Nov 4, 2026, 9:06 PMThere's one other thought I had, that I couldn't make fit into Bluesky's 300-character boxes.
I wrote this post, with intentionally provocative language, before the election. I think this frame is still useful. "Wedge strategies". What we saw last night was that Republicans failed to use trans people as a wedge against Democrats. But they *succeeded* in using trans minors as a wedge against trans people in general. (1/3)
I'm gonna try to word this carefully.
Nov 4, 2026, 9:07 PMWe can't, ever, abandon trans children. We can't accept the Democratic Party compromise of "ok, you trans freaks can do whatever it is you're doing, but you can't have childhoods".
But we also shouldn't let transphobes claim a bigger win than they actually got. Especially not in our own heads.
They did this via a cheat. A trick. They distracted the cishets by talking about "kids" and "sports". They can't go about what they want openly yet, not quite. That's important. (2/3)
Nov 4, 2026, 9:09 PMIt's important both to stave off the giant looming despair but also because there's a potential strategy here. We can *convince* the cishets they were tricked. Think about how people reversed themselves so fully on gay marriage when the wind started blowing the other way. It is actually possible to get the cishets into a place where six years from now nobody will admit they supported the 2026 anti-trans ballot initiatives.
It would help if the NYT went out of business. (3/3)
@mcc anecdata and related to your bsky post about framing: I've had success convincing family that these ballot measures are 'gross and weird' by taking the angle that the state has no reason to see what's under a child's clothing. The framing 'it's about fairness in sports' is surprisingly effective but it is equally effective to change that framing.
@madjohnroberts @mcc I have found "lol gross, what are you a pedophile?" to be a great answer for almost anything involving kids and their gens.
Nov 4, 2026, 9:28 PM@madjohnroberts @mcc the thing i still haven't managed to understand is _why_ "fairness in sports" even works at all (e.g. why is it better than nonsense about toilets? _is_ it better than nonsense about toilets?)
the best i've got so far is that "sports" seems to be a weird cultural mythology that i'm just not a part of due to my upbringing
Nov 4, 2026, 9:32 PM@r @madjohnroberts I think this is a good post.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:m4hcx7fornr745oorfsvhslc/post/3myn2p5xqkk2c
This is also good, though it is not relevant, I just stumbled across it looking for the other one.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pe4lojlbe7ruuu2aqrpbgnht/post/3myut4myxys2s
Nov 4, 2026, 10:01 PM@mcc @madjohnroberts okay, that thread ("embodied being" etc) makes me wonder *even more* how much of this is actually secretly "i (a normie cishet) don't get bodily autonomy (probably don't even know that word), but these trans people suddenly do? that is both 'not fair' and also terrifying and cognitohazardous"
which is a phenomenon i've been quietly observing for a while now (see e.g. peptides jumping from silly valley over to normie women with disposable income)
Nov 4, 2026, 10:09 PM@r @madjohnroberts @mcc to be blunt, sports is a beachhead for segregation, surrounded by very superstitious people who have been sold a bill of goods that the segregation is necessary for equity
Nov 4, 2026, 10:15 PM@rakslice @madjohnroberts @mcc right, i was interested in _how_ you would come to have superstition like that (and why it feels *so* foreign to me)
the entire "culture of physical activity" quoted in the other thread branch is not really something i've ever been exposed to
Nov 4, 2026, 10:20 PM@rakslice @madjohnroberts @mcc or, more precisely, i've always been exposed to a *different* one
the culture _I_ got was that organized sports (*well* into the TV-including-cable era) was entirely about obscure meta-game, non-organized grass-touching sports didn't matter because i didn't have friends, and e-sports were not acknowledged by anybody. but this isolation meant that an individualistic "do whatever you want" self-determination wasn't scary at all (see other thread branch again)
this clearly doesn't appear to be what other people got though, and the differences are probably important for adjusting the framing
@r I don't think it's complicated, people (in general) don't think about it very deeply. The bills say they "restore fairness in school sports" oh that sounds good, everyone wants a fair chance! I think that's as deep as most people get, and proponents can push trans scarecrows that simply don't exist since most people don't know a trans kid and don't empathize with what they don't know. And considering second order effects takes practice/training.
