Fascists are cowards who attack the most vulnerable people as a standard tactic.
Why does it seem most people, mainly conservatives, against Trans people? Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever. The ones I have met have been pretty cool.
Submitted 17 hours ago by Don_Dickle@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 minutes ago
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 minutes ago
You all are overthinking it way too much.
Most people hate anything that’s different or uncommon to themselves and their “world”.
Simple as that.
It’s heterophobia in the semantic sense of the word “fear of anything that’s different”.
__Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 minutes ago
Xenophobia
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 minutes ago
I always thought that xenos was more refering to people from outside, like physically from a different place.
But I really know nothing about words, greek, latin or whatever. So it will probably be a better choice of words.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 40 minutes ago
Far simpler than whateveryone else is saying. The best way to rally humans to your side is to give them a common enemy. So conservative politicians picked enemies that are small in number and told everyone how they are to blame for all that is wrong in the world.
klemptor@startrek.website 2 hours ago
For a simple example: my mother is Catholic and until Trump came along, a lifelong single-issue Republican voter who always said she would be a Democrat if it weren’t for abortion. She attends church in an extremely progressive, famously LGBTQ-friendly town.
There’s a transwoman who attends her church (let’s call her Rita). This lady is probably in her mid-50s to mid-60s and has been a fixture at the church for at least 5 years. My mom has been in choir and bible study groups with her for years now. She still just can’t see Rita as a woman. Treats her politely but behind her back refuses to call her “she” and says she’s a “man in a dress”.
She’s really offended that Rita uses the ladies’ room. I’ve asked her why and she can’t articulate it, she just feels like it’s an invasion of her privacy, because men don’t belong in the ladies’ room. And when I point out that Rita isn’t a man, she just rolls her eyes. I’ve asked her if she’s worried that Rita is in there for predatory purposes and she admits that she doesn’t think Rita intends any harm. I’ve asked her how she’d feel if she were forced to use the men’s room and she says “but that’s different!”
My mom prides herself in being a moral person, and still can’t manage to get past her bigotry to see Rita as a woman. There are just too many mental blockades against it. But since she thinks she’s so highly moral, she thinks she must be correct in this situation. It excuses her from finding empathy and bettering her attitude toward trans folks.
My longwinded point is that when people who consider themselves highly moral are bigoted, there’s almost zero chance of getting through to them. And I think a lot of the people who are bigoted against trans folks feel that morality is on their side and being trans is morally deviant, so they think they’re justified in their prejudice.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
I’m a southerner. Take what I’m about to tell you as close to the grain of the problem as possible, because it is.
Here’s the thing. 9 times out of 10, a Southern man is going to meet a lone trans or gay person, have a pleasant experience talking to them and go about their day, they even make friends with the person, spend years talking to them, send gifts, become family members, etc.
But you know what?
Behind closed doors, it’s “fuck those trannies”, “not in my schools”, etc. My mom does it, her sister does it, my dad did it. It’s hypocrisy at an extreme level while also ignoring it at an extreme level.
“Well I have gay friends… I’m not homowhatzit”
THEY’RE TEACHING WHAT!?
“Double Standard” might as well be the tagline for the entire South. They’ll protect their religion and the expectations put on them by their parents and social norms on a general level across the board, while still shaking hands and eating cake with their lgbtq+ buddies.
Just remember any southerner is one thought from God away from stabbing you in the back at all times, because no matter how close you get to them, even as a family member, that book and the expectations behind it means more, was beat into them more, every day since they were born until you met them.
y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
Southerner here and I’ll say you were right, up until your last paragraph.
Just remember any southerner is one thought >from God away from stabbing you in the back at all >times
This part however, is bullshit.
We’re not all the same and that you would suggest so actually pisses me off. Replace the word “southerner” in that sentence with any other group of people and see if you still find it acceptable.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 41 minutes ago
At this point I’m assuming that loads of them either want to be trans, want to have sex with a trans person, but they feel they can’t do either because they were told it’s evil
It’s the same as the gay hating, any guy very visibly hating gays always ends up snorting cocaine from a gay escort dick.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Conservatives use fear to manipulate their constituents as their primary means to rally support. A minority scapegoat many of their supporters don’t know in person, like trans people, are easily demonized by politicians and clergy to pretend trans folks are pedophiles and sex assaulters projecting their own party and priest crimes, it’s the same thing they try to do with fear mongering homosexuals as a previous scapegoat to distract and deflect from their awful policy privileging the wealth class and harming poor and middle class people, they need someone to blame for their own awful behavior and choices.
MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
It seems like it’s always projection with these fascists.
They are the ones whose “party” is full of violent sexual predators. They will never bring up the monsters (including their “president”) on their own “team”.
slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Excellently said!
The only thing I have an issue with, and it’s a small issue at that, is:
Keep in mind, where I grew up, you just didn’t see trans people,
You most assuredly did see them. You just didn’t realize it because they were forced to hide who they really were.
untorquer@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
This is so real. It takes a LOT of effort and time to train this out. If someone isn’t willing to go through that then it makes sense that it would fester.
I had lots of times when i was younger learning about queer culture when i got mad it things. Especially after an overly polite and patient person took the time and effort to explain something to me. Unlearning hate is painful. Learning to liberate yourself is painful.
I think a lot of people feel that pain and decide to run from it and double down on the hate because that way they don’t need to learn and change or pry open their mind to an alternative.
Then there’s the whole fear of conflicting with your own community as a factor.
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
Would you mind sharing what that person explained to you?
fool@programming.dev 9 hours ago
A brave, vulnerably nuanced answer. Suspicious… what are you planning?
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 7 hours ago
What happened next? How was the dance? Don’t leave us hanging!
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 hours ago
I remember reading that when people have racist reactions like what you’re describing it’s like a different part of their brain triggers and then their frontal lobe (for higher logic) sort of suppresses it. I really wish I could remember more about this but I definitely remember learning about this in psychology. Something like when a baby sees someone of a skin color they haven’t seen before they get nervous, but when they’re older different parts shut it down. The memory is very fuzzy.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
It’s a failure of empathy. People hate and/or fear what they don’t understand.
They can’t empathize with someone not feeling right in their own skin like that, so all their rationalizations for things like “why would they want to use that bathroom” end up stemming from what they have left, which is unsavory intent, making them threatening.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
Because stirring up hate against vulnerable minorities, by positioning them as a threat is a well tested and effective technique for power hungry politicians 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.
Don_Dickle@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The more I read these comments it sound like the USA is entering its Hitler phase.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
They very much are…
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Hell we used to genocide and enslave the people we looked down on. Talking ill of them on Fox News is a step up, my friend.
Pacmanlives@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Spot on. The fucking bathroom issue I keep hearing kills me. They are in there to take a shit Karen not to pass you brownies though the stalls and play a game of peak a boo above the stalls
HawlSera@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
I still don’t understand their claims that bathroom segregation makes anyone “safer”
Do they think there’s some kind of law on the books that says “Anyone who matches the gender on the sign can diddle anyone inside they want!” cause that’s how they act…
Personally I find it silly that bathrooms are segregated at all when stalls exist.
Xanis@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
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.
vga@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
I’m going to be an apologist for conservatives for a sec, just for the sake of giving out my theory of mind of these people.
This is a bit anecdotal, but I think this all happens mostly due to the stress trans people are inadvertently causing their parents. If you’re a sensible, smart and handsome person like I truly fucking am, you can process it in a few years and come out as not being a 100% asshole towards the issue.
But if your reference group is republican church goers, there’s a high probability that such a person just simply does not have the mental toolset to process it in any sensible way.
T156@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I think this all happens mostly due to the stress trans people are inadvertently causing their parents. When your kid comes out of the closet, this will happen to a parent regardless of how liberal-minded they are. Even if you have no problem with the concept, your kid being trans brings about new kinds of threat scenarios you never had to think about before. If you’re a sensible, smart and handsome person like I truly fucking am, you can process it in a few years and come out as not being a 100% asshole towards the issue.
I feel like it’s more the opposite problem. For the parents, trans people are a vague boogeyman. They’ve never meant a trans person personally, and they’re constantly told that trans people are just waiting to jump them in the bathroom, or at sports, or all sorts of other things, so they’ve never had to contend with someone they know being trans.
If it was simply stress or threat to the kid, it wouldn’t really explain the reaction to disowning them, since most of those aren’t about the treatment that their kids would receive for being trans,.
slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 2 hours ago
I think you’re close to the root of it. The need for a biological legacy is strong no matter any affiliations. Having “non-conforming” children threatens that legacy.
For the groups that inflate this drive, that’s all there is. That’s the only purpose. No “we as a species”.
For the rest of us it might be a little disappointing at the prospect of no grandchildren. But we know that it’s ultimately not our decision. And the same outcome could happen regardless of any “conformity”.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Hating gays isn’t cool anymore and will get backlash even from conservatives.
