Gender is a load bearing brainworm for capitalist society. Capitalists need stratification, having a gradient of various degrees of precariousness for workers to experience that would push them into accepting a worse deal for selling their labor. Gender is clearly one of the primary ways to achieve this: an absolutely incredible amount of domestic labor is performed without compensation by women every day, and society would fall apart if it wasn't. The rigid structure of the patriarchy is a key feature of this system, which means that trans people represent a clear break in that logic; if AFAB individuals can just choose not to be subjected to gender-based exploitation, it starts to rip the whole thing apart. Equally, transfeminine people represent another break in the opposite direction. The patriarchy is more or less incompatible with the existence of trans people, at least without significantly transforming itself.
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My personal opinion is twofold:
- they need a diversion. Like a magician (or more accurate a pickpocket) they will take anything to make people blind while they amass their power. It is a sickness of the mind. They are addicted to power and ever anxious to loose it. Minorities are a good enemy for the people to blame the problems on that these people either cause themselves or dont want to take care of. In the past it was witches, nowadays it is other minorities.
- minorities have been fighting for a place in the world for a long time and there have been significant improvements. But that is not a positive development if you want to rule supreme. If you‘re power crazed, you need people to fall in line. Otherwise it wont work. We have ample evidence that only a sufficiently subdued population will not rise up against authority.
I tried to read the wheel of time once and what i learned is that gender is the ultimate defining factor in some peoples lives. It is their whole defining principle in interacting with others. Everything about you is a direct consequence of your sex. Mess with sex/gender and you destroy their entire way of interacting with humans. Hunans dont exist for them, only men and women. The sexes are actually incapable of communication or cooperation of any kind. Effectively different species. This makes trans people a literal impossibility. A leopard cannot become an attack helicopter. A trans person threatens their world view in a fundamental way.
These people also want control of everything, probably due to inability to cope with anything they don't understand, which is a lot. I don't understand being trans, but i undetstand the right to health and happiness and i wish it for you.
That could be an interesting explanation of why gender studies have been a target so often, even during the Nazi era
Other scapegoats have changed, while this comes bsck
I read that book and it felt like satire, but apparently this extreme belief in gender differences is the norm and im a freak.
Im ok with that, but i do raise it to make the point that some of us just dont see your sex/gender as particularly important information and anyone changing their gender is a massive threat to the status quo beleif that such things are not only natural and right but the basis for who you are and how to interact with you.
I remember people calling for sex/gender to be declared as part of your reddit profile. This is why, they cant interact with people as humans, they need a sex/gender to tell them how. It's very disturbing to me.
trans people are a threat to the status quo of the patriarchal-capitalist Gender regime. the ideology of patriarchal capitalism is that your gender assigned at birth is immutable and there are only two. in patriarchal capitalism your gender defines a lot of what path your life will take, the societal expectations placed on you, and importantly what opportunities and privileges are afforded to you. obviously the setup is men dominating and oppressing women which has been going on for far longer than capitalism but worsened significantly under it. the division of reproductive labour is the social basis of gender. according to traditional gender roles, women are expected to act as broodmares to reproduce more worker stock and also perform most or all domestic labour in essentially a slave role. the existence of trans and trans nonbinary people disproves the two axioms on which this all rests, that your gender is immutable and one of just two. gender in capitalist ideology is little more than a tool or system of oppression, and by existing and living our lives as we see fit and not railroaded by traditional expectations based on assigned gender at birth, we show clearly that it doesn't have to be that way. so to answer your question they come for us because we are a genuine threat to capitalist patriarchal orthodoxy, we show by our actions and existence that a better social order is possible, one where individuals are actually afforded self-determination instead of being locked into a predetermined role based on what genitalia you are born with.
sorry it's kinda an incoherent thought dump, there is plenty more to say this is just a quickie of the root superstructural reasons that we are perceived as a threat to patriarchal capitalism. of course, most transphobes won't have these specific reasons in mind (in fact probably couldn't comprehend them at all due to ignorance) and have just been convinced by capitalist propaganda and transphobic media to hate us because we are icky etc. the prevalence of misogyny also is why it's so easy to get people to be transphobic, a lot of it just boils down to either "hah! why would a man want to be a woman?", or "hah! a woman could never be a man".
I just want to add that it's not just the idea of gender being immutable, it's identity as a whole. So much of society is built around stuff like legal names. They use them to track and control people. And then trans people are out there deciding to change them just because we want to, or using prefered names that don't match our legal names. The idea that people can just decide who they want to be is threatening to them.
