When the Trump Administration announced that it was considering defining “transgender” out of existence in Title IX of the Education portion of the federal Civil Rights Act, I decided to dig deeper into the practical effect of the proposed change. What was the problem exactly, that the Trumpies wanted to solve? The possibility that male-to-female transgender people could claim gender discrimination? Apparently so. Hard to imagine anyone would seriously think people would change their gender on some sort of lark.
Trump Goes After the Guys Who Become Girls In Order to Sue for Sex Discrimination
12 Comments. Leave new
«All we gotta do is get our balls cut off, turn our penises and foreskins inside-out, and make a new labia, and take estroben and face systemic ridicule, discrimination and violence.» Easy peasy, Ted ; like falling off a log….
Henri
More like a log falling off …
However, this links back to the point I was making on the other discussion thread. Fox has an outsized footprint. It’s one organization but it occupies the zeitgeist real estate occupied by at least several others. Fox drives the narrative. Thus, transgendered troops, as a topic, are mostly a distraction. And it’s a distraction used by the Right. Climate change? Minimum wage? Single-payer? Just have Fox drag out this “issue” of transgenderism and watch the left respond EXACTLY as desired. End result? The left has pissed away a huge quantity of mental, emotional and media energy on a nothing burger. The Right keeps going to the bank while the left keeps stamping its middle precious foot about a fantasy world they think they can summon up just by being outraged.
He’s signaling his base, especially far right Christians.
Transgender people are a threat to the mental health of Pussy Grabbers, who fear they might get a handful of who-knows-what from one in transition? Added to this is the greater fear that they may like it.
Some of them might even lie awake in bed at night worrying* their genitals over this possible misjudgement.
* Webster 2. c) to touch or disturb something repeatedly.
“c) to touch or disturb something repeatedly.”
+1
Every time I hear the phrase “Gay Agenda” I expect to also hear basso profundo organ chords, perhaps followed by the sound of breaking glass and screaming women.
«Thus, transgendered troops, as a topic, are mostly a distraction.» Alex’s point here regarding the role that issues like gender identity play in US politics i e, as a for the ruling elite welcome distraction from other matters and on that, moreover, is guaranteed to activate the «base» (which nota bene, includes people whose support is vital to a meaningful class struggle, is to my mind of great importance. It is interesting to note that in some countries here in Europe, like my own, attempts to exploit such issues have been far less successful, while in others they have been at least as efficacious as in the United States. Is it due to the pernicious effect of fundamentalist versions of the Abrahamic religions in the latter group ?…
But how then are progressives/socialists/whatever to deal with issues like the above ? While they should no doubt be recognised as the distractions they are from the major issues of class and money, telling someone who no longer accepts being forced to conceal the nature of his or her – or his/her – sexuality that such issues aren’t primary simply isn’t going to cut it – for that individual, they often are. How «we» are going to get ourselves off the horns of that dilemma is not immediately obvious….
Henri
I want to be QUITE CLEAR here.
I don’t blame someone, who has been shat on for years because their gender sense doesn’t match their physical body, for being too close to the situation to be dispassionate. But the transgendered are stuck in a trap.
After decades/centuries of being humiliated and marginalized (let’s remember that the Stonewall Riots and the subsequent Gay Rights Movement threw the trannies right under the bus, just like the Civil Rights Movement discarded the women), the transgendered have finally grabbed on to a seat at the table.
Of course they aren’t going to give that up.
But they have to, at least as a central component.
What do the transgendered want? Let me take a stab at it: the same thing the non-transgendered want–health care, job security, freedom from discrimination, etc. Everyone wants the same thing in the end: their share of power. A seat anywhere on the bus they choose. How are they going to get it? Well, they can demand it for the same reasons everyone else does: that’s what the government is there for–to provide essential services and protections to the citizens. By doing it THAT way, they JOIN a collection of other small groups, all of which can set aside their differences and dislikes and distrusts of each other and work toward their one collective goal.
OR … the transgendered (or the gays, or the Hispanics, or the women, or the left-handed hockey players who think Oswald was Ted Cruz’s dad’s patsy) can take what should be a multigroup protest approach and try to make it JUST THEIRS (TM). And if they do, they will fail. Because they are not a large enough group on their own, they do not possess sufficient economic clout, and they have a huge amount of (unearned) distrust to overcome.
It’s simply too great a task. The transgendered have to fight smarter, not harder. And that means retaining their sense of group identity WHILE electing to join with the larger collectives that will help them to achieve common goals.
Can anyone tell me ANYTHING that the transgendered want that would not be included in a larger demand by the collective majority of the U.S.? Do hockey players not want job security? Are most Hispanics opposed to universal single-payer? What, exactly, do the transgendered need that the rest of us don’t? When I see a transgendered person, I don’t think, “Jesus. Listen to them. Going on about wanting health care. What a fucking lunatic. Is Bernie Sanders going to announce his run soon, I sure as hell want single-payer universal healthcare …”
“Us against the world” (and every group does it) blocks every us from an easier path to success.
As I said, when you’ve spent most of your life being hated or pitied or avoided because of what you are at the true core of your being, it’s not easy to set aside everything you fought for because that’s what the odds say.
> Can anyone tell me ANYTHING that the transgendered want that would not be included in a larger demand by the collective majority of the U.S.?
Gender reassignment surgery. I mean, c’mon that one was just too easy. 😀
Other than that, you’re spot on.
«Can anyone tell me ANYTHING that the transgendered want that would not be included in a larger demand by the collective majority of the U.S.?» Of course, transgendered people want access to good health care and job security – at least if they are not exorbitantly wealthy, in which case they, like their compeers who are not transgendered, can ignore such elements of the class struggle. But they – I presume from what I’ve read on the matter ; I have no personal knowledge – do not want their own needs to be ignored and to be told that these needs are irrelevant to the larger struggle or, still worse, that they have to keep their traps shut, for otherwise they will provoke other potential allies. That, I submit, is the issue, not that transgendered or others in the motley LGBT crew desire a ™ on that common struggle. How can progressives (if, indeed, that’s the appropriate term) work to convince both the LGBT group and those others among people who have to work for a living who have been deluded into thinking that LGBT people are the spawn of the devil to work together for ends that are common to them both ? Making LGBT people – or MeTooers – or Blacks or Hispanics, et al – responsible for our failure hitherto to do so just won’t cut it….
Henri
If we had USP healthcare, we could give every transgendered person in the US reassignment surgery (if the person wants it) and STILL turn a savings just by firing a couple or three CEOs at the largest pharmaceutical companies and demanding fairer drug prices.
P.S. I just corrected a typo after posting. Is it wrong that this excites me, just a little?
Good stuff. You’re on it Alex.
Focus on the money.
Declare an empathetic truce on the identity stuff:
“We disagree with our opponents, but we love them, and we don’t want to fight, we want to give.”