Horrifying Republican response to Bishop's sermon

[JessaWoo]

These are tweets from Matt Walsh on X about Bishop Marian Budde and her sermon earlier today in Washington, attacking her womanhood and ability in a sexist and ageist tirade. It seems the clarion call has gone out to the rest of the Trump X minions, as they are all tweeting the same sentiments - including Kellie-Jay Keen and Donald Trump Jnr. Rep. Mike Collins całłed for her deportation, although she is American. Do you still support Trump after this?

“A liberal woman over the age of 50 with a lesbian haircut is guaranteed to support the most evil ideas and policies that mankind has ever conceived.”

“Just take one look at this witch and you know everything you need to know about her, even before she starts talking.”

“Of course this grotesque display is coming from a female “priest.” You will only ever hear heresy and inanity from someone whose whole existence is blasphemous.”

And another tweet from Bo Loudon: “🚨BREAKING: A bishop at the National Cathedrol just urged President Trump to protect transgender children and not deport illegal aliens because "they're not criminals."

Pure class from President Trump as he sat through this despicable politicization of the prayer service.”

Speech text:
““In the Name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Budde stated. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families. Some who fear for their lives.

”The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens, or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

Budde asked Trump “to have mercy” on people “in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing warzones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land,” she continued. “May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God.”

Earlier in her message, Budde stressed the importance of unity, of respectfully disagreeing with one another, but also expressed concern over what she called “the culture of contempt” and feared “the loss of equality” for some who lose in political debates.

What a horrible, divisive message this is! 🙄 Personally, I think Budde's message is courageous and beautiful, and clearly deeply Christian at its core.

The problem is when you appoint someone with the precondition that they must be of a certain social group then you are immediately narrowing the field of possibility. If 'diversity' and 'representation' rather than excellence is your goal then that might work. Though if this practice is extended indefinitely you simply end up practising reverse forms of prejudice and re-emphasisng group differences. People are viewed and treated purely as part of a social grouping rather than as individuals.

My experience of teaching showed me that schools that operate out of ideological principles and through the practice of 'mixed ability' teaching in order to 'include' everyone don't really meet anyone needs very well, and that excellence is sacrificed for mediocrity.The weakest often don't get the one to one support they need and the brightest are not stretched enough. Teachers end up teaching to the most common denominator or to the 'middle'.

Personally I think that feminism is as much about focusing on the specific needs of female people, as it is about creating 'equality' in the workplace. Now that there is legislation that prevents unfair discrimination I think it is possible to once agin notice difference and to accommodate it. People are not all equal in that they are not all the same. Culture, background, family of origin, sex, ethnicity, age, as well as individual talent, skill, preference and so on mean combine to make us all different.

I don't think operating negative discrimination against someone just because of the colour of their skin or their sex is a worthwhile goal, or something that should be encouraged. Obviously in some circumstances positive discrimination is important in order to achieve a particular goal or to protect a particular characteristic.

So, for example, we have single sex spaces - for a good reason...and that is to preserve the dignity of the female sex in certain types of situation in which the female body or biology plays an important factor - when members of female sex are in a state of undress, or occupied with their bodily function, or in sports in order to provide a level playing field in which female excellence can be encouraged and rewarded.

Likewise we may want to hire an asian woman to work in a service that is meant for women of certain asian ethnicities, or we may want to hire a gay man to work in a specialised service for other gay men. In such circumstances positive discrimination is acceptable and is protected in law.

I'm referring to the fact that the vast vast majority of the population recognise biological sex is real, that there are two sexes in humans (and indeed all mammals) and that no-one can ever change sex.

Hi @Princessconsuelabananahammock9 . I'm sorry I didn't get back to you. I think we are probably in different time zones! I see you have already interacted with plenty of other women on this thread, all of whom are much better at explaining themselves than me. I also understand why you have stepped away from the thread, so I am not expecting an answer, though I do hope you read this.

I think you and I probably agree that various groups of people with bad intentions have taken advantage of people like your partner to push their agenda. I don't think it is just a few assholes/arseholes. This is a concerted attack on women as a sex-class from a huge number of queer theorists, cynical politicians, predators, fetishists, voyeurs, indecent exposers, misogynists, MRAs, misguided therapists, trendy teachers and mercenary medical practitioners. It is a war, and people such as your partner are being used as trojan horses and considered expendable collateral damage by the aggressors.

