Stop trying to appeal to both by saying something like "Trans people should be included in most of life, but not all." That might be where the average is, but it's not where people are. There are transphobes, people who already believe in equality, and people who need educating.
I mean, the biggest thing should be that it's morally wrong to exclude people, and I know a bunch of people think that doesn't matter to strategy, but it actually does. Having values and sticking to them is appealing.
But also! Transphobes hate your message because you're including trans people at all. People who already believe in equality hate your message because you're excluding people from shared rights. And the people who can be educated will be swayed by someone who cares more.
All you've shown is that, whatever good you may have done, you don't really *care*, and people do not like a demonstrable lack of interest. It's not even entertaining, let alone useful.
It's not a mini thread. I'm so sorry. I SUCK at being brief without a lot of editing and I wrote this on the fly because I was mad at seeing something about averages.
It's a really good thread, though. (Think we saw proof of your point here in the UK earlier in the summer with the (reasonable and understandable) backlash to proposed cuts and changes to disability benefits. "The average person" calculated by some polling may be supposed to want those...
... but enough actual people know someone who has been through the utterly labyrinthine and exhausting system and may well have been refused things they need at least once. And to those actual people (including a lot of MPs) it just read as performative cruelty rather than savvy)
(Also quite a lot of actual people, who vote, are themselves disabled and have been through the horrible benefits system and it really did not go down well with them for very predictable reasons)
The Labour stuff is making me so mad for you all. My brother lives in England, and I can't tell whether that's better or worse than still being here.
Thank you. It's probably better in a bunch of metrics but it's also just so exhausting and so stupid. (and feels like constantly being reminded that a) they are squandering a landslide and b) they keep forgetting that the thing people voted on was "no return to austerity")
Last? thought: sometimes Democrats think they can pick up new people by alienating people they assume have nowhere else to go. Sister Souljah moment ass behavior. But people do have somewhere else to go: home.
Democrats see their opponents picking up votes by being cruel and think they can be halfway cruel to peel off some of those people, but the people who get off on cruelty don't want the diet flavor. They want full-bodied cruelty.
You're not picking them up, but you are sending people home. Stop it!