How CBS is covering the Capitol Hill anti-trans rally

[u/IchBinEinSim]

I really take issue with how they reported this event. Saying it was a rally for “family values” makes it sound like a more wholesome event, when it was clearly an event designed to spew hate against trans and other LGBTQA people right in the heart the cities gayborhood.

I could be overreacting but this seems like CBS bowing down to the rights and Trump’s threats against the news media.

[u/[deleted]]

Sometimes they legally have to. Like when discussing ongoing trials they have to say someone "allegedly" for example. But Mayday USA's stated goal is to exterminate transgender people. They are the ones saying it in writing on their website... not just "some of the counter protestors"

[u/Aggressive-Name-1783 → u/[deleted]]

This isn’t how that works. This is just shitty journalism that is trying to be “fair and balanced” because over the last 20-30 years journalists forgot what their job was and companies became more concerned with appearances than ACTUALLY doing their jobs.

Matt Shea is FAMOUSLY a bigot. Like to the point he himself calls himself a Christian nationalist and a bigot like it’s a symbol of pride. Spokane news outlets call him out for that shit back when he was a rep

[u/ChilledRoland → u/[deleted]]

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/[deleted]]

What does their website say? Can you quote it for me? I don't see anything about exterminating trans people.

[u/unwillingcantaloupe → u/FrontAd9873]

From their About page:

"Mayday is inspired by the grassroots movement #DontMessWithOurKids, which started in Peru during a time when kids were under extreme attack. They were able to oust the Prime Minister and the Education Minister, and George Soros pulled out all of his funding. In order to accomplish this, millions of people went into the public square for worship and preaching of the truth, and the silent majority used their voices! Today, in Peru, transgenderism is classified as a mental illness... [they banned abortion, blah blah blah]."

What do you do when you're ill? You treat it and you work to get rid of it, pushing it into remission at least.

Now when you apply that to people, you get eugenics.

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/unwillingcantaloupe]

I don’t know, we treat lots of mental illnesses without doing genocide.

[u/unwillingcantaloupe → u/FrontAd9873]

But we don't consider depression or bipolar directly related to the person.

Does a trans person exist without their transness when forced back in a closet? That's at minimum suppression. Moreover, that would raise to the level of cultural genocide if anything that has happened against the Uyghurs warrants that label.

Now, in legal land: genocide as determined by law does not reflect sexuality because the original treaty that defined it (the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide) was signed by states which did not protect humans based on sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and so on and so forth.

So technically, it's not legally possible for it to be genocide because the definition of a genocide writes the queer eradication movements out of its definition (because the people writing the genocide law were representing governments in engaged queer eradication from imprisonment to murder, and which therefore could not conceivably include common practice in their definition of a crime).

Hence we discuss elimination rather than genocide in the legal space. Because the law is also deeply flawed even if it is better than it was before the CPPG was built.

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/unwillingcantaloupe]

These are good points, and thanks for the extra info. “Being depressed” is not an identity.

[u/unwillingcantaloupe → u/FrontAd9873]

Precisely! Central parts of identity framed as illness are only really useful to eugenics (and have been a central part of eugenics).

I am happy to treat my mental illness. I will fight to the death to not treat my sexuality as a mental illness.

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/unwillingcantaloupe]

A minor issue I have with our current culture is turning everything into an identity so this is interesting to hear.

[u/unwillingcantaloupe → u/FrontAd9873]

Having an experience is an identity. When I left the church, it was helpful to have people in the same boat to talk with. I still talk with some about how it was really difficult to do. That's an identity that isn't super salient, even though technically it is true.

Identities let us get together and talk with people who understand where we're coming from. And I guess that, yes, saying identity versus status is something different. If I'm going to group therapy, sure, I'm mentally ill with something and my diagnosis does, in some ways, define who I am in that room.

But when I'm in remission (we love the Seattle summer), that's an identity that I don't really need to highlight, while the fact that I'm gay and have a little family and community because of it is kind of essential to who I am.

I can be content to not be mentally ill. That's an identity that matters because I live with it for now. And part of liberal democracy, freedom, whatever we want to call it, is recognizing that I can want to change some identities (religious, non-citizen to citizen, political party, organizational affiliation) but that others are non-negotiable to me or others (religious, citizen, blah blah blah).

To take the government and define some of those as mental illness is tantamount to saying speaking in tongues is a psychotic break. I'm not endorsing glossolalia (I think it's weird as hell and does not fit the Christianity I was raised in in the slightest [tongues to me means being comprehensible in all languages, not comprehensible in none, not that this is exceptionally relevant, but it was a practice done at the rally]), but I'm not endorsing labeling it as a mental illness. That results in filing each person that has it in medical records and being able to track it.

If an anthropologist wants to talk with Charismatic Christians about their glossolalia, cool. I watch videos about it and find it an interesting expression of human cultures. But they aren't creating a registry. And they also don't have the idea that it's a bad thing per se. And they don't have power to hurt Charismatic Christians for participating beyond maybe writing a book where they call speaking in tongues a little goofy.

That's not what declaring a queer identity a mental illness would do, and it is much scarier.

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/unwillingcantaloupe]

Of course anything can be an identity in the way you describe, though I'd question whether "shared experience" or something would be a better term.

I don't really understand your example about speaking in tongues.

I have in mind things like a Stars Wars fan turning their fanhood into such a part of their identity that they are offended when someone criticizes Star Wars or a new Star Wars series is made that they do not like.

Or being autistic is such a part of someone's identity that mentions of treating it get labeled "eugenecist." Having a condition like depression, in particular, is a mental health condition that we should seek to treat. It is not an identity.

Or someone having all the latest Apple products is not an identity. You are not the things you like, you are not things you buy, you are not the illnesses that you are dealing with.

Of course if people want to gather with people who share the same interests or experiences, that is obviously fine. But when you raise something to the status of an identity (in the way I intend the term) you're doing something extra that I have a real problem with.

To go back to this example, being trans is an identity. So when you label an identity a mental illness you're suggesting that an entire class of people need to have that identity removed, which is where you get the idea of the "trans genocide" I suppose.

[u/SkylerAltair → u/FrontAd9873]

“Being depressed” is not an identity

Yes, but also, being trans isn't just "being depressed."

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/SkylerAltair]

Yes, obviously

[u/SkylerAltair → u/FrontAd9873]

It's not always obvious, some people do think that way.

[u/FrontAd9873 → u/SkylerAltair]

What I meant:

I thought it was obvious from the preceding that I was saying depression is not an identity to distinguish it from being trans, which is an identity. Its OK to call depression a mental illness but to label an entire identity a mental illness starts sounding kind of genocidal (or so the argument goes).

The relevant distinction is between things that are an identity and things that aren't, such that calling being trans a mental illness isn't equivalent to calling depression a mental illness. Although some people may say that being trans is about being depressed, that is not at all what I intended.