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Recycled Homophobia

A Twitter thread by @ImplausibleGrrl has a large collection of examples of how today’s transphobia recycles homophobia from the past. I have sourced the newspaper clippings from there with permission.

The table gives examples of mirrored transphobic and homophobic fearmongering.

Transphobia Homophobia
“I’m frightened about […] the ability of individuals to safeguard children in society […] a predator’s charter, a tool to groom a whole society.”1 (image) “It’s grooming children for sex grooming them to change their identity”2 (image)
“they never meant it when they said there’s no conflict between women’s rights & trans rights”3 (image)
“Why are we allowing trans rights to eliminate women’s rights?”4 (image)
“Why does tolerance demand that we forfeit our rights?”5 (image)
“And ‘she’ still dates women so I can’t imagine why her female teammates are uncomfortable in the locker room”6 (image) “a homosexual being in a man’s locker room […] make heterosexual men uncomfortable”5 (image)
“indulge your fetish in the comfort of your own home […] It’s a paraphilia”7 (image) “gayness is a bedroom fetish, nothing more”8 (image)
“narcissist, psychotic trans activists […] hog the visibility and obscure everything but themselves” 9 (image) “all homosexuals were by definition narcissists […] seen as a form of autoerotism”10 (image)
“man […] with a crossdressing fetish […]”11 (image) “Homosexuality is a type of fetish”12 (image)
“Trans is a cult”13 (image) “homosexuality is a cult […] believing it to be the thing to do to be popular”14 (image)
“What rights don’t trans people currently have?”15 (image) “I for one would like to know the explicit “rights” the homosexuals want that they currently don’t have”16 (image)
“no basis in biological reality”17 (image) “it corresponds to a biological reality”18 (image)
“nearly all of them grow out of gender confusion”19 (image) “these kids will grow out of it it’s just a passing phase”20 (image)
“Trans women […] they’re mentally ill”21 (image) “they must be crazy and are in need of psychiatric help”20 (image)
“trans religion IS the patriarchy”22 (image) “homosexuality is actually a religion […] the colorful banner is one of its symbols”23 (image)
“accused me of being a transphobe […] that label is nonsense used to silence those who speak up in defense of basic common sense”24 (image) “homophobe — a politically correct slur used by those who now consider common sense to be hate”25 (image)
“Trans don’t need trans rights because they are already equal and have the same rights as everyone else”26 (image) “Homosexuals already have the same rights as every other American citizen in this country”27 (image)
“If any man can be a woman, the word woman becomes meaningless”28 (image) “become merely words with no meaning […] gender would become nothing”29 (image)
“Their nazi accusations are pure projection”30 (image) “If any group in America displays tactics similar to […] the Nazis, it is the so-called gay rights movement […] The mainstream homosexual lobby, in true Hitlerian style, has targeted our children”31 (image)
“Trans people aren’t demanding equal rights they already have those. What they want are EXTRA rights. Special rights.”32 (image) “militant homosexuals demanding special rights and protected class status”33 (image)
   

References

  1. Twitter (@FemmeLoves) 2021-09-03 (link to tweet)

    I’m just frightened about qu**r theory, and trans ideology.

    I’m frightened about what it is doing to the ability of individuals to safeguard children in society.

    I am frightened that it is a predator’s charter, a tool to groom a whole society.

  2. The Windsor Star, (Windsor, Ontario, Canada) 2015-02-27

    As if that wasn’t bad enough, both McNaughton and Nicholls, along with another PC leadership candidate, Conservative MP Patrick Brown from Barrie, then went to address and meet with protesters opposed to the new curriculum, the first one since same-sex marriage became legal and sexting became a thing. Here’s a taste of the protesters. “We’re going to have… little lesbian and homosexual minions…. It’s grooming children for sex grooming them to change their identity to become homosexuals,” one woman told The Toronto Star. I’m at a loss. How do you respond to that?

  3. Twitter (@TroonPlanet) 2023-04-08 (link to tweet)

    The trans meltdown in the UK bc women’s sex-based rights have been strengthened proves what we already knew: they never meant it when they said “There’s no conflict betwn women’s rights & trans rights.” All along, what they really meant was “Redefine sex rights as gender rights.”

  4. Twitter (@BreannaMorello) 2022-10-03 (link to tweet)

    Why are women and girls being silenced when they vocalize their discomfort for biological boys/men entering our bathrooms and locker rooms?

