Remember, it’s your duty to vote for someone who wants you dead, because the other guy wants you even more dead!
“As a kid in a wheelchair, I faced my share of bullying. It’s why I believe that no Iowan should face discrimination. As a Paralympian, I also know it’s important to have rules. It’s why I oppose males competing in female sports, something that is already illegal in Iowa. I’m against taxpayers paying for sex changes too. Anyone tells you any different is lying. I’m Josh Turek. I approve this message. It’s time to stop the nonsense from both extremes and start to focus on lowering costs for Iowans.”
What a disgusting piece of shit. You are the bully, you just found some people easier to bully than yourself and like the feeling.
To those shaming people for daring to criticize a democrat: There’s a difference between vote shaming and criticism of someone who hates you. Telling trans folks they can’t be hurt by things like this because Republicans want to lynch them is some pussy shit. Try just once to imagine being in their shoes. Both doors close on you, and those who still have one open door won’t even let you grieve your basic human rights. Criticism is the least these invertebrate “leaders” are owed.
Defining moment for Josh Turek.
Absolutely this. If you consider yourself an ally, your reaction should not be to shame marginalized people for being scared and frustrated. Your reaction should be to call this fucker’s campaign office every day to tell him you want to support him, but he’s dead wrong on this issue. That is what an ally actually does.
You can still vote for him, but voting for him without telling him he’s wrong on this is the same as telling him he’s right.
In December 2024 the NCAA counted just under 510,000 collegiate level athletes. That same year less than 10 of them were transgender.
One study found that of the trans women who competed in sports about 41% of them did improve their competition level. That implies however that more than half of them either stayed at similar levels or got worse.
Additionally, the sample size used to determine this statistic was 52 transgender women over a period of 8 years.
This problem is so niche that it’s difficult to even study, and even when it is studied, the results are inconclusive.
They have us all worked up over nothing in the interim all trans people see is millions of people debating our rights and hyper-fixating on all the ways we might be different, when most of us don’t even compete in the first place.
Trans people are famously under-represented in sports as a percentage of our overall population… mostly because we are terrified of the bad optics and the circus it brings.
Option A:
- protest over a huge transgression, in support of equality
Option B:
- protest over A MILLION issues, including a huge transgression, in support of equality
No election is a binary choice, as each election effects the elections that come after it. You can stick your fingers in your ears and yell “I can’t hear you!” tell you’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that anyone trying to compress an election down to a binary choice has the attention span and memory of a goldfish.
No election is a binary choice
This is, as a matter of political science, incorrect.
Currently, almost every election in the United States ultimately boils down to a binary choice, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger’s_law
You can certainly disagree with the candidates, the platforms and the messaging all you want, but the truth is that (in almost every first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all election in the United States) one of two people (usually a Democrat or a Republican) will ultimately win–and to the winner go all of the spoils. That’s the system we currently have, and as someone who agrees that it sucks, I highly recommend advocating for state and local reforms to make elections laws more democratic.
What does candidate A represent? How does it compare to candidate B? Fundamentally, the question absolutely boils down to “which one of these two people do I want to win, and which one of the two do I want to lose?” And that is the basic question by which the informed and politically-aware voter ultimately ought to make a strategic decision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_voting
Vote with your heart AND with your brain.
Easy to say when it’s not your own rights on the line.
I might be incorrect, but I think they are trying to suggest that no election is a standalone choice where the only downstream effect is that one candidate wins over the other. Each election outcome effects the elections that come after it. If a moderate republican won last time they might try to run a more conservative one next time to test the waters. If a progressive dem lost the dems are likely to use that as a reason to not run a progressive next time.
They may be suggesting that voting for an anti trans dem now opens the door for more anti trans or anti-XYZ dems in the future. Do we want to get to a place where the Democratic Party is comfortable running anti choice candidates or anti public school candidates? Basically the idea is to signal to the party that they will not ever win with this message, even against fascists. Along the same line of thinking, but as a rebuttal to what I’m assuming is their conclusion, an R in office might change policies or do harm that a dem may not be able to reverse, regardless of if they win next or not.
I’m not suggesting people not vote for him, and I’m not suggesting vote blue no matter who, I’m just adding some context for how I interpreted the comment. I personally am a vote blue no matter who person so far. Maybe it makes me a coward, maybe it makes me pragmatic, maybe both. I do think I understand trans people withholding their vote if this is their candidate though. I won’t blame them for standing up for themselves, since the rest of us seem willing to throw them under the bus.
