• Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    23 days ago

    Because stirring up hate against vulnerable minorities, by positioning them as a threat is a well tested and effective technique for the power hungry to gain and retain power. And it’s effective, because it works by pulling people in and making all of the conversation about whether or not it’s right to hate on the group they’re targeting.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        23 days ago

        Hell we used to genocide and enslave the people we looked down on. Talking ill of them on Fox News is a step up, my friend.

      • resin85@lemmy.ca
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        22 days ago

        https://www.faena.com/aleph/umberto-eco-a-practical-list-for-identifying-fascists

        In an essay published in the New York Review of Books, Umberto Eco distilled the 14 typical elements of “Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism,” while warning that, “These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

        • The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

        • The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense, Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

        • The cult of action for action’s sale. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture, the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

        • Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” Appeal to social frustration. “[…] one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.

        • The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”

        • The enemy is both weak and strong. “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

        • Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

        • Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

        • Everybody is educated to become a hero. “in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

        • Machismo and Weaponry. “This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.”

        • Selective Populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

        • Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

    • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      It is also exceedingly important to note that plenty on the Right don’t explicitly hate Trans people. That’s a rhetoric. They may be worried about some of the news “reports” and “”“stories”“”, had to triple quote that one, and yes the radical Right and MAGA do buy in hard and hate due to racial and superiority bullshit. What so many on the Right who are on the fence about these things are truly scared of…

      Is having an opinion that deviates from the people around them who they’ve known probably all their lives. Unlike us on the Left who hiss and spit at one another every time one of us has a family gathering, many on the Right fear alienating their social circles.

      If you ever want to change the mind of someone on the Right you really just need to soothe their rabid, horrid, twisted by those around them, frothing soul of an angry jackass and make them feel as if they can actually believe something else could be the truth.

      But by GOD can it be tiring.

    • Pacmanlives@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      Spot on. The fucking bathroom issue I keep hearing kills me. They are in there to take a shit Karen not to pass you brownies though the stalls and play a game of peak a boo above the stalls

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        23 days ago

        I still don’t understand their claims that bathroom segregation makes anyone “safer”

        Do they think there’s some kind of law on the books that says “Anyone who matches the gender on the sign can diddle anyone inside they want!” cause that’s how they act…

        Personally I find it silly that bathrooms are segregated at all when stalls exist.

        • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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          23 days ago

          Personally I find it silly that bathrooms are segregated at all when stalls exist.

          You mean the 3-foot particle board separator with a 2-foot gap at the bottom and a solid inch of space around the entire door, the gap large enough to make eye contact with someone at the sink while you’re sitting with your pants down?

          Because that’s what passes for a “stall” in 99% of America. Privacy never even came into the conversation when they designed those damn things. They are designed to give the bare minimum illusion of privacy while still being easily stared through to make sure no one is doing drugs in your bathroom. At any point in time any employee of any company has a right to come into the bathroom, peer through the crack in the door and make sure you’re in there dropping a dook properly and not say, shooting up heroin. And you can’t stop them even if you wanted to, the stalls are designed to make that possible.

          So, with that knowledge, I sort of almost understand the people that get all up in arms about this. Because there is almost NO expectation of privacy in ANY American public bathroom. If we had European style stalls this would never have been a problem in the first place. But because anybody can just walk up and literally make eye contact from outside the stall while you’ve got your pants down, some folks can be understandably concerned about that.

          That doesn’t excuse any of this mess and it doesn’t make them correct, but non-americans don’t realize how shoddy our typical public restroom is. The anger at trans folks should instead be directed at the cheap-ass building contractors that mandate bathrooms that don’t give you privacy.

          Edit: These are what I’m used to seeing.

          If you’re tall, your eye level is over the top of that door. If you’re a young kid, the bottom of the door doesn’t even start until your chest or shoulders. If you’re medium height the gap around the door is your peephole, whether you want it to be or not.

  • slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    As someone who grew up in a conservative household in a deep red state, I think that part of it is that a lot of people are letting Lizard Brain dictate their response to transgender people.

    Let me give you a personal example. A while back, I went to a social dance, and there was a trans woman there. Before the dance starts proper, the couple that runs it will teach a dance lesson, and we rotate partners while that’s going on. Eventually, I was rotated into being her partner. For some background, she was obviously early on in her transition; she still looked like a dude in a dress, she didn’t quite have the appearance down yet. But she gets huge props for not only having the bravery to go out as herself, but doing it in fucking Arkansas.

    So I rotate over to her, and it dawns on me that she’s trans. In my head, Lizard Brain immediately starts screaming. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! THIS PERSON IS OBVIOUSLY A DUDE IN A DRESS, HE MUST BE UP TO SOMETHING IF HE’S DRESSING AS SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT HE IS! RABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLE”

    Keep in mind, where I grew up, you just didn’t see trans people, and even now, it still tickles that primal part of my brain that was trained to be uncomfortable around people who aren’t white and straight.

    The difference between me and many of the people I grew up around is that I recognize that it’s happening and try to tone Lizard Brain out when it starts screaming. A lot of other people listen to it and don’t care that the person that it’s screaming about is exactly that: a person.

    • untorquer@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      This is so real. It takes a LOT of effort and time to train this out. If someone isn’t willing to go through that then it makes sense that it would fester.

      I had lots of times when i was younger learning about queer culture when i got mad at things. Especially after an overly polite and patient person took the time and effort to explain something to me. Unlearning hate is painful. Learning to liberate yourself is painful.

      I think a lot of people feel that pain and decide to run from it and double down on the hate because that way they don’t need to learn and change or pry open their mind to an alternative.

      Then there’s the whole fear of conflicting with your own community as a factor.

        • untorquer@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          Many conversations with many different people. I can’t recall as this was mostly a decade ago, before it all clicked for me that humans are diverse and nuanced and it’s fine. My guess would be pronouns and wide net incel stuff. Not that i was particularly bad but deprogramming a Catholic suburban upbringing in american masculinity culture and propaganda is a monumental feat.

          I think the fact that i was willing to listen, think critically, and engage in self doubt is what invited the conversations. Still, they were being very charitable with their energy and time.

          I’m really grateful for that, especially after recognizing in not as cishet as i thought i was.

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      Excellently said!

      The only thing I have an issue with, and it’s a small issue at that, is:

      Keep in mind, where I grew up, you just didn’t see trans people,

      You most assuredly did see them. You just didn’t realize it because they were forced to hide who they really were.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      23 days ago

      I remember reading that when people have racist reactions like what you’re describing it’s like a different part of their brain triggers and then their frontal lobe (for higher logic) sort of suppresses it. I really wish I could remember more about this but I definitely remember learning about this in psychology. Something like when a baby sees someone of a skin color they haven’t seen before they get nervous, but when they’re older different parts shut it down. The memory is very fuzzy.

  • klemptor@startrek.website
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    23 days ago

    For a simple example: my mother is Catholic and until Trump came along, a lifelong single-issue Republican voter who always said she would be a Democrat if it weren’t for abortion. She attends church in an extremely progressive, famously LGBTQ-friendly town.

    There’s a transwoman who attends her church (let’s call her Rita). This lady is probably in her mid-50s to mid-60s and has been a fixture at the church for at least 5 years. My mom has been in choir and bible study groups with her for years now. She still just can’t see Rita as a woman. Treats her politely but behind her back refuses to call her “she” and says she’s a “man in a dress”.

    She’s really offended that Rita uses the ladies’ room. I’ve asked her why and she can’t articulate it, she just feels like it’s an invasion of her privacy, because men don’t belong in the ladies’ room. And when I point out that Rita isn’t a man, she just rolls her eyes. I’ve asked her if she’s worried that Rita is in there for predatory purposes and she admits that she doesn’t think Rita intends any harm. I’ve asked her how she’d feel if she were forced to use the men’s room and she says “but that’s different!”

