The rise of queer and transgender Bluesky

Bluesky has become a real alternative to X-twitter for LGBTQ people. Transgender World has experienced  more than a 50% increase in followers since the US election.

The increasing polarization of American politics have seriously damages some of the most valuable parts of the internet: commons for debate and information sharing. Twitter was, for a time, such a place,  used by millions of people across the political spectrum for debate and research.

Not anymore. Twitter was weakened even before Elon Musk took over, but since he became the owner and leader of what is now X, it has devolved  a cesspool of hatred and trolling. He intentionally dismissed most of the moderators.

Toxic environment

I gave up debating transgender issues on twitter/X years ago, as it became increasingly clear that nearly all threads regarding gender variance might be taken over by  trolls whose goal was not to learn but to win. If you debated on their terms, you soon found yourself lost in a toxic sea of "fake news" and lack of logic. 

People have been leaving X-twitter for a long time now. I noticed that serious journalists stopped using twitter in their research. Activists who do not belong to the MAGA-tribe are also much less likely to use twitter for hashtag campaigns intended to raise awareness. Most trans people have stopped using twitter as a place of identity exploration or for finding friends.

Elon Musk has effectively destroyed Twitter, and I’m convinced it was intentional, as his extremist politics do not flourish in open and tolerant arenas for learning.

Note that Musk is a transphobe who has actively been harassing his transgender daughter on twitter,  He is that bad.

Trump and the transphobes won in the US. But there are still ways trans people can win.

To defeat Trump and right-wing extremists, pro-democracy advocates must help humanize trans people in the eyes of Americans. Photo: Valeria Blanc.

Let us not beat about the bush:  the election of Donald Trump is a disaster, for LGBTQ people, for America, and for those who want to make our societies more open to diversity and inclusion. This is going to be hard. But this "culture war" is not over. There are so many good people fighting for a better world out there, and if we act appropriately, tolerance and compassion may still prevail in the end.

But first, let us see where we are right now:

The Bad

Americans have elected a person who is - at best - an unhinged, aggressive populist, but who also tick off nearly all the boxes of what constitutes a Fascist. 

We will now get a new administration in Washington packed with people who do not respect the basic rules of a democracy. 

In other words: If the anti-fascists of the US do not manage to handle that danger, the worst-case scenario is the end of real American democracy. This is what happened in Germany when parts of the establishment decided that Adolf Hitler was a man they could manage.

Many are exhausted from enduring Donald Trump's toxic mental instability for over eight years. There is no rest where we can have moments in safe spaces of rationality and optimism. Trump is a seriously sick man, a narcissist incapable of genuine human compassion. And he is getting worse. The next four years are going to be bad.

But we are not where the Germans were in 1933 yet. And it is important to keep that in mind. This is not the end of this story. Actually, this may be the start of a better one.