Liberals will lie to you and tell you to “just vote in the primary,” but in reality they simply don’t care about trans rights and do not believe there is ever a right time to challenge transphobic Democrats.
First primary: the transphobes hide their colors so you can’t vote against them.
First general election: the snakes reveal their colors, but you can’t vote against the traitors because “blue no matter who.” They tell you to just vote in the next primary.
Second primary: the same people who tell you now “save it for the primary” shift their tune to “we can’t give up an incumbent seat in a purple district!”
Trans people can see through these bad-faith lies. Yet of course, mansplaining trolls will be sure to breathlessly explain “lesser of two evil” math, as if that’s not an argument we haven’t heard a thousand times and already rejected due to its obvious flaws. There’s never a shortage of arrogant cis people who think they know more about trans issues than actual trans people.
Liberals want your votes, not your voices. Be a good little minority and sit down. Shut up. Support the party. You owe the party your support. The party owes you nothing.
EDIT: A few thoughts to address the comment in the thread here:
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You need to get past your team sports approach to politics. I am not advocating voting against Democrats in general. I’m advocating for not voting for the 1% of Democratic candidates that have chosen to become fascist collaborators and adopt Republican positions on trans rights. To trans people, the Democratic party going TERF is a greater danger than the Republican party winning a slim majority in the Senate. The nightmare scenario here is what happened with Labor. Labor has completely fallen to Nazi collaborators. The UK has regressed in trans rights to now be the most transphobic country in Western Europe, and that happened under the rule of a center-left government. The trans people of the UK would have been better off with another term of conservatives than the transphobic labor leaders they elected instead. We don’t need to elect more Fettermans who will turn around and vote against the party the first chance they get. So many people in this thread believe, “you have to vote for the Nazi collaborators, otherwise the Nazis will win!”
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On saving democracy: you are vastly underestimating how difficult that task is. You seem to imagine you can just write a bill that just says, “democracy saved,” and call it a day. Actually saving democracy is going to require stripping powers from the presidency and dismantling the post-9/11 security state. That requires Democratic leaders of moral strength and conviction. It will take leaders willing to look their constituents in the eye and tell them, “I am going to vote for this bill to dismantle ICE. Yes, that means that occasionally an illegal immigrant is going to murder someone. I’m going to vote for this bill to dismantle the NSA’s illegal programs. Yes, that means we may have more terrorist attacks than we would otherwise. It’s worth it to save our Republic.” Saving democracy requires leaders who are literally willing to vote to kill their fellow Americans. Every power you strip away results in a few more people dying. It’s inevitable. And these transphobe Democrats are fundamentally cowards with no inner moral center. They’ll follow any poll or vote for any policy they think will get them power. This kind of person is not capable of saving democracy. You can’t defeat Nazism by voting in Nazi collaborators, and it’s insane to pretend you can.
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Those arguing that trans rights are a minor or insignificant issue? Frankly, if you believe this, you deserve to have your right to vote taken away. If you’re not willing to protect the vulnerable among your community, you deserve whatever evil befalls you. Karma’s a bitch in that way. We can all go to Hell together if that’s the path you choose.
Even if you can’t be an empathetic human who accepts that everyone should be safe and allowed to exist as who and what they are, you can still be selfish and recognize that attacking transgender rights is also attacking YOUR rights.
If you are referring to the commenter, I think their point is that the fear is irrational in large part because it’s such a small group of people.
I would add to that, there’s no evidence that being trans itself has caused anyone any harm. Even studies of gender affirming treatment shows that an overwhelming number of people treated see an increased quality of life afterwards (98% or more, with the reduce quality being attributed mainly to increased transphobia from others, not regret of the treatment itself).
Yes.
And my point is that even with it being a small group- positively tiny in the scheme of things- it’s still important to protect their human rights.
Because if we erode their right to be who they are, we erode our own right to be who we are- that includes the right to be women who are good at sports, or men who suck at sports.
That includes being a male nurse or so woman firefighter.
Or whatever they’re telling us is appropriate/innapropeiate for what ever one has going on.
They’re using transphobia, fear and hate to attack everyone. Trans persons are vulnerable and need protection, not just because they need and deserve being safe… but also because what happens to the most vulnerable of us will eventually happen to all of us.
I don’t think anyone in this thread would disagree with the principle that the legitimacy of a human right isn’t dependent on the size of a group.
And you are correct that what happens to one group can happen to all. I would take it a step further and say that this is already happening with transphobic laws. Cisgender people are becoming victims of them too. https://www.advocate.com/news/lesbian-mistaken-transgender-arizona-walmart
ya know, i’ve been an ally for a long fucking time
but simply pointing out it sure looks like this is the exact same playbook that put trump in office again and sparked this nightmare leads to downvote brigade
this is the fucking stupid ass shit that causes divide and leads to bad people gaining power, that’s all i’m trying to fucking say in here
I would argue that it is your attitude that leads to people like Trump winning.
There’s a strain of toxic positivity among liberals. You can’t speak ill of the party, definitely not near election time! The idea is that if we simply agree to never discuss the negatives of the party near election time, if we “speak no evil” hard enough, that we can manifest our way to an election victory. It’s been tried again and again, and it fails every time.
It wasn’t Republicans that cost Kamala her election. Republican troll accounts didn’t invent lies about her Gaza policies and then spread them using bot accounts. Kamala threw her own base under the bus, and as a direct result of her own choices, lost the election.
She didn’t lose because of the evil machinations of Republican divide-and-conquer tactics. She lost because she betrayed her core voters.
I absolutely despise the liberal impulse to smear any criticism as Republican or Russian meddling. If anything, it causes people to reject Democrats even more. No one likes being told that certain topics are forbidden or beyond discussion. And while you can vote scold people until the cows come home, no one is actually going to be shamed into voting for candidates that betray them.