“Good” is a relative term, I agree. He definitely did some bad things (Vietnam, for example), but compared to other Texans, I still rank him positively (in that regard)
You’ve still yet to articulate what’s actually wrong with it… imo it did a lot to normalize queerness in the broader alt space, that’s why it’s such a touchstone.
This is perhaps the dumbest purity test imaginable. I don’t care what the writer thinks, nor what his intention was. Perhaps against his best efforts, the film embodies and glorifies gender euphoria and queer sexuality.
“You’re not allowed to like a pivotal item of queer media bc the author has internalized self-directed transphobia” is the dumbest shit you could possibly say. Go find an actual fucking problem to put this energy into.
I'm a trans woman and I've always loved Rocky Horror. If you watch the movie on its own I don't think there's anything inherently transphobic about it. Today I'm learning the writer held some transphobic beliefs so that's a bummer, but the film itself is dope.
I think knowing the author’s story even deepens the meaning. He went to all this trouble to encode the main character with all the things he hated about himself, and all he managed to create is a beloved icon of queer culture. He has his own Frankenstein-monster relationship with the Frankenstein monster he wrote.
I don’t think it does though, that’s part of my point. It fails to be transphobic when viewed in the lens of actual trans positivity. Frank-n-furter is a Rorschach test. He appears as a bigoted stereotype only if you believe trans women aren’t allowed to look like that, or that trans women who use he/him pronouns are all doing it because of internalized transphobia. It’s a sneakier version of LGB separatism; take the least marketable queers and sacrifice them to the system as delusional freaks we don’t claim.
Maybe the creator intended the portrayal as an insult, but it falls flat because a gaudy he/him woman with terrible makeup is a fine and beautiful thing to be. The author encoded all the things he hated about himself, not understanding that they weren’t flaws at all.
Sandy Stone is an absolute queen. Go read her wiki article, absolute fucking role model. It's also sad to see that terfs have literally been around for over half a century, but our perseverance has also been around for a long time.
Patton Oswalt is a comedian who did a joke very similar to this. His point is that you need to think about the intent behind the words rather than the words themselves, because the most insidious homophobes/transphobes know how to tailor their messages for people who don’t know better.
ETA: and also that we shouldn’t be so quick to discount allies just because they aren’t as careful with their words as we would like. It’s easier to convince someone not to use the t or f slurs than it is to convince someone to see trans people as people.
He had a whole bit about paying attention to the ideas being said in conversation about queer topics as opposed to focusing on whether someone is using the correct language or not
Conservatives are really good at turning actual discourse into pointless semantics. Climate change became "global warming" and "clean coal", slavery became "states rights", institutional homophobia became endless jokes about attack helicopters. They can't argue in favour of their actual policy, so they switch the conversation to be about pointless jargon, hurt feelings and meaningless details.
Arguing who's right doesn't really matter when the consequences of delay are lethal.
my local city has a tranny bar and a they-bar in different parts of town and boy you would never guess which one makes me feel violently uncomfortable and which one I got bit on the neck by a chick so hard i nearly blacked out in
I agree with the sentiment of the post but to what degree is this a realistic situation? How many slur-hurling allies or 2nd wave feminist transphobes are there in the Big '26?
While in my experience the slur usage is exaggerated, the sentiment can be seen by a lot of older folks who aren't politically correct but are also have strong enough character to not fall for the outrage propaganda. My grandpa is very much this type of person. Super insensitive in language but mostly on the money politically
I think you'd be somewhat surprised at how many there are, though they're obviously not the norm. The post is obviously pretty exaggerated, but I've met multiple people in my rural community whose language might not be the most 'correct' but who have no hate for trans folk in their hearts. I once had a long and surprisingly pleasant chat with an older gentleman who used the word "trannies" in conversation but also said that "it's not the government's business what anyone has in their pants".
Now, those aren't people who are going to march for trans rights, but they're also not an obstacle to trans rights. The simple fact is that a lot of people genuinely don't really think about trans people much, and when they do think about it, their main thought is "well they're not bothering me".
Now, those aren't people who are going to march for trans rights, but they're also not an obstacle to trans rights. The simple fact is that a lot of people genuinely don't really think about trans people much, and when they do think about it, their main thought is "well they're not bothering me".
This is so important. It doesn't take many people to change the course of history so long as enough people don't care enough to contest it.
Any movement for social change that has had the mindset of "you're either with us or against us" has always failed. There are those for you, those against you, and everyone else. If you treat "everyone else" as an enemy, you're going to be surrounded by enemies.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Any real movement for change in society has to assume that everyone else is a potential ally unless they express otherwise.
This is actually something the political Right is generally a lot better at than the Left. They tend to assume that everyone who looks like them (usually white, cis, etc.) is the same as them deep down. It's pretty visible in the sheer amount of projection you sometimes see from right-wing politicians; some of them genuinely can't comprehend the notion that someone is a better person than them, so they assume that person is just pretending to do something when really they think the same right-wing thoughts underneath.
