Fair point, but society should ask itself if it avoids laughing at jokes because they're not funny, or fear of others thinking they agree with the joke as if it were a factual statement. And did someone make the joke because it was ironic, or because they believe it? Some of us seem to have lost the definition of a joke, and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of? Societal anecdotes would say yes, but this doesn't make sense logically.
> … and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of?
Of course, and you shall be shunned like that Black Mirror episode where the people were blurred out.
Comedians already know this from day 1. It’s incredibly difficult to say funny things for 5 minutes straight, let alone a whole hour special.
The people trying to limit the speech of comedians aren’t the same people who are going to comedy shows usually. That’s the core of the issue. The people who don’t like comedians having free speech typically aren’t into comedy at all.
There wouldn't be an endless series of unfunny comedians making "Comedy" specials called "Trigger Warning: How I'm Canceled by Snowflake Cucks" for Netflix if people weren't watching it.
Our primary problem isn't that there's a bandwagon of male comedians whose whole show is crying about snowflakes cancelling them or making exactly one joke about trans people. It's that there's a ready audience excited to watch them do it. If there wasn't Netflix wouldn't keep making the specials. I'm still going to call the comedians and Netflix immoral hacks for cashing in on it, though. And I hope the cancellations keep rolling in so Netflix can see us vote no with our wallets.
I agree with this. All these protest and cancel stuff is ridiculous. Just let the market figure it out. If people wouldn't watch, for example, Dave Chapelle then he wouldn't have a platform anyway.
“We” aren’t just going to not laugh or not give money to “you”. No, “we” will harass, perform character assassination, boycott anyone associated with “you” and try to harm “you” financially and derail “your” career.
Such concerted harm campaigns should be outright illegal, especially when stirred and directed intentionally, as they usually are.
You shouldn't be disallowed from joking about anything. Clamping authority down onto jokes kills them before they've had a chance to fail.
The safety net of a failed joke is that it doesn't mean very much. Putting authoritative rules in place to prevent a failed joke makes it so much worse when a joke doesn't land, or accidently offends, because now it "shouldn't have been allowed in the first place" and the public senses a disruption in their own control over the world.
Just let jokes go people, they don't matter and that's the gorgeous, beautiful truth we can share together. The network effects of treating jokes like they have authority and governmental consequence is deeply unpleasant for everyone, except a few political groups which benefit.
Who is making these rules about what jokes can be made, and by what mechanism are they enforced? I've never seen anything about that.
There are social consequences to making certain kind of jokes. Like there always have been? But which kinds of jokes and what sort and degree of consequences are changing.
You can have an issue with that and resist it, but the mechanics of this institution are not new. These unspoken rules about who can say what and what will happen if you transgress them are the invisible infrastructure of social connection and ultimately society. The rules are changing fast and by different players than is traditional, but the fact that there are rules and consequences for violating them is as old as us.
In the US, a long list of comedians have fought hard through the decades, first radio, then TV to be able to tell risky jokes, naughty jokes, anti-establishment jokes, uncouth jokes, etc. They all fought against the prudes and establishment culture back then.
Should they not have fought and won those victories? Should they have remained in vaudevillian repertoires only?
Etc is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Racist, homophobic, sexist, and transphobic jokes are really what we're here to talk about. Was it an intentional omission or an accident? Just curious.
Lenny Bruce, Redd Foxx, Richard Prior, etc. Comedians of old engaged in all of the above. I do not know a comedian that existed prior to 10 years ago that did not have some sort of sexist joke (Obviously Andy Clay takes the cake, I think), short of maybe some pretentious super wholesome "comedian" doing "wholesome jokes"
Let me summarize and repeat the argument to see if I'm getting it right. Because jokes were used to test boundaries in the past, there is no boundary that should not be tested today?
I'm not a comedian. I cannot tell a joke. I would bet most comedians 10, 5 years ago would have said definitely yes. They probably would still say so today -but given the coals they have to walk on, you may find some trepidation amongst some.
Techbros seething lmao, easier to just downvote the person who clearly doesn’t understand that freer muh speeeeech freeer the people. How dare there be consequences for any action, I just want to say anything and get away with it, like you know etc.
