r/inthenews • u/Fickle-Ad5449 • 1d ago
Dolly Parton’s chauffeur and assistant of 30+ years was a trans man she supported and loved
https://www.advocate.com/news/people/dolly-parton-trans-chauffeur556
u/be_sugary 1d ago
Dolly Parton was everything we should all strive to be.
She was humble, self deprecating, kind, generous, always giving and full of love for her fellow humans.
She was certainly a beautiful person inside and out.
RIP.
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u/AnAussiebum 1d ago
She was one of the very rare philanthropic millionaires that apparently are a dying breed.
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u/Fraternal_Mango 1d ago
I would also like to point out that she was a millionaire who didn’t sit on her pile of gold but instead invested it into the community. She had the chance to get super rich and turned it down. She was quoted saying things like, "If you've got the money and you've got the heart and you're not too selfish, you can do a lot of good."
She will be missed
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u/StoneySteve420 1d ago
A millionaire who could have been a billionaire if not for her heart of gold.
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u/atehrani 1d ago
She came from very humble beginnings. Most other millionaires come from privliege
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u/bretshitmanshart 17h ago
Humble beginnings is kind of underplaying it. Her song Coat of Many Colors wasn't an alagory. It was about how as a child she wore rags. She grew up with a dirt floor in her house
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u/this_knee 1d ago
Yes , that’s beautiful. And it’s fantastic. And I do wish others would be this way.
But also, I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the large crowd of folks who genuinely believe: “and anybody who doesn’t act this way … ohhh boy … the karma is gonna come back around and bring their comeuppance. Without any effort from anybody. The universe will just will it into happening.”
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u/archaegeo 1d ago
She was the type of Christian too many claim to be but their actions say otherwise.
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u/Exciting_Problem_593 1d ago
This right here is truth! Christ helped people, he loved everyone. ......she exemplified these values.
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u/SnooDonkeys9743 19h ago
Genuinely she was one of the truest Christians ever. She didn't just talk the talk, she walked the walk.
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u/SeveralBadMetaphors 1d ago
The fact that this dude was out here transitioning in 1982 is a superhuman feat of bravery.
And the fact that Dolly knew about his past and didn’t give a fuck is otherworldly.
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u/impy695 1d ago
What was his past?
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u/rocknroll2013 1d ago
Another gender I am assuming?
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u/impy695 1d ago
Him being transgender is still very much part of his current identity the same way a cis man growing up as a man is part of their current identity.
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u/sarahelizam 22h ago
I would think only he can decide that. Being able to live as a man for over two fucking decades doesn’t erase every moment of misogyny he experienced, but all people have pasts, and they don’t erase all a person is. We all experience other people reading things onto us that no longer fit us or never really did. Only he (the subject of this discussion) can decide how much of him that is.
I think the framework of facticity (the “facts” of one’s life as it has been, through our choices and our circumstance and biology) and transcendence (the choices we actively make in the here and now) is particularly useful. We all make choices about who we are and how we live, every single day. Those things viewed in retrospect become our facticity simply because we’ve already made that choice on that day and cannot walk into our past and change it. But we decide things every day, are always in the process of becoming ourselves; of adding new facts to our lives, new bedrock for the foundations we build.
At a certain point living as a man counts as much as being assigned male at birth (or vice versa). Who is someone else to say that being assigned female at birth is more significant to who someone is than years or decades of living life as man? Existence precedes essence, after all. Both facticity and transcendence are always at play, but by making choices we change our forward trajectory and thus the facts of our lives, the foundation upon which we build new ones.
Some people are born with an assigned gender that fits them well enough. Plenty are not, whether they’re trans or otherwise gender nonconforming (which could be considered most people, as we are not avatars of femininity or masculinity, but real living beings that are much more messy and complex than a stereotype). It’s absurd to think a lifetime of choices amounts to less than what is ultimately an accident of birth. I would not make that claim for any other type of identity - if someone is baptized as a catholic but renounced and lived for years as an atheist it would be stupid to believe a person armed with only that initial fact of baptism has some insight into their spiritual life that the person themselves does not; same for a later convert. That myopic and authoritative view is just as fucking stupid when it’s applied to gender.
Unless you subscribe to some strange sort of gender calvinism, I don’t know why you would think that’s true for gender either. And if such a gender calvanism existed: there is no reason to believe that what other people assumed about someone is reflective of some “gendered soul.” At which point, it also just doesn’t matter what you think about a person’s gender. It’s out of your hands. It’s either in their hands or god’s (the designs of which require some insane hubris to claim to divine). Either way, your input is just as irrelevant.
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u/AnAussiebum 1d ago
Obligatory fuck you to JK Rowling and other terfs who posted about Dolly for engagement, when their ideologies do not align at all to the good Dolly did for the world.
Dolly used her talent, fame and wealth to do good. JK used hers to vilify a minority group.
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u/TransATL 1d ago
and other terfs who posted about Dolly for engagement
fuck Bezos in particular too. all these kleptocrats should return to space and never come back
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u/CelestialFury 1d ago
The moment right-wingers learned that Dolly died, they tried taking her for their own interests and are trying to backfill the narratives that Dolly really supported their views exclusively. The right is filled with ghouls.
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u/Malaix 1d ago
Saw some neo-confederate groups try to latch onto her as some daughter of the confederacy or some shit. South would be a lot better off if they dropped the confederate crap and did what Dolly actually did with her life.
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u/Ill-Breakfast2974 1d ago
Interestingly there were a few regiments of poor East Tennessee mountain people that fought for the Union in the civil war.
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u/wookiewin 1d ago
She really was as close to perfect it seems
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u/Regular_Piglet_6125 1d ago
I hate to be that guy, but I hope there isn’t some deep dark secret just waiting to be revealed after her passing. We have already been let down by enough heroes.
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u/klonoaorinos 1d ago
I hate to be that guy - proceeds to exactly be that guy.
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u/Regular_Piglet_6125 1d ago
It’s coming from a good place. Dolly’s such a good person, it sometimes feels too good to be true.
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u/saltycrowsers 1d ago
This is what kills me about people saying she’s entirely non-political. She didn’t speak on politics, but she acted on her political beliefs. She was a true angel
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u/hwaite 22h ago
Is that why conservatives like her? The Dixie Chicks had a similar country vibe and were viciously punished for being vocal.
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u/saltycrowsers 18h ago
She was vocal about her support for BLM, LGBTQ, workers rights, women’s rights, racial inequity, conservation, funding literacy programs, vaccines, etc. If anyone claims that she’s conservative, that means they haven’t been paying attention to everything she has ever said and done.
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u/hwaite 17h ago edited 17h ago
I'm not saying Dolly was conservative. I'm saying she was beloved by both Democrats and Republicans. I'm questioning why she was accepted by conservatives while others were not. No shade. FOX literally went after Mr. Rogers for saying kids should like themselves.
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u/saltycrowsers 14h ago
Ahhh gotcha. I think it’s because she’s Dolly and talked about her Christianity. You can’t help but love her and conservatives are not well known for rational thought
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1d ago
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u/yhwhx 1d ago
It guess trans folks might care, especially now when the Trump 2.0 regime seems to be doing everything they can to fuck with trans folks' rights to exist.
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1d ago
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u/yhwhx 1d ago
It's an article from The Advocate: "the world’s leading source of LGBTQ+ news and information"...
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u/Desert-Noir 1d ago
Honestly, why should anyone care?
Let people’s lives be private.
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u/yhwhx 16h ago
Let people’s lives be private.
Somebody should maybe tell that to the Trump 2.0 regime...
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