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.

And so I have to ask, where would we be in some parallel world where the socialism and liberty party, or the worker's party, had this particular brain worm and worried about the ~*~optics~*~ of campaigning with her, of letting her be the incredibly effective leader that she is?

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.

It is in a lot of ways just an abdication of responsibility, of taking a role in forming the political environment. It's the fundamental problem of shallow popularism; you assume you're just a powerless actor reacting to the "preferences" of the "median voter", which is a loser's way of thinking.

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.