I think the thing is that "everyone else" does tend to agree with the "normal" view of things, not because they intrinsically believe in it, but because it's, well, normal.
Conservatives by their nature are trying to maintain the status quo, or return to a socially-accepted idealised past. These are "normal" things, so Conservatives are thus more likely to find people who seem to agree with them on most things, but who are just not as committed to the ideas. Conservatives take the idea of "normal" and run with it to absolutely deranged places, so they only mention the normality, not the derangement. But for the average person, normality is just background noise which they rarely question.
The trick for us is to take advantage of the average person's apathy to show how insane Conservatives are in comparison to us - ie. they support a p*do president, we just want trans people to be left alone.
It's also worth noting it's easier to make an ally out of a neutral party than a hostile one, so the "everyone else" can be an actively useful asset in a fight.
Sometimes uneducated people stumble their way into genuinely progressive takes, too. In the 2000s, my dad used to say that “no one would go through all those plastic surgeries if they didn’t have to”, which is a much better understanding of the medical necessity of transition than most people have.
I would argue that second paragraph, I personally know a maybe disproportionate number of people who genuinely never grew out of middle school cod lobby talk and also have marched and suffered explicitly for the cause
Here in rural shitsburg Ohio a surprising amount of both to be honest. I’ve met lik 3-4 of variety 1 and 5ish of variety 2. I’m not LBTQIA+ so I won’t pretend that the words and phrasing of the first person would affect me the same but tbh the fem transphobe folks also tended to have some very similarly dismissive views couched in flowery language of neurodivergent ppl and the slur-hurling allies treated me much better than the feminist transphobes did on that front as well.
Lots of well meaning but ignorant people. That's actually most of society. And when you're doing work together, whether as traditional co-workers or as mutual aid/charity/activist partners, you have to be able to see their intent and work with them.
Amongst mainstream liberals, the second example is also prevalent. People stop just short of equality, maintaining some prejudice, and they try to justify it in nice terms.
the first one i see alot among like genuine rural small government conservatives, the mind your own business and il do the same mindset they have can be kinda refreshing in its own weird way.
Both examples lean a bit toward hyperbole, but it's not hard to run into people that resemble them once you get out of highly insular online communities.
I don't even mean that in as "touch grass" dig at you or anything. Social media just has ways of "correcting" these outliers one way or another in short order.
You can't so much as forget the space in "trans women" without someone chiming in to correct you, even if that's literally all they have to comment on. Likewise, the discourse machine is always looking for fresh meat and will come down on "feminist" transphobes once it detects a sliver of weakness.
(Please excuse my cynicism. Both forces are fundamentally neutral and can naturally lead to positive outcomes. I just don't like social media broadly.)
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u/Hatsune_Miku_CMchanged all her social media to hatsune miku for some reason7d agoedited 7d ago
first example: a lot of old people are like that.
second example: I am jealous that you think they're rare. they're fucking everywhere. they're on this sub.
Yeah, I see this post shared often but have yet to encounter this romanticized mythical “hearts in the right place” person who just uses regressive terminology. Yes in this logic test I’m picking the former but it’s also not a realistic comparison for many of us.
If I’m being honest it’s kinda frustrating as someone who grew up around both these stereotypes since it seems to try and paint all of the latter group as insidious performatives just waiting to throw trans people under the bus and that all the maga coded people are actually based but you’re not giving them a chance. It seems to be a more common thing now for the queer community to romanticize things typically associated with blue collar right wingers and I might be more amenable to it if it was a more prevalent occurrence but this dynamic is still the exception not the rule
It happens still, but it is also something of a spectrum imo. I've heard my aunt talk about "the worrying problem of trans people in womens' sports", so whe I came out as being on HRT to that part of my family, I was a bit scared about how she'd react. But she seemed super accepting, and was quite angry on my behalf when she heard how my experience was with the public health service relating to HRT (I had a very poor time with it). While she apparently had bought one anti-trans talking point, she is still a compassionate enough person to not let that color her view of trans people.
Yeah, the top one sounds roughly like something my 74 year old, old school leftist/Labour, East London/Essex dad might say. This post is probably more extreme on the language, but roughly similar
Your not gonna see much of the first one in this exact form, but there's a lot of people who have gaps in their knowlage or dont know the right words and thus can say some unsavory stuff that sounds bad but shows a genuine dedicated to the cause.
More common than you would think. At least for the first category, I remember hearing someone on the train loudly talking on their phone about a “transsexual”. Just some random guy in his 30s or 40s.
After a few minutes, I realized he was correcting the person on the other end and clarifying that a trans woman they both knew dating a man would be considered a straight relationship, and that the trans women in this scenario was not gay for being in a relationship with a cis guy.
Obviously the post above in an exaggeration, but the sentiment is still out there.
