As someone who grew up in a conservative household in a deep red state, I think that part of it is that a lot of people are letting Lizard Brain dictate their response to transgender people.
Let me give you a personal example. A while back, I went to a social dance, and there was a trans woman there. Before the dance starts proper, the couple that runs it will teach a dance lesson, and we rotate partners while that’s going on. Eventually, I was rotated into being her partner. For some background, she was obviously early on in her transition; she still looked like a dude in a dress, she didn’t quite have the appearance down yet. But she gets huge props for not only having the bravery to go out as herself, but doing it in fucking Arkansas.
So I rotate over to her, and it dawns on me that she’s trans. In my head, Lizard Brain immediately starts screaming. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! THIS PERSON IS OBVIOUSLY A DUDE IN A DRESS, HE MUST BE UP TO SOMETHING IF HE’S DRESSING AS SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT HE IS! RABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLE”
Keep in mind, where I grew up, you just didn’t see trans people, and even now, it still tickles that primal part of my brain that was trained to be uncomfortable around people who aren’t white and straight.
The difference between me and many of the people I grew up around is that I recognize that it’s happening and try to tone Lizard Brain out when it starts screaming. A lot of other people listen to it and don’t care that the person that it’s screaming about is exactly that: a person.
Because fascists need a ~scary other~ to scapegoat to erode everyone’s rights.
Why would you ask this question on Lemmy. You will get few, if any, legitimate answers. This platform is an echo chamber.
To be fair, every platform is an echo chamber. The only differences are to what degree.
Probably true enough, but I’m sure there are a few that are a mixed bag.
Yeah, such a shameful lack of bigots’ POV.
Religious people control their kids through the village support system of their church. Some kids are learning things at public school which are not in line with those beliefs. This is scary for parents. Parents don’t want to lose their children, and can’t imagine loving them as somebody else. Case in point Elon And his trans daughter Vivian.
I’m quite liberal and atheist, but the prospect of a transitioning child is troubling to me. While I’d have no problem supporting a gay child, I feel very strongly about body acceptance, and I reject body dysmorphia. Transitioning to another gender is to me, not too different from a woman who wants augmentation surgeries or a man who is taking steroids. That said I could care less what anybody else does. I think cosmetic surgery and steroids should be legal. I don’t think the government needs to be involved. It’s a decision to discuss with a child, doctor, and parent.
I guess what I’m saying is, I can empathize with the transphobia of conservatives. Where we differ is in how we deal with that fear. They want the government to make society conform to their beliefs. I think it’s up to the individual parent to grow the love in their heart to accept and love whatever their child decides to be.
I feel very strongly about body acceptance, and I reject body dysmorphia.
Drag wants to take a crack at explaining this.
The mind is a machine. We have free will, but that free will has limits. If you try to hold your breath until you pass out, you’ll probably fail. Your subconscious will demand air and you’ll give in. The human jaw is capable of producing enough force to bite off a finger. But you can’t chew off your own finger unless you’re on drugs. Your brain won’t let you. We can do a lot of things with our brains, but some are hard, and under normal circumstances some are impossible.
Accepting your body when you’re five pounds heavier than you’d like is something our brains can do without that much trouble. Accepting your body when you’re a hundred pounds heavier than you’d like is hard. Some people never manage to summon enough willpower to do it. Accepting your body when you’re the wrong sex is, for most people, impossible. It doesn’t work. The brain has limits, and those limits kick in.
I just want to say as a trans person, first off, your views are very valid. I think it’s actually great that despite your misgivings you respect the principle of bodily autonomy, which I very much agree with myself. Totally think this is a good take.
I also wanted to give my 2 cents on the experience itself. You liken transition to body modification, and there definitely are parallels. But in my experience, the two are distinct. Like, I have both dysmorphia at times, and dysphoria at others. I’m not 100% happy with my body after transition, but now it’s like, less because I look like a guy and more because I look like a girl but, maybe not with the ideal body I wanted. When that first hit me, my wife told me “welcome to womanhood” and I laughed a little (and cried a little) because it was true, I’d never known a woman who didn’t struggle with her body image.
