Gillian, you are such a great writer and thinker. This, combined with your other essay, is especially good because it shows why people, besides being craven, and inconsistent with any defensible value system, are mistaken in a self-defeating way to be indifferent to transgender rights and freedoms. Divide and conquer is their strategy! Your essay goes along PERFECTLY with Silvia Rivera’s speech which remind me of ‘ain’t I a woman?’ in a certain way—which is that she was there sharing the brunt of what our morally corrupting views on other humans results in, and had been beaten and had her nose broken and they should rip the blinders off and see her but their vision is directed the wrong way. They are still holding up the hierarchy but they should rip the whole thing down and throw it away instead of thinking they can get something out of it.
It will turn against them. Nothing has proved that freedom is always in peril unless everyone has it than this period we’re in.
It makes me very angry on her behalf and it makes me love her. She is truly everything that heroes are made of. She sees clearly like Sojourner Truth did, and all the brutality in the world couldn’t shut her up (and of course that’s no recommendation for brutality, or to imply that’s what everyone should be like—we can’t be. Just that this is how some people are made, and without them certain truths about humanity would never come to light.)
This always get to me where people love the heroes later, when everyone approves of them, and it’s safe to love them. They let them suffer, and then they bask in their self-regard for that valor whenever that valor is safe to approve of. When these same people are being shredded, and there is some cost to standing with them, they turn away like cowards or else want to dictate terms to protect any slight advantage, and keep other people under the yoke. It prolongs other people’s agony if they don’t want to hear the truth —suffering they are responsible for, and it eviscerates any claim they have to decency. But the truth is the truth, and it condemns them. Spineless bigot Seth Moulton thinks some child should be hampered for life because of his competitive feelings about children’s sports, and personal delusions? The people with eyes to see all know what he is now. Who else wouldn’t he fuck over for his momentary feelings and his delusion that depriving someone else puts his children at an advantage? People like him show they would always go along with any systemic injustice because their thinking is totally imbued with a commitment to it.
"If our previous inclusion...was meant to assure America that everything will work out fine the more people we include...our exclusion is meant to tell a tale of scarcity." Great summation of this administration's messaging.
Transgender rights are human rights and we wouldn't have to fight for those rights if we didn't have a fucking government. Governments are the antithesis of FREEDOM. Governments will only OPPRESS us.
Gillian, you are such a great writer and thinker. This, combined with your other essay, is especially good because it shows why people, besides being craven, and inconsistent with any defensible value system, are mistaken in a self-defeating way to be indifferent to transgender rights and freedoms. Divide and conquer is their strategy! Your essay goes along PERFECTLY with Silvia Rivera’s speech which remind me of ‘ain’t I a woman?’ in a certain way—which is that she was there sharing the brunt of what our morally corrupting views on other humans results in, and had been beaten and had her nose broken and they should rip the blinders off and see her but their vision is directed the wrong way. They are still holding up the hierarchy but they should rip the whole thing down and throw it away instead of thinking they can get something out of it.
It will turn against them. Nothing has proved that freedom is always in peril unless everyone has it than this period we’re in.
It makes me very angry on her behalf and it makes me love her. She is truly everything that heroes are made of. She sees clearly like Sojourner Truth did, and all the brutality in the world couldn’t shut her up (and of course that’s no recommendation for brutality, or to imply that’s what everyone should be like—we can’t be. Just that this is how some people are made, and without them certain truths about humanity would never come to light.)
This always get to me where people love the heroes later, when everyone approves of them, and it’s safe to love them. They let them suffer, and then they bask in their self-regard for that valor whenever that valor is safe to approve of. When these same people are being shredded, and there is some cost to standing with them, they turn away like cowards or else want to dictate terms to protect any slight advantage, and keep other people under the yoke. It prolongs other people’s agony if they don’t want to hear the truth —suffering they are responsible for, and it eviscerates any claim they have to decency. But the truth is the truth, and it condemns them. Spineless bigot Seth Moulton thinks some child should be hampered for life because of his competitive feelings about children’s sports, and personal delusions? The people with eyes to see all know what he is now. Who else wouldn’t he fuck over for his momentary feelings and his delusion that depriving someone else puts his children at an advantage? People like him show they would always go along with any systemic injustice because their thinking is totally imbued with a commitment to it.
Very well written—thank you.
"If our previous inclusion...was meant to assure America that everything will work out fine the more people we include...our exclusion is meant to tell a tale of scarcity." Great summation of this administration's messaging.
Brilliant, as always ❤️
Thanks for writing this; I’ll be sharing it with a lot of people
Transgender rights are human rights and we wouldn't have to fight for those rights if we didn't have a fucking government. Governments are the antithesis of FREEDOM. Governments will only OPPRESS us.
Huh. Though I don’t agree entirely with everything you wrote, this is an incredible article. I’ll be re-reading this many times.
Oh, and the Rivera video. Chef’s kiss.