How a Ferocious Backlash to LGBT Equality Is in Full Force While Leaders Have No Strategy

And now they are all busy claiming a candidate who up until three years ago wanted us to be denied marriage rights is some great champion while those newly won rights are under assault.
"Because the Human Rights Campaign mistakenly endorsed a candidate (Clinton) early -- the group has in the past few elections waited until after the primaries to endorse -- many believe there's no leverage, no incentive for the candidates to speak out. There's no endorsement to compete for. "- He's spot on, and it is scary.

was unrealistic, TBS. Religious fanatics don't give up.

The HRC has never really been a leader in our community. To the extent that they have been useful to us, they have brokered deals, meetings, and connections with D.C. politicians. Anyone who turns to the HRC for leadership is nuts. The HRC has always led from behind, with the grassroots pushing it and pulling it--often screaming and protesting the entire way--toward where it needed to be.

However, this is a larger problem for the community. There really is no other nationally well known group that is coordinating things. There are lots of great groups at the local and state levels that are fighting, but there is no national coordination, and these groups are woefully underfunded. (Meanwhile the HRC sucks up the cash.)

If we are going to mount a successful counter attack against all of this, we need a national group that is forging a national message that is unequivocally clear. My feeling is that we aren't going to see that for some time, and it may be wise for us to begin contemplating building a new organization (or supporting an existing one) that will force the HRC out of business and the spotlight.

To build a permanent building in DC when they should have been working to phase out the organization 's existence. That's when I said no more . Those working for HRC live way too high off the hog. For too long HRC has only been interested in its own perpetuation and not in fighting for equality .

...that the way to deal with these piss panic bills that target trans people is to point out how absolutely ridiculous that they are. Women are "afraid" to take a piss in the same bathroom as a trans woman? Okay, fine. Let's see how "afraid" she is to take a piss in the same bathroom with a fully transitioned trans man. I hope she has fun with that, and is not in any way made uncomfortable. Oh, what about guys? How comfortable will they be standing next to the urinal with a trans woman? I'm sure he'll feel totally cool with her hiking up her dress to take a piss right next to him.

Then let's focus on how these bills will actually be enforced. Imagine commercials where school officials are doing "genital checks" on children to make sure they are using the right bathrooms. That will be fun.

It is the wrong strategy to take a defensive position. The right strategy is to go on the offensive, and really show people what this shit would be like in reality. They are freaking out over bullshit, and actually making situations that will be MUCH MORE disruptive. Not to mention putting trans people's lives at risk. (Not that they care about that, of course.)

On the surface they seem to be in opposition to one another, but in reality they are operating out of the same playbook.

...and of course, both are enemies of the community.

Anyway, I think trans folks who started using social media to show how absurd these laws are with #WeJustNeedToPee was brilliant. We don't need to try and get cis and straight people to empathize--they won't. They just need to see what their stupid ass law would actually cause to happen.

Here is an article on the trans activists efforts along with pictures.

and het sex is a shameful catastrophe best done through a hole in a sheet, if at all

Those photos say it all, really and the hashtag is genius.

Thanks for posting the link.

...imagine if this was what was dramatized in TV Commercials by actual trans people. Let people see what this bathroom nonsense would ACTUALLY be like in reality.

So, we hit them there. Then we hit them on the enforcement on the bills. How are these bathroom bills going to be enforced? There is only one real way to do it: government genital checks. So, I'd have teachers on commercials talking about how uncomfortable they'd feel about being forced to examine the genitals of children whenever these bills come up. I'd have commercials that ridicule them for the absurdity of government genital checks. Every time I'd go out and talk to the media, that would be the talking point: government genital checks, government genital checks, government genital checks.

The goal would be to brand any anti-trans bathroom legislation as government genital checks, rather than "protecting cis women from trans women." It puts the other side on the defensive. At the same time, I smear individual politicians with accusations of wanting to force teachers to do genital checks on children, and insinuate that those supporting such legislation might be secret pedophiles since they think about the genitalia of children so much. Meanwhile, the #WeJustNeedToPee campaign basically dispels some of the fear and myths around trans people using the gender appropriate bathroom facilities.

Go hard against them, put them on the defensive, and if we are aggressive enough I guarantee this shit dies and ends. If you are a politician the last thing you want to do is explain to people that you are not in favor of genital checks on children. That is just an untenable position to be in, and so this issue will be dropped like a hot potato.

By taking a page out of their book and reframing it we could beat them at their own game.

Instead of going on the defense, turn it around, use fear and revulsion against them.

Absolutely brilliant.

I'm unsure why the HRC has tried their stupid "win their hearts" strategy. Let's face facts. Most of the people in this country hate us, and of our community they hate trans people the most. We will lose even liberals if we try and fight them on their ground, because even most leftists are ignorant as fuck about our community. The majority of the time only few people have any consequential interactions with our community outside of our employment, and if they do it is usually brief.

The only way we win is by framing issues in such a way that is favorable to us. We cannot frame issues in such a way that we are asking people to vote in support of us (the majority of people are prejudiced as fuck). Instead, we need to frame issues in such a way that they are voting against our enemies. It's not the people vs us. It's the people vs them.

We want straight and cis people, when we have to defend ourselves, to not think about how things impact us. Instead, I'd rather them think about how laws meant to target us impact them personally.

Taking on "religious liberty laws?" I don't even mention LGBTQ people. I just start running ads with the KKK refusing to serve black people and use their exact rhetoric and language, and similar issues with other minority groups that could be targeted. Imagine a young black man holding up a picture of his father on a TV commercial, talking about how his father fought to de-segregate the country, and now such-and-such politician is trying to bring back segregation under the guise of "religious liberty." Come up with a catchy slogan that can be repeated again and again as a branding message, and just go at it. Let the politicians go out there and defend that shit by saying, "No! We don't actually want to discriminate against black people, we only want to discriminate against the gays!" It forces them to actually make their stance clear to the public, instead of going under that vague "religious liberty" bullshit.

The problem for them is that they cannot target us specifically with the law, and so they must craft those laws so broadly that it impacts everyone. Since it impacts everyone, we need to broaden the base of people under attack by the law. Don't let them narrow it to us.

We can't win the hearts of people who are racist/sexist/ homo and transphobic, etc but we can make sure they realize that they are also at the bottom of that slippery slope.

If they can be made to feel what the victims feel they will start to care.

of people with no heart and are out of their minds.

Once they realize they stand to lose their rights they might care.

Like Cristie. No buffet for you. Bakeries not serving the obese.....

Please no offense meant to folks with more cushion, I'm one of them, just showing the absurdity.

is that the government already performs genital checks, even on children. They do it at airport security, and hardly a peep is made. Sometimes it escapes containment and we get a clickbait "This girls was stopped at airport security and you'll never guess what happens!" but then nothing happens.

Although I think the problem with what I've said is that no one has really pressed the issue, and like you said, if it's publicized that they actually want teachers to literally check kid's genitals before they enter the bathroom then the pushback against these laws can succeed.

I'm tired of SWERF and TERF being the order of the day and everyone chowing down.

Even after the "win", I was called a "Debbie Downer" because I didn't don my rainbow undies. I knew this was going to happen. Besides there still being plenty of homophobic laws out there (housing and employment), there was no way in HELL the right was just going to thrown in the towel and move on! And here we are with "leaders" who are impotent and a populace going "whaaa...?"

They seem to think that marriage is the be all and end all of lgbt rights.

Of course they are the same people who accused you of wanting a pony and being "single issue voters".

Fundamentalism of any kind always ends poorly.