I also just, can’t really explain how much my mental health has improved. I had terrible anxiety when I entered puberty, and it wasn’t about gender or anything (that I was aware of at the time, anyways). It was almost just like my brain started malfunctioning. I got quieter, I overthought everything, I self medicated with weed and alcohol, became kind of aimless. Then I turned it around, got my career going, got married, worked on myself. I still drank to take the edge off and be able to socialize, but put on a face at parties and figured out how to push through the anxiety. I tried therapy, medication, meditation, you name it, but it never really got too much better, I just got better at working around it.
I had kinda given up on there being an “answer”. I just figured, you know, this is life for me. Not bad, just hard. And then this thing happened, where a lot of stuff I had been pushing down all came up at once. And I transitioned.
I really, really didn’t think it would “solve” things. Like, I thought it felt right, that it would make things better. But I was trying not to get my hopes up. And at first it didn’t, like hormones didn’t really immediately fix everything. It was more subtle. It was like… like slowly waking up from a long and tiring nightmare. The kind you don’t remember much of, you just keep that vague sense of unease for a while.
It’s been a year and a half. I can go to parties and not drink now, and just, relax. Have fun. Socialize. I can make friends and talk to strangers. I still have anxiety, I still have problems, but like, my brain just works better. I don’t know how else to describe it. I make connections I never did before, understand people and empathize with them more.
I feel happy. Not in a like, “this is new and exciting” kind of way, but a sort of deep contentedness. Peace.
I don’t think this is a silver bullet. It doesn’t solve all your problems, and it sure as hell won’t solve anything for a cis person. It just helps to take a constant burden out of the way. And for me, even if there had been 0 physical changes, I would 100% take estrogen just for the mental effects it has had alone. It’s been the best mental healthcare I have ever received.
I appreciate your story and I’m really happy for you. I think if I was child free I would just say hell yes I support everybody to be themselves. But being a parent makes me more protective and cautious and concerned and if I’m being honest I kind of hate that change in myself. It’s so easy for me to say I support autonomy but I already know that it won’t be when my child is asserting their own autonomy. I know that parents don’t have control, only influence, but it’s hard for me to walk that fine line.
I feel the need to add to my feelings on this, because I don’t like admitting that I am somewhat transphobic. I strongly believe in bodily autonomy and I think 18 is too old to grant it. For tattoos, piercings, health decisions and anything else relating to oneself, I think autonomy should be granted as soon as it is claimed. In some cases of teenage pregnancy, the conception itself is a declaration of autonomy, unless the parents gave permission, which would be weird. I’m not sure a minimum age can be set. I think teenagers should be able to legally divorce (reverse adoption?) their own parents too. I recognize that this is also an extreme view that would frighten most parents. It frightens me too. But I kinda feel like picking out specific issues like trans rights or abortion is ignoring an overarching issue of parental/societal control. Not too long ago it was fairly common for husbands to view their wives as property. Many if not most parents seem to view their children as property. Maybe someday that too will change. It’s not as though 18 is some magical age of self actualization. Some people will be dependent on their parents well past that age if not forever, and some people are ready to face the world alone at 15, maybe younger.
It seems that way because the minority of people who are against trans people are very loud and obnoxious, and their voices are heavily amplified by sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Not most. Your premise is faulty
Prove it
It’s on OP to prove. But reasonably most people aren’t transphobic considering how big of s topic, if you will, transsexualism had become lately. I don’t think most conservatives are transphobic either.
Kind regards, someone who would be very liberal in the US.
Because they tell teenagers that you might accidentally kiss a man and let hormones and immaturity handle the rest.
Because stirring up hate against vulnerable minorities, by positioning them as a threat is a well tested and effective technique for the power hungry to gain and retain power. And it’s effective, because it works by pulling people in and making all of the conversation about whether or not it’s right to hate on the group they’re targeting.
The more I read these comments it sound like the USA is entering its Hitler phase.
They very much are…
A combination of ‘scapegoat’ and ‘them vs us’, basically.
It is also exceedingly important to note that plenty on the Right don’t explicitly hate Trans people. That’s a rhetoric. They may be worried about some of the news “reports” and “”“stories”“”, had to triple quote that one, and yes the radical Right and MAGA do buy in hard and hate due to racial and superiority bullshit. What so many on the Right who are on the fence about these things are truly scared of…
Is having an opinion that deviates from the people around them who they’ve known probably all their lives. Unlike us on the Left who hiss and spit at one another every time one of us has a family gathering, many on the Right fear alienating their social circles.
If you ever want to change the mind of someone on the Right you really just need to soothe their rabid, horrid, twisted by those around them, frothing soul of an angry jackass and make them feel as if they can actually believe something else could be the truth.