The problem comes when liars have to perpetually maintain so many lies that they must persecute anyone courageous enough to speak the truth. It doesn't even matter if they're right, just that they can and do think for themselves, and have the spine to speak out despite the show of conformity. They attempt to dominate language to control everything else. That, and fear.. Laughter helps cure people of fear. They need people afraid, divided, and willing to give up essential liberty for the illusion of security.
Disobedience in intolerable.
Slavers are antithetical to truth, and vice versa.
The idea of making jokes up vs. down seems to be predicated on there being a very hierarchical or class stratified society. While I realize my country (the USA) does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy.
However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves.
My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.
> does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy.
What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have?
> as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I have seen very very few if any expressions of a desire for laws to enforce these changing social standards. Mostly what I see is the general idea that expressing some ideas should come with social consequences. There is a growing american movement to use the state to directly ban certain forms and subjects of speech but I don't think there's much overlap right now.
> My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order.
Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
> What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have?
What it means is that the narrative we tell ourselves is that society rewards hard work, no matter who you are. This is _prima facie_ not reality. But narrative is powerful at defining our sense of self. As such, a culture that sees itself as a meritocracy, whether it is or not, may not see that there _are_ systemic issues preventing the ideal from being reality. It is the whole "Americans all see themselves are temporarily disgraced millionaires" or some variation on that theme.
> Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
Academic analytical frameworks make their way from the academy into the the governments and corporations that define our social condition. What it looks like in society is the belief that a) "otherness" is additive and b) people internalize the belief that "otherness" is an inexorable aspect of oneself and thus will never allow them to succeed.
It also informs our language in how we discuss these things. Lantix being a term that a vast majority of hispanics do not accept or even want. BIPOC being a term that attempts to be inclusive but inadvertently groups many disparate peoples into a single monolith, when their challenges and cultural are not monolithic. These terms did originate in the academy and they do inform the conversation we have around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (another term from the academy)
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I said _rules_ and laws. We do have rules, corporations make rules about what can be said on social media. Yes, some of these are very important, some of them may be overreach. But what can't be argued is that there are rules being developed with the intent of protecting specific individuals and groups.
> Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
Nope, not at all. I _never_ stated or even implied that we shouldn't talk about racism. I am not rejecting calls for change. I am not saying that the rules and mores we put in place are necessarily destructive. What I _am_ saying is that much like the narrative of "the USA is purely meritocratic" informs our view of self and thus how we express ourselves, the idea that "the USA is fundamentally, systemically and intrinsically racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic, and being in one of those groups means you will always be 'other'" can inform an internalization of that belief which can server as a means to reenforce the flaws in our society.
I 100% believe that things that are wrong should be fixed. I believe that where systemic racism does exist it needs to be removed. In some cases, like the Voting Rights Act (which was disappointedly repealed), this is done via _de jure_ laws. It can also be done through a (albeit more slowly) concerted effort to change opinions via education, outreach and normalization. For an example of this, I am very confident that, given the same Supreme Court balance as it was at the time Obergefell was decided, the decision would have gone the other way if adjudicated in 2000 or 1995. By the time Obergefell was decided gay marriage was supported by an even or majority of Americans, that was not the case in th...
In a proper free society, you can also criticize anything. Including humor.
Cancel culture isn't new, it only seems different now because the internet has created one giant market where there used to be many independent ones. When a comedian made an ethnic joke on TV, most people never heard the criticisms from the people being made fun of, their criticism stayed within their community. Now everyone can see everything. It was never the case that everyone laughed at all the jokes. The difference now is that we can actually see the people who aren't laughing, and that feels like a downer. You can tell any joke you like, but you aren't guaranteed that everyone will find it funny. Welcome to worldwide two-way communication.
Sort of... The gist of what you say is true... One potentially has a world-wide audience. However, it's not always the case. If an Indian comedian tells awful ethnic jokes about Americans or Brazilians, do you think any one of us will get wind of it? Same with Chinese making jokes about just about anyone else in the world --the likelihood anyone in the rest of the world will find out, is very slim. There is the slightest possibility where someone with a foot in both worlds would be offended plus feel that they need to bring it to light.
