I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
You did what? 🤨
I was talking to a conservative Christian. According them, basically anyone who isn’t a conservative Christian is going to hell. “Sinful” just means “not in line with my interpretation of the Bible” so I and every other left-of-center person I know with an interest in retaining their sanity has elected not to care
Maybe you should care about transphobia?
I do care about transphobia. That’s why I was trying to convince him not to be outwardly transphobic to everyone he met. Convincing a conservative Christian that anything they infer from their Bible isn’t true is a foregone conclusion, so I aimed to curb his transphobia another way.
Imperfect solutions that work are better than perfect solutions that don’t, and can much more easily be replaced through further action with more perfect solutions once they’re in place. The sooner leftists learn that and stop insisting that nothing short of perfection on the first go is worth fighting for, the sooner we can make progress.
But things that aren’t solutions remain harmful.
…there it is.
Bestie. I stated that in the post image. That’s what this post is about.
I’ve been a progressive all my life. My parents both self identify as liberals. I read every piece of gender related literature I can get my hands on so I can be the best ally I can be to my trans friends. If you’re trying to paint me as a Nazi, kindly fucking stop.
We are on the same side. I’m just trying to say that violent revolutions are not the only way to create change. Of course we should be disruptive and protest and riot. But let’s also focus on one issue at a time instead of saying “anything short of perfection in a single step is not worth fighting for at all”
Wouldn’t reinforce a transphobe’s transphobic views, would they?
Oh, you trans friends? Are they “some of my best friends” by any chance?
What does that have to do with taking steps backwards?
You take different approaches to different people. Trying to convince a Christian that being trans isn’t the worst thing a person can possibly be is an exercise in futility. Their mind is made up. If someone genuinely did not understand, or merely thought that trans people were delusional, I of course would try my best to explain the neuroscience etc. behind it to try to convince them, but if you’re talking to someone who thinks being trans is sinful, there’s nothing that can change their mind. The concept of sin is not a rational one. No religious concept can be. And you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic their way into. The only thing you’d be doing at that point is feeding the trolls. The only thing you can do to ensure they won’t harm trans people is try to convince them to keep their transphobia to themselves. And that’s what I did.
I am sincerely begging you to understand the concept of harm reduction.
Setting aside your post history instilling me with doubt you’re doing anything “sincerely”, you don’t reduce harm by increasing net harm.