    My mom prides herself in being a moral person, and still can’t manage to get past her bigotry to see Rita as a woman. There are just too many mental blockades against it. But since she thinks she’s so highly moral, she thinks she must be correct in this situation. It excuses her from finding empathy and bettering her attitude toward trans folks.

    My longwinded point is that when people who consider themselves highly moral are bigoted, there’s almost zero chance of getting through to them. And I think a lot of the people who are bigoted against trans folks feel that morality is on their side and being trans is morally deviant, so they think they’re justified in their prejudice.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    It’s strange to them.

    When people encounter something that’s different from what they are used to, they don’t know how to process it. It makes them uncomfortable. Some people, instead of learning how to deal with that feeling like a mature adult, blame the individual for making them feel uncomfortable and resent them for “making them feel that way”. Just staying away is not enough, they must be punished for existing.

    All because someone felt a little icky when they thought about a girl with a weiner.

    • puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      23 days ago

      well yeah they don’t like the thought of a girl with a weiner, you can’t degrade and classify women into being just a hole+reproductive organs if they might not have that. (but also pre-op trans dudes can’t use women’s bathrooms cus they aren’t women but still will never be men???) bigots are bigots.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      23 days ago

      This is really it. They feel strange about it and cannot grok it. It’s bizzarre that it can break even people that I hold in high regard.

      For instance Graham Linehan, the brilliant writer of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd went completely of the rails like his own father Jack when it came to transgender people. There’s people who just cant cope. Even including LGBT+ people. Theres plenty of gay people that hate transgenders with a passion and fail to see that the very same hate was directed at themselves a generation before.

      It boggles the mind. But really people feel really icky about the fact that people can choose their gender when they are being plagued by being welded to that gender in most of their lives.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      Even as someone who fully accepts trans people and has trans friends and family, it’s still an adjustment to some really old, deeply-seated habits and mental structures. I’m over 50 so I was set in my ways when I learned about “they” pronouns and it still takes work for me to get it right. If I didn’t care about the people involved, it would be very easy to see it as a burden or annoyance.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    23 days ago

    I’m a southerner. Take what I’m about to tell you as close to the grain of the problem as possible, because it is.

    Here’s the thing. 9 times out of 10, a Southern man is going to meet a lone trans or gay person, have a pleasant experience talking to them and go about their day, they even make friends with the person, spend years talking to them, send gifts, become family members, etc.

    But you know what?

    Behind closed doors, it’s “fuck those trannies”, “not in my schools”, etc. My mom does it, her sister does it, my dad did it. It’s hypocrisy at an extreme level while also ignoring it at an extreme level.

    “Well I have gay friends… I’m not homowhatzit”

    THEY’RE TEACHING WHAT!?

    “Double Standard” might as well be the tagline for the entire South. They’ll protect their religion and the expectations put on them by their parents and social norms on a general level across the board, while still shaking hands and eating cake with their lgbtq+ buddies.

    Just remember any southerner is one thought from God away from stabbing you in the back at all times, because no matter how close you get to them, even as a family member, that book and the expectations behind it means more, was beat into them more, every day since they were born until you met them.

    • scsi@scribe.disroot.org
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      23 days ago

      Your favorite search engine -> “bless your heart meaning” and good luck navigating the waters.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        23 days ago

        I thought this was pretty universally known in the US because I’m not from the US and never been further south than NYC when I did visit, but even I have seen it in some movie and immediately picked it up based on the tone and connect. I mean it was pretty much “he said something incredibly stupid” -> “oh bless his heart” between some southern grandmas

        Might’ve been Big Mommas House, might’ve been something else entirely.

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      23 days ago

      Southerner here and I’ll say you were right, up until your last paragraph.

