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We were never moderate
It is a great lie of gender critical and far right discourse that civil discussion ever achieved anything. Every single battle for rights involved some form of civil disobedience. Every single one. Anita Bryant’s death brought me back to a great Contrapoints video during which Natalie breaks down the supposed witch hunt of J K Rowling. During the video Natalie reaffirms that gay, lesbian and trans liberation has never been polite, and it those who oppose the liberation of minorities who seek polite disinterested discourse to make those rights abstractions. For every Martin Luther King you need the Black Panthers, with a James Baldwin sitting in the middle to provide the bridge. No minority group was ever moderate, for to do so is to throw the less fortunate under the bus.
I have written before about my distain for violence and death threats, and that stands. Being disrespectful, on the other hand, is not a matter of violence, it is a matter of calling oppressive power out for the injustice it causes. When you have a national platform, 100,000 plus followers on the socials, and make your living through content creation you have narrative power. Those with narrative power who claim they are being silenced in interviews in the national media look silly when compared to the thousands of minorities who never get a scintilla of air time unless they are being boxed into a corner and attacked.
Radical action such as a pie to the face or a milkshake to the suit draws attention to the cause, much the same way as hunger strikes and throwing yourself in front of the King’s Horse at the Derby. Moderation is necessary to build bridges and pass laws, but that does not mean that those with the whip hand get to dictate what moderation looks like. Telling the populace to eat brioche in a time of rising bread prices appears a moderate stance, but lacks the critical awareness of underlying power politics and economics. Moderation and mediation are not the same as moderate capitulation, as there will always be a better way at translating rights into law and social practice.
Donald Trump stands up and decries trans identities, gets a round of applause, and on day one threatens to sweep trans people out of public discourse. Helen Joyce, Maya Forstater, and J K Rowling all support the notion that trans people need to be removed from the public sphere for…
