Asklemmy

It is a useful distraction from the surplus value extraction from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The Bourgeoisie hire workers and pay them for their work. But with what money? The money made by selling a product or service. But who did the work to create said product or service? The workers did. So workers do work, which makes money for the company. But do the workers receive all of it? After all, they did all the work. But no, no they don't. If the Bourgeoisie gave all the money the workers to back to the workers, them how could the Bourgeoisie make a profit? It thereby must follow that the Bourgeoisie pay their workers less than the value they produce, thereby stealing that money from the workers.

You might say "but the bourgeoisie own the company! And they also do some work themselves! Some people's work just contributes more than others." Yeah, yeah, but who gets to decide how much of the pie each person gets? How much should be reinvested and what not? Who gets to decide what is done with the money made? The Bourgeoisie! But why them? Why do the workers not have a say in how the money they made is used? Because the Bourgeoisie had enough money to buy the means necessary to make money (the factories, infrastructure or whatever) and the workers did not. How did the Bourgeoisie get all that money you ask? By stealing worker's wages.

What does this have to do with trans people?

1. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

This whole anti-trans thing is a useful distraction. Bad people will believe it's those dam trans people's fault their country is shit and not investigate any further. Good people will be distracted arguing against the bad people on why being trans isn't evil, all the while the real culprits laugh as we fight each other.

Remember: Desperate people make great workers and distracted citizens. Keep people busy with basic necessities and they won't have time or energy to realize who is really exploiting them.

2. It makes trans folk more exploitable

Racism a misogyny is useful for the Bourgeoisie as it allows them to pay lower wages. The bourgeoisie want to pay their workers a little as possible. Desperate jobless people are more willing to take a bad deal because any job is better than homelessness. That means the more desperate people there are, the lower the wages they can pay, as they can replace workers who demand a higher wage with workers from this reserve.

Racism keeps people of color in poverty allowing them to be more easily exploited. Misogyny justifies paying women half the wage of a man, which is exactly what the Bourgeoisie want.

Likewise, if trans folk are illegalized that will make it hard for them to find a job, adding even more people to the reverse army of labour.

They keep you fighting a culture war so you don't fight a class war.

I always thought it was about power. Maintaining power structures requires a clear dividing line, somewhere. The line between women and men is artificially upheld, to create the illusion that there's "naturally two categories in everything". If people got the idea that you could "transition", that would overthrow a whole lot of the artificial divides that we have in our society today.

Its a thing of domination and power. If there are less people with human rights, you can exercise your power more without restrictions.

first the trans, then the gays, then the "other races", then the women, then the poor. and boom, only the elite have rights.

So there is definitely more to it as plenty of people have already explained, but when it comes to Elon and Rowling they both have personal reasons for their anti-trans beliefs. Rowling was sexually assaulted, and now finds the idea of, in her words, "men pretending to be women" utterly terrifying due to her PTSD, and is seemingly incapable of seeing trans women any other way.

Elon on the other hand went through a bunch of drama bs with his family, he's got at least one trans kid who has disowned him, and he spiralled out from there, eventually finding a place among the far-right Nazis who have only reinforced his preconceptions about trans people and trans kids.

No idea what the fuck Zuck's trans villain origin story is though.

1. They're a scapegoat
2. People fear what they don't understand. If they actually went out and talked to trans people they may realize they're normal people just like anyone else.

Its alla diversion.

Find some group that is different, then shit on them and make them look bad publicly while this relatively small group can't so much to talk back publicly.

It'll outrage the public, they'll start looking at the group while trump and Co then go and rob the state blind while no one is looking

A useful distraction to prevent class warfare and protect their wealth with a convenient and reliable scapegoat designed to ensure a divided working class.

Divide and conquer. A united population is harder to subjugate.

Just the latest social group that's still broadly acceptable to shit on.

There's not a ton of global census data out there, but in Canada trans and non-binary people make up 0.33% of the population. Which means there's a lot of people who don't know anyone who is trans or non-binary. Unfortunately there's also a lot of people who are unwilling to emphasize, or even sympathize, for those they feel are different or strange to them. It take time and effort to listen to others' stories and to gain appreciation for their perspective, and it's an effort many people are uncomfortable making if it feels they are deviating too far from society's norm. What you're observing is those in power taking advantage of the same human weakness that's been used forever to discriminate on whoever the current permissible outgroup to hate is.

How many times have you heard, "I don't care about anyone being/doing Y, but...", and then proceed to say some sort of transphobic, homophobic, racist, or sexist shit? When I grew up it was the G in LGBT. When my parents grew up it was African Americans. Women only got the right to vote a century ago, you better believe some of our great granduncles had some shit to say that would make today's uncles look like saints.

