Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Really?

I am a gay man and I see increasing homophobic speech that stems from transphobia which most definitely isn't a "solved issue". This worries me.

Yes there was a battle in culture and politics that lasted decades for gay men, but as soon as you let go. You will see conservative groups pushing back. Because they're not gone, there is a long way for them to go as a lot of these ideas come from religious and conservative groups that will probably never go away.

Sorry, but the fight is not over. You don't see it because you're not a part of it it's as simple as that.

If you haven't taken the time to understand why people are still struggling then you can't come and say "well this is a done deal".

Societies move forward but they so with a constant push back. That's just how it is. Even today there is so much homophobia, transphobia, misoginy and racism being touted by people in our most powerful sitting positions that it's silly to think this is "made up" struggle for these groups to "stay relevant". I mean, homosexuals, transpeople, women and racial minorities are never going to go away so they're always going to be relevant.

> Even today there is so much homophobia, transphobia, misoginy and racism being touted by people in our most powerful sitting positions t

Is that really the case though? It seems like in many (most? nearly all?) cases we've gone from people saying things that are overtly and objectively racist / sexist / etc. to things that aren't but could be construed that way if you squint hard enough, and it's largely in the eye of the beholder to decide, and along with that we've seen the rise in assuming people's intent. Once you've crossed the bridge of assuming intent, then pretty much everything can be further "evidence" of the foregone conclusion.

I invite you to take the statements of the "people in our most powerful sitting positions" for any recent period of time (the past month, the past 6 months, whatever) and make a note of all the ones that you are sure are homophobic, transphobic, racist, or whatever and try to take a look at them with fresh eyes. Set aside for a moment what you are so "sure" about their intent and background and see how many you can find are actually and objectively bad, or if they are just "bad" in the sense because (a) they have a different view than you and/or (b) it's only bad because in your mind that person is already <whatever>-ist and so everything they say is just going to be viewed through that lens.

We're never going to say that e.g. racism is a completely solved problem, but the headway we've made over the past century or two is so incredible that from the 30,000 ft view we're relatively close, and the organizations that exist to combat it have largely outlived their purpose and, unfortunately, in many cases seem to exist mostly to fan the flames.

" Senator calls LGBTQ+ people 'filth,' says most don't want them here " >https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/senator-calls-lgbtq...

So is this just bad because of a or b? Is it because their view is different, or because I'm not giving them enough credit?

How about the fact that three states are having to re-district because they have been using racial gerrymandering to reduce black votes right now?

Actually, I think this is a fantastic example of my point. He did not, in fact, call LGBTQ+ people filth, at least according to the quote in the article - the headline and the article clearly misconstrue what he said.

But let's pretend for a moment that he did say that. Is a state senator from Oklahoma one of the "people in our most powerful sitting positions"? With a sufficiently large population, we will be able to find people saying hateful things until the end of time - I don't dispute that at all. There will always be morons. But as you cast a wider and wider net to find people saying stupid things, you have to also take into account their proportion of the population. Even if he had really said that, he'd be part of a vanishingly small minority. Heck, the very fact that an article was written about what he not-quite said also shows how far we've come.

"We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state – we are a moral state"

Seems to me that he did, in fact, call LGBTQ+ people filth.

When later questioned about calling LGBTQ+ people filth, he answered: "I support my constituency, and like I said, we’re a Christian state, and we are tired of having that shoved down our throat at every turn. I’ll let my words [spoken here] speak for theirselves, but that is my statement, and I stand behind it, and I stand behind the Republican Party values, and that is my statement"

I get that you want there to be a bright line rule and that the only way for you to see that he said this was if he said it in a way that cannot possibly be construed as anything else, but that's not the reality of the english language. Since his statement was clarified further, I think we can all take it to mean what the headline says and agree that the bit of grace we might grant someone being misunderstood is run through.

> Is a state senator from Oklahoma one of the "people in our most powerful sitting positions"?

Actually, yes. If anything, recent legislation has shown that you underestimate the power of state government at your peril.

As to the "vanishingly small minority" - I'd say if 0.01% of people felt that way, it would be vanishingly small. The reality is, given Republican party platforms in multiple states, that closer to 21% of people feel this way. 21% is a minority, it's true, but it is not vanishingly small.

For example, 28% of the country believes gay marriage should be illegal, and 33% believe it is morally unacceptable to be a gay or lesbian person, according to Gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

> Seems to me that he did, in fact, call LGBTQ+ people filth.