Trans people are the new gays in this sense
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
I figure racism will stick around long after transphobia is out of style.
Because no middle class white kid ever sat their parents down and said “mom, dad… I’m black”
throbbing_banjo@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I would love for you to be right. If you’re in the US, though, voter data doesn’t seem to support that.
It would be amazing to live in a country where half the populace agreed that my son has the right to simply exist in peace but I don’t think we do anymore.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 4 hours ago
Homophobia is illegal in Romania
That doesnt stop every single person i know that isnt from the capital be openly homophobic
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 hours ago
That’s a good point. And political movements like trans exclusionary LGB are there to piggy back off of.
gerryflap@feddit.nl 4 hours ago
They’re conservative. The whole name is based on the principle that they want to maintain the old way rather than progress. I think it stems from fear of a changing world. The old world with the old rules provided safety, it was understandable, the rules were clear, and the rules didn’t hurt them. Now some people are “attacking” their world, their rules, everything that offers them safety and understanding. So they feel attacked.
It’s the same thing, but with another subject every time. Whether it is women getting rights, which threatens their safe world with clear gender roles. Or gay people, who threaten the simple rules like “boys love girls”, “in order to be successful, get a job, marry, and get kids”. Or non-white people getting rights. What if they vote for things that “we” don’t want? What if “they” ruin the world that “we” got so used to.
Trans and especially non-binary people are just the next group in like that threatens their simple world. When men are people born as men and women are people born as women, it’s way easier to force people into the traditional roles. The old rules still work, “boy marries girl, gets kids”. And when they speak out about their "concerns* they are (rightfully) called out for it. So they become defensive and start doing whatever they’re doing now.
Donebrach@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Because fascists need a ~scary other~ to scapegoat to erode everyone’s rights.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 hours ago
Because of tropes like tvtropes.org/pmwiki/…/CreepyCrossdresser from movies like Silence of the Lambs, Dressed to Kill, and Psycho. It puts the idea of men dressing like women as a means of tricking women to attack them into the collective unconscious.
Because Trump spent $19 million on transphobic ads during football games in battleground states. Because they need a Boogeyman to rile up their base.
It doesn’t have to make sense. You might as well be asking how can the KKK hate people of color or how can Nazis hate Jewish people.
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Nazis do this dumb thing where they go “hey that small and therefore relatively defenseless group (badassness of individuals aside) is the cause of all our problems, let’s kill them to solve everything!”
Surprisingly, it never works.
So they do it again with somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else, until everybody on earth is killed by nazis or somebody stops them.
As for why anybody is dumb enough to fall for it in the first place…it’s anybody’s guess.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 hours ago
Surprisingly, it never works.
The Holocaust happened and Trump got elected. If those two things don’t count as examples of this hateful strategy working then idk what does.
MonkRome@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I think they meant it doesn’t solve any problems because they never were the problem.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
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.
puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
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.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 13 hours ago
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, Dark 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
scarabic@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Even as someone who fully accepts trans people and has trans friends and family, it’s still an adjustment to some really old, deeply-seated habits and mental structures. I’m over 50 so I was set in my ways when I learned about “they” pronouns and it still takes work for me to get it right. If I didn’t care about the people involved, it would be very easy to see it as a burden or annoyance.
antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
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.
maevyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
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.
antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
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 annd 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 you parents don’t have control, only influence, but it’s hard for me to walk that fine line.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 10 hours ago
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.
antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
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 for some.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Uneducated people in rural areas struggle very much with understanding their experiences of others, and have very strange ideas about how the world works. I told my grandmother I wanted to move to Chicago - she’s convinced I’m going to get gang murdered. (She would be horrified if I told her about wandering around LA on foot)
The idea that there are options other than cisgender heterosexual people is threatening to their understanding of their world. Many have not thought about their gender or sexuality; it’s assumed that you’ll get married to the opposite sex, get gender appropriate jobs, have kids, and go to church on Sunday. That’s what life is in Anadarko or Siloam Springs. Many also struggle with unaddressed trauma from the opioid/fent crisis, or military service - so they think the appropriate response to anguish about your body should just be to just cope with it.
Many of these men are secretly bisexual. Many, many, many heterosexually married men seek out sexual encounters with gay men on the side. They would never want to be in a relationship with a man or someone they perceived as a strange, mentally defective man - for many of them that would also assault their understandings of a relationship as more of a property thing. They feel guilty about porn usage, especially the Christian ones, but externalize it as hatred.