@rakslice @mcc
Nov 4, 2026, 10:49 PM@madjohnroberts @r @rakslice it hurts because i want to like direct democracy but all we ever seem to get out of initiative systems is these bills with feel-good toplines that do something horrific if you actually read all the way to the end
Nov 4, 2026, 11:12 PM@mcc @madjohnroberts @rakslice yeah i'm probably overthinking it, i'm just trying to figure out _how_ i am
i know about the US's slogan-based elections, but i still don't expect "fairness" to emotionally resonate so strongly (to me it's *far* weaker than a slogan like making america great again)
@r @mcc @rakslice I agree it's not compelling. Clarifying what I said above, the surface argument is for "fairness" and the compelling counter arguments ("we shouldn't hate trans folk" aside) point out logical consequences of these bills. Deducing consequences is the step I think people don't do, so "fairness" wins. At some level, this is an outreach problem and transphobes do more of it. It's a problem when people hear of these bills for the first time when they open their ballot
Nov 4, 2026, 11:43 PM@madjohnroberts @r @rakslice This is why I think the Washington initiative is so important: It's a clear overreach and the phobes left themselves exposed
@mcc @madjohnroberts @r @rakslice the fact that that initiative is so hideously creepy that I've been calling initiative Epstein is something we need to lean hard on.
@madjohnroberts @mcc The ad covered in https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/lets-make-sure-youre-really-a-girl really captured the creepiness of the state being obsessed with checking what's in kids' pants
Agree. Here in Washington, it's not about "protecting girls in sports". If so, wouldn't it be more effective banning men as coaches, referees, and trainers? Nope, it's instead about Brian Heywood's weird fixation on girls.
His #i638 initiative seems illegal on its face (because it demands different rules by gender). I fully expect this initiative will die in the courts. But we still need to educate the folks who backed it on why it's bad, so so bad.
@madjohnroberts @mcc We didn't really have a proper discussion in the publics about this one, did we?
"It's about fairness in sports" is easily countered with "sports are defined stupid you're just lazy." But seeing my ballot is the first I heard of it TBH
Nov 4, 2026, 9:37 PM@madjohnroberts @mcc I generally have a belief if someone says they’re protecting kids, “preventing child trafficking”, etc., in a public way, they’re a child abuser, domestic abuser, or at the very least defrauding people. This is essentially always correct.
Somehow normal people buy the “protecting kids” shit and it drives me nuts.
Nov 4, 2026, 10:47 PM@mcc i've been saying this in relation to support for anti-immigration policies, how the fact that everybody still needs to trick themselves that they are "deporting criminals", is a VERY important distinction. that means anti-immigrant views are actually unpopular. that means transphobia is actually unpopular. we can win.
@mcc As someone with a pretty expansive view of who my peers and comrades are, it is exhausting to see some of the people under my duty of care be successfully othered within my people due to blatant propaganda from the group we all know is the enemy.
No! You don't have to hand it to them! You don't have to find an across-the-aisle compromise! No, they don't have a point, except the one they're stabbing into our most vulnerable pack members! The people who "came for" in any "first they came for" are never the good guys, never your friends, and never worth your ears.
I'm exhausted, and tired of tempering my feelings about this to look less insane to people who have drunk the centrism flavor-aid (and still not questioned where THAT got them).
Nov 5, 2026, 1:15 AM@mcc I am so angry with this WA initiative right now. I feel the biggest issue is there are exponentially more creepy men who want to watch girls high school sports with their hands in their pockets worried about being gay.
If this were about children, why is the language for trans girls only? I wonder what would have happened if it included boys having to line up and have their dicks yanked on to prove they're attached?
@mcc Yeah that caught me off guard. :(
I thought "for the children" was the ultimate trump card but "Sport!" apparently pushes some tribal-gambling-nostalgia nexus in American brains and they turn into gibbering idiots.
In retrospect, the TV in every bar in the world should have been a clue.
Yeah I'm pissed. And I don't even LIKE sports.
Nov 4, 2026, 9:36 PM@mcc god the Colorado measures pissed me off so much. The woman who added both of them is fucking insane.
@mcc this is an essential truth that we need to realize and make a part of our political agenda: children are an oppressed class of people and abuses against them are used as a beachhead to go after everyone else in short order. The worst people in the country are asserting that they have the right to mistreat children, especially LGBT children and we cannot allow them to have that