In commemoration of the upcoming Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), President Joe Biden issued a statement praising trans people’s contributions to society and describing actions his administration has taken to counter transphobic bullying and extremism. Additionally, many members of Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also issued their own statements affirming that community health depends on supporting trans people too.
“Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation,” Biden wrote in his statement. “Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive. They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.”
Yeah, happy to help. Sealioning really fucking sucks, because the only ways to counter it are:
Insult the troll until they go away
Refuse to play their game and give short, pithy responses without doing any research (or not linking the research you did)
Ignore the troll entirely
Copy your response and paste it whenever you see the troll asking the same question (which someone is doing in this very thread)
Create and maintain a collection of ready-to-go arguments with citations that you can copy/paste at the drop of a hat, which is a fair bit of work in of itself
In case it’s not obvious, most of the counters for sealioning look almost exactly like trolling itself, and it’s almost impossible to tell a sealion from someone apart looking for a legitimate discussion at first glance–short of keeping track of individual usernames and watching them in multiple threads, the only way to know if someone is a sealion for sure is for at least one person to feed the troll at least one good response. It’s what makes sealioning such an insidious technique, because fighting a sealion almost always results in a lower quality of discussion itself, giving the sealion another type of victory.
There seems to be one other problem too. Someone can legitimately be inept. There is no real proof that someone doesn’t feel that way and is acting in good faith and just cannot comprehend what is being discussed.
Thanks for the break down.