The Problem with Trans / LGBT Culture | An Asian Trans View

Welcome back to the TaraElla Report. Today, I want to talk about the main problem I see with trans culture and LGBT culture in general, especially the direction in which it has evolved in the past few years. I will also look at where it all came from, and hence how we can shake it all off. And before you jump to conclusions, please listen to what I have to say in full, because there are a lot of things to talk about in this topic. It is a complicated topic, with twists and turns everywhere.

I have three main problems with LGBT culture as it stands. Firstly, it limits the life potential of LGBT people. Secondly, it encourages a hostile worldview about the rest of the world. And finally, it leads to an inability to rationally communicate our needs to the wider world, resulting in unnecessary conflict. As I will explain, a lot of these features can be explained by historical political influences, influences that I strongly believe we should shake off as soon as possible.

The thing is, LGBT culture, as it stands, tends to exaggerate how much the whole world is against LGBT people. I mean, there are indeed individuals with homophobic and transphobic attitudes, but things have much improved over the past 50 years, and there really isn't a conspiracy to keep LGBT people down. Ideas like how capitalist systems have to inherently oppress LGBT people also have no basis in reality, they are purely rooted in some of the critical theory that came out in the 1950s and 60s. Furthermore, it is unhealthy to think that the whole world is against you. It leads to people not pursuing their dreams and taking advantage of life's opportunities to the maximum. This is why any true friend of the LGBT community would want to get rid of the victim mentality from the culture.

Another important point is that, this attitude also leads to a degradation of the discourse around LGBT issues to an us vs them fight. After all, if one, by default, believes that the world is out to oppress them, they are not going to take other people's words in good faith. This is why, some LGBT activists in particular, have a habit of interpreting others' words and intentions in the worst light possible, which unfortunately tends to set the tone in the LGBT community, because of how well organized they are, and how loud their voices are. This, in turn, has paralyzed much needed debates and discussions, and has led to things often standing in a stalemate, with LGBT people being the ultimate losers.

To understand where all these unhelpful attitudes come from, I think we need to look back to the 1960s or 70s, when they began to influence the LGBT community. I think it all came from the long-68 mentality, in turn deeply rooted in critical theory, particularly the works of Herbert Marcuse. Of course, Marcuse himself wasn't responsible for all the so-called radical ideas of that era, because the student activists, who read a lot of his works, then went on to vastly expand his ideas into even more radical forms. In those ideas, one would find negative thinking, the conflict theory of change, the blaming of capitalism for anti-LGBT attitudes, the idea of the 'great refusal', and the celebration of being an outcast outside the so-called system. In other words, all the ingredients required to cook up the problematic attitudes I previously described.

So how can we shake it off? I guess just to be aware of this influence, and why it's ultimately bad for LGBT people, is the first step. The next step then is to think about LGBT progress from a more old-school liberal point of view. After all, classical liberal values are the best guarantor of liberty, especially for minorities. Indeed, the 1990s and 2000s saw a collapse in critical theory-based activism due to political circumstances, and the gay marriage movement that existed in that era was based largely on old-school liberalism instead. Instead of conflict, the marriage movement focused on liberty and equality, and won the hearts and minds of many people in a relatively short amount of time. It's certainly much better than anything the radical long-68 had ever offered to the world.