this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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The whole Anti-LGBT campaign blowing over from the US to Europe. In the Netherlands I see more and more of the same π
Why are people so quick to hate what they don't understand? It's infuriating and exhausting. I really hope they will move on from this after the US election, but I worry that it will only continue to get worse.
It's because the extreme-right campaigns are fuelled by hate and discontent. And it helps them by chanelling it towards minority groups by blaming them for everything (obviously a majority won't work because they would alienate too much of their own userbase). So the narrative is 'the brown people' cause all the problems, the LGBT community etc etc. Hate unites people more easily than love π’
What worries me the most is that formerly normal sane 'friends' actually buy into this BS and have become rabiate trans-haters practically overnight. π’
The trans minority specifically seems to be the ultimate scapegoat for them, since it's such a tiny minority. I'm really not liking the "First they came for..." vibes. Actually terrifying.
I'm sorry about your 'friends' and hope you're safe from them. Sending you love β€οΈ
It's happening in so many places, at the same time as actual fascism is on the rise globally. Those "first they came for..." vibes are not an exaggeration.
Thank you β€οΈ But I'm not trans myself (though I am kinda on the LGBT spectrum). I do have several trans friends and I don't stand for that kind of derisive talk. All this hate has prompted me to join campaigns at work and help organise events because I want to do something against it.
Yes exactly. The smaller the minority and the more they stand out the better. Because there is less likelyhood that they offend their own supporters, or that those actually are friends with someone from the minority and know things are not as presented.
I always ask why they are so hung up on trans people, after all they harm no one, and what they do is their business alone. It always results in some contrived reason. The point my "ex-friends" kept bringing up was their children, somehow they are harmed irreparably if they see someone who used to be a man in women's clothes. Or that it's not "natural" (so what, your tattoo isn't either, or many other lifesaving medical procedures). But anyway I got sick of this discussion.
But it's terrifying how much crap they are presented with on things like TikTok and Instagram, once they view one hate video it serves them more and more because they keep looking at them. Most of them are easily debunked but there are just so many.
Unfortunately, the UK has their own anti-trans movement independent of the US. Any official 'Harry Potter' products directly fund it (thanks, Rowling).
Rowling overplayed her hand recently, I think. There's a podcast I listen to every day, whose host I enjoy a lot, and most of his regular guests I like as well. One of them I'm not a fan of because she's pretty transphobic... until Rowling attacked India Willoughby. That, it seems, was a step too far, because this previously rather transphobic lady was like "hang on a second, India Willoughby is a woman though", and has settled into a new position of "there's conversations that need to be had about prisons and sports, but otherwise trans people are not a threat and we need to be more tolerant". This is someone who has, on occasions, induced such rage in me that I ended up yelling at the podcast, and her change of tack caught me completely by surprise. When Rowling has started frothing at the mouth so much that even other transphobes are rethinking their views, things feel a little less hopeless.
I think it's because a lot of her fans were like "hang on, she's just misunderstood, she's not really transphobic, just doesn't want those fake transes going into women's spaces", and Rowling kept it pretty vague, open for misinterpretation, not really ever able to be pinned down as actually being provably transphobic in the minds of many.
But something happened recently and it tipped her over the edge, from keeping her donations low key and her transphobia aimed at the theoretical "not really a woman 'trans-identified-male' boogeyman-woman" (who doesn't really exist), to outright making open donations to anti-trans groups and attacking real trans women.
All the sudden her supporters are like... Wait, this is not who we thought you meant⦠Where are these scary men? The ones invading women's spaces that you were talking about?
Yep. I do reckon there's a percentage of transphobes who are imagining hordes of men pretending to be women to get into women's spaces, but genuinely do have no problem with actual trans people (even in women's spaces. Even as a trans person, I think the belief that, for example, the small number of convicted rapists claiming a trans identity need to be far more closely scrutinised than someone with no history of acting in bad faith, is reasonable.) Now that Rowling is saying the quiet parts out loud, she becomes repulsive to that particular group.
I truly hope that you're right, but many in the US had similar thoughts about Trump.