    Why are we allowing “trans rights” to eliminate women’s rights?

  5. The Odessa American (Odessa, Texas) 2007-02-22

    ously agree to a great extent. I start to disagree, however, when being tolerant means I have to give up my rights. One commentator said heterosexual men should tolerate homosexuals in the locker room or risk being labeled homophobic. He pointed out that a homosexual in a man’s locker room could act appropriately and not make sex an issue.

    By that same logic, couldn’t a straight man be in a woman’s locker room, act appropriately and not make sex an issue? The answer, of course, is no. It wouldn’t be right to subject women in a locker room to the presence of a heterosexual man who may or may not find them sexually attractive.

    So why does it have to be a given that a homosexual being in a man’s locker room shouldn’t make heterosexual men uncomfortable? Many talking about Hardaway last week seemed to be saying that it’s not a problem to subject men in a locker room to the presence of a homosexual man who may or may not find them sexually attractive.

    As for myself, I see no problem with people of the same gender sharing a locker room regardless of sexual orientation. But that doesn’t make it right for everyone, and I’m not egotistical enough to say my view is the only right view.

    What Hardaway said was wrong. He sounded like a homophobic Neanderthal. But what if he had approached the question a little differently?

    What if he had just said, “I’m uncomfortable being nude around homosexual men.”

    Yes, some promoting tolerance would still vilify Hardaway and say condemning homosexuals for their sexual orientation is wrong. But does that mean a person can’t protect their own right to privacy?

    Most of us would agree that we have to respect the rights of others—that’s true whether we’re talking race, religion or sexual orientation.

    My question is this: Why does tolerance demand that we forfeit our rights? Why do we strip the modesty of one in the name of tolerance of others?

    As an old college professor used to say, “Your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose.”

     2

  6. Twitter (@RitaPanahi) 2022-03-20 (link to tweet)

    And ‘she’ still dates women so I can’t imagine why her female teammates are uncomfortable in the locker room. Must be bigots.

  7. Twitter (@BraddockBessie) 2021-12-05 (link to tweet)

    If you want to indulge your fetish in the comfort of your own home, go ahead. Fill your boots.

    Do not bring your kink into the public sphere, & by doing so, force others to participate in it.

    There’s nothing vulnerable, oppressed, stunning or brave about AGP. It’s a paraphilia.

  8. Davis County Clipper, (Bountiful, UT) 1996-04-23

    Several recent writers have declared the right of gays to marry. We all have the right to be as perverse as we want to be behind closed doors, but that doesn’t mean that government has to officially sanction our perversity. Most Americans have no problem with gays or gayness so long as they don’t rub their strangeness in our faces. Let’s get real — gayness is a bedroom fetish, nothing more. What I do in my bedroom stays in my bedroom, and I suggest that others do the same.

  9. Twitter (@ConceptualJames) 2023-04-01 (link to tweet)

    The lunatic, narcissist, psychotic trans activists are the only visible trans people to most of the public most of the time. This makes the “Trans Day of Visibility” badly perverse because literal narcissistic psychopaths hog the visibility and obscure everything but themselves.

  10. History and Psyche pp 49–67 The Narcissistic Homosexual: Genealogy of a Myth

    No one was more guilty of self-love in the minds of the first psychoanalysts than the homosexual, and narcissism was in consequence from the moment of its analytic debut until well into the 1970s inextricably intertwined with homosexuality. Not all narcissists were thought to be homosexual, but it was long an analytic and popular commonplace that all homosexuals were by definition narcissists. This was so in the most concrete of terms: narcissism (self-love) was seen as a form of autoerotism (sexual self-love) and, as another colleague of Freud’s once put it in an unchallenged non sequitur, “intensive autoerotism must lead to homosexuality.” In discussing homosexuality, analysts were literalists, seeing only sameness and habitually collapsing any distinctions between self and other. The intertwining of narcissism and

  11. Twitter (@docchai2022) 2023-04-06 (link to tweet)

    This individual is a misogynist man with borderline personality disorder and a crossdressing fetish. We need to separate gender dysphorics (real trans) from dick bullies with personality disorders. (Fake trans). We are walking on eggshells for borderlines. Let’s make it stop.

