JD Vance, no fan of gender-neutral bathrooms, was photographed in his high school yearbook next to three girls posing in front of urinals in a bathroom during his senior year.
I’m no fan of Vance, but I’m really struggling to see why this photo matters.
He supports criminalising people of the ‘wrong’ gender using the wrong bathroom.
That really isn’t what’s happening in the photo, as I’ve said in more detail elsewhere in the thread, and pretending that’s what’s being depicted makes the attack look foolish and desperate.
I see girls in a boys’ bathroom for a joke picture? Is that not what it is? That’s what he’s advocating to criminalise.
I dunno man, downvote me or whatever, but this really feels like it’s reaching? This is literally just him fucking around as a kid in high school. Who cares?
He’s a piece of shit no doubt, but hate him for the stupid shit he’s saying and doing now and recently. Not for some random photo of him from over 20 years ago.
For what it’s worth, I have to agree with you. I guess people forget that kids do stupid shit in high school, and this photo isn’t really that stupid. Now if this was a photo of Vance organizing a right-wing group in high school, that might be noteworthy.
I went from super conservative evangelical, even harder right than my parents in many ways, in high school, very nearly got pulled into even further right stuff in young adulthood, and now am basically the opposite of all of that. Had facebook been a thing when I was that age, who knows what nonsense I would have been spouting or doing.
I despise Vance and all the he and his ilk stand for, but I agree this just doesn’t feel right to me.
Yeah this is a reach. He’s a big enough turd we really don’t need to stretch this much.
I’m thinking, if you got to have fun, minding your own business… not hurting anyone; No matter how much you may have grown or changed and no longer like or approve of doing those activities, you don’t get to be part of a brigade that strips the rights from people who DO choose to and again, aren’t hurting anyone. You don’t get to incite violence against people who are Minding Their Own Fucking Business without the bare minimum of getting exposed for being a fucking hypocritical piece of shit.
This really isn’t that, though. These women aren’t using a men’s room, they’re posing for a photo. They certainly aren’t trans men using a men’s room, as is their damn right should they wanna.
It’s high schoolers being silly.
Vance is a deplorable man with deplorable ideologies but this doesn’t demonstrate any hypocrisy.
This kind of “gotcha” is uncritical, unserious, and looks desperate.
This is a picture in a High School yearbook.
It’s not a picture of trans people exercising their rights to use a bathroom that fits their gender.
It’s ridiculous to make those things equivalent and say it demonstrates some hypocrisy makes the author look foolish and desperate.
It’s ridiculous to make those things equivalent
Yet the laws proposed by Republicans do just that.
Wow man, just waking up from a coma?
Anyway, the last decade or so, Republicans have been extremely critical of transgender people, insisting that mixing sexes in the bathroom is criminally negligent, and deserves criminal charges or “self-defense”.
J.D. Vance is a Republican politician who is currently running for Vice President. His running mate is fiercely anti-LGBT, as are most of his closest peers in Washington. He has been photographed in drag, and with women in the men’s bathroom.
This illustrates hypocrisy, and a lack of claimed values.
If you would like to learn more about right-wing bigotry and hypocrisy, I suggest removing your head from your ass and opening your eyes.
I totally agree with you about right wing hypocrisy and bigotry, I just don’t think this will serve as a good example of it. Being transphobic wouldn’t preclude him, or anyone that could be swayed to vote for him, from thinking that gender bending (mocking trans people) comedy is funny… not all performances are endorsements. Things like minstrel shows and blackface were also considered funny at a point in time and it’s not because anyone involved thought blacks were people or deserving of equal rights.
They know all of this, but the only thing that matters is making the opposition look bad. The narrative is the only thing that matters, and reality or context are mere inconveniences. It’s a politics thing. Annoying if you want the truth, but unfortunately effective in a popularity contest like the US elections.
I tend to agree and give a ton of leeway to stupid, offensive stuff from years past that people have evolved from. We all said and did stupid stuff that we regret. However, this isn’t offensive, and that’s to highlight that Vance either A. regressed in his values from being normal to being weirdly pro-hyper-traditional gender roles or B. has no true beliefs and is just saying what he says because he thinks it wins him votes.
So JD Vance has proven to be one of the most hypocritical people in politics, which is a lot to say, like saying he is the one of the people with most guns in Texas or something like that.
This pic, and others like it, are basically checking ALL boxes on the stuff he seemed to be OK with before but now denounces because he is a weird hypocrite.
Now all we need is for those who support people like him to care about their leaders being exposed as hypocrites, but they’ve proven over and over that they don’t, so this kind of story has zero impact on them.
True, but if we join them in not caring, then the hypocrisy is completely normalized
Careful i said something similar about the ‘yep’ comment from 2020 and i got some aggressive replies on here. (Apparently im an enlightened centralist or something haha) I agree with you though theres so much worse out there on this weird fella
I’m a fan of the semi-newish tactic of making the RNC look like hypocritical weirdos. It’s effective and there’s plenty of material to work with. These kind of reaches look desperate and that’s really not the position the DNC is fighting from nor needs to.
