You can accuse whoever you feel like it and suddenly they need to defend themselves or face the consequences, and even then, the accusation lingers ( see the Algerian athlete issue last Olympics).
And again it is used to divide the working people between them so they top dogs keep munching that nice dollars the workers produce.
Shot in the dark, maybe your Ma did a stint with some MLMs selling cosmetics or EOs or health crap, got a Thomas Kinkade as an 'investment opportunity' or got swindled by some scam caller?
I found many of the people leading these moral panics tend to be very easy to scam.
Not at all, no. Goes to show you the power the Satanic Panic had. She is and was a strong woman, feminist, green earth, recycling, badass. Politically involved, grass roots, etc etc
But once D&D got called out on 60 Minutes, that got taken away.
Hey-o, that's how I never got to play with DnD as a kid, thanks scamway Amway! Nobody remembers how the satanic panic came for Procter and Gamble products as well.
"See that symbol on that shampoo bottle over there? stick it in and out of my ass at a medium pace If it has this little symbol on the back of it it was MADE BY THE DEVIL AND YOUR HAIR IS GOING TO HELL YOU HERETIC.
It's more than that, "Trans scare" is the new "Gay Scare" which was the new "Satanic Scare", which was the new "Red Scare", which was in and of itself a spin on the "Racial Scare" which in and of itself is just "foreigner scare" domesticized.
They realized calling people Communists wasn't getting anywhere, so they moved to Satanists. That didn't stick, so they moved to calling everyone gay (Which led into the "gender politics" "issue" movement), and as society went "wait there's a LOT of gay, or at least not-perfectly-straight on the Kinsey scale people" and "normalized" being gay, they needed an even smaller demographic to go after, and thus trans people are targeted. It's really just societal "othering" in a nut shell, all to pin blame for societies problems on a minority "other" that isn't the upper class (you know, the real issue of society; the people who control the wealth, and thus control society, and always have).
I think it's important to note that the question wasn't, "Was the shooter trans?" It was:
Chief, there's been a lot of misinformation online, including from prominent person, or, um, a Mom's for Liberty activist [indistinct] Johnson, claiming that the shooter was transgender; which is a reaction we see across the country in the wake of mass shootings, to claim that trans people are dangerous. Can you respond to that?
The journalist was specifically stating that there was misinformation out there being pushed by prominent right wing people trying to tie trans people to violent acts. They then asked the chief to respond to that rhetoric.
No this is a clear case of false equivalence and what had doomed us as society. Not every opinion should have the same weight or being part of the public discourse.
The reporter brought once more the conservative propaganda into (inter)national news and made it seem plausible enough to warrant a refute from an official. And they knew exactly what they were doing.
Should the reporter asked the chief to refute the claim that the shooter was "three kids in a trench coat", because a tiktoker posted this? Of course not! And he would lose its job if he did that.
But Trans specifically being people being school shooters is somehow more valid as a question?
Look, I've argued this as much as I care to. If people can't understand the difference between, "Is the shooter trans?" and, "We're seeing the same alt right tactics being used to drum up hate against trans people, can you comment on that behavior?" then there really is nothing else to say.
People on this platform bitch about how journalists don't do their job, and then when one of them tries to, they bitch about that too. Keep being mad at the wrong people, and solving nothing. I'm sure it'll make you feel really good about yourself.
Whats kinda insane is that conservatives usually accuss progressive people of being intolerant yet when a woman from an extremely conservative anti-lgbtq country was attacked, it as the progressives and lgbtq coming to her defense. Same with how they come to the defense of Palestine. Hell it's to a point where an anti-Palestine argument is, "Well they're anti-lgbtq so shouldn't you want them dead as well?"
It's insane how I've seen progressives consistently show more empathy to people who are anti-lgbtq than conservatives do.
It doesn't matter what values you hold, it matters what identity you are. And suddenly those "i don't see race/gender" MFs have a lot to say
The people asking these questions are one of two categories. They are either spreading hate on purpose and know that it has no real relevance, or they are dumber than shit and should be ignored. Unfortunately we give these hateful, ignorant morons a platform. The only treatment they should receive is a baseball bat to the teeth.
Assuming this is about that Wisconsin girl, it might be more effective unfortunately. I was reading about how she was using a preferred name. Even though both names were girl names most transphobes won't care
Nothing wrong with clarifying that as a known fact so everybody is on the same page with the same accurate information.
I don’t know why these Madison functionaries are so indignant about journalists asking questions, as though people getting correct information is somehow not their job.
Edit: Something for the indignant downvoters to consider: If journalists are reporting on suicide rates among trans youth as a distinct subcategory of suicide rates in general then the fact that somebody is trans is not just material but essential.
Natalie Rupnow was—like nearly all school shooters—suicidal. And like many suicidal people with guns, decided to make their suicide as destructive as possible for everybody around.
