Tired of All This Chaos

It's been a rough few weeks for people who are sensible and moderate in words and deeds (though I'm not referring to political moderates here). The shootings in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, have started a bunch of discussions on social media - though crucially not in the US Senate - that have become increasingly acerbic and have led to people further entrenching themselves into their own beliefs, even when those beliefs are clearly misguided.

At the same time, far-right agitators are being galvanized by laws like Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill to disrupt LGBTQ people's lives. They claim they're protecting children from pedophiles (i.e. grooming), but as usual with the right, it's a bad-faith effort to tar their opponent with the most outrageous claim they can find. The latest one was a storybook reading at a library near here in San Lorenzo, which a bunch of Proud Boys disrupted because it involved a book about a drag show.

Leaving aside whether you think it's okay to expose kids to stuff like drag shows (and to be clear, it's nowhere near as bad as all the violence they see constantly in cartoons, comics, TV and the news), it's definitely not okay to have a bunch of adult men in vaguely military get-ups coming into their space and causing a scene. I'm heartened that the San Lorenzo Police put a quick stop to the invasion and said in unequivocal terms that such things wouldn't be tolerated. But I'm also concerned that far-right accounts like "Libs of Tik Tok" are directing extremists toward events like this (that POS who runs it shared it on her account, in the hopes that exactly this would happen).

But do you know what I'm really concerned by? The way certain elements that portray themselves as left or progressive are also enabling this kind of hate against LGBTQ people. I've been following this on UK media for a while, ever since JK Rowling mounted her increasingly ludicrous defenses of so-called "gender critical" ideology. Rowling herself is pretty progressive on other topics, and so are a number of other high-profile TERFs in UK media, but it's becoming clear that giant parts of the media there subscribe to similar ideas.

For example, I was really grossed out by a column in the Guardian from Sonia Sodha, who used to be an advisor to former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. In the column, Sodha took up the cause of a lesbian barrister who'd been asked to delete tweets saying she didn't want to have relationships with trans women. Sodha is outraged, OUTRAGED I say, at the idea that lesbians are being forced to have sex with men - her own terminology, and it's not happening - and that... er, I guess at the idea that maybe it's not something a barrister should be tweeting about? 

There are a number of offensive things about Sodha's column: one is the way she keeps referring to trans women as "men". Another is her clear concern-trolling, given that she herself is straight. Yet another is the TERF's classic tactic of not actually backing up their statements with concrete evidence: she provides a link to a statement that "women report being banned from dating apps" for saying they want to date cisgender women, but the link actually leads to a blog post by Helen Joyce (who's recently suggested trans people should be put in camps) about this exact case. You have to scroll down about 12 paragraphs to actually find an example, and Joyce provides... one.

I normally love the Guardian, but Sodha's joined in her TERFdom by Hadley Freeman, among probably several others. In the end, they can hold their ideas, even if said ideas are wrong-headed and destructive, but it worries me when someone supposedly progressive graduates beyond just distaste for a group to following someone who advocates for their destruction. At the very least, she and Freeman could probably go write for the Daily Mail or something? They'll get a warm reception there.

(Also, yes, I use the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist to describe this ideology. because Judith Butler put it best: excluding trans women from feminist spaces is a radical ideology. Why is this controversial? Also, while you're at it, read Butler here as well)

To tie this into the above: the far-right is being emboldened by people on the supposedly progressive side who are using chilling language to advocate against trans people. We're already on the brink (or past the brink) of political violence becoming a part of our daily lives, and we don't need our supposed allies to open a new front and provide aid and comfort to our enemies.

Do better, Guardian.