Helen Zille, Using Dehumanizing Language, Incites Hate Against SA Transgender Community!

So transgender people are "a contagion"? So I'm a "contagion", am I, Helen Zille?

The use of dehumanizing language like this is absolutley outrageous, horrifying and beyond the fucking pale! Such hateful dehumanizing language is the dominion of Nazis, eugenicists and megalomaniacs - not of anyone presenting themselves as champions of democracy, equality and human rights! I'm truly shocked to see someone who was once considered those things deteriorate to such an extent as to be completely unrecognizeable.

At this point, the back of her neck should be checked for a zipper - to see if she's some sort of reptillian hiding in a human suit. How utterly cold-blooded and utterly evil must she be to begrudge a persecuted minority (as transgender people are worldwide) simple legal dignities and protections from persecution?

Make no mistake, Zille has been captured by transphobic propaganda - which defies logic, science and common sense, and has forsaken things the rest of us take for granted - compassion, humanity, and empathy.

What's most concerning about this is that Zille - clearly an out-of-touch dinosaur desperately seeking to remain relevant on the stage of current affairs, has been the main reason for the DA's lurch towards the extreme right in the last 10 years: support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, and her loud-mouthed attacks on transgender people made in social media and circulated in the press, to name just two examples.

As a South African transwoman this sort of blatant transphobic incitement to hatred is deeply troubling - especially when it comes from a leader of a party that supposedly contradicts the claimed ethos and principles of that party.

The DA refused to censure her previous TERF remarks attacking transgender people - which were as based in ignorance and malicious stupidity as her latest diatribe - on the grounds that "she has a right to her opinion". Well, no, she doesn't - "free speech" does not include permission to utter hate speech - especially not when she's a leading figure of a political party using that platform and her fame and influence to incite hatred and intolerance for an already persecuted minority group.

If the DA will not speak out or take action against Zille, then that is an admission that they fully agree with her. In which case, their entire premise, principles, mandate, ethos and platform, is a lie. In which case I hope every trans-ally, every LGBTQ+ South African, every person with a conscience and an aversion to a culture of hate and scapegoating, ceases their support for that party forthwith.

Suffice it to say, that if global news coverage of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is not sufficient to dissuade the "Democratic Alliance" from supporting Israel to the hilt, why would they care a damn about their "fearless leader" inciting hatred against transgender South Africans from the platform of her fame and influence in her DA leadership role?

This latest scandal of Zille's utterances of hatred - which praise the actions of hate abroad while also inciting more actions of hate HERE in South Africa - in the midst of already horrific hate rising in the UK against the mere existence of transgender people AND in the US, where transgender people are being legislated into criminality simply for existing - is simply unacceptable! In fact, it is diabolical!

Some sort of action MUST be taken against her for this. There HAS to be consequences for uttering such blatant hate, because it inciteful - and it's obvious what she will attempt to do next, as a politician of high influence within the DA - she will attempt to replicate the actions of her role-models in the UK and US here in South Africa.

Home Truths

I think everyone should experience what its like to lose their rights, even just for an hour or two, so they know how it hurts when you think how it might be to go through life being made to feel like a second-class citizen - a pariah, based solely on something you ARE, something you can't change or help being - something those in power see as wrong or undesirable, particularly for no good reason other than they feel like it, or their old favorite excuse - "cos we say so".

I imagine it would do people like Errol Naidoo, the South African Deputy Minister of Home Affairs (Gigaba), The Minister of Arts and Culture (Lulu Xingwana), Pastor "God-Squad" Ray McCauley and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (to say nothing of our own Kiddie Amin) a world of good. Dr. James Dobson too - even though he has been put out to pasture recently, he has left a legacy of hatred and prejudice (and a trail of misguided parents a mile wide) that can be called his hallmark - the so-called "Culture War" we still feel the effects of today.

Building A Better Mouse Trap

I noted the other day the similarities between some ancient South American religions and modern puritanical Christian fundamentalism. This is of course, only my conclusion - but feel free to take it all with a pinch of salt (and, if it is your "world-view", light):

The Maya, Toltec and Inca practiced human sacrifice of their enemies to satisfy the wrath of their blood-thirsty gods. Oddly enough, despite this minor shortcoming, we miss the contribution their cultures made to the body of scientific knowledge we as a society would have benefited from today. For one thing, their method for predicting the end of time and all life on earth by December in two years time, would've been quite nice (thank you, Mr Cortez). It would have been nice to know if they were accurate, scientific - or just smoking their orchids at the time. I am sure there will be some people who will actually give away all their worldly goods a day early and go sit on the nearest mountain to get a good view of the end of the world. I hope they remember to take pop-corn, if anything to make the trip worth anything.

Sadly, the records and knowledge of these ancient and (in some ways) highly civilized cultures were all but completely destroyed by the Spanish marauders when they conquered South America. Today we know they indulged in practices such as genocide and "ethnic cleansing" while under the mistaken impression that they were doing "God's work", while stealing land and hunting treasure. I don't wish to be a pain, but this seems strangely familiar, don't you think?

Christian fundamentalists today may not actually kill the people they don't approve of, or consider their enemies in their temples - but they certainly do make the gesture by destroying and endeavoring to destroy their lives in the world outside their churches.