True, there is still fractionalization at the national level. And the 'cancel culture' argument as I'm familiar with it is associated with the US and the UK. But as you say, the gist is true, I just overstated the scale.
The biggest difference is that cancel culture is slightly inconveniencing the powerful.
The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades, not just in the US, but everywhere. How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia? In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school). In the Soviet Union, the opposite was true. (For the record, I'm extremely pro capitalism, and to the extent I criticize it it's because I believe that it can get better, whereas AFAICT, other economic systems have largely failed except in very specific and limited scenarios).
>The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades
I was under the impression that was a bad thing. Are we saying it's not longer a bad thing if it affects other people? Or is it more a type of schadenfreude?
> How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia?
At least three from top tier universities [1][2][3], but probably many, many more [4].
> In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school).
The idea that communism or leftism is 'cancelled' in academia very unfounded, and one of the chief complaints by the right and points-of-pride of the left.
Business is not capitalism, and vice versa. Trade and the creation of companies happened well before capitalism was an idea. Likewise, business schools study the mechanism of business and its applications (eg. accounting, finance, HR, strategy), which can take place outside of capitalism.
Okay, so what changed about the Simpsons that got Apu cancelled? I’m pretty sure that was on national TV when I was a kid (and offended neither me nor any other brown guy I’ve ever met).
Cancel culture indeed has always existed. But when John Ashcroft covered up the nude statues in the DOJ we made fun of him.
Nothing changed about the Simpsons. That was my point. Nothing changed about human nature, either. What has changed is that the people who were offended now have a forum to air their grievance, and other people can agree with them who might never have considered the issue at all. You're still free to appreciate Apu, just as the makers of the series are free to change the show in any way they see fit, since they own the intellectual property.
Yeah this is well said, that’s really the distinction from the past. Yes we have always had a level of cancel culture but now we have victim culture on a whole new level
I can just ignore the victimhood culture. Worst possible humans can play around being victims all I care. I might dislike them and ignore what they say.
What actually worries is the cancel culture of lunatic lynch mobs continuously attacking people contacting their employers and trying to get them fired. I think good solution for this is to mandate real names and identification details in such contacts and then make each and every communication public. Thus opening chance to at leas civilly prosecuted these monsters.
I think jokes in general seem to land with audience based on the accuracy of the topic being made fun of.
I think that's what allows some people to make jokes Md others not. For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered.
By contrast any of Rowan Atkinson's work making fun of the British elite seems so accurate and still able to find the humor and contradictions.
Dave Chapelle’s latest stuff is funnier if you realize that, as always, he’s mocking white people. In this case the sensitivities of white liberals and the intersectional hierarchy they’ve constructed regarding who can make fun of whom.
> you realize that, as always, he’s mocking white people. In this case the sensitivities of white liberals
This is likely true, but is that "punching up" or "punching down" ?
You're saying that it's "punching up" but there's an element of punching up at "those comfortable middle-class white people, with their concern for a different minority to mine, who are having a hard time and are a political punching bag, let's trash that concern" which is not entirely "punching up", now is it? It's punching down by proxy.
It’s the other way around—white people and their values are the target, not the proxy. For example, the joke about the rapper DaBaby getting cancelled for his comments about sexual minorities (but not his killing another Black man) is a commentary on white liberal moral priorities. Likewise the joke about gay people being able to pass as white with respect to the police is a commentary on the intersectional hierarchy that puts sexual minorities above Black people.
> It’s the other way around—white people and their values are the target, not the proxy.
Quite, the gay or trans people are not the target, just collateral damage, but never mind them, who cares about them anyway? I don't think that you have a solid argument here.
There are a lot of comics who don't throw minorities under the bus for a laugh. I think he tries to appeal to middle-class white audiences with that material. He knows which side his bread is buttered on and he does not give a damn.
I would rather say that the British elites can take a joke while a loud subset of the transgender community can't. For obvious reasons I might add. The British elites haven't been marginalized for decades.