Sometimes I do use disparaging phrases, because people under siege do that to try to cope with the negative emotions. But I would wager than few of us have someone like your partner in our mind's-eye when we use those phrases. Don't forget that there are many women, and some men, on these threads torn apart by what is happening to children and young people and full of love and compassion for them. That compassion doesn't switch off when the children reach adulthood and it would extend to and enfold you and your partner. I hope everyone already taking cross-sex hormones in the US is given access to high-quality, non-captured healthcare professionals to consider what steps might be best for them in the future and if that turns out to mean continuing on hormones then I would totally support that.

I would also agree with you that it is possible that, for a very small number of people, even hours of high quality therapy to address any underlying issues may not be enough and some measure of relief can only be gained from hormone treatment and even surgery. We just don't know, because there seems to have been a concerted effort not to collect any data, to disparage or even silence any medics or therapists raising any concerns and to swamp the field with troubled young people via the affirmation model.

Where we probably disagree is on terminology. I'm not going to talk about terms like 'transition' or 'trans' and what they mean because that has already been discussed and would fill several pages. However, I would much rather trans-identifying females were termed trans women and trans-identifying males were called trans men. That would make way more sense to me and emphasise that they have not changed sex and continue to have all the rights associated with their sex class. And, to return to Jordan Peterson, I am completely against compelled speech.

Hope at least some of this makes sense!

Edited for crap grammar!

The pinnacle of DEI seems to have happened with the female LA fire chief saying it didn't matter if she couldn't lift a large man out of a burning building, and he shouldn't have got himself in that position in the first place.

And saying it's more important to have firefighters that 'look like you' (than ones who can do the job, seemingly). And everyone, including those who 'look like her' seem to be pretty outraged that this is what their taxes are paying for, and expressing the clear preference for young, fit men to turn up if they're about to die in a fire.

What she said isn't even logical, if everyone's just capable of making sensible choices to avoid getting caught up in a fire, why do you need firefighters at all?

The pinnacle of DEI seems to have happened with the female LA fire chief saying it didn't matter if she couldn't lift a large man out of a burning building, and he shouldn't have got himself in that position in the first place.

I dunno, the American Aviation Authority or whatever they call themselves recruiting for people with visual disabilities to be pilots, or the top woman at Harvard who plagiarised the work she used to get the job and who said in court that calling for the death of Jewish people was 'contextual' came pretty close.

The problem is these days there's no therapy, no looking inti underlying issues or even any questionin, it's pure affirmation and drugs from the moment you enter the adult services at age 17.
The therapy pathway where physical interventions were a last case scenario when everything else has failed is called watchful waiting and is considered as both gatekeeping and conversion therapy.
I'm glad that your partner is happy with the changes made as a fully grown adult. Unfortunately your partner is the exception to the rule not the norm, unfortunately most don't have any therapy or have any of their beliefs challenged, they don't understand that they can't change sex, nor that the physical changes are only to alleviate their distress and that it won't change how most people see them.
If we are to find a way forward it has to involve proper watchful waiting therapy which challenges the patients beliefs and looks at the underlying issues but most importantly makes them understand that no matter what changes that they may or may not make to their bodies they will never change sex and as such don't belong in any opposite sex spaces or groups. Third spaces are the only way forward and trans people need to accept this or they will lose everything purely because of the overreach by the activists.

@OldCrone

Would you like to engage with @Hellofabore's point that since many regular posters weren't even posting on the Trump threads, you can't reasonably conclude that most regular posters support him?

I didn't even agree with that point. They were posting on Trump threads (not all, but a good many) and showing not only support for what he is doing but support for Right ideology in general (eg. 'The Left is responsible for this mess!'). From this, and seeing the general direction of threads on FWR, that was my conclusion. Certainly, it wouldn't be that posters on FWR are primarily Left.

Also, the amount of "NO WE'RE NOT - SHOW US THE EVIDENCE" is tremendous.

Perhaps the lurkers are.

Oops - don't know how that last sentence got there!

"The left is responsible for this mess" is not "RIGHT ideology", Jessa. Another example of misinformation.

Again, I have never voted for a right wing party in my life and don't intend to ever in my life either. I am liberal, anti authoritiarian left wing. If you took a snapshot across my political views as a whole, I would be demonstrably left, non authoritarian (I usually end up somewhere near Gandhi on those "where do you sit politically" polls and you'll find a lot of women here are the same, despite your false claims) .

