Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand
you don't get to insist that no one talks about your political project and it's weak and pathetic that you think you do
Edit: I have grown frustrated by how this piece is shared in bad faith or by misrepresenting what it argues, so I am removing it from this newsletter. You can find an archived version of this post here.
There are a handful of these people I engage with semi regularly (mostly women, many former/questioning evangelicals who don’t yet recognize they’re filling the Church Need with a new social based dogma) and any time I make a reasonable comment or ask a reasonable question, I literally get ignored. Total silence.
Here’s an example. One woman casually dropped in an otherwise loosely related Instagram post “what are you doing to keep from raising little white assholes?”
I replied: “I imagine the best way to not raise little white assholes is similar to the way Asian parents don’t raise little Asian assholes, or Iranian parents don’t raise little Persian assholes, or Latino parents don’t raise little Latino assholes: By teaching them that every person is an individual with unique life experiences, interests, and cultural traditions, and to not assign moral value or deficit to any person based on their immutable phenotypical characteristics. To approach every person with curiosity and good intentions. To realize that so many of life’s “blessings” can be chalked up to good luck, but they should always live as if their actions and words matter.”
Zero responses to that.
This was glorious, thank you.
On “dog whistles”: Last week, Tom Cotton was on Fox news complaining about the teachers’ union president and he said: “Randi Weingarten is a joke. Randi Weingarten does not even have children of her own. What in the hell does she know about raising and teaching kids? In fact that’s probably why she was perfectly fine to shut down schools for two years and force kids to wear masks, because she didn’t have to deal with it at home.”
They called this a “homophobic dog whistle” and also an affront to every teacher who doesn’t have children. Tom Cotton does seem to be homophobic in general, but it’s ridiculous to read this as an effort to stoke anti-lesbian prejudice. Why would he even need to do that, when parents are extremely pissed about the school closures? But they call it a “dog whistle” because they know that Cotton’s actual message resonates with voters.
This tactic might work on some people, but when it stops working it really stops working. Parents are fed up with being told they’re prejudiced when they know they’re not.
Randi calling it a dog whistle: https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1456085062584311817