The political right wing in the United States has been organised around a politics of scapegoating minorities for seventy years or more; there’s a point at which the two major parties switched their wing orientations in the 1960’s, but the same core principles have been the backbone of the right wing in the US for its entire existence:
A “Natural” Hierarchy;
A perpetual representation of their supposed victimhood;
An appeal to Law and Order to redress the supposed grievance;
An induction of sexual anxiety.
In years past, these were enacted on ethnic minorities; specially and primarily at African-Americans.
Today, a politics of Othering, scapegoating, and persecuting ethnic minorities is no longer politically viable, because society has moved its perception to the point that we now understand that persecution of individuals or groups based on ethnicity is not just hostile, rude, and immoral, but also criminal and outright wrong.
So to maintain their political power & influence, they’ve taken that playbook and turned it to the next page,
A moral panic of Sodom and Gomorrah.
It should be noted that none of this is new; it’s been in development for decades, and was aimed at lesbians and gay men in the 1970’s and especially during the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s.
But the bigots feel they can get a wedge in to society and the law by aiming their bigoted behaviour and rhetoric at transgender people.
Full disclosure: I am transgender, and have spent the last five years documenting and fighting hatred on Reddit. I have an anti-hatred bias. If that disqualifies my answer as not being “unbiased”, then …
Homophobia is political, yes.
The political right wing in the United States has been organised around a politics of scapegoating minorities for seventy years or more; there’s a point at which the two major parties switched their wing orientations in the 1960’s, but the same core principles have been the backbone of the right wing in the US for its entire existence:
A “Natural” Hierarchy;
A perpetual representation of their supposed victimhood;
An appeal to Law and Order to redress the supposed grievance;
An induction of sexual anxiety.
In years past, these were enacted on ethnic minorities; specially and primarily at African-Americans.
Today, a politics of Othering, scapegoating, and persecuting ethnic minorities is no longer politically viable, because society has moved its perception to the point that we now understand that persecution of individuals or groups based on ethnicity is not just hostile, rude, and immoral, but also criminal and outright wrong.
So to maintain their political power & influence, they’ve taken that playbook and turned it to the next page,
It should be noted that none of this is new; it’s been in development for decades, and was aimed at lesbians and gay men in the 1970’s and especially during the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s.
But the bigots feel they can get a wedge in to society and the law by aiming their bigoted behaviour and rhetoric at transgender people.
Full disclosure: I am transgender, and have spent the last five years documenting and fighting hatred on Reddit. I have an anti-hatred bias. If that disqualifies my answer as not being “unbiased”, then …