the spirit is weak. woe be the spirit. the body is weaker still. Siërra R
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ask me about horses
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somewhere on website league
username will be botflymother
really if you wanna find me just look for botfly mother
gonna keep that name around for a good while

ValerieElysee
@ValerieElysee
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ann-arcana
@ann-arcana

They want a war on us because they desperately need anything to cling to power, and we're an easy target because let's face it: even most proud Democrats are at least a little homophobic if you catch them in an unguarded moment.

They know they can go after us and the people in power, even the supposedly "progressive" ones, will quietly look the other way.


estrogen-and-spite
@estrogen-and-spite

They1 want us to take it off the streets so they can target us in the alleyways, they want us to take it out of the light so they can hunt us in the darkness. "Be respectable" is saying "be out of sight", and atrocities thrive when they are not seen.

They can't hurt us openly yet, so they demand we are respectable and quiet so they don't have to hide our screams. Only be obvious about your queerness in specialized containers so we can grab a dozen of you at once, call it obscenity or call it a tragic accident or call it a lone wolf.

They cannot force us into special neighborhoods yet, but they can moralize us into hiding when we're not gathered.

If your existence makes cishet people uncomfortable, then exist more so they have to adapt to you. Be loud. Be open. Because if only one of us is that person is a target, but if all of us are than we are a fucking movement.

And the reason is obvious, too. You see it happening all the time. Nixon did a similar version - quote is form a former aide of his, pulled from here:

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Except now they can't make it illegal to be gay or trans, but by getting the public to associate gays with kink and trans with drag, and then criminalizing both heavily.... well, I don't need to say the rest. And we can't forget how the fascists and their ilk try to associate queerness with "leftist ideology" or how anti-queer measures disproportionally disrupt BIPOC communities - it's all connected, and that's why intersectionality is so important.

The cops are not our friends. There is no being "one of the good ones." And if you're trying to get other queer people to be respectable, you're just helping those with power push your queer siblings into neat little pens before they come for you.


  1. And to avoid implications, They here refers to the cops, and the GOP, and the evangelicals, and of course the capitalists who all find us uncomfortable and inconvenient.


NireBryce
@NireBryce

(@estrogen-and-spite I know this is a little spicy in tone but im not directing it at you, this is more yes-and)

silence = death

the only way out is together.

As long as something is seen as improper to discuss, in an intensity where people start to enforce You Shouldn't Say Around Children (that is, anywhere in public one could be) Or Polite Company, every day organizing becomes much harder, hell even knowing who local is trans, or queer in general. not to mention a lot of people hate it being brought up at all in earshot of cis people, for valid safety fears.

making your existence hard to talk about makes it difficult to find people, makes it hard to organize, makes it hard to fight. It's why assimilation is always a losing battle, it eats away at the powerbase. They'll write compromise after compromise to accept you, right until it draws enough people out of the movement that you lose political leverage.

there's a reason the Internet is so full of things from or about trans people. a reason for people yelling they're gay on Twitter. Its the place that's safe to, and a lot of it can be boiled down to a flare pistol on an open ocean.

the nights are much brighter now.

the value of us being out of sight isn't about keeping cis people comfortable or indulging in their bigorty; it prevents us from finding each other, in the same way union busters use anti union propaganda to turn coworkers against each other, to make it impossible to talk about without verifying they're actually on your side first.


ireneista
@ireneista

by the way, there's an update on that car crash story, which adds that video from a bystander shows that the cop lied about the alleged assault. so. figures.

we assume the reason we haven't heard further updates is that the prosecutor dropped charges? if anybody knows, please tell us

but yeah - people up-thread said all the same strategic stuff we'd say, so please if you're younger take the time to read it. queer culture has been winning for decades - the cultural part of the fight at least. the escalating violence now is concerning but as a community we have fought these fights before and we have won, and we will continue to win as long as we remember who we are.


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