Breaking Into The Echo Chamber

  

Yesterday I wrote an article about the Dear South Africa petition post on Facebook against the implementation of gender sensitivity training for children at schools across South Africa.

Of course, sometimes I just can't help myself, and I happened to leave a comment on the Facebook thread as well - which naturally attracted the attention (and ire) of all kinds of nutters who are the sort of people who believe all the bullshit meme-like trash being put out there about LGBT+ people - you know the sort - that we're "groomers", that transwomen transition in order to molest children or women in public bathrooms, or because we find participating in women's sport so much less of a challenge.

The hate from people like this is palpable and tangible. This article will focus on the sort of propaganda-based arguments used by transphobes and homophobes to attack attempts to bring inclusiveness and understanding of diversity into classrooms that appear to be universal when it comes to their source - imported right wing propaganda.

Lock Up Your Schools, The Transgenders Are Coming!

There I was, just minding my own business, when an ad from Dear South Africa - that's right, the petition website portraying itself as a civic-minded action entity - crossed my feed.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the heading "Have your say on the Department of Basic Education's gender ideology training programme".

The...what?

The actual FUCK did I just read?

Wait-a-minute... Why is this even an issue?

And if you're thinking "this is bound to be another case of hysterical screaming, and panicked arm-waving again", well - you'd be perfectly right.

A Goose-Step Too Far

So J.K. Rowling is a Holocaust denier now.

Since she first kicked the door of her right wing closet open a good few years ago now to launch an unprovoked 'total war' against transwomen, Rowling started taking large steps - you might say goose-steps - up the staircase of fascism, and with each step, the sound becoming increasingly reminiscent of the ominous stomp of jack-boots.

Even before Rowling started crowing the anti-science TERF rhetoric which gathered to her a new base of transphobes to feed from the trough at her feet, there were those who had reservations about her anti-Semitic characterizations of the goblins in her stories, just as much as there were those who undoubtedly enjoyed and approved of them.

But as I watched over the past few years, I saw Rowling being increasingly fawned over by the sort of low-brow creatures like those who cheered on while Magnus Hirschfeld's institute and all his pioneering work in understanding and helping transgender women was fed to the incinerator of base national-socialist populism. 

So you see, for some time, I've had a pretty fair idea that it wouldn't be too long before she went full neo-Nazi.

As it turns out, I wasn't wrong.

The Pride Flag Murder - A Reflection

Last week in California, Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton, a 66 year old woman was shot dead in cold blood by someone who can only be described as a domestic terrorist who took issue with a rainbow flag displayed outside her business. 

The terrorist in question was named as one Travis Ikeguchi, a slavering and brainwashed devotee of the Trump/MAGA cult.

While this event may appear at first glance to be a simple hate crime, or yet another commonplace shooting incident, one of many that has already taken place across the USA just this year alone, there are actually more facets to this event than initially meet the eye.

'It's Just A Joke'

I just blocked another old school "friend" on Facebook for posting a transphobic "joke". 

Honestly, what some people think is funny at the expense of other people's suffering is quite beyond me.

It's not satire, because satire is meant to make fun of powerful institutions and people who are literally untouchable as far as ordinary people are concerned. Satire doesn't attack people who are vulnerable and victimized by society, or dehumanize them, or add weight or legitimacy to the arguments against them. 

What this constitutes is, in fact, bullying.

I mean, are you posting this sort of asinine infantile garbage because you think that letting people know you think the suffering of other people is genuinely funny, is somehow not going to hurt anyone - least of all the people whose suffering you're making a mockery of? Do you expect them to not be hurt by it simply because you're the one sharing it, and you're ostensibly their friend? Or do you simply not care?

Are you so self-centered or disconnected from your own humanity that you're somehow oblivious to the fact that you're actively rubbing salt in the wounds of any transgender people watching, and that you're basically laughing in their faces at their discomfort, their pain and their very real fears that they may be next?

Sharing material like that publicly, knowing that you have transgender people on your friends list, especially people you were friends at school with and know in real life? And doing so at a time when transgender people are being marginalized and being fucking murdered just for existing? 

What the fuck is wrong with you? 

My Rage Is Forged In Death

Another mass shooting in the USA isn't really exceptional these days, after all, it happens every other day, doesn't it?

