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Carina's avatar

I hate seeing writers like Jesse and Matt grouped with Graham Linehan, who seems to genuinely hate trans people.

I thought Graham's post mocking the dating profile photos of trans women was repugnant. These individuals had no power and had done NOTHING wrong. The dating app explicitly welcomes trans women to participate. And putting up a dating profile is such a scary and vulnerable thing in the first place. It was so unnecessary and cruel.

If this is really about transphobia, the focus should be on Graham -- not Jesse who wrote on Substack, for example, "Why The Hard Age Caps On Youth Gender Transition Being Proposed By Conservatives Are A Very Bad Idea." Or Matt who doesn't even write about these issues.

The only thing I can even think of is that Matt signed the Harper's letter, which didn't mention trans issues -- but was construed as transphobic after it got published.

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Benjamin Greco's avatar

I hate woke and Identity politics, but I have a question for its critics. I think it is an important one for them to answer. When have we ever been better than this? Jesse Singhal, Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss seem to believe there was a time when our politics was ruled by reasonable, well informed citizens and I do not believe that a time like that has ever existed. It is a myth. I don’t think it ever will exist either. Call me a Misanthrope (I’ll come to dinner) but Man isn’t good enough to create a just society. He can only dream them up.

Throughout our history people have used false narratives and outright lies to gain and keep power. Slave owners, robber-barons, and anti-communists have demonized and ostracized people to maintain their power, and innocents were hurt. The only thing different today is who is wielding the power and the technology they wield it with. The technology makes the manipulation of the mob more suffocating but since Jackson our politics has been about manipulating mobs. The people who are wielding the power sincerely want a society free of racism and misogyny and I think that is a better ideal to strive for than the maintenance of corporate power and sustaining the wealthy. There are excesses, stupid ideas abound and innocents are cancelled, but that is nothing new either.

As for journalism it has always been biased and the willing servant of one power structure or another. And well journalists are opinions. The era of objective journalism, if there ever was one, was a short one. Mr. Singhal’s obsession with who is saying what about whom on twitter is really just coverage of an insular war among journalists that really isn’t all that important.

Of course, a cynic like myself finds wokism sickeningly sweet and insincere but the world is never a happy place for cynics. I don’t think there is revolution happening, or our democracy, such as it is, is in peril. It is just a new era is upon us. And this too shall pass.

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