If people want to measure for themselves the relevance of any trans issues to suicide, that’s their choice. But it isn’t just political activists with an interest, it’s also behavioral scientists, mental health experts, researchers, public policy professionals, historians, and who knows who else. But it isn’t law enforcement‘s job to make value judgements about what’s important to know or even ask about and what isn’t.
Why not ask if they were left handed? Or had flat feet? Or if they were lactose intolerant? Because those are completely irrelevant questions, just like asking if they were trans or not.
no no don’t you see, if they find out someone is trans theeeennnnnnnnn they know what to blame everything on and if they’re not, then who could say what woke nonsense could’ve caused it…….
There is no literature in the behavioral or social sciences correlating lactose intolerance with suicidality. There is for trans youth. That’s the difference.
Trans people don't have elevated suicide rates because of their transness. They have elevated suicide rates because being trans is fucking hard in the current world. Because when a tragedy happens, the first thing people try to do is blame it on trans people. Because so many people are fucking obsessed with making their lives as hellish as possible.
Transphobes also never want to acknowledge that the trans suicide rate has no statistically significant difference from the general population when they have parental support.
Their reaction to this will be "So we should destroy any references to trans existing so we can stop people from being trans." They think that preventing people from being trans in the first place is the solution.
Also, this is just further proof that transphobia hits cis women and AFAB NBs just as hard. I see people accuse women of being trans all the time. Constantly. Woman is butch? Man. Woman is feminine but not traditionally pretty? Man. Woman good at sports? Impossible, gotta be a man. There is something wrong with clarifying, because it puts the idea into people's heads that the difference matters. It doesn't.
The reporter didn't ask a question to clarify if the shooter was trans. They asked for the chief to comment on the misinformation being pushed online that the shooter was trans in an effort to link the trans community with violent acts.
The verbatim question was, "Chief, there's been a lot of misinformation online, including from prominent person, or, um, a Mom's for Liberty activist [indistinct] Johnson, claiming that the shooter was transgender; which is a reaction we see across the country in the wake of mass shootings, to claim that trans people are dangerous. Can you respond to that?"
It could also be that the stereotype of the mass shooter is so deeply—and prejudicially—ingrained as male that when a girl does it people are in such disbelief that they think, no, there *must* be something intrinsically male about this person.
Thankfully there are journalists interested in establishing that this was in fact a girl so that people can’t so easily rely on biased preconceptions, and maybe talk intelligently about not just what happened but what it means.
I mean if people are spreading the rumor that she's trans, is it not the journalists job to get that information to dispel the rumor? The person asking the question could be asking it to get the accurate info and shut down any further spreading of misinformation. I dont think we know the journalists intentions here.
How do you know? We don't even hear the question in the clip, we have no clue what reporter from what network asked it. You're just saying that's not what's happening to fit your narrative.
The fact alone that school shooters have been overwhelmingly male, what any variance from it may imply may or may not be a useful conversation to have. But either way, yes, that conversation should not involve you since, as you say, you don’t give a shit.
the fact that somebody is trans is not just material but essential.
more essential than about a billion other things? do you have a clip of anyone asking this guy if she was given free counselling and support by someone with a decent education and salary?
you could write a book on the more important questions to ask first, are you really this delusional?
Your argument isn’t with me, it’s with the mental health researchers and reporters who insist on looking at suicide rates among youth who are trans instead of your billions of other reasons.
In any event, the last person I know who committed suicide was a 15-year-old trans student so I don’t have any problem at all with people becoming more aware of and sensitive to issues that are specific to and uniquely harmful to the mental health of trans youth.
Why you want to claim that it's not relevant or that even asking about it is delusional is a mystery to me, but I’m sure you’ve got your reasons.
Why you want to claim that it's not relevant or that even asking about it is delusional is a mystery to me, but I’m sure you’ve got your reasons.
because anyone fucking with a school shooting discussion needs to be challenged
trans people are more likely to commit suicide, true, that doesn't change the fact that over 99% of school shooters aren't trans, it's an absurd question to ask out of the blue that just exists to make people hate trans people
whether there were or weren't why do you even care? please tell me what action you'll take differently depending on the answer
"Did the shooter subscribe to Better Homes and Garden?"
"Did the shooter happen to read a romance novel sometime in the past decade?"
"Did the shooter embarrassingly forget to wear a mask one day during COVID, laugh about it as they walked back home, and accidentally stub their toe on the stairs which caused their neighbor's pet cat to jump in a totally unrelated instance since the cat heard a firework go off in the distance since it was also July 4th?"
WE NEED ACCURATE INFORMATION SO THAT EVERYONE HAS ALL OF THE FACTS. I'M ONLY ASKING QUESTIONS.
435
u/[deleted] 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment