This is a post about NC HB2. It's also a post about baseball and Magic: the Gathering. I want it to be a post about communication, but nobody has yet found the right words that lead to mutual understanding. If you think I'll be the one to crack that code, you're betting on the wrong horse. I'm also going to talk about sexual assault and domestic violence in bitterly sarcastic terms, because that's how I talk about anything contemptible. I do not intend to trivialize these matters, merely to spit some fire at those who take the wrong side in them.
When I tried to write about trans issues a couple years ago, my conclusion was this: the ability to live without ever having to consciously exercise the right to define one's own gender identity and/or sexuality is a privilege. Cisgenderism and heterosexuality are not things to be ashamed of, nor is anyone proposing they be treated as such. But this conversation is to LGBTQ rights as George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and Kim Kardashian are to discussions of wealth. Those individuals have accomplished nothing positive at all between them other than winning the parents lottery, but hell if they aren't all proud of themselves for being born rich and, to a degree, powerful. If you're content with your own genitals and sexually desire only people with different genitals, you were born on third. It's up to you whether you think you hit a triple. One thing's become clear, from Black Lives Matter to the rise of Trump to HB2. It's that empathy is dying, solipsism is alive and well, and if the latter hasn't conquered American society just yet, we're almost there. That's what leads to statements like "All lives matter!" or "Born with a penis, always a male." (I'm not going to explore female to male transsexuality in any detail here, because nobody's even pretending to be worried that trans men are all about playing grab-ass in public bathrooms.) It's easy to look down on blacks if you've never lived in crushing poverty, never had to be afraid of cops as a matter of practicality. It's easy to look down on trans people if you only assume they could have turned out just like you if they hadn't wanted and chose to be different. It's easy to look down on gays and lesbians if you only assume they're choosing a lifestyle just to offend you. Just because it's easy doesn't make it good. (Aside: the look on such a person's face when you ask them if they, too, could choose to be gay is priceless. I never get tired of that, and it's one thing I'll miss when all the bigots have died off or moved to the sovereign nation of Texassippianazona.)
A few weeks ago, at a Magic tournament, some guys were spewing trans hate within earshot of me. The exact words words I heard were "Trannies are just boring guys who think [being trans] makes them interesting." I don't know why they were talking about this, and I don't really care. I didn't say anything, because I'm a coward. I just went outside for a cigarette, saw red for a couple minutes, then kicked their bigoted fucking asses at Magic. I play at a store run by some great guys, but their tournies don't draw as well as they should. As much as I've heard "Call out people for being unwelcoming or offensive", as that's a big deal in Magic now, it's a matter of numbers for me. If you chase away intolerant and offensive people and then your store can't get enough people to run an 8-player tournament, I don't know what exactly you've helped. You just don't get to play Magic in a place you enjoy anymore. Besides, we're all guilty of crude sexual humor and foul language at that store, and I wasn't prepared to draw the line at transphobia, especially when I haven't had the necessary, long, difficult, and complicated conversations that would lead to understanding with anyone there yet. Another time, at another store, this dude wouldn't leave me alone because the backpack in which I keep my cards is a purple-and-black Hannah Montana backpack. He finally gave up, in confusion, when I graciously ceded to him that his backpack absolutely made him more of a man than mine did for me. I still don't understand that conversation at all, but whenever I go back to that store and he isn't there, I'm happy.
So HB2 reminds me a little of watching Bill O'Reilly or Michelle Malkin, and not just because of their identical positions. If you turn your brain off all the way and abandon critical thinking, they all seem to make a kind of sense. O'Reilly is the patronizing uncle who knows best because he's made a bit of money for himself, so you should be grateful that he's even bothering to bestow his wisdom upon you. Malkin is in a permanent state of outrage about how us liberals are constantly assaulting your God-given rights and freedoms, and if you ignore the lack of evidence to support anything she has ever said, hell yes that's worth being pissed off about! And HB2 just includes one, erm, problematic "definition": that a person's sex and gender is determined solely by their birth certificate. It goes on to tell the city of Charlotte that their own bathroom bill is null and void, since it disagrees with that definition. And let's get the obvious out of the way: for a vast majority of people, this definition of sex and gender works well enough, if not perfectly. But this bill isn't about those people. It's about telling trans folk that they aren't welcome in North Carolina unless they're willing to subject themselves to using the wrong bathroom.
The loudest voices are the ones saying that if we allow trans individuals to live as their authentic selves, the whole point of all the emotional and psychological torment, harassment, assault both verbal and physical, expensive and painful treatments and surgeries, and absence of social sympathy that they already have to endure has all led to this: getting into a public women's restroom so they can rape our wives and mothers and molest our daughters. I'm the furthest thing from an expert when it comes to what gender identity really means, or what makes us male or female, but this assumption of rape and violence strikes me as a pretty male thing. Because the writers and supporters of HB2 believe trans women are still men, they still have male brains, so of course they would be all about that sweet, sweet public bathroom rape. This belief fails even the most basic test of critical thinking, because anyone of any persuasion who committed such an act would be equally arrested. And nobody's managed to produce any data or statistics (I have yet to even see an anecdote) to support the notion that allowing trans women to use womens' restrooms puts anyone, anywhere, in danger. But that doesn't matter. It's all about my next point: fear vs. hope.
I'll admit to having been a myopic, self-centered young person. I don't think I cared about politics at all until the 2000 election, the first one I was allowed to vote in. But since then, I think I figured out what makes a person liberal or conservative. That's a really arrogant thing to say, and I only say it because I have yet to see contradictory evidence. If you're a conservative, I believe you are motivated at the most basic level by hate and/or fear. The questions are always about threats: who's coming to take my job/money/guns/bible away? Who needs a good bootstomp to the face to make sure they don't get what's mine? Since it clearly isn't my fault my life sucks, whose fault is it? It is fear that brought us back to the Middle East, probably for good. It is hate that burns down black churches and revives the War of Northern Aggression in the deep south. It is fear that causes Christian Dominionists and everyone who listens to them to use "religious liberty" as a euphemism for "legalized discrimination", and it is the widespread nature of this fear that grants human garbage like Tony Perkins a regular national platform. It is a combination of both hate and fear that keeps putting a disproportionate number of gays and trans people in the hospital or the morgue by no fault of their own. It is a combination of both hate and fear that has put an obvious misogynist and racist on track for the republican nomination in 2016, despite an utter lack of qualifications or, indeed, accomplishments of any kind. And it's fear and hate that made Pat McCrory governor of a state that I know for a fact has at least ten or twelve decent people in it. And fear and hate will work forever, because it's SO EASY to be pissed off and scared.
On the other side, I believe liberals (not Democrats, liberals. Our Democratic Party, with a few shining exceptions, is a centrist conservative entity.) are motivated primarily by hope. We envision a better world, and we ask what we can do to help create it. We almost never succeed, because it's a lot easier to succumb to the negative emotions than embrace the positive ones. It's exhausting and demoralizing to wake up every day and think that maybe this shit world will get a little less shitty today, only to go to bed knowing it really didn't. I believe we have an ace up our sleeve, though. Fear and hate prey on ignorance. Hope feeds off knowledge. If we can value truth more than tribalism, we can beat this. It'll take every last one of us, and it'll take longer than any of us will live, but I think we can win. All we have to do is call out bullshit every day for what it is, and remind those that spout it that they're free to say any damn thing they want. Just as we are free to point out the weakness of their arguments, because disagreement is not persecution, and responding to free speech with our own stifles nobody's free speech. If we do this every day, all the time, maybe we will enter an era when we'll get sick of winning, because we'll all be winning too much. We'll be like, stop with the winning already. Except we have to get the media on our side for this to really happen, so probably, we're all just fucked.
This brings me to the reason I wrote this post: calling bullshit. Curt Schilling was a truly great pitcher for the Phillies, Diamondbacks and Red Sox in the 90's and 00's. He was a joy to watch on the mound, and a solid on-air analyst for ESPN after he retired. Unfortunately, in recent years, he's shown himself to be that relative everyone has who throws FOX "News" talking points up on social media, except he's that for all of us- even those of us who proudly lack a Facebook or Twitter account. He was suspended from covering the MLB Playoffs last October when he compared extremist Muslims to Nazis on Twitter, and when he tweeted a HB2-supportive meme meant to provoke fear and disgust, ESPN finally showed him the door today. The uproar from the right was predictable and immediate: They're persecuting him! Read the constitution! First amendment! Yes, that renowned liberal organization ESPN:
-Who gives awards to domestic abusers like Floyd Mayweather
-Who was the first to ask when Ray Rice and Kobe Bryant would be allowed to play sportball again because maybe the bitch had it coming
-Who supported and magnified the influence of overgrown fratboy Bill Simmons for nearly 20 years
...has snuffed out Curt Schilling's dissenting, patriotic voice of reason. Except not at all. Schilling still has all the free speech in the world; he just no longer has ESPN as a platform to use it. It's conservatism's Other Jesus, the free market, that betrayed Curt Schilling. ESPN decided it was no longer profitable or good for their image to allow him on the air. As his blog (which I will not link to) attests, Schilling has not been silenced by either his firing or his cancer. He is free to recite gibberish of his own choosing, whenever and however he wants. But sometimes, if you're an asshole, people aren't going to want to hear you talk. At least until you wind up on the wingnut welfare circuit. If he hasn't already been the #OneLuckyGuy, it's in his future. So congrats, Curt. From now on, you'll be in the slideshow of tiny-minded assholes that flips through my brain whenever I listen to "Black Me Out". And since I've already covered two things I love- Magic and baseball- in this post, let's end it with some perfectly appropriate rock and roll. My unlimited love to all who love.
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