But by GOD can it be tiring.
It’s artificial boosting of the same bigotry that’s been ongoing for generations. The new part switching the target.
See, there’s been a very concerted effort to radicalize the right wing of the American populace by media oligarchs. It’s part of an overall strategy going back to at least the post-nixon era.
Want to crush black people? Find a way to villainize them indirectly. “Inner city” crime. Step up arrests for things that are disproportionately a part of black people’s lives. Spread drugs into the chaos brought about by destabilizing black communities to engender greater violence between gangs. And it worked. Look at how many black people are in jail compared to pretty much any other group.
Go back to Stonewall, when the biggest movements for gay rights got going hard, and remember that trans people were involved from the beginning, but didn’t have a convenient label, they didn’t have a way to be a distinct group. Gay rights efforts worked to some degree. Enough that the far right plans to use gay people as the enemy had to find another target the same way that they had to change targets from black people to Hispanic people in the form of “illegal aliens”.
When your plan rests on fomenting anger, hate, and fear to stir up the lowest common denominator of a populace you have to have a target, ideally more than one since there’s always going to be gaps where your desired audience will fall prey to the manipulation for one hate focus, but not another, like when you run into conservatives that aren’t actually racist, but hate anyone in the LGBTQ+ umbrella because of religion, or sheer stupidity.
So, when gays weren’t a useful target for hate any more because enough people knew gay people, and there were enough gay people of prominence to make it harder, why not switch to the next best thing? Trans people!
See, we had a major shift in awareness of trans issues back in the late nineties and early naughties. That’s was followed by a large shift in trans people now having a serious chance at transitioning as medicine advanced, funding shifted, and there was just enough support that more people could transition and not be alone.
This meant that the assholes pushing their agenda to gain and maintain both wealth and power had a gift given to them. A new label to attack, using the exact same rhetoric they’d been using against gay people. “It’s unnatural”, “but what about the children?”, along with the ability to use lingering misogyny via to attack trans women in specific since they are now women, but used to be men (in the rhetoric), so they must be groomers sneaking into bathrooms.
It’s the exact same bullshit over again.
People have forgotten that the same methodology has been in place every time people in power needed to scare the populace enough to achieve a goal. Remember reefer madness? Before my time, but the entire thing was built in order to continue the oppression of black people, to keep them firmly under the boot.
Go back further, and it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, whatever group was “other” at the time.
But the modern version is so directly a rehash of the anti gay rhetoric that’s not even fifty years in the past that I’m amazed it isn’t glaringly obvious even to the people that have jumped on the bandwagon of both.
I’ve said it before, but people are stupid. They’re easy to manipulate, easy to fool, and that’s the majority. Even the ones that aren’t easy to manipulate can still fall prey to it if they aren’t paying attention. People are also lazy, and have little long term thinking ability, or attention spans. That’s why we got zero lasting changes after George Floyd was murdered. Anyone that’s made it this far, think for a second. How long did it take you to remember that name and what it means? Now, ask yourself how many people didn’t remember at all.
That’s why trans hate is working. People suck. The vast majority are easy to control, and will believe anything fed to them with the right language behind it. It just so happens that while all of the distractions being used to build up the hate also created a smoke screen to hide gerrymandering, which ends up with more and more control over what language is being used everywhere.
So, here we are with a manufactured, strawman enemy being propped up as the target and then painted with the word “trans”. None of the bullshit used to build up the hate is true, it isn’t accurate, and most of the people behind the hate actually know it’s bullshit, but they aren’t allowed to hate the blacks and the gays out loud any more. They can’t just scream the n word or call people faggots at whim the way they used to.
So, now they’ve got trans people to hate. And they want that hate because it means they don’t have to look at themselves, their own lives and choices. They don’t have to stop and think that maybe everything they’ve built their identity around is empty, so they scream about “wokeness” and “transgenderism” as code words.
There’s no serious, legitimate arguments against trans people being allowed to have the full protection of the law, to have full medical access, to have whatever gender they want on their driver’s license. There’s just the bullshit excuses to have someone to hate. There’s not even a good argument about bathrooms, they’re all built on bullshit too, and that’s the one that’s the low hanging fruit because it seems reasonable to people that aren’t buying all the bullshit immediately, but aren’t quite bright enough to think it through all the way on their own. Which, again, that’s the majority, stupid people too drowned in lies and manipulation to bother thinking.
