I was born in the early 90’s, and have known about trans people for as long as I can remember. Why, all of a sudden, are trans people/ the trans community so important in American politics?
I don’t understand why this community is NOW perceived as some battleground for political stances?
Please don’t take me the wrong way… But I’d like someone to explain to me the nuances of this because to me it just seems like a nonsensical distraction from actually important issues. Not to say trans rights are not important, but it just seems like this attack has sprouted out of nowhere?
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I think it’s combination of two things. Overall, society has become more accepting and accommodating to various minorities, and that is then also reflected in legislation. But on the other hand we have hardcore-conservatives who need some kind of “other” to have as their enemy that can be attacked. Gay and black people used to be that and it’s trans people turn now.
Many people nowadays are pushing for recognition (social and legal) for trans issues and protection from discrimination in different settings. People caring and supporting this means there’s a basis for genuine political pressure, as issues people don’t care about are politically non-issues.
It wasn’t important before because trans issues and identity was unsupported, taboo, and the *vast* majority was on the side of it either didn’t exist or was to be suppressed and shamed publically and legally. Same with homosexuality in the US really. Gay rights wasn’t always politically backed either. Nor was equal rights for women… every time people resisted this and thought it was too far or too unnatural, until enough people backed it and made it the new normal.
I’m not intimately familiar with the trans issues specifically, but protection from discrimination and retaliation is something people consider important, and many *many* instances of added difficulty or discrimination have been brought up. So the goal often is not punishing or violating privacy (including inspection of private parts) of trans individuals for not conforming to expected gender conventions or classification.
The US Republican party, at large, and specifically the more ultra right-wing parts of the party are a shrinking amount of the electorate. How they keep holding on to such large amounts of power in the country is by motivating their people to vote. If there are 1000 Democratic voters and only 100 Republican voters, a Republican candidate will win if only 150 votes are cast total and the Republicans cast 100 of those votes while 950 Democrats sat on their butts at home.
One tactic to motivate their voters is to spread outright lies about some scary “other” that represents the opposition that threatens their way of life. That used to be black people (stealing out white women to “pollute” the gene pool) and other immigrants (stealing the jobs of hardworking Americans), and these attacks still exist, by the way. But as society as a whole is more accepting of people, the GOP has to find a different target. They moved on to gays and lesbians (wanting to make everyone gay) for a while, especially in the 80’s and 90’s. Again, these lies are still told today.
Now it’s transgender people. The average person has a hard time understanding “all this trans stuff.” Part of that problem is confusion over how to refer to them, what pronouns to use, and all of the other intricacies that exist within the community- and that’s for people who are accepting. For those that don’t even want to acknowledge their existence at all, they become an easy “other” that no one can understand who must be trying to change how all Americans live. Transgender people have become the latest “threat to American society” to use by the GOP to motivate their voters.
It’s useful for certain political ideologies to define an ‘outsider’ group, that they can allege are having a demoralising and harmful effect on society. And then claim that their party is the only one taking this threat seriously and preperared to do something about it.
It helps them if this group is vulnerable, and often misunderstod by society in general.
Different groups can fulful this role for them – immigrants, trade unionists etc. In recent history gay people have been a target but they”ve fought for and won a lot of acceptablity and although there are still a lot of homophobes about, gay people are more visible in society, there are a lot of out gay people, people know them as as friends and neighbors, family members, celebrities, politicians etc.
So just aiming at gay people as the baddies undermining society doesn’t have the same impact.
So – trans people are a new target. Often misunderstood, many people don’t personally know a trans person(or don’t know that they do). It’s easy to make up scary stories about them, and use them to stoke fear and panic.
Homophobia became socially untenable as a tool for social control.
The right wing uses transphobia as a tool to vilify and abuse any woman who does not conform to traditional beauty standards.
Woman with a shaved head? Abuse them in the bathroom cause they must be trans. Woman with a strong jawline, abuse them because they must be trans. Not pretty enough? Abuse em.
This is why you don’t hear anything from the media about forcing transgender men to use the bathroom of birth corresponding sex. And you generally don’t hear anything about transgender men at all.
> it just seems like a nonsensical distraction from actually important issues.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
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