      Just remember any southerner is one thought from God away from stabbing you in the back at all times

      This part however, is bullshit.

      We’re not all the same and that you would suggest so actually pisses me off. Replace the word “southerner” in that sentence with any other group of people and see if you still find it acceptable.

      • nomous@lemmy.world
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        23 days ago

        Fucking lol at hateful idiots stereotyping an entire geographic area. I’m sure in their minds it’s completely different than stereotyping people because of their race/creed/gender/whatever.

        • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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          23 days ago

          I lived with them long enough that the shadow of a doubt has its own lamp. I’ve heard racist and misogynist shit from people I’ve known for a decade or more who never had a sign of it before.

          Yep, I’m set with it. Fuck em. Worth it.

          • nomous@lemmy.world
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            23 days ago

            Yeah that’s called “prejudice” and isnt a good quality.

            Swap “southern” for “black” or “gay” and see if you’d be proud to make that same claim.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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        23 days ago

        I’ll be goddamn. I’ve seen family members ousted from a dinner table, in my own fucking family.

        Maybe in your pampered version of the South.

        In mine, they leave and never come back or speak to you again and all the old folks wonder why, while forgetting the last 60 family get togethers’ arguments.

        • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          23 days ago

          “Pampered version of the South” lol I grew up in Bum-Fuck, Florida and have lived in various southern cities as well as spending much of my youth in random rural areas.

          Racists and pieces of shit exist everywhere and I’m not denying that. Your blanket statement regarding all southerners is where I take issue.

          Don’t forget you said you were a southerner yourself, so am I to expect God will speak to you at any moment and turn you into an even more prejudiced person or…? Because if that’s a true statement, which it isn’t, you’re saying you yourself should never be trusted. And if that’s the case, why should we listen to what you, who is just another Southern, backstabbing, secret Bible thumping, homophobic, racist (accordng to your own flawed statement) have to say anyway?

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      100%

      My mom went to an integrated school in the South, made friends… but sometimes overheard racist slurs and threats behind closed doors. Same story with family I have now, all pleasent in public, friends with some gay family members. But vehemently anti-vaccine and such behind closed doors… I have horrible stories I can’t even repeat.

      The duality is unreal.

      A question is where that behind-doors comes from… a lot is from church. Church like you’ve never seen if you haven’t been to the South.

  • OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one
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    22 days ago

    Materialist answer (inspired by a video called Why The Political Compass is Wrong: Establishing An Accurate Model of Political Ideology, by breadtuber Halim Alrah… and also Jane Elliott’s famous experiment)

    Business owner makes money by paying workers to produce widgets at $6 / unit. Owner sells these widgets at $10 / unit, making a $4 profit each sale.

    Before long, the workers catch on to the reality of the situation: the owner could be making a lot less and still be able to provide “leadership” (or whatever it is he provides). They decide not to work for less than… $8 per unit. With this price, the owner will still be wealthy (the business makes hundreds of widgets, after all). But now, so will the workers.

    So the workers save up money and use it to go on strike.

    However: business owner comes up with a better solution to the problem: he divides the workers into brown-eyed workers and blue-eyed workers. He then uses his money to discriminate against the brown-eyed workers. His cronies in government make it legal to deny brown-eyed workers jobs and housing. His cronies in the media write hysterical anecdotal stories about various brown-eyed rapists, thieves, and murderers.

    Terrified mobs – stoked into a frenzy by the business owner’s well-funded propaganda – tear down brown-eyed people’s homes and food supplies, leaving them destitute before the strike is done.

    The brown-eyed workers now must choose between returning to work for the business owner at $5 / unit… or starving to death.

    The blue-eyed workers, meanwhile, have just been tricked into betraying their own team. Some were not tricked, but simply unprepared. These unprepared workers stood by in either shock, uncertainty, or laziness, unable to comprehend how their fellow blue-eyed workers could have become so foolishly self-defeating and cruel.

