The biggest problem with the Trans specific community is that there’s a lot of hesitation from within and surrounding allies to call out the crazy stuff that’s being pushed. Most people are okay, for example, with queer books being in schools. Most people are not okay with pornography in certain books. Can’t we push queer books that talk about age-appropriate sexuality without pictures of people giving blow jobs to strap-ons? My mom would have had a fit if she found anything like that between straight couples in my school library.
So, it comes out that some books contain this explicit material, and instead of the queer activists/supporters saying: “Alright, yeah, this material shouldn’t be here. How about replacing them with these queer books that don’t contain explicit material?” They said: “fuck you, there’s nothing wrong with this, you’re just a bigoted transphobe.”
That’s where we’re losing a lot of support. Because most people draw a line at explicit material for those underage. If they physically see that it’s there, and advocates are shouting that it’s not there (and if it is there, that it’s a good thing anyway 🙄) then rational supporters are going to take a big step back and say “whoa, that’s going too far.” And you’re going to get some who say: “yeah, let’s take it all out, at least until we can be sure the explicit stuff is gone.” The tactic of denying that the explicit stuff exists in the face of reality does not work. It causes people to pull away instead of supporting the overall goal.
The biggest problem with the Trans specific community is that there’s a lot of hesitation from within and surrounding allies to call out the crazy stuff that’s being pushed. Most people are okay, for example, with queer books being in schools. Most people are not okay with pornography in certain books. Can’t we push queer books that talk about age-appropriate sexuality without pictures of people giving blow jobs to strap-ons? My mom would have had a fit if she found anything like that between straight couples in my school library.
So, it comes out that some books contain this explicit material, and instead of the queer activists/supporters saying: “Alright, yeah, this material shouldn’t be here. How about replacing them with these queer books that don’t contain explicit material?” They said: “fuck you, there’s nothing wrong with this, you’re just a bigoted transphobe.”
That’s where we’re losing a lot of support. Because most people draw a line at explicit material for those underage. If they physically see that it’s there, and advocates are shouting that it’s not there (and if it is there, that it’s a good thing anyway 🙄) then rational supporters are going to take a big step back and say “whoa, that’s going too far.” And you’re going to get some who say: “yeah, let’s take it all out, at least until we can be sure the explicit stuff is gone.” The tactic of denying that the explicit stuff exists in the face of reality does not work. It causes people to pull away instead of supporting the overall goal.