Transgender lawmaker silenced by Montana House Speaker

[GoTfan]

There is no scenario in which purely elective treatments that a patient will still very easily live without obtaining could be considered life saving care. Not being able to get, or delaying when someone is able to get puberty blockers/hormones/top or bottom surgeries isn't going to kill anyone. If someone were to commit suicide for those reasons, it's not the lack of medical care that killed them.

So you wouldn't call anti-depressants life-saving medication?

No, and by definition, they aren't.

I wish I was able to swear on here, because the amount of stuff I would let fly at that statement . . .

[GoTfan]

If you're a clueless and feckless enough moral coward that you can both sides a moral issue as simple as this one, your advice on how she can better help her community isn't worth anything at all

Well, if the community wants a representative that willingly goes against the rules wholesale (I do regard the GOP's offer to let her apologize to be in good faith even if far from every lawmaker was acting that way), then in a sense she's doing an excellent job representing said community.

But I would note that this sort of combativeness burns bridges and does nothing to stop what the community bemoans.

Your willingness to call me a coward for, in my hypothetical example, not wanting a Muslim representative to act that way is duly noted.

Believe it or not, working with institutional rules and coalition-building are an important part of how you achieve what you want or at least trying to stop what you don't want and going to war with institutions and relying too much on outrage and insulting people (however justified or unjustified it is) makes things harder for you!

This sounds exactly like the sort of stuff a lot of people told MLK in the 50s and 60s.

[GoTfan]

If you're a clueless and feckless enough moral coward that you can both sides a moral issue as simple as this one, your advice on how she can better help her community isn't worth anything at all

Well, if the community wants a representative that willingly goes against the rules wholesale (I do regard the GOP's offer to let her apologize to be in good faith even if far from every lawmaker was acting that way), then in a sense she's doing an excellent job representing said community.

But I would note that this sort of combativeness burns bridges and does nothing to stop what the community bemoans.

Your willingness to call me a coward for, in my hypothetical example, not wanting a Muslim representative to act that way is duly noted.

Believe it or not, working with institutional rules and coalition-building are an important part of how you achieve what you want or at least trying to stop what you don't want and going to war with institutions and relying too much on outrage and insulting people (however justified or unjustified it is) makes things harder for you!

This sounds exactly like the sort of stuff a lot of people told MLK in the 50s and 60s.

Ah yes, because trans rights movement has as broad backing in American society as the American civil rights movement and can also act as though its claims are self-evident in much the same way!

Meanwhile, the trans rights movement, at least overall, has generally been losing support over the past half-dozen years, instead of gaining. Regardless of where you assign blame for that, that alone makes comparisons to the 50s and 60s, if done in this way, less than helpful. It is manifest laziness to rely on comparisons to a time in the past for legitimacy in these sorts of circumstances, as if to bandaid over existing issues. The job of activism is generally to convince people of your views, no?

There are protest and activist movements that have failed completely, y'know. If a movement is on a failing track, no amount of MLK comparisons will save it or shift the winds too much; it amounts to preaching to the choir. All while, you know, a reactionary pushback is asserting itself, attacking drag shows (nonsensically) and, in time, likely quite a few other things. I didn't even know drag was something straight people did until people on this forum informed me so, and this was years after the some on the right began to target drag! How can you expect to defend drag shows and the fun they give people without even educating people about them in a comprehensive way?

Really, this building counterreaction is a mighty opponent and is the hidden cost to activists acting uninterested in accountability towards anything. The power of said counterreaction ought to be handled and opposed firmly and thoughtfully, because if everything and everywhere is a battlefield, then nowhere are you completely safe.

And the rights of adults to legally transition (something valuable to preserve even in red states) should not be indirectly jeopardized by weirdos in the activist class who seem either bad at their jobs, unreasonable in their demands, or both. Over the past seven years, the two groups that I have seen my respect for decline the most, are Donald Trump, and activists, taken as a whole. There's boatloads of great activists, but also tons of nasty activists who seem to want to use the fact they are an "activist" as an excuse to conduct intolerance under another name and dominate others to their whims.

You act like this is war. Well, then you must then know discipline is important to victory, the objective of war? And to win hearts and minds, discipline helps. That comes from disciplining those within the cause as needed. Set some standards and let people change; and most importantly, make sure you are able to talk to normal people on the street in terms they understand, as opposed to (just) your academic lingo. The civil rights movement broadly succeeded because it spent more time on persuasion than name-calling, talked in ways that ordinary people understood (give black people all-American rights they were denied) and never lost sight on the prize.

We will best defeat this upcoming counterreaction through things that earn empathy. Protect what matters most above all else, hold oneself to good standards even if one's opponents are not, and hammer home the excesses of the right where it hurts them the most. For example, tell people stories of drag queens who have lost out because of mindless demagoguery from right-wingers who don't understand what drag is. Machiavelli is a good guide for ruthless strategizing, but the methods, applied to something too unpopular with not enough backing, won't save you from failing.

The pro-life movement has made many of these same pitfalls...consider that a warning sign.

Again, strangely similar to what people said to MLK.

And the idea that the Civil Rights Movement had massive support to begin with is laughable.

[GoTfan]

Again, strangely similar to what people said to MLK.

And the idea that the Civil Rights Movement had massive support to begin with is laughable.

(Wikimedia Commons)
You were saying?

That came what, ten years after Brown? Six years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott? And all it took was a Presidential assassination and a legislative genius of a successor to get it passed.

Sit down.