| I think the extreme political hardlining makes this happen too. I've never been to the US but this extreme-right stuff has made its way to Holland too. They already gained 30% of votes in the last election. Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life. At first I used to try to reason with them. I thought sure, it's just a misunderstanding. I'll just explain it and give some official links and we can move past this. I explained countless times that no, kids aren't given gender surgery. No there's no deep state trying to make people gay (as if you even could!). No, nobody would ever go through a whole transition just so they can perv in the women's bathroom. The very idea is just insane if you know what it entails. But there was no point. These guys just want to be so angry they're foaming at the mouth. They actually enjoy their hate, there's no way they let something as trivial as facts get in the way. They wave official statistics and reports away as 'deep state propaganda' or 'the woke agenda'. It doesn't matter that what they're angry about isn't true and makes no sense. They just want to be angry and 'stick it to the man'. One of my ex-'friends' even asked me seriously if I had plans to transition. I said no, why would you even think that? I'm very happy with my gender and identity and always have been. Well, he said, several of your friends are trans and they spread it around. I quizzed him on it thinking he was just trolling but no, he really believes this. Heard it in some podcast. Just... WTF. This is exactly why we need education on these subjects in schools. But anyway, so I have no time anymore for that kind of negativity in my life and I'm sick of arguing about this. And listening to all this hate. So I'm done. Note that I'm not disrespecting them or calling them names. I'm not even angry at them, if anything I'm just sad. But I just don't want to interact with them anymore. The good thing though is that I did get closer to my progressive and LGBT friends. We never talk about this because we all hate negativity, we just roll our eyes at the news. But we realize we need to stick together to defend ourselves when the time comes. As far as the cause I'm basically blaming social media for it. They strive for engagement to maximise their eyeball time and hate is a very powerful driver of engagement. It might not even have been a conscious choice by these companies. But I am getting very worried now where this is heading. |