  12. The Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswich, New Jersey) 2005-03-28

    I would like to express my thoughts on homosexuality in response to the “Mother of a Lesbian. Homosexuality is a type of fetish. A fetish by definition is an object or bodily part whose real or fantasized presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification. For a lesbian it would be a female’s body parts, for a homosexual, a male’s body parts. Fetishes are developed in people when they

  13. Twitter (@TheSullis) 2023-04-10 (link to tweet)

    Trans is a cult. A dangerous noncey one!!

    Needs sorting by proper adults. Women need to be protected

  14. The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida) 1977-11-13

    HERNANDO—I am 66 years old. I always thought, until recently, that our country was founded on democratic principles, the majority rule and freedom of expression without being harassed. Now that seems to get one in trouble.

    By the vote in Miami (against the ordinance for “homosexual rights”), one could see what the majority of the people wanted. Is that an outdated idea?

    Just who does the Florida Citrus Commission believe buys orange juice? I’m sure the majority of the people who do aren’t homosexual.

    I think homosexuality is a cult. We all know there have always been homosexuals, but now there are many drawn into it just to be in something new. That strange quirk in their personality has been made that way by themselves, believing it to be the thing to do to be popular.

    Why should the majority be intimidated by the few, who, when they appear on television, make one sick in the stomach.

    When the minority can run the majority, our good old USA will go down the drain. What we need are more Anitas to stand up for what is right.

  15. Twitter (@thegaywhostrayd) 2023-03-30 (link to tweet)

    What rights don’t trans people currently have?

  16. The Herald-Palladium (Saint Joseph, MI) 1993-05-07

    I for one would like to know the explicit “rights” the homosexuals want that they currently don’t have — explicit, not generalities.

    Please, if you will, the rights of the individual are not in themselves an acceptable reason to condone the homosexual/lesbian actions anymore than that reason is acceptable for many other activities. We all have the right to smoke, but when we enter a no-smoking zone we relinguish that right.

  17. Twitter (@SwipeWright) 2022-07-03 (link to tweet)

    Remember, activists are using the existence of the white box below in order to argue that the blue and pink areas are meaningless “social constructs” with no basis in biological reality.

  18. The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey) 2009-04-23

    point. Their conclusion? “The interests of the child must outweigh the exercise of freedom by adults. Marriage is thus not only a contractual recognition of a couple’s love. It is a demanding framework with rights and obligations designed to welcome the child and provide for his or her harmonious development.” It recommended traditional marriage be preserved because it “corresponds to a biological reality.”

  19. Twitter (@LukePSulz) 2023-02-23 (link to tweet)

    The tran community will do anything to protect their right to confuse and drug children.

    As the song says “the children are the future” …

    …and trans adults KNOW this means they have to get to kids early because nearly all of them grow out of gender confusion during puberty.

  20. The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware) 1990-01-28

    “People don’t want to acknowledge that gay and lesbian youth exist,” he says. “The conventional wisdom has been that these kids will grow out of it, that it’s just a passing phase or that they must be crazy and are in need of psychiatric help.”

     2

  21. Twitter (@SStricklandMMA) 2023-03-28 (link to tweet)

    Real women are beautiful. Trans women are ugly as hell. Oh, did I forget to mention they’re mentally ill too!

  22. Twitter (@Vivian_Belli) 2022-07-01 (link to tweet)

    Monty, mate, the trans religion IS the patriarchy. (Which of course you know, because you are the patriarchy too). But yeah, help make #IStandWithJKRowling trend.

  23. Herald and Review (Decatur, Illinois) 2018-07-14

    A lawsuit arguing that homosexuality is a religion and that members of Congress who displayed a rainbow flag outside their offices violated the Bill of Rights is entering its second year as it makes its way through an appeals court. The government lawyer rep- resenting Democratic Reps. Susan Davis and Alan Lowenthal of California, Rep. Donald Beyer, D-Va., and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., filed a motion on June 18 that asks the District of Columbia Circuit Court to uphold a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. The motion contends that the case by the plaintiff, Tennessee lawyer Chris Sevier, is “patently frivolous and its outcome is certain.” “I will fight this frivolous lawsuit no matter how long it takes,” Davis said in a statement. “It just shows that attacks on equality and the LGBTQ community still exist and we will stand up to them at every turn. It also shows that the Pride Flag is needed more than ever. I’m confident the appellate court will rule on the side of equality” A year ago — just after San Diego’s gay pride parade and festival concluded — Sevier sued the members of Congress, claiming that the rainbow flag violates the Constitution’s separation of church and state. He argued that homosexuality is actually a religion and that the colorful banner is one if its symbols. He sought $1 in damages, for members to be barred from displaying the flags and for the court to declare homosexuality a religion. The trial court dismissed the lawsuit, and Sevier appealed to the D.C. Circuit. Sevier said that the lower court “abused their discretion.” “The government can’t engage in activities, directly or indirectly, that signify to the taxpayers that this is a religion that we’re en- year dorsing,” he said over the phone. The lawyer representing the House members argues in the motion that the lower court’s decision to dismiss the case should be affirmed because the “emotional discomfort” Sevier experienced by seeing the flag isn’t a valid injury and that he also failed to establish that he had a valid claim. “Mr. Sevier’s claims are so clearly meritless” that nothing significant will be achieved if they are more deeply evaluated, the members’ motion says. While the lawsuit continues, the rainbow flag Davis displayed outside her office alongside the California and U.S. flags has been replaced. The original pennant was given to Delores Jacobs when she left her position as the CEO of the San Diego LGBT Community Center last month after 17 years in the position. A new rainbow flag now hangs in its place. Sevier has a series of lawsuits that target same-sex marriage and is advocating for several bills in state legislature that undermine same-sex marriages. One he’s advocating for in South Carolina defines marriage as exclu- sively between one man and one woman and everything else as “parody marriage” and “ part of the religion of Secular Humanism.”

  24. Twitter (@MattWalshBlog) 2023-04-10 (link to tweet)

    Ana, you have repeatedly accused me of being a transphobe in the past. Are you starting to see how that label is nonsense used to silence those who speak up in defense of basic common sense?

  25. The Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) 2007-12-02

    Those who rebut my “intolerant” letter will themselves be completely intolerant concerning my expressed opinion. They will call me a “homophobe” — a politically correct slur used by those who now consider common sense to be hate.

  26. Twitter (@mtgreenee) 2023-03-30 (link to tweet)

    Trans don’t need trans rights because they are already equal and have the same rights as everyone else.

    Trans people can get driver’s licenses just like everyone else.

    Trans people go to schools and receive education just like everyone else.

    Trans people can get a job if they…

  27. Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, New Mexico) 1993-03-15

    RE: … “SENATE Hastily Passes Gay Rights Bill,” I am appalled at the lack of moral fiber exhibited by all the spineless, weak-kneed individuals who voted in favor of such a wicked measure. Homosexuals already have the same rights as every other American citizen in this country: the right to vote, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As a businessman I don’t know one customer from another regareding their sexual preference and I don’t care. However, when the sodomites start marching up and down my street, flaunting their disgraceful behavior, luring my son or daughter into their debauchery, then I care and will assert my rights. Good bless Tom Benavides for calling homosexuality immoral. God bless Joseph Carraro, Emmit Jennings, Skip Vernon and Billy McKibben. Let Aragon boil in his own stew; he is right about the fact that “this is not a funny matter.”

    ROGER KELLY Magdalena

  28. Twitter (@fairplaywomen) 2021-09-02 (link to tweet)

    If any man can be a woman, the word woman becomes meaningless and so do woman’s rights. @helensaxby11.

  29. Rapid City Journ (Rapid City, SD) 2003-11-09

    Q: But how does someone’s homosexual “marriage” threaten everyone else’s families?

    A: Gay activists are not asking for just one homosexual marriage, even though they often personalize it by saying. “Don’t you interfere with my family and I won’t interfere with yours.”What the activists want is a new national policy saying that no longer is a mom and a dad any better than two moms or two dads. That policy would turn some very important principles upside down:

    Marriage would become merely an emotional relationship that is flexible enough to include any grouping of loving adults. If it is fair for two men or two women to marry, why not three, or five. or 17? The terms “husband” and “wife” would become merely words with no meaning.

    Parenthood would consist of any number of emotionally attached people who care for kids. “Mother” and “father” would become only words.