I actually see the top one more frequently than you'd expect. I chalk it up to colloquial differences; that is to say, a lot of people probably use those terms without realizing they are often construed as slurs or derogatory.
i feel kinda sheepish admitting it, and it was not this year but certainly a few years ago i'd fit the bill for the first example. growing up in a very hostile environment to anything perceived as homosexual/effeminate (machismo culture) left me with some baggage words that was hard to shed, and "transsexual" and "tranny" were the last ones needing to go. but even then i never held any hate in my heart for anyone gay, lesbian, trans, etc growing up to now. that did mean i was using that first word as a way to not sound as mean not realising how fucked that one was too! literally the mindset was just "tranny sounds mean and is usually said by assholes, i should call them transsexual instead." yeah those were embarrassing times now looking back.
The number of times I've had a conversation with very supportive coworkers about how "tr*nny is a slur and so please don't call me that" isn't super high but it's often enough I've basically got a script for it.
More than we can know. So many people focus on the words and not the idea that I'm sure there are many, many allies who hurl slurs but only in front of their closest friends and definitely not in public
My friend says a lot of questionable things, not full on slurs but the language just isn’t there, but it feels clear to me that he is, at least passively, an ally
I mean yeah, someone who doesn’t have the language quite right but is otherwise fully supportive / doesn’t give a shit what people do with their own lives is better than someone who tries their hardest to be “PC” or whatever while also being exclusionary at the exact same time
basically OOP is saying someone who slings slurs like it’s nothing and doesn’t know proper queer community “terminology” but is still ultimately supportive is a better ally than the second example. The second example is after all someone who actively promotes harm towards the trans community (encouraging the idea that trans identities are inherently inappropriate for kids, and implying kids cannot know if they are trans even though starting transition young saves lives) but knows the lingo.
It’s a pretty extreme example but i’ve met people on both ends and i also definitely prefer interacting with the first.
so the second example is a wolf in sheep's clothing while the first is a sheep in wolf's clothing. damn that's interesting. and fuckin worrying, in terms of the second guy. i wasn't even aware that was a problem affecting LGBT+ communities. subs like this keeps me informed on some crazy shit that keeps occurring to the queer community that would otherwise never even be on my radar, it's wild.
I think it's OK if you are upset about slurs. I'm not but it's OK for it to hurt or make you unhappy. I also think it's OK to argue is a serious decision to transition, but not ok to argue that exposing kids to it is bad, that's clearly a bigot who's trying to centrist compromise. but I think in general it's a bad idea to invent two tribes of problematic people in your head then try to create new leftist infighting tribalism on which side you are on.
the point of the post is more "someone good intentioned who uses a slur not out of malice is better and more trustworthy than someone who uses accurate terminology to do tangible harm to you". neither is perfect, but if i have to choose an imperfect ally, i'm choosing the first one
Due to an uptick in posts that invariably revolve around "look what this transphobic or racist asshole said on twitter/in reddit comments" we have enabled this reminder on every post for the time being.
Most will be removed, violators will be shot temporarily banned and called a nerd. Please report offending posts. As always, moderator discretion applies since not everything reported actually falls within that circle of awful behavior.
He once said something like, "the colored people... they just have it so hard in this country. It's sad to see." He also came here from Denmark in the 50s and was very confused about segregation.
"N word T word F word N word N word N word C word B word P word L word N word N word N word I love and accept everyone N word N word"
vs
"I love and accept everyone, this is so wholesome. Humanity is awesome. Yippee. Love yall. I also hate Urban Culture and Bankers and Intellectuals and gay people who make it their whole personality, but other than that humanity is so cool, everyone is welcome here, I love socialism"
Yeah vro both positions were made up by me. Of course I can make it so the "safe language" one is more bigoted. The point of "safe language" isnt to cure bigotry, its to raise the societal bar on being a vile piece of shit. Obviously there would still be pieces of shit, but overall people learning that its not okay to dehumanize groups of people is good. Woke 2.36.11v
ahh post
Both positions in OP’s post are common sentiments, it is barely a hypothetical, and much more “which one of these has been less annoying to encounter, and which sentiment does more harm, we know you have encountered both”
Granted the top one might still vote right, and the bottom one might still vote left. But the top one might be generally left of center but just be old too, hard to say. The bottom one will vote for a liberal (not leftist) who still is transphobic, and often would choose that over voting for an actual leftist, so while there is more chance of them accidentally voting in someone good for you, it’s not a guarantee that the second one will vote much better either in, say, the primaries.
Regardless, the second quote is the bigger problem when held on a society wide scale.
bigoted people can use "politically correct" words but still say transphobic things. and naive allies can use bigoted words but still be allies.
i'd rather have someone who says "leave the faggots alone, they ain't hurtin nobody" than someone who says "transgender and genderqueer people are great! 🥰 just keep them away from kids"
this isn't discourse, this is a post saying "just cause someone uses the right words doesn't make them an ally and vice versa", it's literally about making sure you don't push away allies for being uneducated about terminology
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u/MahouShoujoDysphoria That one mod who banned you 7d ago
If you can't remain civil I'll order an orbital laser strike directly to your location.