Texas

[SuperMatt]

I cite Loudon in the context of it being recently in the news.

But whether it’s Loudon County or Los Angeles or Quillette or Hillary Clinton, I run across no dearth of cis people whose entire take is the invective: “I’m a liberal, a Democrat, but this transgenders [sic] thing is just one extreme too far for me… if your [sic] born with mAlE pLuMbInG you use the mens room… these transgenders [sic] are erasing females [sic] and confusing young girls into becoming men… and they want us normal people to indulge in their delusional fantasy and force us into cOmPeLlEd SpEeCh… and now, because Biden supports this delusion I’m never voting ‘D’ ever again…”

I have fielded and listened to every single permutation of these takes over the past thirty years. They are always predictable, always intellectually lazy by choice, always can be spotted from ten miles away, and when their softer takes get dismissed by their more enlightened, more compassionate peers, they always double-down by leaning hard into more overtly fascist rhetoric.

Loudon is but one example, but what social media and major newspapers of record see in that now is, chapter and verse, the same ugly performance which played out at the Anoka school board PTA meeting in November 1998, in Minnesota, when the district hired a music teacher who was trans: the teacher was forced out of her job before she could even begin because whiteness and reactionary white cis people in the audience who angrily compared her existence to (in the deepest of historical ironies ever) “Hitler’s Germany”.

We can hope that, as with gay marriage, that opinions on this change rapidly and that anti-trans bigots become the marginalized ones.

 

[User.45]

Spoiler: it’s not about the toilet.

It’s about having control and domain over our bodies in the private sphere and control and domain over our presence/participation in the public sphere.

If they had their druthers, they would eagerly and completely erase us from existence.

You shouldn't think I'm unaware. The way I approach problems is by offering practical solutions, so those who use problems as an excuse for their bigotry are to either forced decide whether to try (fake) solving the issue, or or confess on their bigotry.

 

[B S Magnet]

We can hope that, as with gay marriage, that opinions on this change rapidly and that anti-trans bigots become the marginalized ones.

I’ve heard that one for most of the last, idk, 22 years — including from the white cis gay community, who told us to “wait our turn”.

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to live long enough to see “anti-trans bigots become the marginalized ones”.

You shouldn't think I'm unaware. The way I approach problems is by offering practical solutions, so those who use problems as an excuse for their bigotry are to either forced decide whether to try (fake) solving the issue, or or confess on their bigotry.

My point isn’t to determine whether you or anyone else here is unaware.

My point is nothing about this conversation is novel for someone like me. And when it’s the same conversation, year in and decade out, we get tired. Very tired.

 

[Huntn]

So why do you think that heavily Latino counties in TX are turning towards the GOP?

For example, Zapata County on the Mexican border is 93% Latino and voted 65-32 for Hillary in 2016. They voted Trump 52-47 in 2020.

Source for the 93% Latino stat:

How Texas' Longtime Democratic And Heavily Latino County Flipped Red

One of the most unexpected election results happened in Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. President Trump made inroads in the longtime Democratic stronghold and flipped one Latino county red.

www.npr.org

Source for the voting results:

Trump Won Heavily Latino Texas Border County He Lost to Clinton by Huge Margin | National Review

Trump won Zapata County 52-to-47 percent over Joe Biden. The president lost the county in 2016 by 32 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 65 percent.

www.nationalreview.com

Stupidity, ignorance, and self serving is not limited to whites? I’d ask how Trump faired with Hispanics overall in Texas, and Nationally?

Trump appeal has to include perceptions of economic benefit. As a racist (Trump), I really can’t imagine what appeal he could have to any minority communities other than possibly an economic benefit while putting zero importsnce on any other factor, such as electing a crook who would turn us into a fascist state in a heartbeat if that’s what it takes to hold power...and if we let him.

I’ve got a Son, an Hispanic brother in law and nephew, plus a white trailer trash woman who married into the family who are Trump fans.

For the woman, she’s racist, considering her background it’s no surprise. In her early life, she grew up poor and wanted to know why she did not qualify for a free apartment when she was an unwed mother, but begrudged seeing a black family who appeared more prosperous than herself. They must have gotten more welfare (her perspective). Trump is right down her Confederate flag waving alley.

