Trans People Misused to Attack a Project or Developer Who Has Nothing to Do With Them
And why that truly hurts all trans people
The very same hit-and-run perverts who defame the founder of GNU/Linux - then hide [1, 2] - have also worked to defame the people behind Hyprland, which has a new release, as noted by Bobby Borisov in Saturday's article ("Hyprland 0.45: Smoother Rounding, New Configs, and Key Fixes").
The Hyprland situation was barely covered by anyone except right-wing pundits with roots at Microsoft. If one actually examines the political beliefs of the accused ("vaxryy"), one can see these posts from 7 hours ago:
Where else have we seen those same tactics used? Trying to "tame" people politically by lying about people (or 'for' people)?
Trans people (or women or disabled people or racial minorities) ought not become political props, leveraged by people who are none of those things, for instance a jealous Drew DeVault and his "inner child". Yesterday in IRC "cmb" told us: "Oh, I've seen the women and disabled argument in comments on places like lobsters, at least once. Because, ya know, women and the disabled aren't capable of learning new things or working outside the lines society has carved out for them. I'm disabled (blind) myself and hate being used as a hammer/club/poster child by these people."
"cmb" had said earlier: "Like the microsofty who was campaigning against patch-based email workflows a few years ago. "Think of the newbies." And then some of these folks will bring identity politics into the mix. "Patch-based workflows aren't inclusive of women or the disabled or whoever."
Those sorts of tactics end up alienating or demonising (presumption of ill intent, suspicion) women and other groups in our communities. I speak to a lot of people in Free software who fear adding trans people purely because of their suspicion that they might cause trouble. What we're seeing above are the tactics which breed such suspicion, with white hetero males like Drew DeVault doing the most such damage. Stigmas are then reinforced when Drew DeVault's taste in pornography comes out.
It seems safe to say that nobody in FOSS harms trans people more than Drew DeVault. He is just using them as political fodder. █