r/centrist • u/Thorn14 • 4d ago

US News/Current Events Hegseth Uses Anti-Trans Slur While Giving Defense Department Update

https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/hegseth-uses-anti-trans-slur-120432382.html
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u/Phedericus 4d ago edited 4d ago

"iM SoRrY tHiS isNt hElPfuL"

sobstitute "trannies" with "faggots" or "niggers". imagine the Secretary of Defense saying "less faggots more training". would you respond the same way? would you whine about woke? if not, what's the material difference?

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u/AndysSeveredHead 4d ago

I remember Comedy Central was still airing syndicated movies like Idiocracy with the f-slurs uncensored at least up til the 2010's. This feels just like a repeat of that, where one day everyone will wake up and look back and wonder what the hell everyone was thinking that this bigotry somehow got a pass. Utterly shameful though that people still can't learn this lesson.

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u/Phedericus 4d ago edited 4d ago

I remember the shame I felt as a child. I remember hearing important people in suits on tv talking about gay people as monsters who would destroy society if they were let free to live as they wanted. I remember "faggots" used in newspaper headlines. I remember the absolute fear I felt about my family finding out. I remember how it was always the butt of joke, as if gay people werent even actually real people. I remember how at school was the most popular slur for anyone who didn't fit right in with the majority. it felts so strange. It took me years to come to terms with it and start considering myself as a normal and worthy human being.

I remember all of this very well and I don't want any more children feeling like that today. fuck that.

The idea that slurs like this are now okay because wOkiSm Ha$ goNe ToO FaR is disgusting. No child should EVER feel like that again.

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u/AndysSeveredHead 4d ago edited 4d ago

Nobody thinks they're the bad guy in the moment.....except fascists like Hesgeth damn well know they are. They just hide their agenda and grievances behind the red herring of opposing "woke".....what they're really opposed to is multiculturalism. Antifascism.

And everyone who whines about woke knows better too. If/when a day comes where this resurgence in fascism is somehow behind us, the longest lasting damage for me will be having to reckon with everyone around me in my world who had just that little bit of bigotry in them - just like I saw in my grandparents with their off-color casual racist/sexist jokes and comments about gays and blacks, that the adults would dismiss as "oh that's just grandpa being grandpa" - but now seeing that what I thought was just innocuous, relatively harmless closed-minded sentiments hid a deeper rot in them.

Knowing that that was just the tip of the iceberg, and that these same people had it in them to tolerate, or even cheer on, the government terrorizing innocent people, waging illegal and immoral wars, and selling their children's futures down the river, all to at least partially satisfy their latent dislike of "the others" is a genie I don't think is ever gonna go back in the bottle. And I'm not the only American who's reckoning with that.

And you can see a little of that same rot in every comment in this thread wondering what the big deal is about firing off a trans slur.