Honestly that's one of the good things about this place. In America, normie libs aren't even THINKING about throwing trans people to the wolves like British people routinely do. People might whine at the president to pivot right on this or that, but queer stuff really isn't one of those things!
Indeed! It’s so weird seeing that—like why the huge difference? How much blame just falls on JK Rowling? How much is negative polarization putting anti-trans stuff solidly in the “things the GOP does, not the Democrats”?
The admittedly kinda cringey DEI & “In this house we love our XYZ neighbors” stuff has I think actually been really good for fostering an appreciation for diversity in large sectors of the US, shallow or superficial though a lot of it may be
there's an article about it, how Mumsnet put this in the bloodstream there. possibly Mumsnet connections with prominent UK journos? feel free to fact check this, i could be wrong
part of this also may come down to tribalism. transphobia is the Religious Right's domain and they're not our team. UK doesn't have a RR. their transphobia comes from the "left" aka TERF shit; i saw someone else say that today, no RR means it's a wedge for the left and right(???).
also their famous TERFs were prominent feminists with Guardian bylines, is my understanding? like. i'm trying to name a post-second wave clique of feminists with name recognition. there are names I know, but no one on a Gertrude Stein level. then again ihni if Bindel et al are on that level there
I think the original TERFs were American even, but for whatever reasons the other big names in radical feminism at the time here (think this was kinda in the Dworkin-McKenna era? Was that second or third wave?) didn’t go for it, it stayed super-marginal
Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at in mentioning negative polarization, but I think you actually articulated that point here much better than I did
I think I've heard versions of this and it makes a lot of sense to me. The US has had TERFS since there's been a word for it, but there's always just a hard cap on how many and what they can accomplish because it's seen as too close to what the Jesus people think.
Had someone posting about how Democrats need to "do things rural voters want" the other day & I was like the goose meme of "what things? what fucking things?" I will accept the challenge of overcoming the Electoral College disadvantage before I support throwing people under a bus & into camps.
