awesome comments in response to article in NYTimes about the culture wars
Wake me up when Ross and the rest of these hand-wringing pundits start writing thinkpieces about the people (overwhelmingly females) under age 18 who undergo rhinoplasty (nose job), breast augmentation, and ear-pinning surgeries. Won't someone think of the children!?!
Spoiler alert: These pundits only get upset about medical alterations to a young person's body when they are not used solely to "improve" a child's appearance (in terms of the male gaze)—and that child is female 99% of the time.
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The bottom line is that I'm a gay man and there is a hardcore 25% of hateful homophobic racist and bigoted conservative Southern Republicans that hate me and always will. Their influence goes up, goes down, and so on over and over. We had Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schafly, Pat Buchanan and now we have Ron DeSantis, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito and many others that either hate us because of who we are or, like DeSantis, simply to score political points. I almost despise him more than the others because he really has ZERO substance to his hateful lust for power. But at the end of the day I'm sick and tired of talking about how and why I have a right to live my life as an equal member of society WITHOUT being called a "groomer" or whatever else they want to call me. These people, who support politicians who lie and steal and cheat on their spouses are trying to protect children from me and those like me. And I have to dignify these cretins with a defense as I enter the 6th decade of my life? I don't think so.
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The number of trans in the US is extraordinarily small (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28838353/).
The number of people seeking to profit politically off their denigration and tap into the latent and widespread homophobia that is within the penumbra of the anti-trans discussion is large and backed by money (hello Fox News and the GOP).
The trans issue is ginned up out of the playbook of other right-wing autocracies (Russia, Hungary et al). If these folks like DeSantis were truly worried about protecting children from predators and grooming, he would advocate laws squarely focussed on heterosexual male sexual violence.
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The GOP needs a boogie man for every election cycle and, this time, it has resurrected LGBT.
Last time the GOP used gays, anti-gay marriage amendments turned out conservative voters for George W. Bush. In subsequent years, the GOP scapegoated immigrants, Muslims, women, and ethnic/racial minorities.
This time, in hopes of getting back the suburban moms who abandoned Trump, the GOP is banking on scaring them that schools will allow pedophile groomers to abuse their kids just by mentioning gays.
Like clockwork, Americans will fall for the nonsense…again.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/opinion/transgender-culture-war.html#commentsContainer
