by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So. I was dumb and waded into the Trans movement issue on Tik-Tok and now I have people doing heated video stiches to a post I felt was rather equatable. The Left’s Trans orthodox is so absolute, so inflexible that I really worry about our future.
I’m generally supportive of Trans rights and that isn’t really the issue.
What IS the issue is how the Left has such an absolute fixed orthodoxy on the issue that a lot of Traditionalists who are coming at the situation in good faith are being driven into the arms of fucking MAGA Nazi fascists because of the Left’s freak out.
This is a real possibility, if my conversations with my Traditionalists relatives are any indication. Our small-d democratic politics collapses if one side wants to destroy or “cancel” you if you don’t tow their orthodoxy. I hate orthodoxy of any sort and so the idea that even by trying to approach the Trans issue as a pluralist will get me in trouble is really fucking annoying.
Now, something I think a lot about is contrasting and comparing the Trans movement with the African American civil rights movement. I freely admit that some of the arguments that are used against Trans people have, in the past, been used against African Americans demanding more rights.
And yet.
There is the moral element. For your typical Christian conservative, the very idea of being gay is really loaded — a sin, even — so to take this to the next level where you struggle to answer the question of “What is a woman” is a bit much for them.
We can’t just destroy Christian Traditionalists for thinking this way. Even at the height of the Civil Rights Era, there was a certain amount of give and take on what was going on.
It serves no one in a functioning democracy if you are so absolute in your orthodoxy on a subject that people who disagree with you have a credible fear of being publicly shamed.
So, to be clear — I generally support Trans rights. I just think maybe Trans right advocates could be a LITTLE BIT more flexible in their ideology.
