A Few Thoughts On Mike Huckabee (with animated GIF action!)

You might not have heard of the latest quotable thing Mike Huckabee said.

Let me fix that for you.

See, this guy said – and we are quoting here:

“Now, I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee said. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.'”

Is this horribly insensitive to transpeople?

Oh hells to the yes.

Does it display a complete disregard to the discrimination, self-hatred, and violence that transpeople deal with on a regular basis?

Oh hells to the yes.

Here’s the thing, though:  Mike Huckabee is 59, and so considerably older than me.  And I remember what it was like growing up.  The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was considered horribly racy.  The women’s underwear section of the J.C. Penny catalog was prized material, let alone Victoria’s Secret. If I wanted to see a woman’s naughty bits (and as a straight teenage male, I did), I either had to somehow get my hands on a paper magazine or try to squint really hard at this:

So maybe, in his stupid, ignorant, privileged way, Mike Huckabee somehow thinks that pretending to be transgender would be “worth it” if he got to see some woman’s naughty bits.

It’s possible.

…but not likely.

But see, here’s the thing, Mike.

These days, there’s this thing called the internet.

Fabulous thing about the internet.  You can’t throw a goddamned stone here without finding pictures (and video! and live! video!) of naked people.

And this is a good thing.

Because it clearly demonstrates this whole “pretend to be trans to see people naked” thing is so much bullshit.

If Mike Huckabee is so desperate to see naked women that he’d risk the discrimination, threats of violence, and suicide risk of being a transperson… maybe someone should just show him how to google images of naked women in the shower.  (NOTE: The link does exactly that!)

Or maybe Mike Huckabee is just a douchebag pandering to transphobic people so insecure in their own sexuality and gender identity that they have to worry about someone else’s.

Yeah, it’s probably the latter.

There’s no real correlation – either way – between porn consumption and sexual assault (reference, full pdf); that said, given Huckabee’s statement above, I gotta think that maybe going to PornHub and searching “shower” might just work for him to get his jollies.  You’re welcome for that mental image.