#his transphobia era but. that’s not what happened. gay people did not win rights but friendly discussions. but with riots

[nerdycacti]

so one of the founders of the LGB alliance bumped into me as he was giving a talk at my university. i was wearing a trans flag and was going to protest outside the event. I called him an awful transphobe and said that the trans woman he bought for a ‘debate’ was his friend and was transphobic too.

he then asked why and I essentially got him to deny that he thought trans men are men and trans women are women. He invited me to his ‘debate’ but i refused as I didn’t want to be his political pawn for him to use as his platform but i said i would be willing to speak to him after.

today, he wrote an article, saying that a ‘young woman’ (knowing I am a trans man) claimed an ‘awful transphobe’ is coming — as though that ‘young woman’ was uncritical and scared of purity culture coming for ‘her’.

of course, that ‘young woman’ was me.

he completely twisted what happened in a way that is both horribly transphobic and misogynist. You cannot win with them.

it’s also why engaging with debate is pointless. ideally i wouldn’t have spoken to him but he completely caught me off guard and replied pretty much instinctively. it’s just for them to prove they’re rational and unbiased when they’re enforcing violence against us.

fuck the lgb alliance, fuck terfs.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

It’s growing exponentially. And it’s not just relegated to older conservatives/boomers, but Gen Z (there’s a surprisingly growing amount of fascist Catholic zoomers through movements like the Groypers and obviously you have stuff like Andrew Tate which has a stronghold on a lot of young men) and extending into Gen Alpha (which is even scarier). There was a brief period within culture where it became culturally unpopular to be openly homophobic. You still had people who “didn’t agree” with homosexuality cause of their religious beliefs, but they no longer spoke openly about it, a lot of them softened their views and focused on loving people, and society as a whole shifted in an overall more accepting direction. (Especially in more liberal parts of America, and especially for younger generations). Of course, this is an oversimplification since homophobia still existed; it just wasn’t mainstream anymore.

We had the era of YouTuber coming out videos. Macklemore released Same Love! Gay marriage became legalized across America! Using “That’s so gay” and other related insults wasn’t in vogue anymore. There was less overt homophobia in popular music, and there were several openly queer hip-hop/hip-hop adjacent artists like Frank Ocean and Kevin Abstract and obviously Lil Nas X, which previously would have been unheard of. We got Cyrus Goodman! Most secular people widely understood that homosexuality wasn’t a choice; it was a real, valid orientation equivalent to their own, and even if they didn’t understand it, there was no reason not to accept it.

Even the Republican Party, previously a haven for social conservatism, was shifting somewhat. Or at least, they were aware that culture was not on their side, and if they wanted to win a General Election, they had to focus on other things. In 2012, they had famously booed a gay soldier during a debate. In 2017, the openly gay Richard Grenell served in the Trump administration… and the Trump administration hyped him up to show how gay-friendly they allegedly were. (For all his bigotry, Trump actually didn’t run on a platform that focused on homophobia. Things are considerably different now, of course).

But now, there’s absolutely been a hard-right shift. The Trump era as a whole gave way to bad actors across the globe, and fascism is spreading in America, in Canada, in Europe, and everywhere really. Elon Musk, who previously did not align himself with any of this, has openly aligned himself with this new school social conservatism, this rise in transphobia, this push to call queer people groomers (It’s ironic that all of this has happened post-Grimes). And through his control of Twitter, hate pages like Libs of TikTok and horribly unfunny “satire” pages like The Babylon Bee now have free reign. It’s now considered normal to dox teachers for even being queer. J.K. Rowling is mask off and feels emboldened to be openly bigoted on the timeline in ways she would not have felt comfortable being during the height of Harry Potter’s popularity. It’s now one of the central Republican talking points to address “the transgender issue.” Woke is used as a pejorative to push back against all progress. We have Ron DeSantis and everything going on in Florida.

Open homophobia is still a cancellable offense for celebrities. Just look at what happened to DaBaby. But transphobia is allowed for those willing to be “edgy” and “controversial.” There are lots of celebrities who previously would have been seen as liberal who are aligning themselves with the Right on TERF ideology (Dave Chapelle, J.K. Rowling, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Ricky Gervais, the list goes on and on). In the era of Heartstopper and so much progress, we are regressing as a society. “That’s so gay” may have been retired and left behind in the 2010s, but I see casual “edgelord” homophobia on TikTok every single day. People comment “That’s so zesty” and other equivalents to put down others and encourage forced conformity. Lots of kids see Andrew Tate and other agents of toxic masculinity as heroes. Algorithms silo us off into echochambers, which in turn increases cultural polarization. Suddenly it’s 2007 again.

It’s for these reasons that Byler is so important. It will serve as a giant middle finger to all this intolerance and hate. But if the comments on Noah’s post are any indication, it will be a bloodbath in 2025.

I came up with this post because of the homophobic comments in Noah's latest post, but I've been thinking this for a while and I wanna hear people's thoughts: is it just me or this year there has been way more homophobia overall than last year? I swear it's growing, even in my country which is one of the most LGBTQ friendly in Europe