    But now the business owner can put up the illusion of no longer needing the blue-eyed workers. He can run his factory on a skeleton crew of desperate, brown-eyed workers, and say to the blue, “uh oh! Looks like the brown-eyed workers just stole your jobs!”

    Much like the brown-eyed workers, the blue-eyed workers have a restricted set of choices: A) admit they were suckers --fooled into attacking their own team – and try to apologize and rebuild their union, B) double down and blame brown-eyed people for undercutting them… but reluctantly return to work, because the strike is broken, or C) just like the brown-eyed workers, they can choose to starve to death.

    (A) will be the most difficult. As Mark Twain said: “it’s easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled.”

    The business owner wins, and now society has an eye-color-discrimination problem. Eye color was an arbitrary characteristic. Yet now it decides where someone lives, who they spend time with, and what kinds of opportunities they have access to.

    The business owner can rinse and repeat for: skin tone, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. As the saying goes,

    “Divide and conquer.”

    You asked why trans people are currently the subject of fear and hysteria? No reason. Not any new reason at least. Trans people are different. Any and every difference between workers is an opportunity for those fatcats rich enough to own “The Daily Mail” and the “The New York Post” to separate us into camps and drain us dry, one camp at a time.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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      22 days ago

      I find this disingenuous, infantilizing. Racial discrimination and warring has been happening since the beginning of (recorded) time. It stems, among many, many other things (this thing is incredibly complex), from the fear of the other’s “unknowns”, a somewhat justified fear of others, given humanity’s penchant for conquering the neighbors. Another factor is the use of each own’s feeling of superiority over the other’s, to cover for one’s underlying fear of inferiority in some way. Take the example (one of many, not singling out here) of the Jews assertion that they are god’s chosen people, thus everyone else being inferior.

      While divide and conquer has been used since the dawn of time, and adapted by the capitalists, the sad and simple fact is that people fear that which doesn’t conform to their comfortable life scheme, that people want certainty, and having a “different” is unsettling for many, and demonization is an easy way to prop one’s belief structure. People who exchange critical thinking for a “safe” belief structure, find it threatening to have others challenge that, so they fight back, to try to have that attack defeated. This can be exploited by others, to rally against that perceived common enemy. Wave a flag, and all who have a common belief of that flag representing their values will rally.

      People don’t want to think, and/or challenge their beliefs. It’s a comfort thing.

      • Bacano@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        I like your answer too. While I strongly believe the trans talking point is being amplified almost exclusively to fuel culture wars between the working class, your point on out-group mentality is a DNA encoded reality, from what I remember reading.

        I think the two compromise the bulk of the answer along with the culture war fuel dumped by foreign entities interested in destabilizing the US.

        The only remedy is education. Something that is sadly on the decline.

  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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    19 days ago

    I think most commenters here are missing the point.

    There is a more extreme reaction to transgender people as opposed to gay or lesbian people, because of issues like sports and bathrooms. And that hits at people’s sense of injustice. For example if you have a young daughter, a lot of people will hate the idea of a person with a penis going into the women’s room and being around their little girl. Or if that daughter grows up and joins a sports team, the idea of somebody who is hormonally male and thus naturally more muscular competing against your daughter is unpleasant.

    Put differently, I think a lot of people we now classify as ‘transphobic’ don’t actually have much problem with trans people themselves. Rather, with how the efforts to ensure trans people receive the full treatment of their chosen gender can affect the rest of society.

    For me personally, I don’t know what the answer is. I generally don’t care which bathroom you use as long as you wash your hands. I have no problem with anyone presenting themselves to the world as whatever they wish, if it makes you happier than by all means. At the same time though, I don’t think it’s transphobic to point out that somebody who is largely or entirely biologically male will have a natural competitive advantage in the field of sports.
    So while I certainly don’t want to exclude anybody, I think there is at least a little justification for restricting some women’s sports to those who are genetically female.

