As children across the U.S. head back to classes and practices for fall sports, four more states are expecting their K-12 schools to keep transgender girls off their girls teams.

Kansas, North Dakota and Wyoming had new laws in place restricting transgender athletes before classes resumed, and a Missouri law takes effect at the end of this month, bringing the number of states with restrictions to 23.

  • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hey Progressives, let’s waste ALL our time and political capital on something that affects a dozen or so people in the entire country, and not push for real change that could affect literally millions of people in this country.

    This is how the Left constantly loses support. No ill will to any group, but for fucks sakes pick and choose your battles here. If you showed even 1/2 as much effort in this issue, as you do in getting people universal healthcare or parental leave or a ton of other topics that affect everyone, we’d actually have some of these things already.

    People are going to claim We CaN FoCuS oN MoRe ThAn OnE ThInG, but history shows otherwise. The Left in the US can’t focus on anything long enough to get it passed, and then they’ll jump to the new “atrocity” for a few months. Contrast that with how the Right focuses in on a handful of issues and they do it over years and decades. The Left doesn’t have that kind of attention span.

    I fully get that on a site like this, my post is going to fall on deaf ears. It’s not that I wish bad things to anyone but focus on the masses first. You have to, or you will erode your support.

    • RedSeries@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hey Progressives, let’s waste ALL our time and political capital on something that affects a dozen or so people in the entire country, and not push for real change that could affect literally millions of people in this country.

      Funny how the laws targeting trans highschool athletes… well under 1000 people total in the US… are passed by conservatives. Why do conservatives care so much about passing laws against such a small group? Why are conservatives spending nearly all of their political capital and goodwill on oppressing an incredibly vulnerable ~1-2% of the population?

      Can you even name a single solution proposed by conservatives for problems like housing, healthcare, or climate change? I can name dozens from democrats and progressives alike.

      Your comment is essentially one big gaslighting shit show. You chucklefucks wonder why the adults in the room are sick of your shit and are calling you clowns to your faces like you fucking deserve. It’s cause you’re fucking clowns.

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They do that because they know they can push Progressives into some very awkward positions.

        They are pushing progressives into the corner. Painting them as being out of touch with the pain felt by regular folks. The pain felt by the masses and instead focus in on some teeny, tiny, exceedingly small fringe group.

        And it works!

        This highschool thing is just the latest issue. A couple of years ago Democrats were wasting countless hours and effort trying to help DACA people.

        Literally days before that topic hit the airwaves no one had heard of DACA and then all of a sudden they see Dems trying all these things to protect them. They’d try to get them healthcare. They’d trying to get them schooling.

        I’d hear rumblings at my lunchroom at work from people who would busting their ass to pay for their kids schooling and they’d hear that Dems were trying to get these non-citizen free school. When you put it that way, the general public WILL agree that Dems are out of touch with regular folks.

        Then some time before DAC or after DACA was the whole crisis at the border bullshit. Again, the GOP was able to successfully paint Democrats as caring more about foreigners than for the American people. It’s a bad look to have when the American people are the ones who keep you in power.

        Republicans are masters at finding ways to make Democrats look bad on topics that make Dems look like they don’t support middle America and it’s values.

        Stop the nonsense.

        When a plane is losing altitude, the warning message doesn’t say to help your neighbor put on a breathing mask first. No. It says to put on your OWN mask first before you can help anyone else. Dems are constantly trying to help their neighbor all while they themselves lose key support amongst the people that can keep them in power.

        • RedSeries@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They do that because they know they can push Progressives into some very awkward positions.

          They are pushing progressives into the corner. Painting them as being out of touch with the pain felt by regular folks. The pain felt by the masses and instead focus in on some teeny, tiny, exceedingly small fringe group.

          And it works!

          Ah. Got it. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know conservatives don’t actually want me dead, they just want to make the dems look bad and make everyone feel better! /s

          You know dems don’t just focus on this like conservatives right? This is not the flex you think it is.

          Republicans are masters at finding ways to make Democrats look bad on topics that make Dems look like they don’t support middle America and it’s values.

          To the uneducated and religious South? You bet. And that’s it. That’s all they do outside of enrich themselves and their owners.

          There are no solutions to be found with conservatives, just messaging and hate. They attack minorities and then spout how dems “hate you” because they show compassion and try to protect vulnerable groups. Imagine how the opioid crisis (which is utterly raping middle America) could be handled if conservatives spent a tenth of that energy on fixing it instead of attacking trans people, immigrants, and minorities.

          You can say the messaging is off, but it’s “poor messaging” vs “literal, honest to God fascists”. There’s no comparison. This’ll be my last reply, you have nothing of substance to say.

          • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The 50 are NOT more important than the 50,000,000.

            Get over yourself.

            You help the masses first with common, widespread problems. Those are the people who can in return get you reelected and help you grow the movement to help others. The 10 people here or the 20 people there or the 60 people over there don’t. They don’t move the needle when it comes to national support. They don’t have the numbers to keep you in power and they only breed resentment when the masses see one political party waste all its time, money and energy trying to help them at the expense of the suffering masses.

            You are selfish to put the needs of the teeny, tiny, fringe ahead of the millions who represent the masses.

    • burnedoutfordfiesta@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hey, the corporations have spent tens of billions of dollars over decades to make damned sure the American public focuses exclusively on the most obscure and irrelevant issues. It’s very invalidating to all that effort to point out that issues that affect less than 0.5% of the population are very obvious wedges to ensure that the blue-hair city libs and good ol’ boy hicks are unable to ever come together to advocate for their shared material self interest.

    • Solivine@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Yeah they’re just 12 people they deserve to die right? Might as well just let it happen. /s

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not playing a sport will make them DIE???

        On the flip side, some 50,000 people die in the US because they do not have health insurance, and almost a million go into bankruptcy because of medical costs and millions more are affected by obnoxious medical bills.

        Have some focus, for fucks sakes.

        • Solivine@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          It’s not just sport though is it? It doesn’t stop there. It’s constant laws upon laws that discriminate against them, and sport is just one of them. So yes, this issue does need focusing on, because yes, people will die from it.

          I also agree that free healthcare should be a focus for the US, but that’s a much more contentious issue with health insurers lobbying hard to keep it how it is, and their money talks.

          It’s not “oh we’re focusing on this issue and therefore can’t do any other ones”, it’s “we’re also interested in this issue, here is our stance we will try to make happen”. If politics only focused on one issue at a time nothing would ever get done.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I appreciate you sharing your perspective even though you knew you were going to be attacked. I don’t completely agree with everything you said, but I do agree that the amount of energy and capital spent on this issue is disproportionate to its impact. It seems to have become a rage bait topic, meant to sow division and discord.

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m more than willing to post the unpopular opinion. I’m probably little older than the average Lemming and with that I’ve seen these scumbag Republicans years after year, election after election play the Left like a fiddle. They push them to react (overreact) to one pseudo emergency after another. You’d think the Dems would have learned their lesson, but that’s the infuriating part - they fall for it Every. Single. Time.

        Asi mentioned to someone else, when it wasn’t these Trans athletes, it was the DACA kids. Then it wasn’t the DACA kids, it was the crisis at the border. Before that was some other made up bullshit that affects such a miniscule percent of people. You can call me cold and uncaring, that’s fine, but that’s not my point. My point is that you can’t help these smaller groups if you don’t have enough political power. And you don’t gain more political power if yiu don’t help the masses. The big ticket items. The policies that give literally millions universal Healthcare, or insert some other Think Big movement. Those millions helped are the ones who might reward you with more votes and thus more power in the next election cycle. The 50 fringe people here or the 200 fringe folks there, won’t. They just won’t. I’m not saying to turn their backs in them, but help the masses before you look after the tiny minorities.

        Lastly every time the Left jumps to action to help the endangered spotted pigeon, they are seen as being out of touch with common folk’s problems. The Right is already good at fostering a “down home” image (as fake as it is), that it doesn’t help when the Left willingly takes these actions to benefit the few and not the many. Food for thought: the GOP has somehow cultivated an image of Teump that resonates with coal miners, and construction workers, and hunters, and other pickup driving blue collar jobs in small town America. This is a man who is (arguably) a billionaire,who wears exceedingly expensive suits, shits in a gold toilet and is from deep Blue NYC one of the biggest cities in the entire world. Stop feeding into the notion that Democrats are ivory tower elitists who only care about obscure shit and have turned their back on average Joe’s.

        I’ve said enough. Commence the downvotes!

        • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          No downvotes from me since you make a lot of sense. I feel compelled to type a long response since you spent so much time on yours, but I would essentially just be repeating and agreeing with what you have already said. Idealism is nice, but not when it gets in the way of actual progress. As they say, we can’t let perfect get in the way of good enough.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      While I could write an essay I think this is the thing you need to see because the annotations and chain of research is the rabbithole needed to understand something pivotal about the no-minority-left-behind tactic at play.

      https://youtu.be/wCl33v5969M

    • zaph@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Progressives aren’t the ones trying to make it illegal to be trans or arrest parents for supporting their trans child. Why should we sit on our asses and watch people’s rights be stripped away because you don’t think it’s enough people to protect? You feel the same way about murder? “They only murdered a dozen people, we have bigger things to worry about.”