The Hispanic brother in-law makes a high income in the oil industry. Trump- pro oill. The Hispanic nephew is an all around loser, my impression somewhere between anti-govt and Anarchist. He grew up in an upper middle class household. Of note, most of my wife’s immediate side of the family (her mother is white, father Hispanic) are venimently anti-Trump, however her cousins (mostly white with some Indian blood) up by Dallas are Trumpettes.

My Son is military and part of the Cult of Gun, so Trump seems to be a natural. Of note, most US politicians are pro-military and I‘m a veteran, but as you know I regard Trump as one sick, self serving, mental, incompetent mother fucker who just serves himself.

Trump was for liberal issues for decades, including voting for Democrats. With zero foundation other than self benefit, he is for your issues, until some better opportunity comes along. That is the nature of being a sociopath. He votes for where he senses advantage and he was quite able to see where he could pick up followers, racists, anarchists, anti-government, polluting industries. In a nutshell, he sensed The Right in this country was ripe for plucking. And the country is there for him to consume if we let him.

 

[User.45]

Stupidity, ignorance, and self serving is not limited to whites? I’d ask how Trump faired with Hispanics overall in Texas, and Nationally?

This reminds me of someone mentioning here recently how Trump did "well" with Blacks missing only 85-90% of Black vote.

 

[SuperMatt]

This reminds me of someone mentioning here recently how Trump did "well" with Blacks missing only 85-90% of Black vote.

If you set the bar low enough, anybody can be a high jumper.

 

[Herdfan]

Loudon is but one example, but what social media and major newspapers of record see in that now is, chapter and verse, the same ugly performance which played out at the Anoka school board PTA meeting in November 1998, in Minnesota, months after the district hired a music teacher who was trans: the teacher was forced out of her job before she could even begin because whiteness and reactionary white cis people in the audience who angrily compared her existence to (in the deepest of historical ironies ever) “Hitler’s Germany”.

Perhaps you can help me here, but what does being white have to do with being trans. You always blame white cis people. Just trying to understand what being white has to do with it?

Is there a reason black/brown cis people can't be against transgenders?

 

[SuperMatt]

Perhaps you can help me here, but what does being white have to do with being trans. You always blame white cis people. Just trying to understand what being white has to do with it?

Is there a reason black/brown cis people can't be against transgenders?

I believe @B S Magnet may have already addressed this in a post in another thread:

So what makes me a racist/white supremacist?

But unlike some posters here, at least by their screen name here, we (you and I plus Jay, Huntn, Eric, lizkat and a few more) have been going at each other for years. So you can get away with more than someone who has seen fewer than a handful of my posts. Give me a real situation and we can...

talkedabout.com

 

[Herdfan]

I believe @B S Magnet may have already addressed this in a post in another thread:

So what makes me a racist/white supremacist?

But unlike some posters here, at least by their screen name here, we (you and I plus Jay, Huntn, Eric, lizkat and a few more) have been going at each other for years. So you can get away with more than someone who has seen fewer than a handful of my posts. Give me a real situation and we can...

talkedabout.com

Perhaps, but this poll suggests something different:

Democrats’ views also differ by race and ethnicity. Some 55% of black Democrats and 41% of Hispanic Democrats say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, a view shared by just 24% of white Democrats. - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...nder-issues-divide-republicans-and-democrats/

They didn't break out Republican Black or Hispanic respondents.

Wikipedia says Pew is non-partisan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Research_Center

 

[Yoused]

Perhaps you can help me here, but what does being white have to do with being trans. You always blame white cis people. Just trying to understand what being white has to do with it?

To put it simply, white people control the dialog. And in many cases, White people are controlling the dialog (e.g., Murdoch). Blacks are a small minority, hispanics a little less of one (larger fraction), but as of right now, white folks have their hands on the levers of culture, others not so much.

