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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   18782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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So what needs to happen is that trans friendly politicians need to lie, and then quietly do it anyways. Don't worry, trans friendly advocates in media, and trust and safety teams on social media will cover for you.

I've noticed that trans advocacy seemed to be copying along with the successful gay marriage advocacy of the past, and this looks like another possible example. Back in 2008, when presidential candidate Barack Obama came out explicitly against gay marriage, it was considered just common knowledge among my peers that he was lying in order to help the good guys gain power. Obama's stance on gay marriage hasn't been relevant in a long time, but as of the last time I talked about it with friends, they seemed to still believe that Obama had been lying at the time, rather than that his position changed at some point while he was in office.

I have no idea how many people actually believed his lie, assuming that it was a lie, but certainly telling such lies in order to sneak in more "extreme" positions wasn't disapproved of and, by my perceptions, quite lauded. So it does seem reasonable to suspect similar things going on with trans advocacy. However, this doesn't seem to be working in this case for a variety of reasons, including the fundamental physical differences between what gay marriage and trans advocacy demand. There seems to be a sort of cruel cosmic joke here with trans advocates trying to follow in the successful footsteps of the gay marriage movement but as a cargo cult just copying along the superficial aspects.

Ezra Klein actually brought up Obama's lie to the Pod Save America guys who worked for him. No one contested that it was a lie btw.

He identified a different reason the trans stuff sunk Harris: both Harris and the ACLU are fucking stupid.

That sounds harsh but that was the tone. He was as angry as Klein gets, furious that the ACLU would even send out an exam (a paper trail!) on a policy that was almost designed to be maximally offensive and that Harris was dumb enough to say she supported and actioned it on tape instead of ignoring it or simply handing it in.

In essence, they didn't lie as good or as smart as Obama did.

I think the trans thing legitimately is a heavier lift but I think he has a point.

It's harder to get away with a lie the second time.

Obama had a somewhat similar paper trail https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-rights/

In another questionnaire for Chicago LGBT newspaper Outlines, Obama says he supports same-sex marriage. In 2009, a copy of his typed responses was unearthed and printed in the Windy City Times. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” reads the questionnaire bearing his signature at the bottom. Later, Obama aides will dispute that he actually filled out the questionnaire himself.

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