 

Even so, the fact that it's taken for granted - and NOTHING gets done to address this growing problem is a striking indictment of the country that loves to bill itself as a bastion of the freedoms of speech and expression and as "the land of the free". Sadly it seems that inanimate objects in the shape of guns, have more rights than living, bleeding human beings do.

On the 20th another mass shooting took place, this time in an LGBT club in Colorado. Another cowardly white supremacist Christian terrorist has struck down people who had never interfered with him or his own life, nor threatened him in any way, shape or form. 

Let me point out that this is a case in point why I don't write for the masses. The masses are stupid. Stupid people hate those who differ from them for being different. Granted, a small part of that majority are stupid enough to commit violent acts of terror fueled by the stupidity shared with the greater whole of stupidity, but the stupidity is shared and the same.

About That Blank Check

A topical favorite of religious people, particularly conservative Christians, is so-called 'sexual immorality'. 

 What is that exactly? 

To the rational mind, that would mean sexual-related activity which (so long as all participants are willing, consenting adults) results in harm to another person, or creature.

A system creates shame and then creates a means of absolving the shamed of their shame, provided they adhere to the rules of those who run the system. Convenient. 

Bigotry & Transphobia Stirs In South Africa - Again!

What really grated my carrot this week was part of the public reaction to the news that a transwoman had entered that archaic relic of the patriarchy which shamelessly puts women on show like cattle, the Miss South Africa contest!

It seems that as soon as things are nice and quiet and the bigots have stopped shouting for a little while, something happens to spark them off again - soon as they've more-or-less recovered from the disappointment that expressing racism and using the "k-word" in public gets people in trouble - the Karens come out screeching about how transgender people are somehow unfairly competing against them in x, y or z public domains and spaces, that "he-shes" don't belong in women's competitions (or in fact anywhere), and even that "god" created male and female, and apparently "doesn't make mistakes"!

This sort of idiotic Neanderthal mindset makes me bristle - so much so that it inspired my first LGBT activism-related article in quite some time!

So the news in question was that a local transwoman (a lady from PE called Zoe) is entering the Miss South Africa contest. It was in the Herald on Thursday morning, and by late afternoon every right wing lunatic bigot, transphobic halfwit and pious religious wanker who knows fuck-all about science, gender or what transwomen - and especially transwomen of color - endure in this country (or everywhere else) on a daily basis, started making an effort to vent their unintelligible hysterical bile in public. 

Give America Hope Again - A Few Thoughts On The 2020 US Election

The years 2016 to 2020 will surely go down in history as the period during which the USA was forced to see itself in the mirror without makeup for the first time... when they realized that there are and always have been more than one "America"... as it is perceived by different kinds of Americans... victims, champions, bystanders - and perpetrators... a period of internal schism, self-examination, blame, denial, anger, sorrow, revulsion, self-recrimination, introspection and reckoning.

Doubling Down On Stupidity Doesn't Make It Any Less Stupid

The J.K. Rowling saga has been going on for quite a while now, since last year if memory serves. Just this past week however, Ms. Rowling appears to have unseated several silly internet meme trends and other media red herrings to take the top-spot in my Facebook and Twitter feed.

Rowling has come under fire - and rightly so - for not just supporting TERFs via her Twitter account, but likewise, regurgitating patently ignorant TERF nonsense - attacking the validity of transgender people, and also their acceptance as women.

What Does Being Transgender Bring To My Writing?

Hello! :)

Today I'd like to discuss the question: "What does being transgender bring to my writing?"

It's a question I was asked recently by someone, and so after a little thought, I'm here to answer it.

It's 2019 now, and it's been 19 years since I started transition and 13 years since I had my final surgeries. As a matter of interest, since I woke up after my "big op" on January 10, 2006, I felt completely natural - and above all, whole and complete! As a result, I sometimes have to stop and think to remember what it was like to have grown up and lived a male life.

What Is A Bigot?

What is a bigot, I have been asked. Well, what is a bigot? According to that treasure house of knowledge Wikipedia, "A bigot is a person who is intolerant of or takes offense to the opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own, and bigotry is the corresponding attitude or mindset. Bigot is often used as a pejorative term to describe a person who is obstinately devoted to prejudices, especially when these views are either challenged, or proven to be false or not universally applicable or acceptable.

The origin of the word bigot and bigoterie in English dates back to at least 1598, via Middle French, and started with the sense of "religious hypocrite" Forms of bigotry may have a related ideology or world views."

Gee, it looks like there have been bigots for quite a long time - and especially religious bigots.