If the average American were asked what they imagine the priorities of the feminist movement are these days, most people would likely cite concerns like “fighting abortion bans” or “getting justice for sexual violence victims” or boring mainstays like “equal pay for equal work.” But if you listen in to the world of right-wing social media influencers, they have a different answer. To them, feminists are single-mindedly obsessed with destroying women who identify as “tradwives.”
Someone can be “fairly respectful” or “civil” about their views on gender identity & sexuality, but if their message boils down to ideology like “I don’t believe this really exists”, “Be a man or a woman, ffs”, or “These people are all just mentally ill”, it doesn’t really matter how “respectful” they are being if their message / beliefs are harmful to marginalized groups.
I don’t necessarily encourage these kinds of hostile replies, but I can absolutely see where it comes from, and it is absolutely understandable.
If your beliefs can cause or encourages harm, hostility can enforce the message that it is not welcome in these places.
I would also love to know what kind of “left wing agenda” that the commenter is claiming to “cause so much harm” actually is.
It’s something that I have gotten used to hearing even within the “community” particularly from “centrist” gay, lesbian and bi folk. This idea that my freedom to live my life is an impediment to wider acceptance. The implications being that our time is just a little further down the road once things are secure for them then we can have our turn. Maybe… If they feel like it.
Like that means people I know might not get stranded for years between surgeries stuck in pain, have their medications revoked making their endocrine system a fucking mess, be subject to violent crimes because we are not respectable enough to listen to or fight for… That we have to exist with the battery of hope that things could be better running quietly out… To ask yourself if someone you know is going to die in the next election cycle. And then you see the gay guys on the picket lines of the anti trans rallies flaunting their gayness as a weapon to say “even we think they are crazy!” or who act like utter feces when a gay trans man enters a gay club.
The reason the LGBTQIA+ has their no person left behind solidarity is this. The recognition that there is a fight on many fronts and that no one is a fungible pawn because once someone’s got theirs then having gratitude and empathy for the past help of those still fighting is the right thing to do. When people talk about the left abandoning the identity issues they are openly discussing sacrificing us and thankfully some notice and take them to task. True allies understand that to us we are stuck in a Catch 22 and just like the book says “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”