And down goes HERO
Hate to say it trans folks, but this is largely our own fault. Only 26% of the electorate turned out to vote in this referendum. That in itself is appalling. Although HRC and some other trans friendly groups were active primarily in placing ads and holding rallies, how many trans folks actually turned out to man the phone banks, go door-to-door, and/or volunteer to drive friendly voters to the polls or to register to vote? Not very many, I’d wager. We cannot outspend the conservative right with their extremely wealthy donors and the tele–evangelists who are primarily intent on fear mongering, which they did very successfully in Houston. And we trans people have garbled our message and sound all too like greedy children who demand what we want because, well, because we demand it.
A wise friend once told me, confused people always say no. And I think our accelerating push of the now many flavors of unconstrained gender identity selection and gender expression does not help clarify the issue. (I will shortly publish a post expanding on this thought here.)