    • CitricBase@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      I think that one thing you and other centrists are missing is that any kind of regulation isn’t just a regulation on trans women, it’s a regulation on ALL women. It won’t be just trans women that will be put in a position of constantly having their genitals checked.

      Be it for bathrooms, sports, whatever, you’re opening us up to a world where anyone that fancies themselves an authority will feel empowered to sexually assault any women they want. That’s what’s at stake here. This is a women’s issue, not just a trans issue. Hell, even men will end up getting harassed in bathrooms.

      Meanwhile, actual trans people are going to by and large steer clear of segregated contact sports like they’ve always done, feeling the pain of exclusion and marginalization while deserving none of it.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I think the part people don’t realize is that like a lot of top athletes just have oddities - higher muscle building hormones, circulatory systems that work better under stress, more cellular receptors for triggering muscle building etc. And at the same time sex hormones aren’t the only chemicals that affect these things so there’s also a plethora of performance enhancing drugs cascading out of labs at the same time which is genuinely pumping out hulked up muscle freaks (see Liver King’s 12k steroid shots per month scandal)

      At some point it would just make more sense to just classify sports by weight and build and remove the genital inspection element.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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      22 days ago

      I think I’ve heard there are a lot of genetically male, but born female people in sports. I wonder if the same people are against those people playing in sports.

      Idk how many transphobic people just care about specific issues. There’s a lot of “groomer” rhetoric, hate, and general disgust. It’s easy to get people to hate what they don’t understand; and a lot of media is trying their hardest to cultivate hate against trans people to create an out-group, so they can control the in-group.

      • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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        22 days ago

        create an out-group so they can control the in-group

        That’s not just the media. It’s basically everyone in power. Media, politics, government, corporations… Everyone.

        It applies to the Democrats too. Especially in the 2016 election, they managed to successfully make Republicans the out-group. But I believe that was hugely damaging to the country, it created a lot more division when what is really needed is unity to focus on the issues that most people can agree on.

        Because here’s the cold truth- there is a body of policies that probably 80% of Americans would agree on. Things like efficient government, ending government corruption, reducing corporate control over government and elections, reducing income inequality, etc.
        To quote Dylan Ratigan’s famous rant, the United States is being extracted. And I think most people would like to stop that extraction.
        But no major candidate stands for that. Bernie did, but the DNC iced him out because their wealthy corporate donors didn’t want Bernie.

        And that in my opinion is why Trump won. Harris certainly didn’t push any major message of radical reform, just a bunch of the usual ‘help the middle class’ talk. Trump may be terrifying, but he does push a message of radical reform and changing the system.
        To write that off and say half the country is racist or misogynist is to avoid learning from this situation.

    • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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      22 days ago

      LoL at thinking Republicans don’t want people with Penises in their Daughter’s Restroom! Conservatives are LITERALLY making it ILLEGAL for people with Penises and Beards to use anything BUT their Daughter’s Restroom!

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      I don’t think anyone really cares about sports or bathrooms when it comes down to it It’s all about the patriarchy. Not a single person I’ve met has mentioned a woman who became a man going into a men’s restroom as a problem. Or them entering mens sports outside of the dimly vieled “oh well they could get hurt and a man needs to protect them from making their own decisions”

      It all comes back to people thinking men have to take care of women because they can’t take care of themselves without assistance.

      It is a reflection of how weak the people who think such are. And projecting and trying to control others lives because they don’t believe they can take care of themselves.

      If you believe in people having freedom, stop trying to fucking chain them to your ideals. (Not aimed at you specifically)

      • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        There is no patriarchy involved though? Even women actively campaign against trans male participation in women sports.

