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.
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.
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 or social toolset to process it in any sensible way. They will construct a toxic viewpoint for this issue, strengthen it from outside sources and then start to spread that toxicity.
Yeah my mom talked to me about her mixed feelings when I came out. On one hand she saw I was no longer miserable and was extremely happy about that, but on the other hand she was terrified. I lucked out, she’d gotten involved as an ally to the trans community before I came out to her (and I believe she was actually surprised when I did), but yeah she was very scared for me.
Funny enough one of my first thoughts after realizing I was trans was “fuck my life isn’t going to be easy”, so at least the concern for my safety was something we shared lol
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”.
Yeah, I did certainly want to be able to do something that would’ve made my child not trans, but I couldn’t figure any way to do that so there was just nothing to even try. Also in the same vein on several occasions I wondered whether I had caused this by some action or inaction which is just pointless rumination.
Some of the more delusional churchgoers think they can change these things because they think they have a wizard on their side.
That last sentence put an awful thought in my head and I’m scared to even see if such a thing already exists. But how long before there are religious anti-trans conversion therapy camps. I hate this timeline.
If my kid was trans, the only stress it would cause is thinking about how much medical bills we might have.
But I don’t have expectations for my kids that I’m imposing on them, so maybe I have less to process.
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.
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Because they tell teenagers that you might accidentally kiss a man and let hormones and immaturity handle the rest.
I only know of one, and she’s an expert at everything related to fiber channel and tape drives. So I guess it might be that US conservatives are ideologically opposed to cheap long term offline storage.
This is America, we store things in the iCloud or the garage.
Gender and separation of humans based on those lines have been a thing for longer than humans even called themselves “humans”, and transpeople threaten that. So it triggers a flight or fight reflex in people who aren’t used to the concept.
I find when people know me for awhile and THEN find out I’m trans, their reaction is less “I’m scared”, and more “That’s neat”, but if people find out I’m trans before they get to know me, they will be hostile the whole time.
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.
conservative ideology is built around hate, and thus attracts hateful people, or indoctrinates people susceptible to to such ideology. There must always be some outside group to blame every problem on, and to feel superior to without having to actually be better. Conservatives have enough hate to go around that they’re not focused exclusively on trans people, but this flavor of hate is the new hotness for them.
As others have said, one did shoot up a school (and the MSM hid the manifesto & details forever). As your comment proves, they found out the shooter was trans & they tried to memory-hole that real hard. But that’s besides the point; evil & depraved people will be evil & depraved people. Doesn’t matter, trans or not.
Main conservative talking points against trans people: They do not produce children, trans people are categorized as having a mental illness that should be treated instead of chopping off body parts, they really don’t like when health insurance money and/or tax dollars pay for elective surgery & treatments, fully transitioned people have their genitals mutilated & they’ll never experience an orgasm, once they’re chopped up a not insignificant number of trans people experience regret (permanent consequences for acting on temporary feelings), and trans people are more likely than the general population to have depression & commit suicide.
With well-intentioned conservatives, it’s actually coming from place of care & compassion. They don’t want people to hurt themselves, deprive them of families & fullness of sexuality, or see them despair post-op & kill themselves.
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”.
Xenophobia
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.
That’s heresy.
Sigh, I’ll get the holy promethium…
“other; different in origin.” is the meaning of xeno.
So… it kinda fits, it kinda doesn’t.
A lot of conservatives want to simplify life because they have a simple mind.
Because most people don’t actually know any trans people, and find unfamiliar things to be weird and scary.
But also because terrible people have weaponized those feelings for personal political gain. Most people probably wouldn’t give a fuck, even if they found them weird, if talking heads weren’t stoking the flames of bigotry.
It’s who their owners say to hate, so they hate them. Could be anyone and for no or any reason. They’re cultists and they do, say, hate, and fear who they’re told to.
I’ve never met a person against trans people. I talk to lots of people as a Uber driver in Denver. What state do you live in?
I am currently stationed in Chicago. And I have met trans people across the US and none of em have been bad or had a bad attitude they are pretty down to earth and pretty cool.
Because there are only 2 possibilities:
- Trans people are real and the Bible is a book filled to the brim with bullshit
or
- Trans people are not real but merely EVIL men and women possessed by Satan because god created Adam and Eve, not they and them
They are in fact mutually exclusive. So what do you think the moron cult members will choose, the option that requires deprogramming… or the option that aligns with their stupid bullshit cult beliefs?
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.
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.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I’m a dad to a FtM trans teenager and I was born in the early 80s. There’s a lot of “inertia” to the worldview presented as “normal” in education, media, and society at large just in my lifetime.
I think the first time I learned that homosexuality was a thing was from Ellen. I know now that everyone isn’t hetero but every relationship I saw around me, in books, in movies for my the most formative years of my life defined it as “normal” in my brain.
All I knew outside of “gender norms” was Bugs Bunny in drag, Bosom Buddies, Some Like it Hot, Rocky Horror. It was “not normal”, a joke.
I come from a liberal family with a liberal upbringing. I’ve considered myself an LGBT ally for a long time, but I still have a lot of implicit biases in my head.
When my child came out as trans, those implicit biases were the first things into my head. I love my son for who he is, want him to be happy, and fully support him. When he decided to dress fem for the first time after hatching my implicit biases were confused. But it doesn’t matter what those biases say because I consciously support what makes him happy.
My parents were born in the 50s. They are both unabashed feminists but they had another 30 years of that “inertia” to overcome when my son hatched. They still occasionally forget the right pronouns. His one remaining great grandmother has almost 20 years more inertia to overcome and still uses the wrong name occasionally.
I guess what I’m saying is that I agree with you to an extent. These things threaten their “inertia” and it’s hard to question yourself like that. It’s easier to dig your heels in and fight back.
I think we agree yeah. More progressive people will be more open to challenge their “inertia” with new ideas that they believe are right. I think more conservative people give in more to the feeling of these “new” ideas being “wrong”. That doesn’t mean that more progressive people don’t feel those same feelings. I’m in my early 30s and I notice that I do start to struggle more with the difference between what I was taught (and thus what I subconsciously sometimes feel) and how I perceive the world now from a logical perspective. I strongly support people being trans or non-binary because I feel like it makes the world a better place, but deep inside there’s still some part that feels like it’s wrong for people to deviate from the gender rules I’ve been fed from birth.
