LGBTQ+ people are not going back

In which the author attempts a half-baked turn towards the political....

I had planned to work on this essay more but two weeks ago I really hurt my foot and so have had trouble doing much of anything. So I kind of rushed this when I saw today was the deadline of the campaign “LGTQ+ people are not going back”

What makes the continued discrimination of trans people so frustrating is that it is not new. Right-Wing bigots have merely widely promoted and embraced a prejudice that trans people have had to confront on a daily basis.

Since I first came out as trans I’ve heard people calling me a man and all other things innumerable times. This is why it’s always funny when some troll says something like “you’re a man” to a trans woman and thinks it will devastate her. It might piss her off but trust me she’s heard it before.

That why this current wave of reactionary aggression by the right is so enraging because trans people such as myself had lived to a point where it seemed like things were going to improve in society for us only for a group of white nationalists to opportunistically attack trans rights as one of the things they plan to abolish as they seek to bring as all back to before the enlightenment.

But these lazy and bad faith attacks by politicians such as Nancy Mace have made me think about political discourse in this country.

One thing I realized in the wake of this election is that I’m really not interested in the reductionism practiced by the right wing in this country. It’s an anti-intellectualism that’s basically been part of American life since who knows how long, but useful as a way to dismiss people whose opinions differ from yours. And more commonly whose lifestyles or cultures you don’t understand.

The MAGA conservative is incurious and thinks that everything can be summed up in reductive and demeaning rhetoric. You’re an immigrant, you’re mentally ill, you’re fat, you’re trans, you’re black therefore I don’t have to consider what you have to say. A big part of this is the white supremacy and nationalism that is the central ideals of MAGA. An greater part of this ideology is a reductionism and a distaste for trying to understand experiences outside of your own. Or to attempt to learn and study experiences that are unfamiliar to you. No, these different experiences are only useful as terms of insult.

For example, the trolly technique of claiming that transgender identity is a mental illness. This grotesque tactic uses discredited terminology to demonize trans people. And the grotesquerie extends into an attack on people with mental illness itself.

Mental Illness was a term created in order to avoid using terms that demonized people like “insane” or “crazy”. This backfired in much the way that the psychiatric community stopped calling people “psychopaths” and now refer to them as “sociopaths”. This was a good idea but now people use the term “sociopath” as judgmentally as “psychopath” was once used.

The term mental illness itself becomes useless as it is now stigmatizes someone as much as saying they are insane. In our political discourse under MAGA, it doesn’t attempt to compassionately treat people’s psychological trauma is something that can be cured, but rather sees it just as an insult that can be utilized against your political opponent. A scarlet letter now conveniently placed on the body of trans people.

In the disinformation sphere this move is cunning. It’s a two-pronged attack on two groups of marginalized individuals. A good question to ask might be “ What’s wrong with suffering from mental illness” but the danger of such a response is that it might seem to accept being trans as a mental illness.

The complexity of the response needed to arguing with a reductionist view is also the way the reductionist view can claim victory. So many times, I’ve argued with trolls online and when they weren’t able to respond to my arguments they would just say “No one cares.”

I was arguing with some republican asshole on Facebook who claimed that I was dangerous and had a mental illness because of my art and identity. When I asked what was wrong with having a mental illness, he said “Actually, you give mental illness a bad name”. The irrationally of this didn’t matter, it had its desired effect of pissing me off.

The danger is to become something like Blueanon and begin to try to become more bullying and demeaning than the bullies. For instance, all the jokes about trump being fat. When Nancy Mace attacked Sarah McBride there were a lot of jokes about Nancy mace looking like a man or being trans etc.

The only attack we need to use against someone like Nancy mace is that she’s a political opportunist. Who knows if her bigotry is genuine or not, the important thing is that it energizes her base who likes to see that she’s being cruel to others. This cruelty takes the place of political action when MAGA doesn’t offer political action that helps their constituents, all they offer is a political performance of demeaning those who are not like their supporters.

I don’t think we have to extend empathy towards nazis or fascists but I believe we need to take a more pluralistic view of humanity than they do.

We can’t just say “you think being trans is crazy well I think Trump is crazy”

“You hate trans women well I think Elon musk looks like a trans woman”.

This is not a plea for civility or empathy towards fascism but to avoid moral equivalence between leftist discourse and fascist propaganda. We have to complicate the issue even if it makes us less popular because giving in to the propagandist framing ensures that we’ve already lost our freedom.

THINGS TO DO

Contact your representative

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Write Nancy Mace an angry letter but for god’s sakes don’t threaten her, she uses any threats to make her seem like a persecuted freethinker

https://mace.house.gov/contact

Write Mike Johnson an angry letter for giving in immediately to the worst parts of his party

https://mikejohnson.house.gov/contact/