That very well may be so, but even still I would argue that the primaries are really the time to hash out policy and candidate positions.
I’m not from Iowa, luckily, but Turek beat his main primary opponent by more than 25%, which suggests he is more tapped into Iowa political leanings than the average online commentator. I’m from Oregon, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that whoever Iowa elects is going to be much more “moderate” than the people who represent me and my state.
Regardless, the choice right now (and it very much is a binary one) is whether Iowa wants to send a Democrat, Turek, or a Republican, Hinton, to the Senate. Come January, it’ll either be Turek or Hinton–a de facto binary outcome. And that singular choice may mean the difference between a slim Democratic majority or a slim Republican one.
What will a Democratic Senate mean for the next two years? It’s hard to be sure, since Trump can be more than a little bit unpredictable. But at the very least it means Democratic control of Senate committees, which will go a long way towards holding the Trump admin at least a little bit accountable for their words and actions. Speaking personally, I would always rather have the Democrats in power than the Republicans, easily.
So again, people should vote with their hearts, without a doubt, but they should also understand the strategies at play and vote with their brains, too.
To be honest, whether it’s FPTP elections or the power dynamics in Washington DC, it is a little bit exhausting to have to explain this stuff every 2 years… But people should be informed about how the system works and vote accordingly.
I’m generally in agreement with you, but I’m not sure how you see this as you having “to explain this stuff every 2 years”. You’re not providing new information to me or the people that disagree with vote blue no matter who. They understand how elections work. They just disagree with you. Sure, an Iowa representative may be more moderate, but it’s possible these voters are unwilling to concede this particular issue to moderate dems. They may believe that preventing dems from winning with anti trans candidates is worth another republican term. I’m not saying they’re right, but you’re not really arguing with that point as much as reiterating that right now there are only two options.
Also, regarding your suggestion that this is something that should be discussed in the primaries, the article does addresses that:
Up until this ad most of the anti-trans ads from the Democrats this cycle had been mostly focused on trans people in sports and a few about treatment for trans children. This one takes a big step past them in it’s attack on the trans community by stating opposition to “Taxpayer funds for sex changes.”
If a politician conceals the extent of their anti trans rhetoric until the general, there’s not much that could have been done. Additionally, even if they hadn’t, if trans people and their allies supported another dem and they lost the primary, all the sudden they are expected to be willing to accept an anti trans candidate. I can understand them being unwilling to support them and possibly next time it will be the other faction that ends up having to be willing to sacrifice their ideals in the primary they want a dem candidate to win the general.
I am not sure how strategic that is, but mainly because Dems don’t generally withhold their votes so there’s not much precedent to see how the party will react.
Elections are always a binary choice. If you want to send a message, the time to do it is during primaries or any day other than election day. On that day, you can choose to support the lesser evil, or you can support the greater evil. It’s up to you to decide which is which, but that’s always the choice. Staying home, voting for a third party, or writing in some name that will never win, those all support the greater evil.
I agree with you theoretically, but in practicality, in US politics currently, that’s how you get Trump
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Sitting in that chair, playing someone who understands discrimination and fairness because you can’t walk or please a woman, and using the way other people perceive you to say that “in your expert opinion, trans women are the ones doing the discrimination”, is disgusting, cowardly, and shows us that Josh Turek’s biggest disability, is the fetid rot of a person he is.
You can’t be a fascist strong man who defends against “big scary feminism” if you get stuck in gravel, Josh.
Wait, what happened to the lesser evil? I thought throwing minorities under the bus in order to prevent the greater evil was totally fine.
They don’t care. This is just a numbers game to these assholes. By taking this position, they risk losing 5% and hope to gain 10%. (don’t quote me on the exact polling numbers…but, you get the point)
Hey, it worked for Kamala!
(Oh wait.)
I’m not in the US.
And you’re not supposed to vote for them.
You’re somehow supposed to run yourself.
I don’t say this because it’s easy, but because it’s kind of the only way.
Oh no, 1% of the population.
Probably would have been better off talking about general progressive or even queer solidarity.
We don’t need excited voters right now. We just need resigned voters. Let’s not be stupid again
Which of your rights are you willing to have sacrificed in the name of the lesser evil?
