Chappell Roan and the Heightened Dangers of Bothsidesism

The singer’s recent ambivalent comments about Kamala Harris (and Democrats in general) are the latest example of Americans’ favorite preoccupation: false equivalence.

When you spend as much time online as I do, you tend to form connections between different parts of the web that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with one another. Maybe it’s the English major in me, or maybe I just like being able to form unusual connections. Whatever the reason, I find this a very useful way of making sense of the blizzard of information with which I’m assaulted each and every day.

Thus it is that the other day I happened to read two headlines in quick succession. One, in The Washington Post, noted that Trump and his allies plan a remarkable assault on the rights of trans folks if he manages to pull off a victory in November. The other focused on the fact that Chappell Roan, noted queer singer and icon, declined to endorse anyone in the election, choosing instead to engage in a bit of tried and true both-sides-are-bad-so-I-don’t-want-to-endorse-someone rhetoric.

The latter, of course, engendered all types of social media chatter, with some arguing (rightly, in my view) that this kind of…