So, Don, if you’ve gotten this far, I know I went wide of what you asked, but it really is all related. It all comes down to the same thing in different faces over time.
For anyone else, I know this got a little ranty in parts. I know it is long enough to look a little crazed. IDGAF. This shit is patently obvious, it’s not even a secret. The people that have been running the right wing of things for my entire lifetime and before have outright and publicly talked about it. One part of it, the “southern strategy” they brag about. It’s infuriating, so I get ranty.
Please continue with your rants then, that was the most clear and concise breakdown of events I’ve ever seen. Thank you for writing it up
things that are a part of a black person’s life
Crime is just a part of a black person’s life? That’s a highly racist thing to say. Black people aren’t inherently criminals.
Are you fucking joking?
If that’s really where you thought I was going with that, you’re the racist.
If you’re trying to troll, good job because now I think you’re either a troll, a racist, or an idiot. I prefer to think you’re a troll.
It’s who their owners say to hate, so they hate them. Could be anyone and for no or any reason. They’re cultists and they do, say, hate, and fear who they’re told to.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
And the twist is 99.9% of Republican voters think they are in the in-group just because the leopards haven’t eaten their faces yet.
It’s strange to them.
When people encounter something that’s different from what they are used to, they don’t know how to process it. It makes them uncomfortable. Some people, instead of learning how to deal with that feeling like a mature adult, blame the individual for making them feel uncomfortable and resent them for “making them feel that way”. Just staying away is not enough, they must be punished for existing.
All because someone felt a little icky when they thought about a girl with a weiner.
well yeah they don’t like the thought of a girl with a weiner, you can’t degrade and classify women into being just a hole+reproductive organs if they might not have that. (but also pre-op trans dudes can’t use women’s bathrooms cus they aren’t women but still will never be men???) bigots are bigots.
This is really it. They feel strange about it and cannot grok it. It’s bizzarre that it can break even people that I hold in high regard.
For instance Graham Linehan, the brilliant writer of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd went completely of the rails like his own father Jack when it came to transgender people. There’s people who just cant cope. Even including LGBT+ people. Theres plenty of gay people that hate transgenders with a passion and fail to see that the very same hate was directed at themselves a generation before.
It boggles the mind. But really people feel really icky about the fact that people can choose their gender when they are being plagued by being welded to that gender in most of their lives.
I’m going to get all sorts of fun responses for trying to empathize with those with whom I disagree (instead of just writing “dumb bigots”) but here goes:
First, remember that even gay marriage is fairly new to America, it’s been around for less time than the MCU.
There are a lot of folks who almost have mental whiplash, gay marriage went from illegal to “you could get fired for being vocally uncomfortable about it” in fairly quick order.
Now, to make things even more wild for those folks, mainstream culture is pretty insistent that gender isn’t even a thing anymore. Add in some pretty wild news stories/videos*, worries for their kids and the notion that the Left refuses to say there might be any issues whatsoever and you can kinda see where a backlash could crop up.
- eg: trans women being reassigned to women’s prisons and then assaulting the women etc, a 6"2, 220lb woman practically murdering her handball oppoisition, some fairly sketchy research practices by some of the authorities (WPATH) on the subject etc.
Which I don’t get because they’re all about rape as a jail punishment
This aligns with what I have heard from folks I know in that world. Fear motivated by exaggerating one off and isolated incidents. The information silos in the conservative world (especially news) is frightening.
You were doing reasonably well, until you diverted to pure transphobia in the last paragraph
The listing of the news/videos they may have seen?
Not the list, but the way you described them, as if these were things that actually happen…
This is part of the thing. If we on the Left can’t have an honest discussion about things that do happen, then it is incredibly hard for anyone not already “on side” to take us seriously.
trans women being reassigned to women’s prisons and then assaulting the women etc https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/26/americas-growing-row-over-policies-for-transgender-prisoners “Tremaine Carroll, a transferred inmate serving 25 years to life for violent crimes, was charged with raping two women in ccwf and faces trial soon; Carroll denies the charges. In 2022 an inmate moved to Rikers Island women’s prison in New York received a seven-year sentence for attempted rape.”
