[ToucanLoucan]

Look I don’t know how to fly a helicopter but if I saw someone crash one into a tree, I can fairly confidently say he fucked it up.

In the same way as if you’re a woman who voted voluntarily for a man explicitly campaigning on policies that will harm you, you fucked up.

[lynx23]

Again, that is your claim and your opinion. That doesn't mean you are eligible to decide what other people in your democracy are supposed to vote. NO, simply no. In fact, this attitude is a reason why liberals are struggling with support of the common man. You're basically implying that these women, that didn't vote like you wanted, are too stupid to realize what they did. This is plain and outright patronisation mixed with a heavy dose of old-school sexism. Stop it, you are making a fool of yourself and your political friends.

[I-M-S]

While I completely agree with you, I can also understand the reaction of people who happen to be passengers in the aforementioned helicopter.

[lynx23]

Full ACK. Frustration is as human as an emotion can be. But that shouldn't lead to patronising sexism. To me, democracy is a life-long lesson. I see it as a pendulum, necessarily swinging from side to side to avoid a particular political party to establish a dictatorship. The USA, as the stereotypical two party system, demonstrates this pretty nicely. Democrats and republicans seem to pretty much take over in an alternating pattern. However, the life-lesson mentioned is, that if you're not completely centered, there will always be times when you have to cope with your political opponent having the reigns. I consider that a worthwhile challenge, to accept that you can't win all the time. In fact, its not acceptance, its the knowledge that you shouldn't win all the time, which goes much deeper actually...

[ToucanLoucan]

I have LGBTQ+ friends who's lives are demonstrably, objectively worse as a result of Trump's first term. My wife got surgery to have herself sterilized out of fear that were something horrific to happen to her, she wouldn't be able to get the healthcare she needs thanks to the Roe v. Wade decision, which is directly traceable to the "other side." We're about to get a wave of suicides in this country as hopeless minority folks all over the country realize we are entering 4 years of yet more persecution, yet more official policy that will deny them the right to exist as the people they are and they simply can't take it anymore.

All of your comment absolutely holds up when we're talking what should be politics, which is shit like how you organize tax brackets, what priorities we decide are most important to fund, the directions in which we shape our societies. But I am long sick and tired of that same attitude being brought to bear on whether my friends and I have the right to exist as the people we are, whether my wife has the right to decide what happens to her body, and always, ALWAYS with this sardonic tone of "well you can't win em all champ!" as though we just have to accept our differences with people WHO, LITERALLY, GENUINELY WANT US DEAD.

I legit get flashbacks to putting up with bullies in school, where the teacher, bless her and her good intentions, would make you sit and "talk it out" with your bully, as though you in any way whatsoever were responsible for your bullying. As though you and your abuser "just didn't get along" and "needed to work your differences out." And no, categorically, emphatically, to my dying breath, no. The problem between the LGBT community and the Republican party is not a "we just need to respect different opinions" situation. If your opinion is that certain groups of people do not have the right to exist, or should do so with some diminished set of rights, or whatever you'd like to couch it in: your opinion is WRONG and if your paradigm of decision-making cannot see that, then your paradigm is WRONG too.

I wish just ONE of you centrists would have to sit in a public forum as your right to exist is debated, and put on a brave, "rational," calm, and reasonable face and defend that in front of people who would love nothing more than to see you, and everyone like you, ejected from their society so they can freeze to death.

[RpmReviver]

I'm just another nerdy, white midwestern man in a very purple area with a very common name. I lived with abuse and neglect for the first 16 years of my life at home. I have gone through my own spiral down to hell from trauma, I've had to deal with BPD, despair, and a tumor in my head. I've been suicidal every day for the majority of the past 4 years. I've had to deal with feelings of whether not society cares if I exist. I've dealt with wanting to be a victim

I don't know what to say that won't sound dismissive or hurtful, but that's Truth sometimes, it comes without judgement, just trying help with a perspective as outsider looking in

What you feel and have experienced sucks and absolutely awful, but your community is not the only ones who experience abuse. I get a sense from the LGBT community that empathy is demanded and not reciprocated, and friends and allies are pushed away. In the case of abortion, there's no mention to what the moral dilemma you're asking people to make, there's no consideration that you're asking someone to choose between you and an unborn baby, no one is really qualified to make that judgement. Some pro-lifers would argue that the defense of a defenseless creature is a higher calling. It goes for everyone, if you want people to care about you, you have to care about them.

From someone that's gone through a lot of work to deal with my own mental health, these reactions seem completely irrational and the misery is partially self imposed. I see a very emotionally immature community in denial. I see a community looking for external validation when it will never come. I see a community that puts their PTSD and mommy and daddy issues out in to the world and it's a bit much to deal with for normal people. I see a community that has had a lot of hardship and doesn't see that it warps their world view, I'm a believer that most people are good people, your community deserves protection as much as any other but it should also do it's part in helping itself

I absolutely hate it but there's not enough nurturing in world to deal with how brutal nature can be sometimes

Everyone has to deal with the fact people are never going to completely understand you, 100% of people aren't going to like you, there's crazy people out there on the wrong drugs that would kill you just for looking at them weird

There's a good chunk of people that support the 2nd amendment because there is no other higher natural right than your right to defend your existence

[ToucanLoucan]

None of what I’m complaining about is a product of nature, full stop. It is a product of bigots.

I don’t give a shit if people understand me. I don’t understand all kinds of people, not the least are Trump voters. I don’t, by virtue of that fact, want them harmed, want their freedoms limited, or want them subjected to undue misery. And all I really want is that same treatment in return.

[lynx23]

Amen. I fully agree with what you've said.

[lynx23]

I am a member of a very small minority group, mch smaller then the LGBTQ+ community. I've been subjected to hardship all my life. I am being talked down to, patronised, and sometimes even manhandled, on a more or less daily basis. And I have never considered suicide because of that. If what you are saying is true, I take it as proof that mental illness seems to be high amongst the group you are mentioning. I lack empathy for such a victim mentality. In other, more concrete words: If there were a way to switch places, I'd take being a LGTBQ+ member over being 100% blind every day. Maybe something to reflect for you. The LGBTQ+ community has been to fucking loud in recent years that they seem to have totally forgotten that there are groups below them in the privilege pyramid. Those of us below them are listening in bewilderment.

[ToucanLoucan]

Your lack of identifying with a “victim mentality” might also have something to do with the fact that blindness and its associated challenges have a lot more to do with the fact that you cannot see, due to whatever part of your vision failed to develop, and is not an active, maintained bigotry on the part of larger society. That’s not to say society can’t be an asshole to you too: I’m familiar with the challenges around visual accessibility and of course, as any differently-abled individual will corroborate, the only way you will get any assistance is with the forceful application of the state because otherwise no one will bother.

That being said, this is a classic example of crab bucketing. I am by no means saying that queer folks have it the worst everywhere: I’m saying that we have it bad, and we are frequently a bogeyman for the reactionary political project that’s the topic of this thread. And like, blindness certainly is a thing to contend with, but at least you don’t have a large segment of reactionary media saying that by virtue of being blind, you’re a child molester?