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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?

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.

This can be seen everywhere. Neoliberal politicians talk about issues like spectators, and don't advocate for change, only (selectively) enact it once it's overwhelmingly popular. They resent you for asking more of them while they clock in for the bare minimum hours of their not even 9-5.

It is, ultimately, damaging your ability to accomplish things long term or to win elections long term because you assume that you can't change the framing of the conversation even though changing the framing is a tool that's right there for you to grasp. It's incompetence. Malpractice.

It is also, obviously, ethically grotesque, just a fucking evil thing to do, which is perhaps something we ought to start caring about with regards to elected officials.

So you demanded that you have labor and an idea that works. Then go... do it. Go fix those red states. Im sick of groups that demand they know how to fix it... doing nothing to fix it.

This, I think is the core of it. Lead with values. Show some damn courage. No matter what you think of Trans folk, why allow politicians to rig govt to attack a tiny % of US population through religious culture wars carefully crafted to widen into attacks on women and LGBTQ+ -- > 50% of us.