, I know a lot of hard work was going on for trans rights already, but to your average Joe (or perhaps Ken Bone would be more appropriate), the people who they viewed as "the left" (i.e., virtue signalling corporations, celebrities, Twitterers, visible politicians, etc) had suddenly shifted.
I don't think it was the people who were actually politically active in advocating for trans rights who were demanding allyship in this manner; I think it was basically everyone who hadn't been fighting before and was just riding the wave of whatever the hot topic was at the moment.
Anyway, I'm going to go to sleep, but hopefully I'll get a good chance to read the rest of your comment tomorrow.
No worries -- I appreciate the clarification. Sleep well!
Yes, I agree with this. But I think that the right's propaganda resonated with so many people because the left overextended. They started putting a big focus on a group that, frankly, most of the country didn't care about. They were certainly doing the moral and ethical thing—trying to build protections into the system for a group that has always been at risk and casually discriminated against by I'd say a majority of the population in word or deed.
But it was a largely invisible group and one that most people didn't actually see as being discriminated against. Shining a light on this was a good thing, but they didn't really have a defense to the right responding "but trans people are icky!" This meant that the right was able to win where they strategically needed to win by making up lies that sounded believable to an, at best, uninformed segment of society.
I honestly see your response as a typical idealistic liberal response. Yes, the Right are the ones doing the bad things. No, this is not in any way a grassroots movement to stop the icky trans agenda. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a strategic failure by the Left that opened the door for the Right to get a foothold and attack. In fact, that supports the strategic failure perspective.
In war, if a salient gets cut off and encircled, you don't say "well, it's not their fault. They were doing what they were supposed to and the evil enemy overwhelmed them with evil." You admit that they overextended and gave the enemy an opportunity to attack.
If the Left hadn't pushed so visibly for people and companies to (realistically) virtue signal their support of trans people (because I'd argue, for example, that most people calling Caitlyn Jenner the greatest hero of all time in 2015 weren't being genuine), the right wouldn't have been able to capitalize on it. And this is for the same reason they're able to capitalize on it today—trans people were nearly totally invisible in 2015 and are still largely invisible today (only 25% of Americans have a trans acquaintance).
If a highly visible part of your agenda is supporting something most people have never seen, a lot of people are going to be confused. That leaves room for the Right to act like the Left is crazy—and that provides an opportunity for a highly strategic group (the Right) to sow the seeds of demonization.
So I do think that the Right would have moved on to this scapegoat even if the Left had totally ignored trans people. That's how the Right operates. But I don't think it would have resonated with such a large segment of the population if there wasn't such a visible push in 2015 to support trans rights. Obviously it's good and right to support human rights, but that doesn't mean the best way to make a lasting change is to make such a large and high-visibility push.
When you're dealing with the Right, you have to know that they will take every opportunity they get to attack you with lies. And, as the saying goes, when you fail to prepare for that, you prepare to fail.
I don't think such things should be demanded. Not because I have any personal safety I am protecting, Im willing to admit its just pure apathy on my part.
Moreso because I feel its maybe becoming counterproductive. At a certain level of engagement you might be putting people off to a greater degree than you are engendering support. I've seen reporting that states that there is rising support for the right among young men, and I wonder if that is the reason.
Young men are the demographic Id expect to be online more than any other, and making up the biggest proportion of the online discourse surrounding politics. So these are the people who are spending a lot of time in these online spaces, immersed in the kind of activist messaging that seeks to push people toward political engagement. I wonder if maybe they are a first indicator of people being oversaturated by that kind of messaging, getting sick of it, and turning to reactionary politics out of spite.
I kind of feel that I have experienced this myself. I mean, Im not really young enough to be considered part of that demographic anymore, but I do feel that I have a lot more political apathy than when I was younger and enjoyed keeping up with current events.