        Just take a look at this video: https://youtu.be/i39VHDmawtw

        There are no men involved. Just women, so your argument doesn’t track

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          A YouTube video of Donald Trump talking on Fox News is your evidence that no men are invoved in having something against trans people. That tracks

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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              22 days ago

              Not at all. Thats the subject of the thread. Why are people, mainly conservatives, against trans people. And you posted a link to a White Male Conservative on a Conservative platform speaking against some stupid shit that doesn’t matter, and saying men aren’t involved.

              The NCAA is a business. If you believe in a free market, then don’t make laws to dictate their rules. If people actually care they’ll stop buying that product and someone will start a new league with different rules and people can participate there.

              If anything, do the country a favor and ban official sports teams from the education system. And people can join leagues outside of the college and it will help get education better suited. Scholarships should be for educating future minds to create a better future, not wasted on someone who isnt there for an education. The amount of corruption in schools do to sports in way to high.

              • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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                22 days ago

                Bro hates Trump so much that he didn’t watch past the first 5 seconds💀.

                I’m not even going to bother reading what else you typed. You made the argument that the reason people are against trans people is majorly due to the patriarchy, and i linked to an example of a female volleyball team refusing to play a trans team as a direct rebuttal to that point. A rebuttal you would’ve understood if you had gotten over your Trump hate and low attention span to watch the entire video.

                • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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                  22 days ago

                  “I’m not even going to bother reading what else you typed”

                  Proceeds to say I have a short attention span. Yeah there is no way I’m sitting through anything that Fox News broadcasts.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    23 days ago

    It’s artificial boosting of the same bigotry that’s been ongoing for generations. The new part switching the target.

    See, there’s been a very concerted effort to radicalize the right wing of the American populace by media oligarchs. It’s part of an overall strategy going back to at least the post-nixon era.

    Want to crush black people? Find a way to villainize them indirectly. “Inner city” crime. Step up arrests for things that are disproportionately a part of black people’s lives. Spread drugs into the chaos brought about by destabilizing black communities to engender greater violence between gangs. And it worked. Look at how many black people are in jail compared to pretty much any other group.

    Go back to Stonewall, when the biggest movements for gay rights got going hard, and remember that trans people were involved from the beginning, but didn’t have a convenient label, they didn’t have a way to be a distinct group. Gay rights efforts worked to some degree. Enough that the far right plans to use gay people as the enemy had to find another target the same way that they had to change targets from black people to Hispanic people in the form of “illegal aliens”.

    When your plan rests on fomenting anger, hate, and fear to stir up the lowest common denominator of a populace you have to have a target, ideally more than one since there’s always going to be gaps where your desired audience will fall prey to the manipulation for one hate focus, but not another, like when you run into conservatives that aren’t actually racist, but hate anyone in the LGBTQ+ umbrella because of religion, or sheer stupidity.

    So, when gays weren’t a useful target for hate any more because enough people knew gay people, and there were enough gay people of prominence to make it harder, why not switch to the next best thing? Trans people!

    See, we had a major shift in awareness of trans issues back in the late nineties and early naughties. That’s was followed by a large shift in trans people now having a serious chance at transitioning as medicine advanced, funding shifted, and there was just enough support that more people could transition and not be alone.

    This meant that the assholes pushing their agenda to gain and maintain both wealth and power had a gift given to them. A new label to attack, using the exact same rhetoric they’d been using against gay people. “It’s unnatural”, “but what about the children?”, along with the ability to use lingering misogyny via to attack trans women in specific since they are now women, but used to be men (in the rhetoric), so they must be groomers sneaking into bathrooms.

    It’s the exact same bullshit over again.

    People have forgotten that the same methodology has been in place every time people in power needed to scare the populace enough to achieve a goal. Remember reefer madness? Before my time, but the entire thing was built in order to continue the oppression of black people, to keep them firmly under the boot.

    Go back further, and it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, whatever group was “other” at the time.

    But the modern version is so directly a rehash of the anti gay rhetoric that’s not even fifty years in the past that I’m amazed it isn’t glaringly obvious even to the people that have jumped on the bandwagon of both.

