“I’m about to rip [Tom] a new asshole,” Youngest Sister fumed this evening, and it seems I hear that a lot these days, often as a greeting. Then she detailed recent developments and I was glad to have previously delayed posting “Same Trailer, Different Park,” a story that’s veered sharply in an unexpected direction due to Tom’s tomfoolery.
I’ll explain more in the future, so the curious among you can judge for yourselves whether we’ve been too harsh on her, but what galls me the most is the ease with which she’s attempting to con so many people. She’s not juggling her lies and conflicting stories deftly enough to suggest she’s an old pro at this, which is mildly encouraging. But the thread connecting everything is Tom’s mistreatment of her ex, and the comfort and confidence with which she operates — manipulating her, stringing her along, taking advantage of her, and being as hurtful as she wants while demanding absolute fealty from her — is unsettling.
She’s emboldened by the belief that she can skirt our parents’ judgment, having directed us to keep the circumstances of the breakup from them. Likewise, she’s forbidden her ex from speaking with our mom and Youngest Sister about it. She’s put us in uncomfortable positions, seemingly for no other reason than she’s attempting to evade accountability and wants to preserve control of her ex. We would rather things be out in the open, if only to see whether she behaves better once she knows that everyone’s watching. But she has, by design, made that very tricky with her lies and sundry embargoes. It’s a juvenile situation and I resent being dragged into it.
Speaking of juvenile situations, let’s wrap up this week’s detour into politics. If any of you have read early Cranky Lesbian posts, you know it was originally quite political and that I decided to focus on other things the second time around. The Internet was a lot different 16 years ago (for one thing, attention spans were longer then), and our political landscape was slightly less of a Vince McMahon production, but my personal politics are still largely the same: I’m liberal, but there are limits to the insanity I’m willing to indulge from this current iteration of the far-left, which increasingly mirrors the far-right in its rigidity, hysteria, and theatrical devotion to meaningless purity tests.
More than anything else, I’m sick of inflamed rhetoric, unreasonable demands, and stubborn refusals to compromise. My preferred candidates rarely win presidential primaries, for example, but it doesn’t stop me from wholeheartedly supporting the Democratic nominee; I remember Ralph Nader far too well not to. When I became socially withdrawn both online and off this spring, the vile antisemitism of the far-left was a contributing factor. I’ve never supported Netanyahu or West Bank settlements, and I’m horrified by what’s happened in Gaza, but that’s not good enough for the purity test contingent, a group so guided by ignorance and hatred that they’re willing to extend humanity to Hamas but not Israelis.
Their refusal to acknowledge the atrocities of October 7, which some deny happened at all and others minimize, and their laughable contentions that Israelis have historically enjoyed white privilege, is rooted in a shameful ignorance that betrays the fraudulence of their moral grandstanding. Anyone who is truly anti-genocide — and I would hope all of us are — should abhor all genocide; it’s not a game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill.” We could do a similar version of this with trans issues, making a pit stop to address the absurdity of ‘stop trans genocide’ sloganeering, but that would also be tedious and insulting.
If I didn’t know, love, and respect trans people, including relatives whose transitions I helped support, I wouldn’t be offended by the lunacy of pretending every kid who’s afraid of puberty and feels awkward in — or disgusted by — his or her body is trans. The same goes for kids who are reeling from sexual trauma, or dealing with internalized misogyny or homophobia, or who were simply never taught that there’s no one way to be a boy or a girl. It trivializes gender dysphoria and will inevitably result in legal quagmires that make it much harder for kids who are actually dysphoric to receive the care they need.
Apologies for segueing into something serious when I could’ve fantasized about exacting revenge on Tom by subjecting her to 72 hours of continuous Barry Manilow music instead. I suspect anyone who follows me could’ve already guessed that none of my beliefs are too gonzo, but you never know when a newbie will poke around and this should answer any questions this week’s previous posts might’ve raised.