i dream of being possible

the last frontier in sexual bigotry transgender rights la times

The last frontier in sexual bigotry: transgender rights – LA Times.

i have… so many negative feelings about this framework. i mean.

how can trans rights be the ‘last frontier’ of the movement/s started by twoc at stonewall?

there is a lot of violent erasure and historical revisionism necessary in order to make this headline coherent.

My conjecture was that transgender rights were being attacked because that was the last option for those inclined to sexual discrimination. In a world where gays and lesbians were increasingly accepted in society, in their families, and in popular culture, politicians hoping to solidify their standing among the more bigoted members of their base had few other victims to aim at. The transgender community was still sufficiently unfamiliar to the public, its voice seldom heard, so it served as an easy target for any office-seeker looking to ride the us-vs.-them wave.

yes. sort of. but not really. like. we can’t pretend like it was a specific political strategy of Gay Inc to push twoc out and into the darkness in order to achieve their precious homonationalist recognition.

and i’m seeing more and more of this type of claim. that trans rights are finally coming up and we too will be able to assimilate to the white supremacist settler state!

except.

except.

the issue is, is that there will be no large inter/national movement towards pushing trans ‘rights’ like our ability to access public accommodations. there will be no multi-million dollar funded organizations and advocacy groups. no one is going to mobilize.

you know why?

bc the problem facing the ‘trans rights movement’ is different than Gay Inc.

mainly because UNLIKE Gay Inc trans ppl deal with bullshit gender essentialist/reductionist shit from both the right AND the left. this article points out how conservative politicians are beginning to single out trans ppl in their platforms, but they never needed to pay much attention to trans ppl bc ppl on the left were already doing the most to ensure we lacked access to necessary spaces and resources.

like.

vancouver rape relief has been happily and legally excluding trans women from its beginning without the need of any conservative politician chiming in and saying that ‘biological males should be kept away from vulnerable people’ like REAL women. and transmisogyny on the left isn’t restricted or the sole domain of radfems. i’ve seen the same shit in the radical eco justice movement, the same in the socialist/marxist movements, etc and so on. indeed… as radfems show the more putatively radical the group the more likely they are to enforce and support transmisogyny. just as the more conservative the group the same.

the problem too is that we can’t rely on centrists to do anything because there isn’t really a centre any more. overall politics have become too polarized in either direction (but have overall shifted to the right).

basic takeaway: conservatives moving to enshrine in laws what is already practiced might be a new thing, but the transmisogyny and violence that motivates it isn’t and it is a shared quality of the left and the right.

and whatever gains teh ~trans movement~ is able to make will do little or nothing to actually address the problems that leads to the violent deaths of so many twoc.