I see that you are choosing to read it that way, but that is quite literally not what he said, and I don't agree with the assumptive leap that you took to get there. Is it possible he meant it the way you're choosing to interpret it? Of course it is. But it seems at least as plausible that he didn't (the fact that he said 'that' and not 'them' means he's probably referring to some sort of dogma or indoctrination or messaging, and not people), but you - and the author of that article apparently - are choosing to go with that particular interpretation anyway. If you can't see the rather large assumption you're making, to me that's a far bigger problem, because it all but guarantees a state of perpetual aggrievance.

Regarding the other stats, that is actually committing the common follow on mistake of lumping everyone together as the same. Again, let's pretend this rando really meant things the way you're choosing to interpret it. To go from there to implying that he is equivalent to everyone who is not on board with gay marriage is again a huge (and false) assumption that only serves to ratchet up your frustration / anger / whatever towards people who don't see the world the same way.

(And as an aside, if you are truly interested in making further progress on some of these issues instead of just being angry about them, you need those people as your allies and could probably win many if not most of them closer to your POV, but demonizing them by lumping them in with the tiny minority representing the worst of them all but guarantees that won't happen.)

>But it seems at least as plausible that he didn't

I do not believe that is true. Possible, perhaps. Plausible, much less at least as plausible? No. You're kinda making an unjustified leap to support your position here. The alternative meaning of his statement is that LGBTQ+ behavior is filth and that their advocacy for equal rights and safety was advocacy for filth. That is essentially the same as calling the behavior that makes them members of a subgroup filth, and so the subgroup is made up of filth as a requirement for membership. The fact is, though, that he was asked about his statement in the context of calling LGBTQ+ people filth and reiterated that his words stood as a Christian and Republican.

>Regarding the other stats, that is actually committing the common follow on mistake of lumping everyone together as the same. Again, let's pretend this rando really meant things the way you're choosing to interpret it. To go from there to implying that he is equivalent to everyone who is not on board with gay marriage is again a huge (and false) assumption that only serves to ratchet up your frustration / anger / whatever towards people who don't see the world the same way.

That's not really it - I implied that he was similar to about 20% of the population, which is about 2/3 of the population against gay marriage or who believe gay and lesbian people are sinning/immoral. These people advocate for their position. They do not want gay people to exist; they would prefer that sin be eradicated. It is not a stretch to say that people who openly state that their core beliefs are antagonistic to the existence of a group of people are similar to one another in terms of their general unwillingness to allow those people to exist peacefully and freely.

>And as an aside, if you are truly interested in making further progress on some of these issues instead of just being angry about them, you need those people as your allies and could probably win many if not most of them closer to your POV, but demonizing them by lumping them in with the tiny minority representing the worst of them all but guarantees that won't happen.

I don't think that's actually true. If you look at the history of the civil rights movement, at least in the US, it has not required the willing participation of out-and-out bigots to make forward progress. It has required the population that is not flatly bigoted to either take action or get out of the way, but nobody required the KKK to become the ally of the civil rights movement. Fortunately, as their behavior is less respected or allowed, they get less out of being members of their groups and most withdraw or change their behavior.

Are you generally taken in by con artists?

I'm not denying anyone's struggle or their right to organize against it.

I'm saying that the groups in question are amplifying the problem 100x, with the goal of angering folks like yourself.

They are the arms dealer in a never ending war.

The groups organizing against trans people are amplifying the problem 10000000000x.

A recent example is [1]. Many anti-trans activists, including some that represent themselves as more polite, are actively engaged in a conspiracy to eliminate the notion of transgender experiences being a real part of humanity. This is obviously going to elicit a response from trans people like me, and our reaction is not just understandable but wholly legitimate. Why are you not focusing your attention on those people?

[1] https://genderanalysis.net/2024/01/still-dreaming-of-running...

If the "transgender experience" is males insisting that they have the right to impose themselves on any female-only space simply because they imagine themselves to be women, disregarding the boundaries and consent of actual women, then this experience should indeed be eliminated. If you are behaving in this way, please stop it.

And yet, you continue to use software and hardware that trans people have made significant contributions to, including quite likely (at least indirectly) some written by myself.

This is the great tragedy of open source software, isn't it? We keep laboring on things that make people's lives better, including the lives of the people who hate us. Sometimes I ask myself if focusing my career on FOSS always was a mistake.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com