DiscussionListening to someone on the right wing of politics (Emily Jashinsky) analyze my "side" of the political spectrum this week has extremely interesting connections to how gay rights have become crazy "LGBTQ+ rights."

submitted by Q-Continuum-kin from self.LGBDropTheT

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[–]julesburm1891 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Disclaimer: I’m coming at this from a very American perspective.

There was a Bo Burnham song my friends liked in high school. It had a lyric that went something like “being the owner of a company that makes rape whistles / you started the company with good intentions / but now you don’t want the rates of rape to decline / because your sales rates will also decline.”

That’s kind of what it feels like looking at the left right now. They started with really noble intentions of wanting equal rights for LGB people. Then, our struggle became a massive part of their image. We’re now stuck in a situation where it really seems like they aren’t interested in just letting us be with equal rights because that curtails their “virtuous” brand. In order to prolong this, the demands are getting ever more frivolous and the gates have been thrown wide open to anyone who wants to pretend to be “queer.” Meanwhile, most of the LGB adults I know irl are just hanging out like “nah, I’m cool with being able to get married, not being able to be fired for being gay, and a pretty big shift in public opinion in our favor. Can we just chill out now?”

[–]yousaythosethingsFind and Replace "gatekeeping" with "having boundaries" 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Perfect example. This was a big shift in my changing worldview that came from peaking. I became disillusioned with big supposed Charity organizations that weren’t tied to the local community.

We still need institutional support IMO and obv we will need more as great society inevitably hits peak trans. Homophobia remains a problem in the west even in liberal areas but it doesn’t play into black and white us vs. them narratives that others can use to claim moral high ground over others. I would love for us to be thought of as boring so we can just move on handling our own shit.

Plus no one can eliminate all of the discomfort that comes from being different or the opposite of everyone else. Pretending there’s no difference between us and heterosexual people and prohibiting discussion about our differences doesn’t help. That’s why we have each other and need to be able to identify ourselves and each other with common language. We are what makes each other feel at ease and OK with ourselves. It’s each other who helps us get used to being out and about with same sex partners while we act like and other human beings. It’s not randos carrying around rainbow lanyards at work or making dogmatic Facebook posts that give us that comfort.