Still not understanding the depth of the negative reaction people have to being called or implied things like racist, terf, homophobic, transphobic. Whether you feel they’re accurately applied to you or not. These are dead common human traits and while they are not (IMO) desirable they also don’t make you a dumpster fire (or get you fired) all by themselves. Only extremists think so and those are the people we should not be paying attention to.
I don't get this argument. If someone (especially someone you "know" and like from around the boards) mislabels you as a member of a group you literally hate, and then continues to insist that you are one even when you try to explain your questions, why can't you get upset?
It’s the
depth of the reaction I don’t get. If it was just “that doesn’t accurately reflect my views” I’d get it. Even getting annoyed the thousandth time, I’d get. But it dominates the conversation. JoeMorgue must mention it in half his posts. I understand his position - he doesn’t treat anyone differently at all so there is no way he can treat some person that will acknowledge their gender identity. But since so many people won’t parse that or assume bad faith, if he says “I will treat transwomen exactly the same way I treat men” he gets called transphobic. Annoying? Sure. Fighting against autism-style misunderstandings is its own entire thing.
Besides, why should you literally hate any of these groups?
Social change is generally pushed by a vocal minority that makes a strong effort to change the course of public opinion, or put pressure on policymakers, or both.
In this case, you're begging the question that the "extremists" represent a fringe element that nobody is paying attention to, rather than a core group of activists who are making progress towards a new normal where dissent from policy proposals is in fact persecuted as "racist, terf, homophobic, transphobic".
When SuburbanTurkey or LondonJohn calls me a transphobe, I don't push back because I'm concerned about the slings and arrows of outrageous extremists. I push back because they don't want that name-calling to be extreme. They want it to be the norm.
When you push the idea that their name-calling is no big deal, do you actually believe it's no big deal regardless? Or do you believe it would be a big deal if it ever got normalized? Because if you're worried about it ever becoming normalized, then you should totally understand pushing back against the people trying to normalize it.
Do you want it to be normalized? Is that why you're minimizing the objections raised?
I think you’ve missed the target of what I think isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a big deal. Being racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc, should not be a big deal. That’s why being called them should not be a big deal. Being a
strident, hateful racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc, should be a big deal.
Butter for example has never struck me as even slightly hateful, just stressed out, and starting to edge toward some negativity because of that.
Emily’s Cat strikes me as also not coming from a hateful place but rather being convinced that extremists and hijackers are legitimately dangerous and such a large part of the equation that she can no longer afford to give the everyday people the benefit of the doubt. This is the kind of thing I’d genuinely describe as a transphobic POV without intending in the slightest to imply she’s hateful or needs to be scorned or derided.
Just being moderately socially prejudiced, fearful, opinionated, exclusionary, because of some subset of data you’ve seen, impressions you got, worries you have, or ideas you’re pretty damn fond of (talking to the ‘words mean things!’ crowd on that last one) doesn’t mean you’re at all hateful. Just having a different metric of who you think needs worrying about doesn’t make you hateful. Being hateful is what can deserve hate and condemnation. Looking the other way when people you don’t care much about are suffering isn’t even evil, it’s just callous, and we can argue all day about who is being callous to whom.
I’d agree that -phobe is not properly descriptive in the first place but that linguistic ship has sailed. If we had some other word that just meant ‘all this sexual and gender and social role scrambling ******* gets right on my tits and is probably leading to its own injustices here guys’ then I’d recommend using that instead.
