(C) Common Dreams
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“Libs of TikTok” and the Right’s Embrace of Anti-LGBTQ Violence [1]
['Melissa Gira Grant', 'The Politics Of Everything', 'Michael Tomasky', 'Ana Marie Cox', 'Matt Ford', 'Joanna Rothkopf']
Date: 2022-09-07
These may be actors on the political fringe, and the tech-driven aspects of this terror campaign have sometimes been interpreted to minimize its “real-world” impact. But the narrative of LGBTQ rights being cover for child abuse is not just fodder for the far-right clout-chasers of social media like Raichik and Posobiec; it has been weaponized by the right against their opponents in elections from school boards to state legislatures. It has been amplified and legitimized by lawmakers like Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in August introduced a sweeping bill that would ban gender-affirming care, and by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose threats to ban gender-affirming care have prompted some hospitals in the state to end treatment for minors. And it has resulted in threats and acts of violence, scapegoating LGBTQ communities as corrupt and demonic foes.
It’s possible, though, that months of these tactics have sharpened the response from LGBTQ communities and allies. After the board of the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in Texas voted in August to prohibit discussion of what it defined as “gender fluidity,” essentially a “Don’t Say Trans” ban, over 100 students walked out in one district school in protest. When an anti-LGBTQ rally was organized to protest a Planned Parenthood in Modesto, California, the handful of people who showed up were outnumbered by counterprotesters, including anti-fascists and abortion and LGBTQ rights defenders. And in the Dallas suburbs, at an end-of-summer, family-friendly drag brunch, when members of the Proud Boys and militia groups tried to intimidate people from attending, they were met by members of the Elm Fork John Brown Club, who “showed up to provide armed security for the business and those attending the event,” as Steven Monacelli reported, with performer Trisha Delisha thanking them for “keeping us safe.”
As much as this looks like a backlash, that’s not all it is. The anti-LGBTQ right doesn’t want to “go back” to some other time of idealized hetero-utopia. They are more simply satisfying their own desire to punish people, a desire that never changed even as the times did. They seek retribution against defenders of LGBTQ communities too. The need to interrupt this escalation by the right is urgent, more than it was in the Trump years when people may have been more attuned to such threats. It is clearer than ever that such threats cannot be met by appealing to courts to protect us. So while it’s true they are out there looking for a fight, fighting is what is still left.
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[1] Url:
https://newrepublic.com/article/167674/anti-lgbtq-violence-libs-of-tiktok
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