Post

the contrast between seeing US democrats fall over themselves to embrace idiot transphobia all year and tonight seeing footage of the president embracing my (trans) congresswoman, Erika Hilton, at the election night party

Erika was incredibly important to the whole campaign and just in general, both as an organizer and in Congress all year working to push forward the recently-passed amendment that will end the practice of making people work more than 40hrs/5 days a week.

Brazil has an open-list proportional representation system, which is generally a bad idea and probably the worst aspect of the 1988 constitution, but it does allow me to point out also that she is the lower house member from São Paulo with the second most votes cast for her, third nationwide.

There's a constant low-level discussion on English-language bluesky about the electoral consequences of transphobic rhetoric from left-liberals but I think it's honestly worse than "they might not vote for you", it's more like, you're cutting yourself off from political labor and talent.

What these politicians are doing when they put out dumb transphobic ads or say dumb transphobic things on stage is that they're weakening the movement either out of personal bigotry or out of doing incorrect electoral math, and they really should get shit for it.

Because it really is the behavior of people who don't even perceive the *existence* of a movement, who treat politics like it's just their little personal little league game to win or lose. It's wrecker shit, fundamentally. Insecure, pathetic behavior.

Not only are you cutting yourself off from trans people who are good at politics if you do that, you're cutting yourself off from people who are good at politics and don't like haters.