theresponseblog

I recall @kontextmaschine getting into it a while back with Anon over "you keep saying that Woke is gonna roll back but you don't give examples", and it occurs to me that the recent Target Pride thing is exactly an example of how it's gonna go. Company brings out a Liggibettequeue-theme thing, Yay We Love Queers, and then Oh No There's Complaints And Protests (which there's precious little public evidence of, but, y'know, protests) and where in previous times the company would've kept going now they have Safety Concerns and the whole thing gets shoved to the back of the store and deleted from the website and never spoken of again.

And I just read a story about some kids putting on a play where Robin Hood is actually Maid Marian, and they had to do it in a garage because the school nixed the idea, and the interesting thing to me was that the school shut it down not after lengthy and vitriolic demonstration from angry adults threatening violence but after a couple parents phoned the school and complained. And sure, you can interpret that as "oh, the Right Wing is Ascendant and people don't want to buck them", but as late as 2020 I would have expected at least a little pushback from the school authorities, and from the language in the story it was less "someone has made credible threats" and more "we don't want a bunch of people showing up and making a scene because we consider avoiding scenes more important than supporting queer stuff."

kontextmaschine

“Somehow rebounding into a cockeyed reaffirmation of gender roles via rejecting 90s Strong Female Characters” is the kinda bullshit way these things do tend to resolve.