Here’s one thing.
Sometimes there are large-scale political events that leave me utterly baffled. I have this distinct memory from just after 911, where the news shifted to “we’re gonna go to war with Iraq” and I was like, “wait, what the frick does Iraq have to do with 911?”. Nothing, was and is the answer the that. The powers-that-be had some other corrupt fricking agenda to satisfy and pulled the country into that mess, destroying countless lives.
Here’s another thing.
A little while back, I was watching the documentary God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty. It’s about Jerry Falwell Jr., this corrupt fricking dude who was the president of some huge horrible Christian university. His wife liked to bone the pool boy and make him film it, which would be kinda hot if it was consensual and didn’t turn into blackmail and horrible behavior. Not to mention the complete and utter hypocrisy of presiding over a university where the students can’t even hold hands.
But the bigger thing that stuck with me was dude’s dad, Jerry Faldwell Sr. This motherfucker was one of those megachurch TV evangelist dudes. There is a part in the documentary that shows how at one point, he’s just fishing around for something, any hot topic, that will massively engage his base. He tried this and that, dangling an outrage worm in front of audiences while Tucker Carlson was waddling around in diapers. Then he found the perfect thing: abortion. He likely didn’t give a shit about abortion, but he found it was the absolute perfect thing to get his audience rip-roaring. So he made it his whole thing for a while. He wasn’t even political at all before this, but then found that going political with abortion was an even more potent outrage cocktail.
Here’s why I bring up those things.
That’s what all this political anti-trans garbage feels like. Trans people have always had it super rough, but it still feels like, all of a sudden, this is the massive groundswell of very real action against trans people. It’s like the weird pivot to Iraq. It’s like the ooooh abortion that’s a good one! pivot. There is absolutely no reason for it. I find it likely that many of the people behind it don’t even care about trans people one way or the other, it just happens to be a potent outrage cocktail that is helping build political power for a party where outrage cocktails seem to be the only recipe that works lately. Damned if countless lives are ruined along the way.
