Republican Rep. Dale Strong called for Space Camp to remove a transgender employee after a viral social media post called the person a “freak.”
Three Republican Alabama officials are expressing concern that a transgender person is employed at Space Camp, an educational program for children held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.
One of the lawmakers is calling for the employee to be removed and for the center to “open a safety review to consider the potential harm and damages they have inadvertently caused children.”
The backlash began Saturday after Clay Yarbrough, a father who lives just outside of Huntsville in the small town of Owens Cross Roads, posted a screenshot of the LinkedIn profile and social media photos of a crew trainer at Space Camp on Facebook. Yarbrough said he had planned to send his daughter to Space Camp the following week, “but we have just found out that this freak is a team lead and a hall monitor in the girls dorms and at times could be allowed to be alone in the halls at night.”
I’ve always been sympathetic toward Trans people, but cases like this really illustrate how shitty it can be to just exist while Trans in America.
With most “minorities” there are still so many of them in any given community that it’s hard or pointless to single any one out for hate. But with a Trans person you can call them out by name because they rarely have anonymity within a local collective.
Like, this person was working a cool job, probably proud of themselves, helping kids and enjoying life. Now they’re being called out by elected State officials and online random. Being called a pedo and a freak… I can’t imagine what that does to a person.
Now let’s find all the quotes from these people railing about “Cancel Culture”.
I’m sure you know but that’s how hate mongering and fascism works: target the group least able to fight back. Use that to build support so once the group folds you have the ability to target a slightly stronger group next. If they have their way, once trans people have been final solutioned they’ll go after other queer groups and minorities that are ‘hard or pointless to single out’. It’ll be easier to single them out then and far from pointless it’ll be required to continue to fuel their machine
For a lot of trans people myself included this is part of why we’re so loud when even the smallest threat to our rights shows up. We know what happens next if we get removed from society we’re not just fighting for ourselves
Word.
This is why I keep putting up our pride flag, if it isn’t safe to do that then we are not safe.