Musk: more politically oriented than just money now, had aligned himself with a very large part of the population that thinks at a minimum that even if some people need to transition for their own health, society retains the right to consider their pre-transition history to still be part of reality
Zuckerberg: profit driven, is aligning Facebook etc with the political reality in America and the real prospect of being fined or embargoed by a Trump administration, would flip back if a democrat won in 2028
Rowling: belongs to a British generation of certain age where trans people are superficially accepted BUT regards their pre-trans history to be something still relevant. That's where this started and it escalated / deteriorated from there E.g. compassionate to a degree and willing to entertain the "fiction" that a biological man is now a women for the sake of that person's mental health: see them at the shops presenting female? carry on as normal.. talk to them? use their current name and pronouns out of politeness.. BUT.. if they want to access a female shelter, draw a line.. if they want to teach young children, risk assess them including their pre-trans gender and history etc. Rowling then got into increasingly fractious arguments on Twitter, largely arising from other people she followed and liked and what the trans community inferred from that. At that point she doubled down declaring advocates on Twitter to be increasingly hysterical and deluded whilst simultaneously insisting she would treat trans people humanely in person. She's then lashed out in numerous ways including in her writings aligning herself with increasingly extreme anti-trans people. FWIW, I think she would have carried on being a mildly tolerant (if dated) person of a certain age had she just stayed off Twitter entirely. But lashing out, being misinterpreted and misinterpreting others had led her to spiral down into viciousness and bitterness.
I agree with your analysis. I think on Musk's case there is also his estranged daughter, it has entrenched his position
True
I consider your theorizing of "pre-transition history" being within the "rights of society" to "keep in touch with reality" as misleading and problematic.
In fact, these are the axioms of trans erasure I discuss in my other response. In the core of this reasoning is the idea that "men are inherently dangerous to women" therefore "women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with".
So you can't go past the "transition" history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as "misandry", but only apply this to trans women (victims themselves of cis violence in bathrooms and all other settings). Why? Because you register trans women in the semantics of sexual perversion. Then, the "right" to know anyone's medical history does not exist, on the contrary people have the right to privacy to medical interventions of any type.
Due to stigma and discrimination trans people are furthermore entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences. But this is also hypothetical now. The amount of cis-passing is different for every trans people.
Some may pass for cis, most don't. Besides the existential crisis some people experience when they can't tell a person is trans, in practice stealth trans people are relatively rare, and there is not an iota of evidence that there is any societal harm from stealth cis-passing trans people. So there is no reason behind your purported "societal right to know", apart from cisgenderist entitlement.
Enforcing such right is not only infeasible, but it sufficiently and necessarily leads to banning public trans life, with no other explanation other than cis people's uneasiness. The civil rights movement has established that majoritarian uneasiness with minorities sharing their bathrooms is not enough to justify perpetuation of discriminatory segregation practices.
This is textbook transphobia.
In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
I don't believe that, just to be clear. But I think that's the view of a lot of people, and that's what i was outlining. because that was relevant to OP's question.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”,
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically...
even if you are talking generically, i don't think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex. there are many contexts where (for example) men will accept they are treated differently but will not resort to calling this "misandry". at least in the settings i'm familiar with and amongst the people i've lived alongside here in London, UK. you may have very specific incidence in mind or may not be intending to speak universally, but you said "all other circumstances", which sounds pretty universal, so i'm just pointing out that's not correct..
entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences.
I don't know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic..
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically…
That's right
Ieven if you are talking generically, i don’t think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex.
I am talking about the notion that all men are potentially sexual predators. I am not discussing the truthfulness of the idea, or whether women are justified to be afraid of men in general (to an extend they are). But regarding this narrower notion, there is plenty of evidence online that men find the fear outrageous (Not all men etc). If they think trans women are (*) simply men (I disagree) then they are simply not consistent. This naturally leads to the next step, that their interpretation of transness in AMAB people is registered as a sexual perversion (*). It isn't. It is a personal identity thing, like being a (cis) woman also isn't inherently a sexual thing. To think the former is transphobia, to think the latter is misogyny. I am not saying, nor I care, about you subscribing to either, personally. We are both discussing the sociological popularity of these notions.
I don’t know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
I am a nomad, but I was talking about the US, where this grim picture is true in some states, especially with black trans women whose murders the police is particularly inadequate to solve.
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth
I was talking generically. That having been said, I wasn't sure about your personal take, since the lack of tone in this written medium can be very misleading.
in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic…
I really tried to put arguments forth, and conscientiously not target you, while not giving you a free pass. I don't think I exaggerate, I just present in distilled form the things that people might mean but not necessarily say out loud.
As for being combative, I just try to be thorough and concise. When I said this is textbook transphobia I weren't attacking you. This is factual. If someone looks up a textbook on transphobia they will find the points I have asterisk-ed above. It would perhaps come down as less combative if I said "this is the dictionary definition of transphobia"? I don't know. Transphobia is an ugly thing and much like racism, there is no pleasant way to say it, but this is what the word means.
I think Peanuts is speaking from JKR's perspective, not justifying it
But I also skimmed bits of both of your comments. It's ironic really, because I'm equally verbose
The wording is such that lends legitimacy to these viewpoints. The breakdown is right there for anyone who want to build upon this discussion, but it would be naive to give the benefit of the doubt to just anyone, when ignorance and misinformation is ubiquitous, nay, institutionalized.
