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Notes -
Haven't seen a thread yet on the gay bar shooting last weekend so I figured I would start it.
Sticking to facts in this post, opinion will go in reply.
The shooter killed 5 and injured 25
The shooter is a 22 year old, Anderson Lee Aldrich
The shooter previously was charged after he threatened his mother with homemade explosives and kidnapped her, but the charges were dropped
The shooter is the grandson of a prominent local Republican
The shooter was stopped by a drag queen combat veteran, who used his high heels to stomp him
Now for the opinion:
I believe that speech is powerful. Words are a means we use to convince other minds of beliefs about the world. Minds act upon those beliefs.
At present, there is a powerful right wing-meme that many people, some LGBT and some not, mostly democrats, are attempting to sexually confuse children for nefarious purposes. This is often described as "grooming" in order to equivocate with sexual abuse children.
Insofar as the reasonable man's reaction to a co-ordinated effort to sexually abuse children is not "I should vote about this and if I get outvoted, I should allow my children to be sexually abused", the actions of the shooter are completely predictable.
You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?
You aren't reponsible for every nutcase or moron on your team. But you are responsible for the logical consequence of your ideas. I know of no society that believes they should be having free and open debates and votes about whether teachers should be permitted to sexually abuse children. If you really believe this, you should act the same as if they proposed legalizing Cannabalism. There is no debate with barbarians, only the sword.
Well, it would help me to moderate if the meme wasn't so true.
You think it's true that there is a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them? Obviously "the meme" could refer to a broad range of stuff - but I think that's the gist of it. That seems very outlandish to me. Do you have any evidence?
Certainly not. There's a coordinated effort by a very small number to do this. Think of them as the inner party.
There's an outer party - larger in number - who are happy to get positions of petty power where they push ideologically compliant stories and occasionally hide truthful information that might harm the party. Think: all the journalists/content moderators happy to hide what Kiwifarms/libsoftiktok/NY Post want to reveal, regardless of it's truth. As another example, consider the case of Loudon County covering up a rape because it was done by a transwoman, or the police covering up hundreds of rapes in the UK.
Most of these folks would certainly never rape children. But even if a few leftist drag queens do want to rape children, it's an isolated incident and it's best to cover it up to avoid getting conservatives elected.
And there's a much larger group of folks who believe whatever MSNBC and the NYT tells them, and also believe that if it isn't on MSNBC it didn't happen. These folks can be forgiven for not noticing the small correction the NYT made that Trump supporters never killed anyone on Jan 6, or the line casually buried in the 8'th paragraph that hate crimes the police solve in NYC almost never fit the stereotype of a right wing white guy. If it were important, it'd be on the front page, right?
This one isn't really a good example for the anti-trans side, is it?
The two students involved were fuck buddies and had met for liaisons several times in the school bathroom. At the time of the incident, they were meeting up, but the girl was intending to cut things off. This doesn't seem like the typical example people think of, when they think of the dangers of transwomen in women's bathrooms. Like, are women seriously scared that they'll arrange a meeting with a long-time, trans sexual partner in the bathroom, and that partner will react badly to them ending things and assault them in the bathroom? No, the fear is always that a stranger will assault them, and there's still very little evidence that this happens often enough to warrant the fear people have of it.
I thought there was also confusion as to whether the attacker was actually trans, or merely a GNC boy. Regardless of that, at the time didn't the school not have policies in place allowing trans students to use their preferred bathrooms? So, if lack of such policies is supposed to protect women, this case would tend to be a bad argument in favor of it.
Obviously, the school shouldn't have tried to cover the incident up. But that is sort of separate to whether it actually supports the anti-trans side.
Kids also aren't supposed to be fucking in the school bathroom in the first place. An example of a boy lying about being trans to gain sexual access to women-only areas is not exactly a glowing endorsement.
It has been a while since I've looked at the case in depth, but I don't believe that the boy was lying about anything of the sort, and certainly not just to get into the bathroom for consensual sexual encounters. He was just gender non-conforming and wearing a skirt. The skirt did not grant him access to the bathroom, since the school did not have policies allowing children to use their preferred toilet at the time. It was just two stupid kids engaging in risky behavior, until one of them took a rejection particularly badly.
I agree that ideally, schools should not be turning a blind eye to students having sex in the school bathroom, but I think this probably happens more often then most people expect, and in the vast majority it involves a boy and a girl with no pretense on either one's part of being GNC or trans. They're just blatantly breaking the rules.
This is... a little more complicated than it sounds at first glance: see the second half of this post
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