 

[B S Magnet]

Perhaps, but this poll suggests something different:

Democrats’ views also differ by race and ethnicity. Some 55% of black Democrats and 41% of Hispanic Democrats say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, a view shared by just 24% of white Democrats. - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...nder-issues-divide-republicans-and-democrats/

They didn't break out Republican Black or Hispanic respondents.

Wikipedia says Pew is non-partisan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Research_Center

Watching you do mental acrobatics to avoid seeing what’s staring you right square in the face is both expected and boring.

Is there a reason black/brown cis people can't be against transgenders?

STOP SAYING “TRANSGENDERS”. STOP IT.

Transgender is an adjective, not a noun, not an object.

You are welcome to say “trans people”.

 

[User.45]

My point isn’t to determine whether you or anyone else here is unaware.

My point is nothing about this conversation is novel for someone like me. And when it’s the same conversation, year in and decade out, we get tired. Very tired.

Sure we can sum it all up in like 5 bullet points. We can still express solidarity, willingness to do our part, vent frustrations etc.
Or poke Pepe...

 

[User.168]

.

 

[B S Magnet]

The major reason for this in Texas was because many Latino people live hand to mouth and believed that a Trump led government would quicken the reopening of businesses, so people could get their badly needed regular income again. The other reasons are clearly stated in the npr link that you provided.

"Joe Gutierrez ranches and owns an oil field construction company in town."

That pretty much sums it up. Some of your comments on this sort of stuff has always struck me as naive. Just because it's right on the border with Mexico it does not mean that the Latino community living there are ready to welcome Mexican refugees with open arms. Clearly this particular county is of full of Latinos that have established themselves and are likely to have lived there for multi-generations by now. I am quite sure that Joe did not recently jump over the wall along with his cattle, tools and construction company vehicles. I am also quite sure that Joe employs undocumented Mexican refugees for a pittance whilst he chews tobacco, just like a good Republican should, because I have seen this behaviour first hand in the other parts of the US within the Eastern European immigrant community.

It will probably surprise you to learn that immigrants can be racist against other people from their own countries. That's just humanity and that "fuck you, the country is full, I got mine already" attitude isn't reserved for US born whites only.

Spoiler alert (mostly for Herdfan, who isn’t grapsing the basic concept of whiteness):

Some Latine folks are white. Some Latine folks are Black. And some Latine folks are brown, Indigenous, or a mix of all these. Colourism — another flavour of racism — within the Latine world is alive and pretty rampant, and shares the same roots of settler-colonialism as the choking vines of racism in the U.S. and Canada.

Which is why, “My family came from from Honduras,” doesn’t describe much beyond, well, the geography of your immediate ancestors. You’re comfortable enough in your whiteness to describe yourself as a “redneck” (which connotes far more beyond a congenital inability to tan under heavy sunlight) — just as I can (and do) experience white privilege despite being mixed and my family name coming directly from pre-colonized Angola.

 

[User.45]

Spoiler alert (mostly for Herdfan, who isn’t grapsing the basic concept of whiteness):

Some Latine folks are white. Some Latine folks are Black. And some Latine folks are brown, Indigenous, or a mix of all these. Colourism — another flavour of racism — within the Latine world is alive and pretty rampant, and shares the same roots of settler-colonialism as the choking vines of racism in the U.S. and Canada.

Which is why, “My family came from from Honduras,” doesn’t describe much beyond, well, the geography of your immediate ancestors. You’re comfortable enough in your whiteness to describe yourself as a “redneck” (which connotes far more beyond a congenital inability to tan under heavy sunlight) — just as I can (and do) experience white privilege despite being mixed and my family name coming directly from pre-colonized Angola.

Reminded me of this paper...just because some neonazis used Africa to justify their homophobia (they usually mean it in a way that even such low people like Africans hate LGBTQ+ folks...if they actually read...).

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/nicep/documents/working-papers/2020/nicep-2020-04.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2G5D_5zEBHDBm8ixUs7lCP-9ms5Vnw2fJJFEeO2vXM27a8YjyfK_gLQeg

 

[B S Magnet]

Reminded me of this paper...just because some neonazis used Africa to justify their homophobia (they usually mean it in a way that even such low people like Africans hate LGBTQ+ folks...if they actually read...).