This is the answer. It's the intersection of those with strong personal opinions and the power (money) to speak their mind without true repercussions, and the power (money) hungry who are following the strongest zeitgeist in the halls of power.
The zeitgeist exists because the entrenched powerful ones are currently using trans people and migrants as a wedge between different parts of the working class. It used to be homosexuals and communists. Or abortions and hippies. Or slaves. Or indigenous people. Ad nauseum. It's about keeping the working class divided and maintaining power. This is the latest version. And it's not just in the US BTW
People like Rowling are new money working class that fell for the con
Trans people’s very existence requires the rest of us to question our own upbringing. There are a lot of childhood experiences that boil down to you doing something or not doing something on no basis other than the fact that you were told.
You were told by your family, you were told by your friends, you were told by random strangers, you were told by the media, and they were all telling you the same thing. So you listened, even though you didn’t know why they were saying it. Surely EVERYBODY can’t be wrong, right? Some people might have told you something contrary but they were the losers, the outcasts, the villains. You don’t want to be any of that, surely?
For someone to transition, they are required to do the exact opposite of what so many told us all. They embrace the very outcome we were threatened with when we failed to conform, that we would not actually be the gender we were failing to conform to.
To accept that they are valid in doing so requires us to admit that many of our own guiding forces were actually just bullshit. We have to question why we are the way we are anew. If what they’re doing is strong, what we did, what we’re continuing to do, was weak.
When confronted with the idea that we were all just raised wrong and that much of what we collectively spend our time and energy stressing about is stupid and pointless, how many people do you know that will just shrug and say “oh well” and then move on with their lives? Easier to find an excuse to keep doing what you were already doing. “They’re just lying because they’re perverts that wanna cheat at sports.”
Some of these rich people are insidious and manipulative, no doubt, but the loud ones are usually just idiots no different from the uncle you don’t want to talk to except that being rich means they’re able to yell louder.
Transphobia, just like any form of queerphobia, serves the maintenance of property rights and the reproduction of the workforce that generates billionaires' wealth. This is where the antagonism comes from.
Also, please don't call Elon Musk that.
They are a fairly small group compared to other marginalized groups, and particularly vulnerable compared to others. There is already a lot of misinformation about them. Average people often dont run into them or understand them Well enough to make informed decisions. Its easy for billionaires and republicans to wield religion against them. They are often vocal about their beliefs. Intersectionality is also important (e.g. supporting and protecting other minority demographics' rights because it is the right thing to do, and tearing each other down is counterproductive) to them, which isnt always the case. Disappearing them sets an example and is a test run for setting up the infrastructure and means to take control. See: nazi germany with the deaf, and current marginalization by the trump administration of the trans and disabled communities.
I think this is an important part of the answer i don't see mentioned much. Lots of good answers that seem right to me, amd i think also because trans people are such a tiny part of the population, they are politically not very strong. Bullies always pick on those weaker.
My conjectures:
Musk: Trans kid who disowned him for being shitty so obvipusly it must be trans peoples fault and not his.
JKR: I firmly believe she's selfhating in the closet trans. The equivalent to the homophobic pastor who eventually gets caught with the choir boy. We just haven't seen the choirboy yet.
Zuck: Not transphobic, just a sociopath (at worst) who will go whatever way the wind blows.
There are a lot of other good answers, but it seems worth remembering lots of poor powerless folks hate trans folks too.
Part of the reason they're coming after trans people is because it's human nature to hate or fear those you don't understand and who are different. A dark, and sad part of human nature, but part of human nature nonetheless
All the other stuff folks are talking about is also a true, but it's not like they're unique in their contempt for people who are different
Rich/famous transphobes' voices are louder because they're rich, unfortunately. It's the same problem with every other awful opinion that rich/famous people have.
I do suspect though that it also has to do with social class and thinking that they are "above".
Mostly a people to blame and for others to fear monger, it's a way to make people look the other way also, a common "enemy" instigated from the true enemy. And sense there is not a lot of trans people statistically it's hard for them to defend themselves. It's all about manipulation and control over the people
Products of their generation. As they die off others will take their place and society will move on to other groups to target.
Correlation is not causation.
Personally I just think they're just pandering some group of people who have real power to determine how money flows in a society and they happen to be right wing conservatives.
US democracy is collapsing and the future throne is probably already set and they might have inside information.
Like you said, trans people can't really do anything. Perfect target when you want to show where you are planning to stand.
They may not be politicians but they spend money to get themselves into positions of political power as these few days have shown with Musk. And these people get most of their power from the masses that are dumb enough and bigoted enough to be swayed by a shared common hatred of groups to scapegoat for everything.
Because there are alot of ignorant people in the world afraid of what they perceive as different.
In your first two examples, regardless of not being politicians it's clear that by helping put politicians in power they benefit, so whether they genuinely care or not, it's just about money and lack of compassion to them. And continuing to drive class warfare continues to benefit them.
In your last example, I think that person is just in the ignorant and afraid of change category with an unfortunate amount of exposure.