We are allowed to criticise and be angry at "our own side" for their, in this case, extremely glaringly obvious failures which, despite years of warnings, essentially handed the Presidency to Trump. We know this; gender was one of the key areas that led swing voters to switch from the Dems to Trump. And once again, it is a sign of extreme political immaturity and lazy tribalism to claim that if someone agrees with a politician on one particular policy, that they therefore are aligned with them on others. You clearly have very little understanding or knowledge of the history of women's rights legislation (many of the women you're smearing here do, so yes, they are better informed), It's the childish "everyone I disagree with is Hitler" argument. I don't know how old you are, but for goodness sake grow up. You're talking to a diverse range of adults here. Different ages and backgrounds, different life experiences. Perhaps actual diversity isn't one of your strong points either?

And once again, it is a sign of extreme political immaturity and lazy tribalism to claim that if someone agrees with a politician on one particular policy, that they therefore are aligned with them on others.

Exactly. Hitler could have said we needed to save the ice caps and it wouldn't make environmentalists literal Nazis, not even if the Allies had insisted global warming was a scam.

It is not so much about Right versus Left, as rising above tribes and being able to see the larger picture....and that often involves not automatically dismissing everything just because it is coming from the 'wrong' tribe.

Many of us here have been shocked out of our previous ideological and political certainties - as a result of Gender ideology and the way it has been embraced by many on the so called Progressive Left. Once you've seen something, it is hard to go back to what you previously thought you knew or thought.

If you can rise above the continual focus on Trump as a personality and look at the issues then that might make it easier for you to grasp why people voted the way they did. Old allegiances are breaking down and everything is aligning in new ways.

When you have always been a politically engaged person and have a natural political bent, rather than just a narrow party affiiation, then you end up becoming interested in the larger patterns and movements that lie beneath the surface of events and issues.

The rise of group identity politics has led to the polarisation we are now witnessing......with people feeling they have to buy into a whole suite of policy proposals or ideological positions - as a badge of tribal membership. Hence Obama telling black men that Kamala was the candidate they should vote for - because she was mixed race and a woman, and if you are black you are meant to prioritise your supposed black identity above all else.

It's interesting to note the reaction of Reddit to the Ross Ulbricht pardon.

Before Trump the political parts of Reddit were largely behind the campaign to free him or at least reduce the sentence. This was very much a left leaning libertarian stance with the campaign for Ulbricht involving a lot of civil rights organisations who saw the sentence term as incredible state overreach and had concerns over political meddling and a court case that involved elements of corruption.

2015 Reddit would have thrown a party at his pardon. I'm sure you can work out the reaction on the main politics sub this week because it was Trump who did it.

Your DP is female and on testosterone, yes?

If your DP was charged with a crime and remanded in custody awaiting trial, would you want your DP held in a men's prison or a woman's prison?

Because that's the kind of thing that Trump's EO is about.

As far as the affirmative action EO:

It's worth understanding why the original policy was made. It affects mainly civil servants, and at that time, there were a minuscule number of black Americans in the civil service. The idea was that they should be roughly in proportion to their numbers in the population, 12%.

Whether you think that was a good or bad approach, that was the reasoning and those were the numbers.

The federal civil service now is 19% black. Which is to say, black Americans are over-represented compared to the general population.

So is it really necessary to carry on with a scheme meant to bring that group up to proportionate representation? Arguably that could end up over-shooting significantly which means others will be disadvantaged.

As a numbers game the policy has accomplished what it was intended to.

'The Left is responsible for this mess!'

is not "Right ideology", it's a factual observation.

I was a Labour Party member until 1st May 2018, the kind that went to ward meetings and leafletted. I still endorse core traditional Labour values like workplace rights, trade unions, social housing, free-at-point-of-use health care funded through general taxation, and a welfare safety net to protect those who cannot work and those who make up what Marx called the "reserve army of labour" aka the unemployed. Yet, I do not recognise the modern Labour Party, with its focus on subjective identity and its anti-Semitism. Past Labour govts have brought in tuition fees and PFI in conflict with those traditional Labour values to the extent that I think they aren't a socialist party at all any more. Given a choice at last GE between a non-socialist Labour who think men can become women and a non-socialist Tories who think you can't change sex, I voted Tory for the first time in my life.

