I really wanted to write about running today. I haven’t written about running in a little while and the promise of this blog was write about both running and trans stuff. Unfortunately, sometimes other things come up that need to be written about…
Former South Carolina GOP Executive Director Todd Kincannon is no stranger to causing controversy and spewing hate. He has a long history of this. However, this week, he has upped the ante with the suggestion that transgender people should be rounded up and put into a “camp.” This man would rather promote the same ideas has Adolf Hitler than to allow transgender people the right to live freely among the rest of society, let alone have any sort of equality. You can read a bit more about the initial exchange here and here and you can this below:
There is no mistaking this man’s intent. This is especially vile and it comes from a former GOP official.
I immediately decided to call this bigotry out:
I am not naive, I knew what I was walking into here, however, I did not expect the level to which I would be personally attacked. Not only did Todd Kincannon himself take the time to attack me, but a dozen or so of his followers joined in the party. They went through my tweets to find photos of me and continuously showed obsession with my genitals. This has been going for 48 hours now and has not yet come to an end.
I am tough, I can take attacks and hatred. I can stand up to bullies and fight back. I can enter a situation like this and be on the end of constant hate without being mentally or emotionally affected. These people are bullies and trolls and mean nothing to me, they cannot affect me emotionally.
However, not everyone is able to stand up to abuse online. What I’ve received this week is negligible in comparison to what others deal with. This has been a relatively small and isolated incident and is not my norm. I know people for whom this is their norm. I know people who have been publicly doxxed with their personal information shared online. I know people who have had letters sent to their jobs in an attempt to have them fired. The list of horribleness goes on and on. And that’s to mention nothing of the offline bullying youth are often on the receiving end of.
I stood up in defense of these people. I am glad to fight back. If I do nothing else but draw the fire of bullies and bigots off of those who are down, it’s worth it.
I also believe bullies, bigots, trolling, and hate speech of any kind must be challenged. At some level, these people want to get a rise out of others, it’s entertainment to them, but the real issue is deeper than that. Bullies and bigots want to silence. They want to take control over others. By “not feeding the trolls,” we give in to being silenced. We may not always be able to stand up and fight back, sometimes we must resort to simply ignoring the hate and getting friendly with the block button and we may rarely every change a bullies mind, but, when we are able to, we must stand up and refuse to be silenced.
There have been literally hundreds upon hundreds of tweets exchanged and directed towards me and others who have stood up. I could not attempt to expose them all, many of the worst tweets have already been deleted by those too cowardly to stand by their bigotry. I have selected some of the most offensive and vile and included them below (or after the jump) from those which have not yet been deleted. The photos themselves are clickable links to the actual tweets.
