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The Sarah McBride trap
Sarah McBride’s defenestration has been swift and public, at least according to the transgender Twitterati who condemned her for accepting the Republican’s banning her from using women’s facilities on Capitol Hill. Few defended Sarah’s statement saying she would abide by the rules, most lambasting her for not standing up and defying the wholly unjustified rules. In turning on her so quickly, in attacking her for not being a champion of the cause, trans activists have once again lanced the wrong boil, treating Sarah as a traitor rather than a victim. This is the Sarah McBribe trap, and it is one which the trans community repeatedly keeps falling into.
Twitter has been a cess pool since Elon Musk changed it to X, a mirror darkly onto the soul of anyone who participates. Trans Twitter reflects the militant and plaintive sides of the trans community, those seeking a voice in times of troubles. That we all feel the need to externalise our opinions, and that those opinions should matter to others, has been drilled into us by social media companies. In desiring to be heard who need to take our opinions to extremes lest someone else out extreme us, and with the trans community it has become a bad habit to turn on those who seek mediation and a lower key approach to activism. Sarah’s statement was quietly defiant in her own way, and in attempting to be dignified she has fallen foul of those who want their voices to be heard.
To be clear, I do not think Sarah is selling out anyone, nor do I think her position if she had protested would have made any difference to her situation. She is a lone trans voice in Congress with a judicial system stacked against her should she seek legal remedy. To exist as herself in a hostile environment takes energy and commitment to the cause the likes of which are opaque and frustrating for those on the outside to see. Her victimhood is not the easy sort, she has not faced social exclusion, she has intersectional power that many in the trans community do not. Reading through the comments and posts about her you see the sense of betrayal because trans people have projected a sense of what they want her to be rather than the practical realities of her job as an elected representative. In calling her a turn coat and essentially a Judas to the cause they are martyring their own projections of her rather than Sarah’s lived reality.