I can see how the Dems in the US, by focussing on subjective identity and "defund the police", have alienated voters in the exact same way. People want to be safe and feel safe. They want to know that they can leave their DD at swim class and there won't be a man in the changing room. They want to know that criminals will be arrested and the police will be there to do that. They want politicians who don't gaslight them that a man can become a woman, they want someone who doesn't lie about basic biology. They don't want someone who campaigns on protecting abortion access and then breaks that promise, they want someone who promises day one EOs and actually signs them on day one on camera.

The Left is absolutely responsible for this mess, on both sides of the Atlantic. Remember that Labour didn't gain many votes here, they won because the Tories lost voters to Reform UK. If Reform UK hadn't been on the ballot paper, the Tories would still be in power.

What I said about that kind of law needing regular review with the intention of eventual repeal? This.

Yes, this was my understanding too.

A heads-up: the "look who you've got into bed with" posters are following a new TRA strategy to fracture British gender-critical feminists.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10894160.2024.2356496

Can you quote the part that references the specific TRA strategy you're thinking about? I feel it's a great cautionary article about the state of gender-critical politics today.

Hear you go Jessa. I'm sure when you read the witterings of The Blessed Jude you will see why gender ideology has no hope

Butler calls instead for an alternative vision that can challenge the frame of gender as dangerous ideology. Butler invites us to consider: “How do we develop a counter-imaginary strong enough to expose [the anti-gender] ruse, scatter its force, and stop the efforts at censorship, distortion, and reactionary politics that it empowers? It is up to us to produce a compelling counter-vision, one that would affirm the rights and freedoms of embodied life that we can, and should, protect”

"These differences matter, not only for accurately mapping gender-critical politics, but for developing effective counter-strategies. For example, gender-critical feminists appear to be divided on whether to collaborate with right-wing groups, with some actively distancing themselves from the right and others calling for strategic alliances. These divisions open up potential pressure points. These distinctions also suggest that ‘one-size-fits-all’ counter approaches may be less effective than tactics and strategies that address the specific concerns and motivations of different strands."

The emphasis in the quoted text is mine.

"Look who you're getting into bed with", which in this thread takes the form of "look how men who agree with you on one thing have, without any instructions from you§, been mean to a woman on TwiX", is leveraging those "pressure points" of "some actively distancing themselves from the right".

§ See the first rule of misogyny: what men on TwiX do is somehow women's fault.

@Shortshriftandlethal

It is not so much about Right versus Left, as rising above tribes and being able to see the larger picture....and that often involves not automatically dismissing everything just because it is coming from the 'wrong' tribe.

Many of us here have been shocked out of our previous ideological and political certainties - as a result of Gender ideology and the way it has been embraced by many on the so called Progressive Left. Once you've seen something, it is hard to go back to what you previously thought you knew or thought.

If you can rise above the continual focus on Trump as a personality and look at the issues then that might make it easier for you to grasp why people voted the way they did. Old allegiances are breaking down and everything is aligning in new ways.

When you have always been a politically engaged person and have a natural political bent, rather than just a narrow party affiiation, then you end up becoming interested in the larger patterns and movements that lie beneath the surface of events and issues.

It's interesting, as I agree with much of this post. I've written plenty of times I don't not believe in tribal thinking; ie. agreeing with one aspect does not mean throwing in your lot with the rest. However, as you say, the past couple of years has unsettled many out of their ideological and political foundations, and that's what I've observed in FWR trends over time.

What I see in the US, and increasingly globally, is a fall into authoritarianism. This isn't just over the past year, but has been brewing for the last 10 at least.

I am just left-of-centre, so not particularly left, either. I am more disappointed and distressed by the how ugly the world is becoming, and even though the word 'woman' is supposedly reclaimed, women themselves are reduced to vehicles of sex, baby-carriers and homemakers. All the work feminism has done could be erased.

I'll likely receive jeers back to this post, but I don't care. I think it's too important that women know what they're supporting.

@AliceNutterWasAWoman

Hear you go Jessa. I'm sure when you read the witterings of The Blessed Jude you will see why gender ideology has no hope

Butler calls instead for an alternative vision that can challenge the frame of gender as dangerous ideology. Butler invites us to consider: “How do we develop a counter-imaginary strong enough to expose [the anti-gender] ruse, scatter its force, and stop the efforts at censorship, distortion, and reactionary politics that it empowers? It is up to us to produce a compelling counter-vision, one that would affirm the rights and freedoms of embodied life that we can, and should, protect”

So do you agree with the witterings of 'The Blessed Jude' or not?