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/nicep/documents/working-papers/2020/nicep-2020-04.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2G5D_5zEBHDBm8ixUs7lCP-9ms5Vnw2fJJFEeO2vXM27a8YjyfK_gLQeg

Daaaaaaaamn someone finally broke out the geospatial data to assist on pinpointing the locus and historical origin of institutional homophobia in colonized parts of Africa. I love this research already. Thanks for the link.

 

[User.45]

Daaaaaaaamn someone finally broke out the geospatial data to assist on pinpointing the locus and historical origin of institutional homophobia in colonized parts of Africa. I love this research already. Thanks for the link.

Definitely changes the narrative which has been fubar. The prevalence of androgynous deities like Obatalá really hints to a much more complex history outsiders assume.

 

[B S Magnet]

Definitely changes the narrative which has been fubar. The prevalence of androgynous deities like Obatalá really hints to a much more complex history outsiders assume.

The relationship between colonialism and institutional homophobia/transphobia (e.g., “buggery” and “cross-dressing” laws) is well-established in queer studies. What I find doubly intriguing here, however, is not only the due diligence paid to plot those causative origins spatially and temporally, but also how much of this originated from pre-nation-state colonialism — namely, the religious-institutional complex from those colonizing kingdoms-cum-nations which permitted the missions to “convert” Indigenous communities which never needed “conversion”.

Everything about the praxis of induced conversion makes me physically ill.

It also brings into better resolution the context of that religious-institutional complex and nation-state building with the really screwed-up, violent legacy of the residential school system finally (finally) being condemned here by white people who had downplayed it for decades. I guess it really was the literal producing of (hundreds of) dead Native children’s bodies turning up suddenly with radar-penetrating tech which finally jolted their conscience awake.

 

[JayMysteri0]

For anyone from the CRT still unsure about the fragility of those old White men in office so concerned about what Texas' school children are taught...

I present...

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1417298474761134087/

Texas Senate votes to nix teaching requirement calling white supremacy ‘morally wrong’

The Texas state Senate has passed legislation that would repeal requirements to teach the history of white supremacy and the ways “in which it is morally wrong,” among other lessons pertaining to p…

thehill.com

The Texas state Senate has passed legislation that would repeal requirements to teach the history of white supremacy and the ways “in which it is morally wrong,” among other lessons pertaining to prominent people of color and women.

The Republican-led upper chamber passed the measure, known as Senate Bill 3, in a 18-4 vote on Friday.

The legislation now awaits consideration in the House, also led by Republicans, where Democratic lawmakers left earlier this month to deny their colleagues on the other side of the aisle the quorum necessary for a special legislative session in an effort to block a sweeping elections bill.

The bill recently passed by the upper chamber seeks to repeal certain teaching requirements that were included in legislation passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in June.

The law was praised by Abbott and other proponents as an attack on critical race theory, though the legislation doesn’t outright name the concept, which asserts that racism is embedded in the country’s institutions.

However, among other provisions laid out in that bill, House Bill 3979, was a section requiring students be equipped with the understanding of “historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations.”

That section included “the Chicano movement,” “women's suffrage and equal rights,” “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech, “the history and importance of the women's suffrage movement” and “the works of Susan B. Anthony,” among other requirements.

But none of those requirements are mentioned in the new bill passed by the Senate last week, which would still keep in place previous language outlining how race can be discussed in classrooms but would repeal a chunk of the section in question from House Bill 3979.

It instead includes more vague provisions requiring students learn about “the history and importance of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964," as well as the “Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”

It would also take out a portion of the earlier bill requiring students be taught “about the writings of and about the founding fathers and mothers and other founding persons of the United States,” which included the writings of women like Sally Hemings and Ona Judge, with the new bill requiring instruction cover “the writings of the founding fathers of the United States.”

We see you Texas.

We see you.

 

[Thomas Veil]

Looks like the racist politicians in Texas are applying the Fox News model to teaching.

“Racism is evil.”

“And now, for the opposing perspective…”