LogFAQs > #963812867

evilpresident posted...

It's not a new strategy. They try it every once in a while.

"Hello fellow people, say wouldn't it be much better if we were to separate the T and Q+ from the LGB? That way we can better focus on trans right!"

Divide and conquer.

Absolutely. This has happened with bisexual people, asexual people and transgender people, and I've also been feeling a big push against non-binary presentation - especially against AMABs or people who want to be more masculine to further blur the line between gender.

I follow a webcomic artist who went from fem-presenting to explicitly non-binary with minor facial hair, and people were asking them not to change because they were gender goals or because they'd miss them. Like they weren't gonna stop making the comic, people were just upset about their re-evaluation of their gender to the point that it felt like they'd be losing a person by them changing. And they were saying it directly to this person in an effort to change their mind.

Another personality I follow went from portraying a feminine persona with a feminine name to adopting a more masculine name and taking on less fem presentation - explicitly updating their pronouns to he/them - and people dragged up tweets from years before when they did identify as trans to "discredit" their more recent non-binary identification.

And to expand on the bi, ace and trans thing - all three identities have been characterised as predators or invaders, as well as people whose open identification hurts other queer people just by existing (bi people simultaneously being able to dump gay partners for straight ones and supposedly being bigoted towards trans people by not identifying as pan, ace people for "co-opting" the queer struggle for something that supposedly doesn't harm them due to being able to "pass" in cishet society, and trans people for "preying on lesbians" and making it harder for queer people to assimilate) who subsequently - according to those who say this shit - shouldn't be a part of the community. And it's happening to non-binary people too.

And the worst part is that the people who do this exclusionist bullshit either don't realise that they're falling in with the conservative fucks who'd like to see their own queerness get stomped out of the public eye, or they do realise and they side with it anyway by reasoning that they'll be both safe and powerful if they side with the bigots. Look at how TERFs are devolving into like phrenology and bone structure to define who is a man and who is a woman, as well as defining men as deviant abusers and women as righteous victims as a way of shielding blame from the harm that they're doing to other people. Like they're sharing a house with tradwives and channers to own the libs. Look at how gay people have vilified bisexual people for the "psychological torture" of being dumped for an opposite sex partner, or how they've besmirched openly queer people for making it harder for them to assimilate into heteronormative society.

And the fact that I'm here right now, talking shit about other queer identities and my grievances with them, plays into that. It's a negative feedback loop, breeding more animosity and conflict between different identities to take some of the heat away from the people who are actually trying to force us back into the closet. Political lobbyists, corporations like Toyota who bankroll conservative election campaigns, people who pass laws that impact us for a taste of that filthy lucre. People who march alongside confederate and swastika flags chanting "blood and soil", elected officials telling Jewish constituents that "work will set you free", people who unironically threw an arm up in salute of a conservative president at the behest of a known neo-nazi.

And it's because people in the queer community are used to animosity, in having to drive out bad faith actors. Right wingers just consolidate where the most passionate people are, and it tends to drive their party line further and further right because the most passionate people they can court tend to be totally buttfuck insane about some stupid shit that doesn't mean shit to anyone.

So what happens when you weaponize a leftie's desire to drive people out, to identify a group that goes against their interests as a group, by saying that another group with a common cause is actually a bully who wants to rob them of who they are? And what happens when their desire to be safe outstrips their ability to discern whether a person or group of people legitimately mean them harm?

Then you get TERFs. People who'll go to the grave saying they're protecting the queer community from rapists, murderers and pedophiles, only for their legacy to amount to the ostracization of their own sex for looking too "mannish".