    Gender would become nothing. The same-sex proposition cannot tolerate the idea that any real deep and necessary differences exist between the sexes. It must rest on a “Mister Potato Head theory” of gender difference (same core, just interchangeable body parts). If real differences did exist, then men would need women and women would need men. Our children would learn that sexual differences are like mere personality types. Wait until your kids start bring- ing those papers home from school

  30. Twitter (@KProtein19) 2023-04-10 (link to tweet)

    This is a trans advocate’s response to a Black woman criticizing the pathetically absurd ballet man. The racism in the trans community is ramptant, and very on brand. Their nazi accusations are pure projection.

  31. Statesman Journal (Salem, Oregon) 1994-03-05

    If any group in America displays tactics similar to those employed by the Nazis, it is the so-called gay rights movement, which has spawned numerous violent splinter organizations, such as ActUp and Queer Nation. Eric Pollard, a founding member of ActUp, said in a 1991 Washington Blade article that ActUp’s tactics were drawn largely from Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The mainstream homosexual lobby, in true Hitlerian style, has targeted our children for wholesale moral re-education through public school programs labeled with benign-sounding euphemisms such as multiculturalism and diversity.

  32. Twitter (@JohnJGaltrules) 2023-04-07 (link to tweet)

    It’s past time we call out things for what they are.

    Trans people aren’t demanding “equal rights” they already have those. What they want are EXTRA rights. Special rights.

    We have laws against men going into women’s locker rooms for a reason. Trans people are demanding 1/2

  33. Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ) 1993-12-28

    When Denver District Judge H. Jeffrey Bayless ruled Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2 unconstitutional this month, he soothed the soul’s of homosexuals nationwide. But while the battle is won, the war is far from over. The core of the Bayless ruling said that equal participation in the political process is a “fundamental” right of citizenship. That right applies to all citizens, not simply those who are members of traditionally protected or “suspect classes such as racial or ethnic minorities.” of Colorado had a formidable legal challenge to meet: to show at least one compelling state interest for the discriminatory statute. Although the state presented six alleged interests, Bayless was not convinced by even one. The state’s case both morally and legally was tenuous at best. Reportedly, the human-resources division of the Attorney General’s Office refused to even participate in preparing the state’s defense. Instead, attorneys from other divisions were recruited to do the dirty legal work for the state. They failed, and as a result of the decision, protections in employment To uphold Amendment 2, the state and housing still exist for gays in Aspen, Boulder and Denver. Since the passage of Amendment 2 in Novem- ber of 1992, the towns of Telluride and Crested Butte have passed similar safeguards, and the court has sustained their legality, as well. But this month’s decision resonates beyond Colorado’s borders, for it affirms that a fundamental right cannot be put up to a popular vote. It is thus one of the first big steps toward putting out the raging fires that anti-gay opponents have set and fueled with so much success this last year. During the Colorado campaign, the leaders of the anti-gay measure persuaded voters that equal-rights ordinances like those in Aspen and Denver were the work of “militant homosexuals” demanding special rights and protected class status. Voters were bombarded with loaded terms like “quotas” and “minority status,” and warned that they would be forced to hire or rent to gay men and lesbians. The Amendment 2 forces also tried to divide and conquer, claiming that the “hard-won gains of African-Americans, Hispanics, women, and the disabled” would be shattered. Most disturbing, they played on fear and hatred, distributing distorted campaign materials to thousands of voters accusing gays of practicing repellent sexual acts and spreading communicable diseases. To these tactics, Bayless responded, “If one wished to promote family values, action would be taken that is pro-family rather than anti some other group.” Homosexuals didn’t get everything they wanted from Bayless, however. He chose not to address the plaintiff’s desire for “suspect class status,” so gays cannot yet be listed alongside other discriminated groups in the categories of race, gender and nation ality. Bayless has also surely angered some voters in Colorado. Will the forces of bigotry rally and return to the electorate with a more legally defensible version of Amendment 2? The state’s legal maneuvering has surely helped to chart a course for this endeavor. Still, gays have rightfully cheered the Bayless decision for derailing the momentum of the hate groups in Colorado and across the country. But now is not the time for homosexuals to settle back into complacent closets. In the wake of Amendment 2, Colorado gays have embarked on a campaign of “coming out,” urging their brothers and sisters to be visible with family, friends and co-workers. This is a vital strategy, for only when the straight society comes to know lesbians and gay men as their neighbors and friends will fear wane and bigotry dissolve. Kathy Deitsch is a writer living in Denver.