The woman are miserable and are committed to making everyone else miserable as well. You gain power in those communities by policing others, especially young women. They are threatened by the idea that they weren’t locked into compulsive heterosexuality and performative femininity. There was a possibility that they could have graduated college, or not had children.
They get the program though. They’re proper Puritans. If life is suffering then the only joy to be had is in watching other people. And what better target than those who are defying our most basic sociological roles? These are the same people who host gender reveal parties - it matters to them. So it must matter to everyone else.
That’s my guess as a trans man at least, obviously I’m biased.
Etterra@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Fear, control, indoctrination, tribalism, double standards, poor mortal character, hypocrisy, and because it ‘makes them feel icky’ and so they have to be loud and obvious about it so that they’re community sides with them and doesn’t suspect that they’re (allegedly) total closet cases.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
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.
Carnelian@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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
mke_geek@lemm.ee 11 hours ago
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.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
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.
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
FYI
nbcnews.com/…/nashville-christian-school-shooter-…
They’re people, just like the rest of us. Some are great, some are not.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
yeah, was going to say - there have been trans mass shooters, lol
Another notable case:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_sho…
Aldrich’s attorneys have said in court documents that their client identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, preferring to be addressed as Mx. Aldrich. Neighbors allege Aldrich to have made hateful comments towards the LGBT community in the past, including frequent usage of homophobic slurs. Aldrich never mentioned being non-binary prior to the shooting and was referred to with masculine pronouns by family members. Police testified they found rainbow-colored shooting targets in Aldrich’s home. Experts in online extremism have voiced the possibility that Aldrich’s proclaimed self-identification could be disingenuous, while the Center for Countering Digital Hate acknowledges the suspect’s past actions and impact on the LGBT community.
I am personally inclined to agree that the self-identification is likely disingenuous, a stunt for the courtroom.
Wanderer@lemm.ee 6 hours ago
I’ll try actually answer the question and get hated for it I’m sure rather than circle jerking something to the top. But I think it goes like this.
Imagine you had a ball and a cube. Then everyone agrees the ball is a ball and a cube is a cube. Been like this as long as anyone remembers.
Then suddenly someone comes around and says one of those cubes is special and is actually a ball. Then everyone agrees that person is mental. Years go by and more people start saying that some cubes are balls and you feel like you are losing you mind. You know what a ball is, everyone knows what a ball is! How can anyone say a cube is a ball. People attack you for it. People say you are wrong that you are hateful, horrible but you know! Surely everyone knows this is a joke.
They started painting cubes to look like balls and everyone acts like they are balls. But you know they aren’t balls.
You are happy to group them on different measures. Sure some balls and some cubes are red, some are yellow. Both balls and cubes can be spiky, sure balls are more often spiky but there is nothing wrong with a spiky cube. Each to there own. Most cubes are smooth but some balls are smooth. That’s fine.
There are a million and one ways to group these shapes. But at the end of the day a cube is a cube and a ball is a ball. Anything else is madness and you’re not standing for it. You can group them however you want, choose whatever is the most important, fine is doesn’t matter. But don’t say something that is obviously a cube is a ball and what is obviously a ball a cube. You can’t change the definition of a cube to be what that shapes feels it is, that’s meaningless. It defeats the purpose of the word. Sure make a new word but don’t use that word.
CubbyTustard@reddthat.com 6 hours ago
what a shit analogy
donuts@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
But at the end of the day a cube is a cube and a ball is a ball. Anything else is madness and you’re not standing for it.
This is the crux of where you are wrong. There’s more than just cubes and balls, but because of society, stigma and restrictive laws in some countries, everyone has to try and fit themselves into a cube or a ball, even though they might be egg shaped.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
genders are not defined by shape of the human but by biology
Montagge@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
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.
Breve@pawb.social 15 hours ago
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.
Lauchs@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
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.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
You were doing reasonably well, until you diverted to pure transphobia in the last paragraph
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Bruh check out the guys post history, read their comment history, they arent exactly a trans ally
Lauchs@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The listing of the news/videos they may have seen?
rational_lib@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
They’re a convenient political target because it makes insecure men not want to be associated with them. Believe it or not, a similar thing happened last time Republicans won the popular vote in 2004 - back then the issue was gay marriage. Bush went hard on opposing that and it helped him win.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 7 hours ago
Since when do conservatives care about mass shootings?
PlainSimpleGarak@lemmings.world 11 hours ago
Why would you ask this question on Lemmy. You will get few, if any, legitimate answers. This platform is an echo chamber.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 8 minutes ago
What?