This is a tricky issue, trans women in men’s prisons are also at risk. But to straight up deny these things happen and deny the existence of non transphobic concerns, well, that’s hard to take seriously.
a 6"2, 220lb woman practically murdering her handball oppoisition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJYdXj7Kac&ab_channel=WilsonB9000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Mouncey
Murder was hyperbole, probably inappropriate. But damn, she is just so much bigger than her entire team and everyone on the opposition in all of those clips. (She also dominates in Aussie rules football.)
some fairly sketchy research practices by some of the authorities (WPATH) on the subject https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/06/27/research-into-trans-medicine-has-been-manipulated
The whole article is discomforting and worth reading. But, while WPATH (what is supposed to, and claims to be and independent science based organization) was creating their guidelines: “But an email in October 2020 from WPATH figures, including its incoming president at the time, Walter Bouman, to the working group on guidelines, made clear what sort of science WPATH did (and did not) want published. Research must be “thoroughly scrutinised and reviewed to ensure that publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender health care in the broadest sense,” it stated. Mr Bouman and one other coauthor of that email have been named to a World Health Organisation advisory board tasked with developing best practices for transgender medicine.”
Again, I’m generally on board with trans rights etc but to say there aren’t issues just makes it that much harder to take us at face value.
This is a tricky issue, trans women in men’s prisons are also at risk
“Also at risk”
The fact that you equate cherry picked single instance anecdotes as comparable to entrenched violence and discrimination against trans folk as being somehow comparable is the part that makes it transphobia.
Murder was hyperbole
It was, yeah. Despite her “murdering” the opposition, from the very article you linked, Australia finished 5th.
There are 7 players on a handball team. She scored 23 goals across 6 games, for an average of just under 4 goals per game (3.83 to be specific).
The total goals scored by Australia in those games was 160, which works out to an average of 3.81 per Australian player across those 6 games. Her “murdering” of her opponents consisted of having a 0.02% higher average than her team mates.
The fact that you parrot lines like “murdering” and look at videos designed to make it look open and shut, whilst not bothering to investigate the reality of the situation is what makes it transphobic.
The whole article is discomforting and worth reading. But, while WPATH (what is supposed to, and claims to be and independent science based organization) was creating their guidelines:
An article posted on the economist, who has Helen Joyce, a vocally transphobic journalist as one of their senior staff. Linking to an article that has been mostly circulated on various transphobic websites, calling out WPATH for being biased and getting in the way of evidence based research? Whilst defending the Cass review, which has been widely called out by many international medical bodies for its own bias and inconsistent approach to evidence.
The fact that you’re worried about WPATH as the real issue here is telling…
Bruh check out the guys post history, read their comment history, they arent exactly a trans ally
I don’t recall posting about trans anything, can you refresh my memory?
Edit: Oh, it’s you! Are you making this assumption because I disagree with you and condemn the advocating of violence on republicans and democrats?!?
mainstream culture
Talk to any random person on the street and they don’t fucking care about identity politics.
Extremists are not the mainstream no matter how much they shout about it.
No, most people aren’t going out of their way to hurt trans people, but those loud extremists are creating a negative connotation in some people’s minds. That’s no different from racism.
Extremists on both sides are a problem, so when you say “those loud extremists” a reasonable person would have no idea who you’re talking about. I think you’re correct in either instance, but I doubt that’s what you where going for.
Oh. My bad. I thought a reasonable person would assume I meant the loud extremists that match the topic of this post.
There’s a reason conservatives campaign against “woke.” And most conservatives I know socially called the election a win against woke, even if they couldn’t exactly name a woke policy that Harris proposed.
Harris explicitly didn’t play identity politics, and I applaud her for it. I think the left is starting to realise even people who agree with them dislike being told what to think … one can dream right.
After it became less acceptable to explicitly hate the gays in public they needed a new target. There’s a lot of people who like being riled up with hatred, who are fearful and need a bogeyman, etc. It’s either human nature or something deeply embedded in our culture. Eventually they will move on and find a new target to focus their hate on.
Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting
Even by population ratios, that’s gotta be really rare.
Outwordly trans people make up like 1% of the population. So one incident could screw with the stats more than you’d like.
Outwordly trans people make up like 1% of the population. So one incident could screw with the stats more than you’d like.
I don’t think it would, especially if you look at it over a period of time.
It could definitely be misrepresented, but anyone with the intellectual curiosity to look at ratios would probably be less likely to misrepresent it.
Not with the rate we have school shootings
