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Is there a youth backlash brewing against LGBT?
I came up out of the subway the other day, and nearly my entire field of view was filled by a massive glowing screen full of flapping pride flags, wall-to-wall and six feet tall. It was a project by some charity or other claiming that "hate crimes" (or victimization, or incidents, or whatever they measure) jump by 60% during pride month. I've been so burned out by the sight of that flag everywhere that the only reaction I can muster is "maybe stop being so obnoxious about it then?" From the POSIWID perspective, one could consider the purpose of pride month to be to spike hostility against LGBT people, so why do it?
A long tweet from sci-fi author Devon Eriksen claims that pride month is downstream of the "toaster fucker" problem, in reference to an ancient greentext. Condensed: the internet brings together people with bizarre niche interests (what he calls "toaster fuckers" — he claims it's meant to be a general term but he's clearly writing about the LGBT theater of the CW). A supportive online community stops these people from leaving the toaster in the kitchen and adjusting to the normal world around them, and instead these online groups metastasize, eventually spilling over into the wider world: intra-group status competitions start with "who can fuck the most toasters", lead to "'toaster-fucker pride' bumper stickers" and then "bragging about how they sneak into other people's kitchens and fuck their toasters, too" and "swapping tips for how to introduce kids to the joys of toaster-fucking."
I think I agree with some of that description but not all of it, and may write it up in another thread if I get time, but it's not so important for this post. I need it as context for the bit that I think is more accurate: the normies getting fed up with all the toaster-fucking, the backlash, and the response (lightly edited to concatenate multiple small tweets, but no words changed):
I think this explains the split in normie opinion pretty well: red states have had more than enough and that's led into the various legal battles that Devon alludes to, school choice advocacy, campaigns to replace progressive school boards, etc. I don't think I've seen "beaten with fenceposts"-level backlash (I figure it would pop up here if it was an issue), but even the memory of such events in the semi-recent past could explain normie "I want to be a good person so I'll call myself an ally"-ism. Compare the number of "racist hate crime" hoaxes over the past few years, to the point where "the demand for racism exceeds its supply" has become a dark joke among cynical online commentators. I don't think I've seen LGBT activists fabricate incidents (certainly none as badly as Jussie Smollett did), but it seems useful for a group to have opposition to keep its supporters energized ("our work is not yet done!") and I could definitely see obnoxious pride month displays as accidentally serving this function.
Onto youth. A recent tweet by a newish Twitter account, America_2100, claims a drop in support for LGBT over the past few years (2022–2023: US-wide: -7 points; Republicans: -15 points, to a 10-year low of 41%; Democrats: -6 points; "young people": -8 points). In particular, they claim Gen Z's support for gay marriage dropped by 11 points between 2021 and 2023, which is double the time span of the other stats but could indicate an ongoing decline in support. Unfortunately the tweet doesn't source the surveys it refers to beyond saying that it came from PRRI and I don't have hard data beyond a couple of anecdotes. Lime, a scooter rental company, made a pride-flag crosswalk in Washington a 'walk-the-scooter' zone after several teenagers were arrested for leaving skid marks on it. I saw a recent comment on a gaming subreddit (sorry, I can't find it), in response to yet another pride-month-themed mod, saying something like "don't be discouraged! 50% upvotes for a pride mod is pretty good these days". But when I interact with university students, the discourse is still very pro-LGBT: they talking about being excited for pride events, etc.
So, questions for the floor:
Probably on its face true, because vandalism is considered in the same category of "hate crime" as assault, and during pride month the amount of publicly displayed gay stuff increases by vastly more than 60%. If the modal hate crime is something like "FAG" graffiti on a pro-Gay poster or tearing down a pride flag, the number of pro-gay posters and pride flags has to increase by 500% or better during Pride. So really, the hate criminals are restraining themselves more during pride month. It's the same way that AIPAC and the ADL have long played with the numbers to make Jews the primary victim of hate crimes, because swastika graffiti anywhere within five miles of a Synagogue is counted as a hate crime in their numbers.
Anecdotally, as Pride is becoming something you get taught about in middle school, the backlash is inevitable among the youth as a basic form of teen rebellion. Kids are always going to find whatever their 7th grade health teacher teaches them lame. I remember in health class they showed us a Lifetime movie about Date Rape called She Cried No. As a gang of virgins in the Boy Scouts, we spent multiple camping trips making up alternate titles when the scoutmasters weren't looking. "She cried maybe later" "She cried not you" "she cried and then kept crying." And it wasn't like we were pro-rape, just that health class was lame and we were going to make fun of it.
I've had the argument with many well-meaning progressive friends who tell me they are teaching their kids that classic profanity is no big deal, but slurs are the really bad words. I tell them that is the opposite of how to teach their kids not to use slurs: every kid turns twelve or thirteen and wants to use the no-no words, from Romeo's buddies in Verona swearing by Christ's Wounds to kids buying Eminem CDs in 2001. If you tell them that Nigger and Faggot are the only really bad words, those are the only words they can use to get the thrill of using profanity for the first time. The old Reddit joke about Dr. Kikey McNiggerFaggot will hit all the harder for them. Unless your kid is some Ned Flanders-ass dork, they're gonna cuss. You better teach them cuss words that are no big deal, or they'll use the ones that are. #ReadAnotherBook and all, but liberalism has fallen a long way from 1997 when Fictional Liberal Hero Dumbledore confidently intoned that "fear of a [word] increases fear of the thing itself;" and you knew the really good guys because they weren't afraid to use the no-no words, they said what they meant and meant what they said. Now the left-wingers would be in support of not using the "V-word" because it "re-traumatizes" the victims and their families.
I'd never considered this take on 'You Know Who' before, and I find it utterly fascinating, especially in light of how Rowling backtracked in Book 7 and made Voldemort a literal Taboo where saying the name would summon a small army of 'Snatchers' to attack you and imprison you.
(For the life of me, I have no idea what Rowling was thinking with this plot point. It seems obvious that the Taboo was intentionally foreshadowed in earlier books -- Voldemort is identified as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, after all -- but it's more a little brain-bending to realize that Rowling wrote Dumbledore as absolutely insistent that Harry should always always used Voldemort's name and that there is never any reason to fear a name and that other wizards are funny and weird at their fear of even hearing Voldemort's name. My pet theory is that this was part of 'Dumbledore wants to set Harry and Voldemort on a collision course so the prophecy could be fulfilled ASAP', like the Philosopher's Stone obstacle course in Book 1, but that just opens a whole new set of questions.)
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