> “My transness, my queerness is never even a topic with most people in my community,” Whaley said, “because we’re focused on the things that they are focused on. And the number one thing is utility bills.”

Over the last couple days I've been thinking about how much the completely unnecessary war in Iran fucked the GOP and how their focus on so-called culture war issues - "DEI", "women's sports" etc. also fucked them

I reckon there are a lot of Americans who don't give a shit about trans people either way (and that's not a good thing to be clear, neutral apathy is only very slightly better than negative apathy) but ordinary Americans do notice that they are paying a gazillion dollars per gallon for gas at the pump, their groceries are more expensive than ever and their utility bills are going up because of "AI" datacenters - and the GOP hasn't presented any good solutions to any of these real issues other than just trotting out their usual scapegoats

that said, the effect of the US right wing's culture war rhetoric continues to have actual negative effects, trans rights are actively under attack across the country as evidenced by the ballot initiatives I mentioned in the earlier thread. So even if the GOP got fucked by it, they are still doing the bad thing so y'know the fight continues.