MUSK’S LEANING TO THE RIGHT IS SO WRONG.

At the 2022 Australian Federal Election, the Liberal Party, having failed to heed the lessons of 2019, in the seat of Warringah, decided to parachute in a transphobic candidate, who was a Captain’s Pick, who succeeded in increasing the margin of the first Teal Independent, Zali Steggall. By definition, a Teal Independent is a wealthy candidate who is Right-leaning but is socially progressive and wants action on climate change.

Today, that unsuccessful candidate posted and gloated of how thankful they are that Elon Musk wound back the protections and hate speech provisions about deadnaming and misgendering trans folk. This is someone who made disgusting comments about trans folk, yet initially began by saying that they had concerns about transwomen in women’s sport but claims that transwomen are men who believe they’re women without understanding that they are people assigned male on account of their genitalia who align more with being women. She has also claimed that trans kids are basically autistic.

There is an overlap and trans kids can be autistic, but you can be autistic and not LGBTIQA and you can be LGBTIQA and not autistic.

For her to then say that she’s not homophobic because she has a babysitter for her kids who is a lesbian is akin to the man I knew many years ago claiming that he wasn’t racist because he went to a Chinese restaurant at the invitation of a Vietnamese man (he was a client of the firm his wife worked for and he made an exception because it suited him, not because he was misunderstood!).

The fact of the matter is that many right-wingers are more likely to be prejudiced than left-wingers, within reason (the one thing that all the major parties agreed upon in Australia was restrictive immigration and the union movement because it was aware that Japanese and Chinese were industrious and would work for lower wages) and they should not be given a platform to express their hateful statements! They can claim, “Oh, but free speech,” but most proponents of free speech are only about amplifying the voices they want amplified and to be able to spout their hate without recourse.