Notes
… the idea that society has recently become polarized in some unprecedented way, that we've all become extremists, that, in some sense, we've all become the Westboro Baptist Church.
The problem is Megan's views about this only make sense if you assume that Megan is the main character of reality. If you assume that the moral improvement of bigots is more important than protecting the people they target.
Brief notes:
• Many people in recovery from themselves will try to mitigate the magnitude of what they have done by trying to redistribute their share onto other people.
― The idea, for instance, that everyone is
prejudiced and
prejudicial in some affecting way, is the sort of thing a recovering neo-Nazi might say along the way to
parsing the difference between that
general pretense and the
particular experiences of his own tale. The
pretense↑ that everyone is a
bigot, to the other,
erases those very differences in order to hide particular behavior in general noise. The difference is pretty significant toward outcomes, and, turns out it comes up along the way.
• The moral improvement of bigots is always a tricky consideration because, while the pretense is active in discourse, the big complication is that it doesn't make sense to the folks who don't see any need for improvement.
― Tabula rasa suggestions of kid-gloving bigots in hopes of convincing them to improve their moral circumstance should be viewed warily, as the blank-slate perspective stands out, especially in well-trod issues, for being so utterly ignorant.
What is never clear is just how much we need to clear the deck for the moral improvement of bigots. It's as if everyone else needs to not just back off, but disappear, and wait for the bigot to change while sympathizers encourage that it's okay, one hasn't done anything wrong. And if all the immoral, wrong people just shut the fuck up and go away and stay that way for long enough, then the bigot will no longer be a bigot. By
that argument↗, bigotry is only solved by being fulfilled, and that's why people should
"graciously"↗ give the bigots what they want.
†
And then: There is also a question these people do not wish to address:
As long as you say it with a smile, then it's okay?
Is there a
polite way to tell someone they have no civil, human, or constitutional rights?
Is there a
polite way to falsely accuse someone of being a groomer? For instance, if I point out that come-lately anti-trans sympathizers are throwing in with
actual groomers↗, plenty of those sympathizers might complain regardless of how the line is delivered. But it's ten years later, and
vis à vis the people who train up their girls to act more girly because they're training up the boys to expect it, we can only wonder how many people think the
real grooming problem is the idea that girls should be who they are. Compared to training her up to be a proper and submissive wife in support of her righteous husband possessor, it seems strange that telling kids to be who they are is what passes for grooming.
Or, wait, let me guess: None of our Rowling supporters or middle-roaders remember
that period↱, either.)
But here's the tricky part (not really):
• If we go back and look at the
Deutsch cartoon↑, from 2021, that's Matt Waslh doing the "men wearing dresses" bit, but
is it transphobic? After all, he
says he's got nothing against trans people. But inasmuch as that's a cartoon caricature—
—there is also reality to provide certain contrast: When you back Rowling, these are your allies. If you cast about for a middle road, this is what you're trying to shield.
It was
almost six years ago↗ when I wasn't quite joking about the British terf wars landing in my socmed feed—
What stands out most is the idea that this so-called radicalism is apparently really popular feminism in Her Majesty's dominion, and it's only when I look at the proverbial everything else that goes on in this period that it really does make sense: There is a reason why such feminism should be popular among the British, as it strives to help women achieve their proper place and potential under a man. Of course British radicalism aims to serve traditional power.
—but this time later the anti-trans argument has only managed to reinforce the point, over and over, both in general and particular. That is, it's not just the British version; one of the reasons it seemed easy enough to see coming is that it simply isn't new.
Indeed, neither is the part where we start at the question of supremacist sympathies contributing to the election of supremacists, and end up at doubting supremacism (
e.g.,
#434↑, "But
are these transphobic?"); while the effort to dilute the word "bigot" seemed something of an outlier for being unusually direct and pointed, the more general idea that we might avoid the infamy of supremacism by doubting the boundaries of supremacism is predictable near to axiomatic.
But the point remains: This anti-trans pretense is a segregationist human rights argument dependent on segregationist presupposition. And if the standard is to just
say it with a smile↗, all
polite-like↗, one must smile like their face aches in order to pretend discriminatory stratification, exclusion, and diminution of fellow human beings for the sake of superstition is in any way polite.
And that's the thing about the idea that "we've all become the Westboro Baptist Church": Is that intended to raise Westboro's status, or drag everyone else down? One way to look at it is the threshold of telling someone to fuck off, or some similar retort. Think of it, to the one, disrupting funerals, or even baselessly accusing people of crimes against children; to the other, telling them to fuck off just isn't, y'know,
polite enough. To whom are these equivalent in what way, because aside from saying it with a smile, it remains unclear what about discrimination, segregation, and superstitious infliction against human rights we're supposed to pretend is polite.
But is it
really transphobic? Yes. And supremacist. And misogynist. And bigoted. And traditionalist.¹ What remains mysterious are the boundaries of the apparently undying politeness the objects of such prejudice owe the people who would harm them.
Maybe there's a reason some people would rather pass over that part.
____________________
Notes:
¹ And, as
feminists remind↑, misandrist. We can't leave that part out, but it's also self-inflicted in a way that both misogyny in particular and traditionalism in general seem to depend on.
Anti-Defamation League. "What is 'Grooming?' The Truth Behind the Dangerous, Bigoted Lie Targeting the LGBTQ+ Community". 16 September 2022. ADL.org. 7 June 2025. https://www.adl.org/resources/artic...ngerous-bigoted-lie-targeting-lgbtq-community
www.theguardian.com