I find it curious that the group decrying cancel culture most prominently, conservatives, are also the group who tried to council rock music, rap music, gay people, gay marriage, abortion, people of colour, abuse victims, businesses making business decisions to change the names of their products etc
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadI imagine it's something of a structural feature, not something we could do away with the right policies or education.
Of course, and you shall be shunned like that Black Mirror episode where the people were blurred out.
The people trying to limit the speech of comedians aren’t the same people who are going to comedy shows usually. That’s the core of the issue. The people who don’t like comedians having free speech typically aren’t into comedy at all.
Our primary problem isn't that there's a bandwagon of male comedians whose whole show is crying about snowflakes cancelling them or making exactly one joke about trans people. It's that there's a ready audience excited to watch them do it. If there wasn't Netflix wouldn't keep making the specials. I'm still going to call the comedians and Netflix immoral hacks for cashing in on it, though. And I hope the cancellations keep rolling in so Netflix can see us vote no with our wallets.
“We” aren’t just going to not laugh or not give money to “you”. No, “we” will harass, perform character assassination, boycott anyone associated with “you” and try to harm “you” financially and derail “your” career.
Such concerted harm campaigns should be outright illegal, especially when stirred and directed intentionally, as they usually are.
The safety net of a failed joke is that it doesn't mean very much. Putting authoritative rules in place to prevent a failed joke makes it so much worse when a joke doesn't land, or accidently offends, because now it "shouldn't have been allowed in the first place" and the public senses a disruption in their own control over the world.
Just let jokes go people, they don't matter and that's the gorgeous, beautiful truth we can share together. The network effects of treating jokes like they have authority and governmental consequence is deeply unpleasant for everyone, except a few political groups which benefit.
There are social consequences to making certain kind of jokes. Like there always have been? But which kinds of jokes and what sort and degree of consequences are changing.
You can have an issue with that and resist it, but the mechanics of this institution are not new. These unspoken rules about who can say what and what will happen if you transgress them are the invisible infrastructure of social connection and ultimately society. The rules are changing fast and by different players than is traditional, but the fact that there are rules and consequences for violating them is as old as us.
Should they not have fought and won those victories? Should they have remained in vaudevillian repertoires only?
Your comment has an extremely sinister tone, I’m not sure if that was intended.
It literally illustrates my point? I don't like people making bad jokes about "people like" me, but in about 45 seconds I'll be over it.
Disobedience in intolerable.
Slavers are antithetical to truth, and vice versa.
SPEAK THE TRUTH.
However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves.
My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.
What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have?
> as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I have seen very very few if any expressions of a desire for laws to enforce these changing social standards. Mostly what I see is the general idea that expressing some ideas should come with social consequences. There is a growing american movement to use the state to directly ban certain forms and subjects of speech but I don't think there's much overlap right now.
> My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order.
Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
What it means is that the narrative we tell ourselves is that society rewards hard work, no matter who you are. This is _prima facie_ not reality. But narrative is powerful at defining our sense of self. As such, a culture that sees itself as a meritocracy, whether it is or not, may not see that there _are_ systemic issues preventing the ideal from being reality. It is the whole "Americans all see themselves are temporarily disgraced millionaires" or some variation on that theme.
> Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
Academic analytical frameworks make their way from the academy into the the governments and corporations that define our social condition. What it looks like in society is the belief that a) "otherness" is additive and b) people internalize the belief that "otherness" is an inexorable aspect of oneself and thus will never allow them to succeed.
It also informs our language in how we discuss these things. Lantix being a term that a vast majority of hispanics do not accept or even want. BIPOC being a term that attempts to be inclusive but inadvertently groups many disparate peoples into a single monolith, when their challenges and cultural are not monolithic. These terms did originate in the academy and they do inform the conversation we have around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (another term from the academy)
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I said _rules_ and laws. We do have rules, corporations make rules about what can be said on social media. Yes, some of these are very important, some of them may be overreach. But what can't be argued is that there are rules being developed with the intent of protecting specific individuals and groups.
> Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
Nope, not at all. I _never_ stated or even implied that we shouldn't talk about racism. I am not rejecting calls for change. I am not saying that the rules and mores we put in place are necessarily destructive. What I _am_ saying is that much like the narrative of "the USA is purely meritocratic" informs our view of self and thus how we express ourselves, the idea that "the USA is fundamentally, systemically and intrinsically racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic, and being in one of those groups means you will always be 'other'" can inform an internalization of that belief which can server as a means to reenforce the flaws in our society.
I 100% believe that things that are wrong should be fixed. I believe that where systemic racism does exist it needs to be removed. In some cases, like the Voting Rights Act (which was disappointedly repealed), this is done via _de jure_ laws. It can also be done through a (albeit more slowly) concerted effort to change opinions via education, outreach and normalization. For an example of this, I am very confident that, given the same Supreme Court balance as it was at the time Obergefell was decided, the decision would have gone the other way if adjudicated in 2000 or 1995. By the time Obergefell was decided gay marriage was supported by an even or majority of Americans, that was not the case in th...
Cancel culture isn't new, it only seems different now because the internet has created one giant market where there used to be many independent ones. When a comedian made an ethnic joke on TV, most people never heard the criticisms from the people being made fun of, their criticism stayed within their community. Now everyone can see everything. It was never the case that everyone laughed at all the jokes. The difference now is that we can actually see the people who aren't laughing, and that feels like a downer. You can tell any joke you like, but you aren't guaranteed that everyone will find it funny. Welcome to worldwide two-way communication.
The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades, not just in the US, but everywhere. How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia? In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school). In the Soviet Union, the opposite was true. (For the record, I'm extremely pro capitalism, and to the extent I criticize it it's because I believe that it can get better, whereas AFAICT, other economic systems have largely failed except in very specific and limited scenarios).
I was under the impression that was a bad thing. Are we saying it's not longer a bad thing if it affects other people? Or is it more a type of schadenfreude?
At least three from top tier universities [1][2][3], but probably many, many more [4].
> In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school).
The idea that communism or leftism is 'cancelled' in academia very unfounded, and one of the chief complaints by the right and points-of-pride of the left.
Business is not capitalism, and vice versa. Trade and the creation of companies happened well before capitalism was an idea. Likewise, business schools study the mechanism of business and its applications (eg. accounting, finance, HR, strategy), which can take place outside of capitalism.
[1] https://history.rutgers.edu/academics/undergraduate/course-d... [2] https://pll.harvard.edu/course/china-part-9-communist-libera... [3] https://polisci.berkeley.edu/course/selected-topics-comparat... [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=communism+university+course+...
Cancel culture indeed has always existed. But when John Ashcroft covered up the nude statues in the DOJ we made fun of him.
[0]: https://youtu.be/fk3svL0GPWI
Now we never hear people say this.
It’s clearer to me if framed that way, what’s being complained about.
Everyone angling to be framed as the victim or deprived unjustly.
What actually worries is the cancel culture of lunatic lynch mobs continuously attacking people contacting their employers and trying to get them fired. I think good solution for this is to mandate real names and identification details in such contacts and then make each and every communication public. Thus opening chance to at leas civilly prosecuted these monsters.
I think that's what allows some people to make jokes Md others not. For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered.
By contrast any of Rowan Atkinson's work making fun of the British elite seems so accurate and still able to find the humor and contradictions.
Dave Chapelles jokes to me are effectively anti humor.
I'm pretty sure Chappelle's joke have landed extremely well, which is why he is so reviled by those who find themselves the butt of his jokes.
Anyway, as Voltaire once said "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
Also, Chappelle is black.
This is likely true, but is that "punching up" or "punching down" ?
You're saying that it's "punching up" but there's an element of punching up at "those comfortable middle-class white people, with their concern for a different minority to mine, who are having a hard time and are a political punching bag, let's trash that concern" which is not entirely "punching up", now is it? It's punching down by proxy.
Quite, the gay or trans people are not the target, just collateral damage, but never mind them, who cares about them anyway? I don't think that you have a solid argument here.