I really wish being gay didn't come with a free membership card to a club of wacko leftist queers that I can't refuse.
Like, I can't avoid this shit.
I go out to a gay bar with a couple friends and all of a sudden I'm listening to their plans to LARP a revolution. I thirst follow some dude on Instagram and all of a sudden I'm subjected to clips of Hasan Piker and calls to kill Jews. All my old friends have gone down the alt left pipeline and been radicalized. I can't go to a new gay bar or join a new gay group because those spaces attract so many fuckin radicals.
To the point where on social media old friends of mine are making immature call-out posts saying I'm a Zionist Nazi whatever whatever (because apparently it's still 2013 and we never grew up)
Even outside the antisemitism I can't even go into LGBT spaces anymore without being accosted by radical politics
No, I don't want to talk about "how queerness is inherently an act of rebellion", I want to sip my fruity drink with my limp wrist and talk about musicals and how men are hot
It is absolutely bizarre how isolated I feel from the LGBT community simply by being a fuckin normie lib (notwithstanding being Jewish!!)
Why tf are all gays radicals now
Lotta stuff here that I think is all important to talk about. Here's my perspective:
The closest big label you could apply to me is probably socialist, but I have a lot of anarchist friends.
Seeing mainstream democrats completely abandon trans folks has demolished a lot of queer support for anyone even close to being moderate
Idk how much this goes for my friends, but personally seeing the level of corruption going on with campaign finance (and also democrats folding under zero pressure against the "big beautiful bill") has further impressed upon me that Something Needs to Change
Antisemitism is absolutely a huge problem in farther left spaces. We've gotta do something about it, but I'm not really sure what else to do personally. I am just Not Friends with people who are antisemitic and already don't put up with that shit in my spaces.
Revolution LARPers who want to overthrow the government but won't do their own damn dishes always exist, and for the most part I ignore them or occasionally explain to them that they should try joining a union first
I am personally involved in disability advocacy activism because academia has tried to kill me for the crime of having ADHD. It will not succeed and I'm not gonna take it lying down.
I am personally a huge advocate of labor organization, because frankly I don't really want to be an activist, but the current state of labor laws and pay in the US is so fucked that I just cannot stand by without doing something about it. Also I want to be able to afford living and I want everyone else to be able to afford it too.
Basically I'm involved in activism because I want things to be good enough that I don't have to be involved in activism
There are LOTS of young people getting organized right now who are young and inexperienced and haven't learned the lessons of their organizing elders, such as "you have to separate activism and living life in order to not have severe activism fatigue" (re: you want to sip your fruity drink with your limp wrist and talk about musicals and how men are hot)
I want to do that too, but I still want to be involved with shit outside of that. People need more clear delineations between social events and activism events.
Are the "mainstream democrats completely abandoning trans folks" in the room with us right now?
Legitimately WHERE are so many leftists getting their information from??
Projection
Leftists will eagerly throw away Trans and all other queer people, just as they did Black and Jewish people
One thing is for certain, and it's that they aren't getting it from anyone reliably reporting on reality. Still boggles my mind how people continue to insist Biden never did anything. Like hello, we got lots of things? Steps towards union protection, trans kids covered under Title IX, cheaper ACA premiums and the elimination of the sibsidy cliff, as much student loan forgiveness as Biden could muster with Republicans attempting to block it every step of the way and more in almost certainly forgetting or happened but I didn't hear about.
But no, let's pretend dems don't care about anything or anyone and just sit around doing nothing, I guess? I feel like the fact the best these people can give as motive is "actually, it's a conspiracy where they work together to ratchet politics eternally rightword" or similar shit says everything.
#gonna be a while before i forget that stupid political ratchet graphic i read once#like maybe what you're actually observing is the fact dems are never in power long enough to do anything#well anything more than damage control and basic repair work#has something to do with how politics keep getting yanked eternally rightword
Are y'all joking? We have people touting Gavin Newsom as a presidential candidate and he's chucking trans people under the bus as hard as he can. Mr. Mayonnaise himself, Pete Buttigieg, has been mealy-mouthing about "fairness in sports". Elizabeth Warren is ignoring everybody yelling "hey maybe stop endorsing KOSA because it's really bad for trans people especially." Tons of normal Democrat consultants keep talking about how protecting Trans rights is a losing strategy.
And like, I could pull a lot more examples, but I have shit to do and y'all are not arguing in good faith anyway.
Has every mainstream Democrat abandoned trans people? No. Have "mainstream Democrats [that is, individual high-profile people] completely abandoned trans people"?
YES. That has happened.
Fuck's sake.
Hope Pisoni | Uncloseted Media Weekly Newsletter
AND ANOTHER THING: that bill you cite up there? That didn't happen on the first round of legislation. That happened after a HUGE pressure campaign from trans people and our allies.
So yes, those liberals are in the room with me: I'M LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU.
I just want to stay on something for a sec
I want to sip my fruity drink with my limp wrist and talk about musicals and how men are hot
It is absolutely bizarre how isolated I feel from the LGBT community simply by being a fuckin normie lib
Sipping that fruity drink and talking openly about how men are hot are (extremely precarious) rights that were won for you, in living memory, by the same sort of "radicals" you're busy scoffing at.
The Queer Community is an inherently political concept. I don't mean gayness as a radical act, I mean in the sense of a coalition, a bloc of similarly-situated individuals who can exercise power more effectively together. I'm a trans lesbian. You're, from what I can tell, a cis gay man. Our experiences of queerness probably do not overlap much, except at the basic level of "I will stand up for you if you will stand up for me." That it. That's the whole agreement. Because we are marginalized in similar ways by the people who would see us both stripped of our autonomy.
So of course you feel isolated from the community — what you're engaging in — a fruity drink, Drag Race, some tacky shit from the Target pride collection, whatever — is queer consumerism. Community requires the work of active participation. It cannot be bought. No one's asking you to quit your job and join the revolution full time, and being in queer spaces does not require defending the ideas of every wingnut who steps through the door. But if you want to be let off the hook for refusing to put the minimum amount of work in, you won't get that from me. I know the temptation is strong to say "this shouldn't have to be my problem!" And it shouldn't. But it is.
