No Stupid Questions

They have to have somebody to hate so they don't hate themselves so much.

I support trans people to do whatever they want to themselves but unfortunately one did shoot up a school https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

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.

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 line 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.

Because of tropes like https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/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.

In a less direct way one standing theory is that it’s tied to cultural issues with gender relations and due to the lack of a cultural role for us (at least in cultures where that applies or where those roles were damaged during colonialism, which was very common). Then there’s also the oversexualization of trans people.

For the first one Julia Serrano does a good job going into a lot of detail for a big chunk of it, but the quick summary is that there’s two axes of sexism: traditional (one sex and that which is associated is better than the other, traditionally prioritizing the masculine over the feminine) and oppositional (that that which is associated is deeply connected and immutable). All sorts of people run up against oppositional sexism, from cis gay people to dudes who like to sew. But it’s likely necessary to reinforce traditional sexism.

Then there’s the lack of cultural space. It’s being built, but it isn’t done yet and until it’s been uncontroversial for some time it’ll be at risk. It’s the issues of “I don’t know how to treat them” and “it’s against god”. It’s people angry that their understanding of one of the most vital parts of their culture is being called to make space for something that’s new to them

Then there’s the oversexualization. Trans people all throughout the world have a long history of resorting to sex work to survive. That means that to many people our existence is seen as inherently sexual. I grew up where trans people only appeared on tv as tragic sex workers, jokes of erotic disgust, or Springer style freak shows, and the next closest depictions were as murderous erotic crossdressers (which many saw as the same thing). And so now here I am, one of them, demanding you treat me as an educated professional and a peer and a decent chunk of bigots will see my face as inherently pornographic and therefore unfit to display around children. They hear about teenagers wanting to transition and think of it as sexualizing them. And for a certain portion of people they’re mad that a porn category and type of exotic hooker is demanding rights

There’s more, and I didn’t say it all the best I could (typed it out off and on over a while between doing things as well as it being something I mostly break down in discussions with other trans people). But yeah, we’re different and we challenge basic understandings of some of the foundations of society and culture, but our liberation helps break down the issues you’re already facing and a lot of the time the requests we’re making make life easier for cis people once y’all get used to us being around.

There are a lot of factors at play that make transness an easy target to be the scary other bigots rally around.

The simple truth is that unless you yourself are trans you cannot understand the trans experience. There is no way to explain the scope or impact it has on someone's life. It's automatically alien and provides essentially a permanent out group. Anyone who is uncomfortable with people who are different or that have different experiences than themselves are almost certainly transphobic to some degree. Right now to the best of my knowledge transphobia is the only thing all hate groups share.

Trans people are the current scapegoats because prior to the pandemic we had an explosion of trans people feeling safe enough to come out online (I blame Obama making us all feel safe). They are particularly effective because both white nationalists and evangelicals use queerness as a scapegoat all the time anyway so it was easy for them to rally around. Which is why conservative politicians fearmonger around trans people.

It's not that simple, but it's close enough for a lemmy comment.

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.

I can only recall one instance of a trans person going postal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

I don't think it's most people. I (choose to) believe that's a loud minority.

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.

Rural IL here. Full of conservatives.

Nobody here cares if you are trans. Couldn't care less.

Never met a school church shooter either.

Most conservatives I know think it's dangerous to entertain trans ideas in children. They say kids don't know what gender really means because they haven't experienced puberty yet but the most effective time to use hormone blockers is before puberty. So they feel like it's the parents who are encouraging use of hormone therapy for their kids because the parents are brainwashed by left media, and essentially committing child abuse.