Beware the Curbstomps of March

This has been a rough month for me. March has stabbed me in the back, knocked me down, and kicked me such that the only thing I've been able to do is cover my head and try to survive. I'm honestly surprised I've made it this far, but that's mainly because I have skipped out on a lot of my duties, avoiding social media when possible, and practicing as much self care as I can. 

So because writing makes me feel better, and because I want to feel like I've accomplished something today, let's take a look at the highlight reel from March Maliciousness. 

It started with the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), March 1-4. I covered the very worst parts of it in my post titled A Little Knowles is a Dangerous Thing, but just to be clear I want to point out that most of CPAC 2023's theme was villainizing transgender people. Now, I've said before (and will say again) that we can have productive and necessary conversations about topics like "At what age do children have bodily autonomy?" and "Should transgender athletes compete in sports?" because these are topics without easy answers that will require difficult solutions. (Sadly, most people want cookie-cutter solutions that can be implemented without having to think about them, which is a problem because people aren't uniform dough, we are complex and unique entities and what works for one person won't work for another.) However, CPAC went far beyond that and dove headfirst into "Let's make it illegal for grown adults, who aren't hurting anyone, to find comfort in their own skin and within society."

The next week there was the Jeremy's Chocolates debacle, wherein Jeremy Boreing took exception to Hershey for having a trans woman featured in one of their commercials for their International Women's Day Her/She (get it? Hershey, Her/She?) and threw a big ol' fit about it and decided to sell his own overpriced chocolates to compete against Hershey. Now, this is important for two reasons:

1. A lot of my conservative friends thought this was the Best Thing Ever and were laughing about how Jeremy was "owning the libs" by saying things which mocked and denigrated trans women. The fact that they didn't realize they were mocking and denigrating me, and therefore hurting me, didn't seem to register with them. 
2. Jeremy Boreing owns The Daily Wire, which airs Michael Knowles' show, as well as the shows of other anti-trans pundits like Adam Walsh. So by spreading the message of this commercial, and by buying these chocolates, these friends were directly funding people who hate me and want me back in the closet or in prison. 

I asked people not to do this. I pleaded with them to please consider Rule 4 ("Be aware of your target and what is behind it") as it pertains to online virtue signaling. I cried as I received friendly fire from people who I thought liked me, respected me, even loved me. I wept as they treated me like I was acceptable collateral damage in this bullshit culture war that has now politicized chocolate, of all things. 

Either they didn't hear me or they didn't care, for they kept doing it. So I started unfriending them, because people who hurt me for laughs or for political points or who just don't care aren't my friends. At this point I've jettisoned close to a hundred people, and it seems like every few days another one says something hurtful. The very worst of them was when a friend of over a decade, with whom I have been very close, posted a link to a Not The Bee article about how transwomen are a threat to women by invading their private spaces and generally painted us all as vile sexual predators. 

About the only good thing to come out of all this, and it's a tiny silver thread in this otherwise very dark cloud, is that some friends have reached out to me and let me know that they love me and they will support, protect, and defend me if things in this country become as bad as it looks like they will. That kindness resulted in my ...By Other Means post and this accompanying graphic:

If you have transgender people you care about, they're probably scared and hurting from the events of the past month. Reach out to them with this sentiment to let them know that they can rely on you. pic.twitter.com/8dYPCvAf5X

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 25, 2023

... and then Some Asshole, who was transgender, shot up a school. 

http://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/

I think I've established my bona fides over 16 years of blogging that I loathe mass-murdering fuckheads and would have gladly given my life to stop this fuckhead if I'd been there. I also like to think that my readers know me well enough that I'm not going to defend said fuckhead just because said fuckhead is transgender. Trans people are still people, and people can be awful regardless of other characteristics (except maybe people with Down's Syndrome. I've never met one who wasn't sweet and kind). 

Unfortunately not everyone in the world reads this blog and therefore doesn't know me, so the picture which was made for the above post and which was spread across social media on March 26th made it look like I, the Pink Pistols, and Operation Blazing Sword were defending the mass murdering fuckhead on March 27th. I guess I'm lucky that I didn't post it to the OBS website because that would have been worse. 

For the record, I didn't delete the social media posts, because that would look like we were ashamed of the sentiment and I'm not. It's still true. But we have had to clarify things. I made this post on the 28th which seems to have been sufficient for all but the most obtuse:

Erin Palette here, speaking in official capacity as President of Operation Blazing Sword and National Coordinator of the Pink Pistols.

I emphasize, in the strongest terms possible, that our organizations are defensive and only defensive.

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 28, 2023

Part 2
I denounce, in the strongest terms possible, any offensive actions taken in our name

We are not vigilantes. We are not a militia. We are not a mob howling for blood.

We do NOT act out of vengeance. We act only in defense.

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 28, 2023

So all of this week I've been getting it from both sides. The anti-transgender right is making damned good use of this anti-trans sentiment by declaring us all mentally ill and therefore we shouldn't be allowed to own firearms because we're all sick deviant perverts, while the anti-gun left is doing their usual song and dance about how anyone who owns a gun has blood on their hands and we're all facilitating a cycle of violence and so forth. 

Agitating for the removal of a Constitutionally-guaranteed right without any due process is certainly a spicy take, but it's definitely not a Conservative one. In their haste to infringe upon the rights of a demographic they find icky they haven't realized that this same tactic can be used against them when the Left controls Congress and, just as an example, decides that since Oppositional Defiant Disorder is in the DSM, anyone who distrusts and defies the authority of the government clearly has ODD and is therefore mentally ill, meaning they should be denied their Second Amendment rights for "the good of all."

Meanwhile, the Liberal gun prohibitionists don't seem to realize that the ugly, hateful statements they make about gun owners are exactly the same kind of ugly, hateful declarations being made about transgender people, and that they think one is good and they other is bad when in fact they're both awful vitriol that accomplishes nothing except starting a fight and moving us all further away from finding common ground, which is "Murder is bad regardless of who does it, and we should find ways to save lives without punishing the innocent."

You've heard of "The Man Without a Country"? Well, I'm a woman without a political party:

• The left wants my body dead because I own guns. 
• The right wants my soul dead because I'm trans. 
• The libertarians, god bless them, are incapable of being elected dogcatcher. 

This results in me having no competent representation to defend my rights against the federal leviathan.

It feels like I'm stuck in a Michael Moorcock novel, witnessing the stereotypical struggle between Law and Chaos, and Chaos is currently winning. And I don't mean the bright, fun chaos of spontaneous creation and whimsy; I mean the brutal, destructive, churning chaos where nothing can live because there's no stability that is conducive to life. 

This is already really long and I'm not even up to this past week, so I'm going to end this for now and continue it in part 2 where I talk about our house's mold problem. Sigh.