uosdɯᴉS ɐuɐꓷ 🦄

Yes. Elections are a choice between two possible futures, not a referendum on whether you approve of every single thing about the democratic candidate.

Me too.

And even if you do want those things, how does filling in bubbles for democrats every two years in any way make that harder?

Anyone who thinks we should let republicans win because of Gaza is a fundamentally unserious person.

Because Republicans are so good on the issue of Gaza?

Not voting for democrats doesn’t make Gaza better. If it did, we could have a conversation, but there’s no conversation to be had if I’m supposed to burn my own rights down to “send a message.” That’s so fucking dumb.

So if you say “I won’t support the democrats because I fundamentally don’t believe in this system,” you’re entitled to that, but it means you have nothing useful to contribute to the cause of trans rights here and now.

The job of a trans rights activist in the US is to advance trans rights within the context of the US. Which means acknowledging what the system is, and trying to use it to achieve the best available result.

If you’re a “trans rights activist” and you refuse to support the Democratic Party because you’re an “anarchist” or a “communist” or whatever, you’re basically the same thing as an Amish bus driver.

Without making any value judgment about what you believe, your beliefs are incompatible with the job

Yeah, I mean, they had that for a very brief period, it involved a lot of people like Lieberman and Baucus, and they still managed to ram the ACA through. It took all they had and it was a miraculous achievement. I get mad when people act like they could have easily done more. It’s so ahistorical.

Yup.

And leftists seem to want the Democratic Party to be that, more, and they never think through what the down side of that would be.

Why do you think I try to stay visible?

Not that I’m super normal, but I think I’m very nonthreatening. Being trans is not why you’ve heard of me. It’s not the focus of my existence. I’m not out here trying to squick the normies. I’m just existing.

American feminism, unlike British feminism, is largely very pro-trans.

I knew Roe was going down as soon as Trump won.

But I had leftists confidently telling me it wasn’t, a week before it happened.

I won’t speak to the political efficacy of “trans women are women,” but I do want to shout it at everyone who’s ever referred to me as a “trans femme.”

I think I object to the word “liberation” because it’s confusing in this context. You have to explain to people what it means to say we aren’t “liberated” now.

What’s wrong with “trans rights now”? You might have to list which rights you mean, but you won’t have to define the word.

People felt free to just let the anti-abortion forces win, because we’re not going to lose abortion rights! It’s settled law! Hillary is just trying to scare us!

People thought the only question was how fast progress was going to happen. They wouldn’t accept that things can go backwards.

I think people are still in denial about it, honestly.

There was this idea that civil rights only ever go in one direction, and once you’ve gained a right you never lose it again. Because for 50 years that had mostly been true.

I certainly remember “trans activists” straight-up lying about the last THREE democratic nominees. All of whom were extremely pro-trans.

We would be so much better off if those candidates had all won. Why aren’t our “activists” able to admit this very basic fact?

You can just put this quote below my picture: I don’t know how you have a civil rights movement if it refuses to prioritize its members’ actual civil rights.

It became more of a clout contest than an actual civil rights movement, and then, big surprise, we started losing rights. For reasons that it was “cringe” to actually directly combat.

Like, let’s be real, the single greatest determinant of what rights trans people have is whether democrats win elections.

Has “trans activism” in any way reflected that fact in the past decade?

Oh I definitely think all of that gave cis people, even well-meaning cis people on the liberal/left end of things, this idea that our medical rights are more optional than they really are.

We started talking to each other, or even just yelling at each other, instead of to the rest of the world.

Who doesn’t like eclairs?

Okay, some of the stuff in this thread is still available and already on the shop.

But here we go again! New stuff!

If woke 2.0 could get back to asking “what is in trans people’s actual real world interests,” that would be great, thanks.

And then in the mid-2010s suddenly it seemed like “trans activism” was all people calling each other out for clout, and, to the extent it was focused on policy, trying to invent reasons NOT to vote against people whose main goals included destroying all our rights.

I don’t know if this is directly what we’re talking about here, but I can say that as a trans person, I thought we actually got off track during the “woke 1.0” years.

Like, prior to that, the focus among “trans activists” that I knew was on expanding our legal rights.

Shoutout to Women! To women of color To disabled women To neurodivergent women To childfree women To sexworker women To non-monogamous women To intersex women To trans women To gender-nonconforming women To enby women , bigender women, and folks who are only women sometimes To aromantic women To asexual women To bi/pan women To lesbian women To questioning women To women of all shapes and sizes To women of all traits and identities To women society tries to erase cus they fear the power of your existence

The intro to NBC's revival of 'The Daffy Duck Show' from 1988.

Ooh, I like that.