While I’m at it, let’s do another one. Someone posted a “news story” about an old guy yelling at a 9-year old girl at a track meet, something like that, and he “misgendered” her. The thing is that, because she had short hair, he assumed that she was pretending to be a boy.
This goes off the rails almost immediately because of people’s inherent political and social biases. Let’s talk about it.
First off, the story that was posted is here, if you want to read it. It’s really not particularly relevant. My response was “This guy was being a dick. The lesson to be taken away from it is ‘don’t be a dick’.”
Immediately, others started whining about the concept of misgendering, which isn’t a thing. I said something along the lines of, since the entire thing has been deleted because it turned into a shit show, “On the subject of misgendering though, people have to have realistic expectations. You are free to request that people refer to you as anything that you’d like. It then becomes up to them whether or not they choose to comply. It becomes a matter of free speech. You can ask, they are free to do as they wish. You have to have realistic expectations .”
Oh, they didn’t like that much. Immediately came childish cries of transphobia and “you don’t get to look under her skirt!” Who ever asked to? I already said this guy was an asshole, but there are plenty of assholes on the other side, who figure that if they don’t immediately get their way, they can launch into smear campaigns and name calling.
These people are also dicks.
That’s really the problem though, isn’t it? You have people on the extremes on both sides who are both being assholes, in the same way as usual, ignorant of the fact because they are incapable of looking in the mirror. The second anyone dares to doubt their side, they’re immediately on the warpath, looking to take down all of the heretics.
It didn’t last long because, as I said, the whole thing got deleted as soon as it heated up. I was just laughing at the lunatics. It’s another case of “you’re doing the same thing the other guy was doing, for the same reasons.”
Why isn’t this remotely surprising anymore?