How To Confront the Bigots

 

John Oliver debunks the right's weirdest anti-trans conspiracy yet, that kids are using litter boxes in classrooms: “The fact that you seem to genuinely think that that’s happening is just heartbreakingly stupid” https://t.co/iPVGo1W1SK

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 17, 2022

In part, it has to be mockery. When people believe things (or say they believe things) that are entirely stupid and harmful, there isn't anything else you can do but call them out. On the spot. 

The reality of this urban myth is pretty grim--some schools do have kitty litter on-site--because in the event of an active shooter situation, the kids can't go into the hall to get to the bathroom and have to make do. The problem isn't some weird kids who think they are cats (a fake problem) but the very real problem of school shooters. Like what happened at Sandy Hook, or Uvalde. The kind of thing your Alex Jones just shrugs off and pretends is not even real. Even as the bodies of children pile up.

There are people so abjectly weird they need fake problems because they have no answer for real ones. So abjectly weird they think that armed Proud Boys outside of a library is somehow less fucked up than a drag queen reading a story in front of kids with their parents there is. 

The shooters are fake, in some cosmology--and the litterboxes for "furry "kittens are real. I don't know how anyone can be polite about confronting them, but they absolutely do need to be confronted. And it has to be called "stupid". Believing Drag Queens are dangerous and neo-Nazis are not is appallingly fucked-up. Bigots thrive on pretending they own the status quo, though. 

People who want to believe anime is satanic or video games lead to becoming an active shooter or whatever, suffer from a not so rare case of their believing mind believing, and setting their thinking mind to proving--even if the proof isn't there. 

The Prover needs to be derailed. It needs lampooning. The believer can't be told not to believe, but they can watch their proof system fall apart under the steady mockery of peers. (Sometimes this does harden people who are exceptional in their proofery--most people are not that guy, tho'.) They aren't the status quo--they are the weirdos. 

The anti-LGBT bigots--they are the weirdos, not gay people, not trans people. The bigots are the ones who can't mind their own business. They are the ones who want to impose their reality on others. They are the lurkers into other people's lives, the intruders, the people who can't let go of things that have nothing to do with them. 

There is no "both sides" here. There is only people trying to live their lives on one side, and the bigots, the outsiders, peering in and hating, who need to get called off. Or asked what they would do about the school shooters, if they think kids squatting over kitty litter is a real problem, and haven't yet twigged that kids dying is also, a very real problem. 

Like kids who are not validated in their gender and being suicidal is a problem. This is the reality. If the "concern mommies" of this country want to be useful, instead of banning books, they would listen to their kids. Just listen. Parent, instead of trying to force the schools and libraries to parent and gatekeep for them. Actually do their job, instead of making it political. Raise their kids to be adults, instead of hoping the community will let them keep their bubble-babies in the bubble. 

What if? What if bigots tried to not be that, but be in any way useful instead? 

I know this is a lot to ask in a world where a dog shelter got death threats because drag queens read stories to dogs. Was the dogs becoming gay a concern? 

Of course not. It isn't about the dogs, it's about accepting gay folks at all because these people are truly ignorant and intolerant. And yep, they need to hear that society does not accept them for their intolerance and stupidity. They will not snatch us back to the dark ages. Their intolerance is the problem, not LGBT people existing. And that has to be the point of every conversation.

The bigots are laughably wrong. LGBT people have dignity and worth. We exist even if they wish we didn't. We just wish they had better ideas. 

ADDENDUM: We wish they didn't want us dead. That, too. So who is the real danger to society?