In the face of ‘eradication’, one trans activist is preparing to fight – and she’s sick of silence and neglect from her supposed allies. Raquel Willis tells Io Dodds why Republican bathroom bans are everybody’s problem
They are political creatures. I wouldn’t say they were “content to do enough to get credit” so much as lacking the courage to do more. But I’m also not going to blame them for doing what they think is most likely to keep them elected even if I vehemently disagree with that.
A shocking percentage of the US population is transphobic and the answer is not to expect politicians to put votes on the line to “do the right thing” (LOL) but to work to ensure they don’t have to because that transphobia goes away.
How the hell does 1% of the population get 50% to stop hating it and believing bullshit about it
I feel like you are thinking in absolutist terms. We do not need every person to accept our right to exist, only enough to move policy and cultural-level acceptance forward. That is already happening, slowly but surely. In my lifetime we’ve gone from “lock em up and give em a lobotomy” to being able to be safely visible most of the time and for it to be common to state pronouns.
It’s not perfect and it’s not where we need it to be but it is light years ahead of where we were. And this progress, even if things get forced back for a time, is inevitable.
Maybe I am thinking about it in absolutist terms, but im also young. I see nimbyism stifle housing in blue states and conservatives having a ton of kids and fear the country will only get redder. In my lifetime, we reached gay marriage only ten or so years ago and things are already being pushed back far further. Roe, a ruling made decades before I was born, has been overturned and set abortion law back just as far. I think having lived through most of it, you may be biased; but progress is not a guarantee. Things can always go backward, and there’s no limit to how far
