The Human Rights Campaign is a highly respected organization. A lot of LGBTQ+ people and allies that I have a lot of love and admire regularly work with them to raise awareness on various issues affecting our community. Many other people in the LGBTQ+ community, however, are suspicious of or down right angry with the HRC for good reason. They have a long history of excluding people of color, transgender individuals, the bisexual community, and low income LGBTQ people from movement building. Based on HRC’s track record, I feel they’re just using these people as a means to an end. That end being looking credible and genuine in their concern for the community’s welfare. And making lots of money.
In 2016, Human Rights Campaign threw their support behind Hillary Clinton before the primaries had concluded. Why endorse a candidate their own organization gave an 89% rating to over a candidate they gave a 100% rating to? Easy. Chad Griffin, the guy who runs the show over at HRC, is friends with Clinton. When she threw her so called support behind LGBTQ+ people in 2013, it was his organization who released her public statement on the matter. This is corruption plain and simple.
Now, is Sanders perfect? Hell no. He’s just as cringe as everyone else is when he frames issues like abortion, equal pay, and gender-based violence as a cis woman only issue. In fact, if he really stopped and thought about it, he’d realize there are very few issues that solely impact cis women and girls. He and everyone else need to get include intersectional practices in their work and stop leaving the most marginalized vulnerable behind with gendered language that acts as an exclusionary tool rather than the solution it’s intended to.
But, even with his faux pas he was and still is the best choice. I can hear the keyboard warriors screaming “elections ARE a women’s issue! Aren’t you tired of old white men in charge?” The answer to that is I’m tired of old white men who impede progress in charge.
As a general rule, I don’t vote for people based on their genitals or age or anything else arbitrary about them. I vote based on their voting record and the policies they are pushing for. Of course, I want to see more diversity in politics. But, finger wagging and accusing everyone of misogyny just because they support a cis man candidate over a cis woman candidate doesn’t help anyone, least of all the cis woman candidate.
Think about it this way: if you constantly call everything misogynistic the word loses meaning and power. This makes is so that if this woman does face a case or cases of actual misogyny somewhere down the line, no one will believe her or listen to her. They’ll accuse her of crying wolf and dismiss her claims as hypersensitive Social Justice Warrior syndrome or something equally stupid.
Here’s another way to look at this: women supporting women is fine by me. I want to see more of this sentiment happening in the trans community. But, does that mean you support every woman every single time she’s doing something? Let’s say Ro Khanna was running against Sarah Huckabee Sanders for president. Does your vote automatically go to a woman who worked for a man that brags about sexually abusing women just because she’s a woman? Or do you vote for the very woke principled man because his stance on the issues is what’s best for the American people? Voting for Huckabee Sanders over Khanna just because she’s a woman would be like me voting for Blaire White over Khanna just because she’s trans. It’s nonsense and not only goes against your best interests as an individual, it goes against the best interests of everyone in this country.
This is what HRC was complacent to when they endorsed Clinton. A woman who ran her campaign on the fact she is a woman and felt that alone entitled her to the highest office in our country. A woman whose advisors, campaign managers, and most well-known supporters smeared all of her opponents as sexists without any real criticisms of her policies. A woman with only name recognition and a bunch of platitudes and clichés to play on. She was business as usual. She was half steps and half measures. She had no actual policy solutions that were anything close to what Sanders was and still is bringing to the table. She was a terrible candidate.
Now, we get to the debate itself. I didn’t get a chance to watch it, and I couldn’t find it online. Curious, that. However, I did find this enlightening video about the debate and HRC as an organization on The Young Turks’s (TYT) YouTube page:
I want to start off by encouraging everyone to not just listen to this amazing woman who is speaking with Cenk and John, but to also take her words to heart. What she’s saying is very important. Honestly, if you can make it through this entire video and still think HRC is a good organization, I don’t think there’s anything to convince you otherwise.
But, HRC isn’t the only organization that screwed up here. CNN did too. In the video above, we see Blossom Brown, and amazing Black trans woman who is getting viciously talked down to by a smug Don Lemon. When he says to her they’re doing this debate for ‘people like her,’ I saw red. How dare he say something so disgustingly condescending to an activist who is simply trying to make everyone aware of the crisis going on with Black trans women in America right now.
Chris Cuomo is a sanctimonious self proclaimed ally to the LGBTQ+ community. At no point is a ‘joke’ about pronouns EVER okay. You know who else does that? Republicans. LGBTQ+ grifters who side with reactionary dirtbags against their own best interests. People who think anything goes in comedy and being ‘edgy’ is cute. In other words, no one worth knowing or associating with. I lost all respect for CNN and MSNBC during the 2016 primary, and shit like this just further downgrades my opinion of them.
It saddens me to say this, but among our demographic, even independent media still needs work. While TYT did amazing covering the LGBTQ Town Hall, they haven’t done so great on other issues in the past.
In this video, the hosts debate a father daughter dance being postponed in order for the school to find a way to make it inclusive for nonbinary parents and students:
The reaction is mixed. One of the hosts is all in favor of it, while Cenk and Ana express skepticism and in my opinion snark. Ana also misidentifies nonbinary folks as not trans. No, Ana we are trans because we don’t identify with our assigned sex at birth. And nonbinary isn’t as cut and dry as you don’t identify as male or female. There’s a whole spectrum of identity and presentation involved there. Please do some research on the subject.
Then, there was this fiasco:
As you all remember, Julian Castro spoke about Reproductive Justice during the first debate. Everything was going all right until he misgendered trans men by calling them trans females. TYT took this miswording and went off on a tangent of transphobic proportions. Once again, you got Ana at the center of it saying abortion isn’t a trans issue. You got another lady talking about how she doesn’t get how it is a trans issue. You are journalists, right? Are you capable of research? Are you able to go on social media and ask TRANS PEOPLE how this is an issue that impacts them? Do you not have any trans friends? I’d be surprised if you had very many after this fuck up. I’ve repeatedly called for them to apologize to the trans community and retract their statements. They haven’t. No surprise there!
What’s clear to me is number one, we have to stop platforming so called LGBTQ+ organizations that feed the capitalist and white supremacist trolls, and number two, anyone who claims to be a news or journalistic outlet needs to either do better research or hire trans people to cover the issues that impact our community.
TYT, this latest video proves you can do a hell of a lot better than you have been. When having conversations about trans issues, it’s important that the conversation is led by trans people, specifically the person or people directly impacted by what’s happening. The next time you discuss abortion, talk to a trans man or nonbinary trans AFAB. I promise you will come away from it with a clear understanding of how it affects us, and why it matters.