    I’ve said it before, but people are stupid. They’re easy to manipulate, easy to fool, and that’s the majority. Even the ones that aren’t easy to manipulate can still fall prey to it if they aren’t paying attention. People are also lazy, and have little long term thinking ability, or attention spans. That’s why we got zero lasting changes after George Floyd was murdered. Anyone that’s made it this far, think for a second. How long did it take you to remember that name and what it means? Now, ask yourself how many people didn’t remember at all.

    That’s why trans hate is working. People suck. The vast majority are easy to control, and will believe anything fed to them with the right language behind it. It just so happens that while all of the distractions being used to build up the hate also created a smoke screen to hide gerrymandering, which ends up with more and more control over what language is being used everywhere.

    So, here we are with a manufactured, strawman enemy being propped up as the target and then painted with the word “trans”. None of the bullshit used to build up the hate is true, it isn’t accurate, and most of the people behind the hate actually know it’s bullshit, but they aren’t allowed to hate the blacks and the gays out loud any more. They can’t just scream the n word or call people faggots at whim the way they used to.

    So, now they’ve got trans people to hate. And they want that hate because it means they don’t have to look at themselves, their own lives and choices. They don’t have to stop and think that maybe everything they’ve built their identity around is empty, so they scream about “wokeness” and “transgenderism” as code words.

    There’s no serious, legitimate arguments against trans people being allowed to have the full protection of the law, to have full medical access, to have whatever gender they want on their driver’s license. There’s just the bullshit excuses to have someone to hate. There’s not even a good argument about bathrooms, they’re all built on bullshit too, and that’s the one that’s the low hanging fruit because it seems reasonable to people that aren’t buying all the bullshit immediately, but aren’t quite bright enough to think it through all the way on their own. Which, again, that’s the majority, stupid people too drowned in lies and manipulation to bother thinking.

    So, Don, if you’ve gotten this far, I know I went wide of what you asked, but it really is all related. It all comes down to the same thing in different faces over time.

    For anyone else, I know this got a little ranty in parts. I know it is long enough to look a little crazed. IDGAF. This shit is patently obvious, it’s not even a secret. The people that have been running the right wing of things for my entire lifetime and before have outright and publicly talked about it. One part of it, the “southern strategy” they brag about. It’s infuriating, so I get ranty.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    23 days ago

    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”.

  • Montagge@lemmy.zip
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    23 days ago

    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

    • Breve@pawb.social
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      23 days ago

      And the twist is 99.9% of Republican voters think they are in the in-group just because the leopards haven’t eaten their faces yet.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    Far simpler than whateveryone else is saying. The best way to rally humans to your side is to give them a common enemy. So conservative politicians picked enemies that are small in number and told everyone how they are to blame for all that is wrong in the world.

  • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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    23 days ago

    Conservatives come in two types. The rich ones who want more and more money. And the poor ones who also want more money but are unable to obtain it because the rich hoard money.

    The rich conservatives need to stop the poor conservatives from realizing the rich are why the poor can’t get money. So they make up vulnerable groups to blame for the poor’s problem, and the poor are generally too poorly educated to catch on to this game.

    Different groups have been the scapegoat. Women, blacks, the italians, the irish, asians, gays, and now it’s transgender people.

    The good news is transgender people WILL get full rights in about 20-30 years if you look at historical cycles. The bad news is it will be a fight and many will die before they get treated as human beings by these asshole conservatives.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    They are just propagandized. In general, it’s so much like racists - they may know trans people and just think they are the exceptions, like them as individuals and still think they hate them as a group. They are intentionally riled up by being forced fed edge cases and disinformation.

    Trans people are just people. They aren’t angels who are never criminals and they aren’t degenerates who are always criminal, they are a diverse group like all of us are. But you can bet your ass that whenever a trans person does something criminal it will be blown up so big in conservative media and used to paint them all as criminals. It’s just the right wing media machine.