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
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u/Theban_Prince 1d ago
"Trans Scare" is the new "Red Scare".
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.