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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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.
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