So I’ve been thinking about Erich Fromm & trans rights. In particular, I’d been puzzling over how & why the right has been able to make hostility toward a minuscule fraction of a percent of the population a major political issue. Like, even if people don’t get it & are weirded out, why do they care?
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1) people want a small out-group to hate, to solidify their sense of being in the in-group
2) it used to be gays, but the Internet made people more aware of gay relatives etc, so they needed an even smaller population.
I remember when I was a kid, people were openly homophobic but apparently indifferent to transgender people.
Trans characters were a common trope in sitcoms and Love Boat, etc. and they were generally accepted and treated as equals, no?
(Maybe bc they were generally played by cis women…)
That, combined with the rise of the internet and alt. media has given trans people the ability to network and-
They use religion the same way they use racism and fear: as tools.
It's the reason why Bernie Moreno's ads prominently featured/ vilified these minorities. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4958731-meet-the-unwilling-faces-of-gop-anti-trans-ads-i-havent-been-able-to-sleep/
#cspan #cspanwj
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/americans-have-one-very-strange-cognitive
You could replace trans people w those Japanese redheads on FOX and the viewers wouldn't miss a beat in turning their hatred to them.
Trans rights have moved forward quickly in this young century. Political operatives looking for recent changes that the public might not be entirely comfortable with didn’t have to look far.
Creating fear by lying about the imaginary dangers of those scapegoats, then promising to protect us.
All YOU have to do is give away some of your rights, and ignore how our laws and values are manipulated
When people have to think about something they didn't have to think about before, that makes them angry
If you like your gender, you can keep your gender
Same reason Claudine Gay became a multiple week news story even though it literally affects hundreds of people at most.
Excellent for: Creating fear & rage towards a very small group of people who aren't known for high crime rates.
Make it seem that we're all at risk (of straight men raping women, but we'll pretend it's trans women who do that). Only he can protect us from the (imaginary) threat.
For example, there's no reason why a social category like self identified gender is relevant in sports. And if kids in school don't understand that sex is real, we need to fix science education.
given the intolerance on the subject most people wont say this publicly thus it polls lower than reality
Any examples from reality that expose it as nonsense must be destroyed. They are trying to flex cultural power by getting everyone to buy into falsehoods.
The modern liberal take substantially redefines what gender means. It's not objective physical observations but a mix of internal feelings and self-id. That means it (implicitly) asks everyone to rethink their own relationship to gender.
Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” does a great job of spelling out this all-too-human dynamic.
Our fascists aren't even particularly original.
It's not more complicated than that.
"You're different, then I hate you."
Make it all go away
1. Our tribe is special and deserves everything.
2. The outsiders are trying to destroy us.
3. Therefore our tribe should destroy them.
So for this to work, you have to find someone to be the outsiders , and then you generate rage against them.
Profit !
And lest I be accused of having an original thought here:
That's why so much of the trans panic is literally just castration anxiety
One (1) undocumented murderer.
Trump is going to deport millions, costing trillions, using the US army, because of this invasion of murderous migrants.
Human psychology is not rational.
The other possibility is the toxic media they’re consuming which leads them to believe 21% of people are trans.
That sort of defense evaporated this year