Are we a week away from a picture of him in blackface?
I went to a summer camp in the 80s and 90s and we had this big event where the camp was separated into groups and each given a country. There were a ton of events, but some of the events were writing a song about the country and then another where you would act out some spirit event for the country. Always points for being dressed up with “traditional” clothing from the country.
It was a wretched hive of cultural appropriation and stereotypes. The song I remember the most is about how everyone was starving in Ethiopia. I saw some pictures of us all dressed and man oh man, if I were running for office those would be incredibly embarrassing.
Know what I know now, I realize how wrong the whole thing was and doesn’t represent me at all 30 years later. In fact I even stand against these things now.
One could easily look at these and claim im some massive hypocrite. But the reality is that I was a dumb teen having fun and now I’ve grown up.
On some level, I feel bad for people who think we should hold shit that happened as a teenager against us…like were you not out having fun being an impetous dumbass? Is these nothing you did as a teenager that you wouldn’t do now or think is wrong?
I basically agree with you, but the subtext is a little different.
I don’t think this photo is damning in any way. It looks like some kids having fun in a pretty typical way. It’s pretty normal for kids to “joke,” and play around with gender. But this dude had some fun as a teen and now he’s trying his damnedest to ensure no one ever gets to express themselves in a way that is incongruous with their agab. It’s worth pointing out that that’s shitty for some specific reasons.
He’s a piece of shit because his policies are terrible. Whether or not his current actions are congruent with his actions as a teen, which is true for most all of us, are two separate things.
I don’t believe he’s genuine, but if he is, like I am with my current beliefs, stupidity as kid shouldn’t be held as some evidence against who he is now.
Don’t get me wrong, when I first saw this my reaction was “he’s the gift that keeps on giving” but after some introspection, the more I think about it, the less I like it.
See that’s just it I don’t think this picture shows that he was stupid as a kid I think it shows that he’s unwilling to grant the freedom of self-expression and self-discovery that he went through to kids today.
It’s not his participation in this picture that is damning in any way, It’s who he is now that damns him.
The kid in this picture was doing normal kid shit, I can’t even figure out why someone might be offended by it but I know a Republican WOULD immediately reach for their pearlsif they saw this picture thinking it was taken recently. They would call it wokeness, and attribute it to the deep state.
That’s a good point. It’s just kinda funny because my reaction to it is basically “wow. maybe he actually used to be a real human.”
I think probably this just illustrates that he’s not genuine. That said I like your reflection that past behaviour should not be used as evidence against who a person is currently. That’s probably a good baseline, even if the past evidence could actually be viewed in a positive light.
Anyways. Thanks for the thoughtful exchange.
I agree with the teen stuff. At some point, we expect that people quit the dumb, attention seeking behavior. If they don’t learn, it becomes weird. It also is why the weird meme sticks so hard. It is MAGA signature brand.
TLDR: Kleenex became synonymous for tissues. MAGA is weird in the same way.
I’ve always said that you can’t just take one piece of a person’s life out of context to judge them. You have to look at the complete picture. You from 30 years ago doesn’t represent who you are today. BUT…it can inform a complete picture.
Remember the news articles about teenaged Mitt Romney holding a classmate down and forcibly cutting the kid’s hair? By itself, it just said Romney was a jerk as a kid. If Romney turned into an upstanding person over the years, it would be unfair to judge him based on what he did as a teenager. But we have the family dog incident and the numerous Bain articles to add to his teenaged antics, and we can build a complete picture of him, a picture that shows year after year, he was a jerk that liked to lord it over ‘inferiors’. We harped on that, all the way to his 47% comment, to illustrate that he thinks people who aren’t multi-millionaire hedge-fund conservatives should shut up and take the boot to the face. We convinced enough people in 2012 that despite Obama’s handling of 2009 through 2012, Obama should get a second chance rather than let “Better Than Thou” Romney get into office.
JD Vance (and his boss) fit in the same boat. We’re NOT just hammering him based on the fact that he did stupid stuff as a kid. We’re pointing the hypocrisy of getting all up in other people’s business while having some really weird shit going on in his business. And his history of telling other people what to do extends all the way to the present day.
In short, Vance hasn’t changed, so his teenage antics are fair game.
“Kamala Harris created inflation that’s crushing American families, caused a historic crisis at our southern border, and allowed deadly fentanyl to flood into communities across our country, (complete bullshit) and this is what the media is worried about,” a spokesperson for Vance told The Daily Beast in a statement when asked about the photo.
“A goofy high school yearbook from over 20 years ago? Get a life,” the spokesperson concluded (I actually 100% agree with this.)
This is just fucking stupid. There are half a billion more important things to discuss, we don’t need this kind of stupidity in the national conversation.
You might actually be right for all the wrong reasons, actually. This IS a critically important issue for many voters, as JD Vance is making the subject of this photo strictly illegal with criminal charges for minors or even justifying “self-defence” style assaults on minors.
However, anybody who cares about this issue likely isn’t a swing voter, we’re not going to attract moderates with this sort of publicity.
JD Vance puts his cast iron in the dishwasher pass it on
