When bigotry rears its ugly head it's always pretending to be something else.
Whether it's about "upholding traditions", "preserving history" or the perennial favorite "protecting children," bigotry may hide behind different issues as time goes on, but it can never hide for long.
This week for conservative media outlet the Washington Examiner the disguise was "being too woke", but the thinly veiled take down of a transgender character didn't fool anyone.
This year for its fourth season CW's Supergirl made television history introducing the first transgender superhero.The new character Dreamer, and her mild mannered counterpart Nia Nal, are played by transgender actress and activist Nicole Maines.
Actress Maines' own life story, a New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Ellis Nutt, reads a bit like a superhero story itself. Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family can be found here.
The simple inclusion of a transgender character though seems to have upset the delicate ecosystem of one writer at the Washington Examiner.
In a recent piece writer Nicole Russell calls out the new character as little more than pandering to the "woke" generation while explaining the flimsy reasons as to why this is bad.
After taking shots at Maines' acting credentials Russell got down to the heart of the issue.
"This effort to cast a transgender character in a main role on a popular show for kids is a blatant attempt to normalize a movement."
For people on Twitter though, including a transgender character already seemed pretty normal.
And many suggested to Russell that there might be a perfectly good reason to include a transgender character: because transgender people actually exist and always have.
Whether Russell or other transphobic people like it or not.
Russell's biggest concern though appeared to be (surprise, surprise) for "the kids", most of whom fall out of the show's target demographic.
"This not only fails to represent the majority of children's experiences, but attempts to indoctrinate them at an age when they are the most impressionable."
"If children watch shows like this without interacting with adults about it or observing it with critical reasoning skills, they could end up more confused than inspired, more frustrated than encouraged."
Apparently teaching children that transgender people are human might interfere with the Washington Examiner's preferred indoctrination that they are not?
Maybe in the future they should spend more time examining the articles they decide to publish.
But considering the source, we won't hold our breath.