It's called smokescreen. Turns the attention of the masses away of their wealth and power

Because it's nothing more than a trick to divide public opinion and control it.

All threaten the oldest hierarchy of all: man over woman.

As for musk, he has a trans child he hates and disowned. And he’s a Nazi, straight up. Family left Canada to go to apartheid South Africa because they agreed with apartheid and white racial supremacy. See the hierarchy here?

Zuck is an opportunist who will align with anything that makes him money. But he also has a weird obsession with Roman history that’s a red flag to me about being a closet fascist.

Jk Rowling is a second wave feminist and she’s big mad that people without vaginas can call themselves women and be in women’s spaces.

You can't get ultra-rich while being a compassionate person

They will pick whatever group they think will suddenly put as many idiots as possible under their control when they say "GROUP A IS BAD".

Most of them don't care they are trans, they only care that they can take advantage of the oppression of a minority group in order to consolidate control over people so that they can oppress more people.

When everyone alive and dead is either oppressed or under your control, you become god. This is the goal, but they don't care about the process to get there.

preface: conjecture

musk and zuckerberg benefit from “othering” a group so that the majority of people get caught up in arguing about the rights of that group. While you’re busy being distracted by that they can push for agendas that benefit their companies and personal wealth, which inherently fuck you over.

musk does seem to have a personal vendetta as well given his issues with his trans daughter but I truly think this is ancillary to enriching his wealth and power. He also seems to love getting involved in topics that rile people up because deep down he’s a 14 year old reddit troll

rowling is double down and attention. She has a shit take, posts about it, people call her out. She’s a literal billionaire “beloved author” used to being surrounded by hangers on so being challenged wrecks her shit. Rather than reflect and look at scientific consensus she doubles down on her shit take. Because of people like above this gets her increasing amounts of attention and relevance so her beliefs are reaffirmed and deepened constantly. Now she’s consulted to speak authoritatively on the matter despite having no actual qualification other than being a rich lady who got into twitter arguments about it

Many of these apply to nobodies as well. Your stupid anti trans neighbor benefits from “othering” someone because it gives them someone to deflect blame onto. For most of American history it was black people, or Hispanic people, sometimes Jews, basically any minority. They also will double down when called out on shit takes and will absolutely respond to attention given for shit takes.

They are frequently interviewed.

Which means they are frequently asked: “Why’s everything fucked up?”

They can’t give the real answer, which is “ultra-rich people”.

So they give no answer at all (in which case you don’t hear about it) or they cite the Enemy Of The Day.

There must always be an "underclass" in capitalism for the upper echelons to threaten the middle echelons. No exceptions. Wether that's the homeless, psychiatric patients, gay or trans people... doesn't matter. There will be some regional differences in what constitutes this underclass but the end result is always the same. Capitalism CANNOT FUNCTION without this implicit threat of excommunication and starvation.

The only real difference with the recent past is that all of this has become much, much more explicit than it ever used to be before. But make no mistake, even with a Biden or Harris at the helm, this would still be the case, just much more muted.

This is a feature of the system, not a flaw, and will never change as long as capitalism in its current form dominates.

As far as I can tell, they didn't. J.K is a straight example, but Elon went looking for an edgy movement to align with, and Zuckerberg just wants to stay rich.

Your everyday regressives want to go after trans people because they don't think they can take gay people on anymore. Some political movements have capitaised on this to gain their support, and have captured rich supporters as well because trans abuse is compatible with the rich continuing to gain more and more power.

How rich are the Wichowski sisters? You bet they're not a fan of any of this.

Easy to scapegoat like most minorities that a large part of the population has never interacted with before.

Scapegoating

Poor, trans, minorities, leftists, educated, and even moderate Republicans are all under attack. These billionaires participate so they can be part of the fascist takeover of this country, not through any personal conviction.

They saw /egg_irl and blame them for why eggs are now expensive.

They want you fighting a culture war to keep your mind off the class war.

The mainstream "left", such as the Democrats benefit from this too.

Draw the national party lines between bigoted and non-bigoted. Now everyone can fight over that and nobody has to address the fact that two thirds of the country want universal healthcare.

I do wonder what their end game is. History surely will not look on them favourably, so who would want to be the villain on the world stage? Yes history is written by the victors, but only for a short while until the truths come out. I just can't understand why anyone would deliberately want to be on the wrong side of history.

My personal opinion is twofold:

1. 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.
2. 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.

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.

Point 8

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism