The intersectionality coalition shows signs of cracking up. In recent years, gays and lesbians have started dissenting from some key liberal issues, and some liberals can’t seem to take it. Just this week, a Deadspin article went viral with the message, “Conservative gays need to shut the f**k up.” In other words, gays can’t think for themselves.
The article’s author, Laura Theisen, slammed Chad Felix Green for his article in The Federalist, “The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics Is Worse Than The Stigma Of Being Gay.” Theisen proved Green’s point, even going so far as calling it “good news” that there is a huge stigma against conservatives.
“I mean, in a utopian society, nobody would much care who other people prefer to f**k or fall in love with … but [our utopian folks] would likely get pretty pissed if someone came around advocating the use of tear gas against people in need [border security], or death for sick people who don’t have the money to pay for treatment [not expanding Medicaid], or killing machines for everybody [Second Amendment]—all of which are mainstream conservative points of view,” the Deadspin author wrote.
The article continuously dropped into vulgarity and profanity, twisting every political issue to suggest that any dissent from liberal orthodoxy is horrifically evil. Any homosexual man who opposes any part of the intersectional revolution is a “traitorous queer” who needs to be silenced, Theisen argued.
She lamented that “wealthy and mostly white gay men have all too often been afforded the choice not just to shed the ‘oppressed’ label, but to become oppressors themselves. Their sexuality, then, becomes a tool used to help uphold the anti-feminist, white supremacist, wealth-favoring status quo, and they need to f**king stop.”
A gay conservative, Brad Palumbo, responded to Theisen in The Washington Examiner. “The argument that ideologically dissident gay men need to ‘shut the f**k up’ isn’t just being pushed by some obscure writer at a random sports website, it’s quickly infecting the identitarian Left, and deserves to be dismantled.” Actor Tom Arnold defended the article on Twitter.
Palumbo has experienced this hostility on campus. “Many progressives are truly beginning to believe that gay men who hold conservative or libertarian views are not just wrong, but traitorous. Living on a liberal college campus in Massachusetts, I’ve personally encountered this attitude many times. It is sick, sad, and fundamentally regressive,” he wrote.
“Basically, Thiesen is saying that gay men have to think with their genitalia, and that their sexual preferences strip them of the same right to reason we afford everyone else. This is ignorant, and frankly, blatantly homophobic,” Palumbo argued. “Yes, I am gay, along with Greene and many other men. But I’m also a person—and can think for myself.”
Reason‘s Robby Soave pointed out Theisen’s attack on Milo Yiannopoulos, whom she called a “right-wing fag.”
“Using this word as a slur (or, heck, at all) will get you run off a college campus. You can’t host the Oscars, and some people will basically ask you to return your Heisman Trophy. But I guess it’s okay when the left does it?” Soave asked.
https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1072907634263711744
The Deadspin author also revealed just how narrow her liberal orthodoxy is by attacking Peter Thiel for supporting the Trump “regime,” which supports “defining trans people out of existence.”
Transgender identity is a divisive issue, even among radical feminists. Theisen’s position on transgenderism comes from the New York Times article she linked. That article attacked the Trump administration for restoring the plain (and original) meaning of “sex” in federal law to refer to biological sex, rather than gender identity (the way Obama redefined it). The Times drew the ire of feminists for doing this.
“The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) is a radical feminist organization that stands to liberate women and girls from patriarchy,” WoLF lawyer and spokeswoman Kara Dansky told PJ Media in October. “You can’t fight for the rights of women and girls if you can’t define that category directly.”
“Women have been oppressed and discriminated against for thousands of years on the basis of our biology,” not their gender identity, Dansky declared. “Everybody knew what a woman was when they wouldn’t let us vote.”
Indeed, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being kicked out for her sexuality, has consistently complained about transgender ideology “erasing women.” Many lesbians argue that lesbian women are targeted to be convinced to undergo gender transition.
Lesbians like Ben-Shalom have faced horrendous attacks and discrimination for their opposition to transgender activism. Last year, a 60-year-old lesbian was beaten bloody by transgender activists who called her a “TERF.”
“It is dismaying to me to see women being erased and censored by trans and their allies,” Ben-Shalom declared. “It is angering to see the human rights of women and children, the most basic of which is privacy, being shunted aside by males identifying as transgender. It is outrageous that these people are dictating to parents how they ought to deal with their children. And it is plain wrong to insist that we all should accept the delusions of these people as being ‘normal’ and regular.”
As a radical feminist, Ben-Shalom agreed with many of Theisen’s points, but decided on a different strategy. “Instead of telling conservative Gay men to ‘shut up’ — they ought to be told to stand up and speak up for Lesbians. After all, Lesbians were there for them during the AIDS crisis (including me!!),” Ben-Shalom told PJ Media on Friday.
She said it was “time these men to use their privilege to help, use their money to help their sisters. They need to realize that they are as at risk of erasure as Lesbians — just not at the same rate. They can support taking the T out of the LGBTAIQ++ silliness. They can support academic freedom of speech. They can support gender-critical women who lose their jobs and are threatened by the trans juggernaut.”
If gay men “will not do these things — then they ought to shut up,” she declared. As for what Theisen said about gay conservatives, “this is not nearly as bad as what Leftists say about people like me.”
Ben-Shalom is likely right that lesbians who oppose transgenderism receive a great deal more hatred than gay conservatives. All that same, I cannot help but make a connection between the gay conservatives who are demonized by the Left for bucking liberal orthodoxy and the lesbian feminists who have it far worse from the same people for disagreeing on just one issue.
While homosexuality may get you points on the Intersectionality score, disagreeing with liberal orthodoxy makes you a “traitor” — or more specifically, a “traitorous queer.” It seems liberals are all too willing to turn on lesbians and gays if they think for themselves, especially on transgender issues.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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