Onboard the Nonbinary Bandwagon

by on

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper writes (Aeon article below):
“And here we have an irony about some people insisting that they and a handful of their fellow gender revolutionaries are non-binary: in doing so, they create a false binary between those who conform to the gender norms associated with their sex, and those who do not. In reality, everybody is non-binary. We all actively participate in some gender norms, passively acquiesce with others, and positively rail against others still. So to call oneself non-binary is in fact to create a new false binary. It also often seems to involve, at least implicitly, placing oneself on the more complex and interesting side of that binary, enabling the non-binary person to claim to be both misunderstood and politically oppressed by the binary cisgender people.”

1 Comment

Two Realities

by on

And similarly:

7 Comments

Then They Came for J.K. Rowling….

by on

Progressive love forced recantations:

Andrew Sullivan writes (second item):

One of the long-held principles of the gay-rights movement has been that it’s wrong to fire someone just because they’re gay. Now, one of the principles of the LGBTQ movement is that it’s fine to fire someone if they disagree in the slightest with every claim of gender ideology.
This shift from a “live and let live” to a “do what I say or else” movement is one reason I don’t identify with this activism any more. I loathe the idea of forcing people to say things they don’t believe, demonizing and ostracizing them for their dissent, and enshrining in law penalties for wrongthink. I am very happy to live alongside people whose faith makes them consider me a sinner. As long as they cannot touch a hair on my head or use the law to punish me for what I believe and how I live, I’m fine. But that pluralist worldview is anathema to the “social justice” movement, as it proves every single day. …
Resisting this authoritarianism of the left is as vital to our liberal democracy as resisting the authoritarianism of the right. Yes, I stand with Maya. And, no, this is not a drill. It’s a fight for freedom of thought and empirical reality.

Relatedly:

4 Comments

Back to Buttigieg

by on

Apparently, same-sex marriage undermines radical queerness and led to the rise of pseudo-heteronormative Pete Buttigieg, or something.

Via Shannon Keating at BuzzFeed:

But it’s hard for me not to take a more cynical view of the way Buttigieg’s campaign has packaged the world’s most straight-palatable gay narrative: He is a practicing Christian who, according to an op-ed he wrote in 2015 for the South Bend Tribune, believes being gay is no more significant an identity marker than “having brown hair,” and who is safely and monogamously partnered with the first guy he ever dated (whom, he’d like you to know, he met on Hinge — not Grindr). Buttigieg doesn’t have to contend with the implication of a seedy gay past or present; he’s already fulfilled the gay assimilationist dream of marriage, the white picket fence, and a couple of rescue dogs. …
If some white gay men would like to prove they’re no different than your average married straight bro — that they believe in “family values” too! — in order to receive less scrutiny from a prejudiced world (and/or because that’s what they’re actually into), then all power to them. But Buttigieg isn’t just your average white gay guy — he’s running for president, and pretty successfully so far. In doing so, he’s laying out a very public roadmap for gay success at the national level, which in all likelihood wouldn’t be possible without the assimilationist activism of the marriage equality movement. The best way for queer people to get ahead, it seems, is still to act as though we are just like everybody else.

2 Comments

Fairness for All 2

by on

Because the original thread on the Fairness for All Act was getting too long, I’m continuing it here.

Plus an observation: Ever since the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was introduced, whenever it looked like a version of ENDA had a chance at passing, the LGB (later LGBTQ) political lobbies would move the goalposts so that it would not have enough support—for example, adding gender identity in 2007 (which was too much even for a Congress with supermajority Democratic control during the first two years of the Obama administration, when no action was taken on ENDA), and now by replacing ENDA with the over-reaching Equality Act, which would, among other things, roll back religious conscience protections under the bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act that Bill Clinton signed.

A cynic might say that the Human Rights Campaign’s worst nightmare would be an anti-discrimination bill that could actual pass, because once it did a major impetus for HRC’s fundraising could be undermined.

6 Comments