elon musk, mark zuckerberg, J.K rowling! Are the names that come to mind.
3 from different background: a African immigrant benefiting from government spending, an American smart young engineer, and a female English successful writer.
They are no politicians, and cant be accuse of trying to gather some vote. Multi-billions amongst them.
I get they lean to the right to protect their cash, with less tax and regulation. I get they are racist because they fear some poor people will take their cash.
But why the hatred for trans people ? It’s 1% of the population, they cant do anything, dont threaten anyone. There is no rational or psychological reason
*EDIT: I read all the comments. A lot of interesting explanation: smokescreen/scapegoat, maintaining the male/female power structure, new face of anti-gay , projection / self-hatred , just louder voice …
I realize, may be, I didn’t post a good question. May be it is less about the ultra-rich but more about why that rhetoric work on the general population (else it would not have taken hold as it does). For that I have a 2 cent theory: The raise of the cult of Nature we have since the global warming. The idea, that everything natural is better. The ugly version is only natural male and female are worthy*
Just the latest social group that’s still broadly acceptable to shit on.
There’s not a ton of global census data out there, but in Canada trans and non-binary people make up 0.33% of the population. Which means there’s a lot of people who don’t know anyone who is trans or non-binary. Unfortunately there’s also a lot of people who are unwilling to emphasize, or even sympathize, for those they feel are different or strange to them. It take time and effort to listen to others’ stories and to gain appreciation for their perspective, and it’s an effort many people are uncomfortable making if it feels they are deviating too far from society’s norm. What you’re observing is those in power taking advantage of the same human weakness that’s been used forever to discriminate on whoever the current permissible outgroup to hate is.
How many times have you heard, “I don’t care about anyone being/doing Y, but…”, and then proceed to say some sort of transphobic, homophobic, racist, or sexist shit? When I grew up it was the G in LGBT. When my parents grew up it was African Americans. Women only got the right to vote a century ago, you better believe some of our great granduncles had some shit to say that would make today’s uncles look like saints.
You can’t get ultra-rich while being a compassionate person
This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!
Easy to scapegoat like most minorities that a large part of the population has never interacted with before.
Also, societal attitudes have changed to the point where at least open racism or homophobia aren’t really acceptable any more. So they needed a new scapegoat.
It is easy for many people to think trans wars is a distraction, scapegoating, or a genuine threat to the authoritarian world view. I ask you to carefully consider that anti-trans hate is genuine.
Nazis had prioritized Jewish genocide and pursued it to an irrational degree, even prioritized the genocide to actually winning the war. Some analysts say that this shows their war was always and primarily against civilian Jews.
We have evidence to think this is the case with trans people now.
The recent “anti-christian bias” order outright frames trans rights as an enemy of their ingroup.
Reed has covered the leaked Christian emails that show them believe trans people are demons and evil incarnation and want to wipe them from the face of the earth.
Rowling has been caught on tape saying she wants to minimize the number of people transitioning so that they have less work to do “special accommodations later” for trans people.
For those aware of the term Sonderbehandlung this leaves no doubt: trans people are their primary enemy, they have poured their millions into the pockets of nutjobs and politicians that will relieve them from having to live side by side with trans people.
Don’t be fooled that this is just distraction and/or scapegoating by power-mongers.
They have a trans Holocaust in the making and they have already put the plot in motion. ACT NOW
Edit:
I realize I might have not responded directly to OP’s question. See the following for my take.
My analysis linking Bathroom Bans as early signs of completely banning trans people out of public life https://lemmy.ml/post/25037664
I wrote this while still believing that anti-trans hate was an election-winning distraction. It partly responds to where anti-trans hate comes from https://lemmy.ml/post/24711061
In this sense many people are deeply transphobic, but billionaires have the resources to eradicate trans people from public life. The rest can only curse, badmouth, trash, verbally attack, workplace harass, fire, refuse healthcare, sexually or physically attack or mob-lynch trans people. Every transphobe does as much as they can get away with. Billionaire transphobes can get away with genocide so they’re doing that.
Additional resources in support of the argument
Summary of early Holocaust course of events and why targeted people were not mobilized https://lemmy.ml/post/25008729/16208799
Erin Reed article on fundamentalist anti-trans lobbyists’ leaked emails https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2600-leaked-anti-trans-lobbyist-emails
good post
Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity), but only the ultrarich can afford making arbitrary people hate them without any good reason. That’s why it looks like only the billionaires are doing it.
Then they go to Twitter with these opinions and go insane and the whole thing enters a neverending tailspin.
Elon is slightly different insofar that one of his own kids is trans. So that’s not entirely due to Twitter, but there’s also some lived experience at the bottom of it all (I assume perhaps wrongly that he spent time with said child).
“Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity)”
Are you saying most people are anti-trans? And that people who aren’t anti-trans are somehow not of sane mind?
Are you saying most people are anti-trans?
No, I think it’s more nuanced than just black-or-white allies and anti-trans people. The level of pro- or anti-transness within individuals falls on a spectrum that’s shaped like a bell curve, and the majority in the middle are usually amenable to trans rights if they bump into the issue in a way that resonates with them. Like for instance in their personal life with friends or family.
But less amenable if they mostly face the issue on TV, social media or via angry activists. You might then recognize these people as anti-trans, especially if the issue is deeply personal to you.
And that people who aren’t anti-trans are somehow not of sane mind?
No, that’s not what I was trying to say. In fact, I’d say that genuinely anti-trans people (the other end of the bell curve) are the insane ones. Socio- and/or psychopathic. My claim (possibly a bit extraordinary claim in this day and age) is that most people are not at that end.
I agree with what you’ve said for the most part but I find no correlation between it and what your initial comment said. Maybe I’m just tired.
I don’t want to pretend that this (this being how and why people think the way they think about trans rights et al) is a simple issue, which is why what I say on two different comments might be slightly incongruent. I think I was mostly answering your specific question in my second comment without so much trying to address or bolster my first comment.
Poor, trans, minorities, leftists, educated, and even moderate Republicans are all under attack. These billionaires participate so they can be part of the fascist takeover of this country, not through any personal conviction.
Musk: more politically oriented than just money now, had aligned himself with a very large part of the population that thinks at a minimum that even if some people need to transition for their own health, society retains the right to consider their pre-transition history to still be part of reality
Zuckerberg: profit driven, is aligning Facebook etc with the political reality in America and the real prospect of being fined or embargoed by a Trump administration, would flip back if a democrat won in 2028
Rowling: belongs to a British generation of certain age where trans people are superficially accepted BUT regards their pre-trans history to be something still relevant. That’s where this started and it escalated / deteriorated from there E.g. compassionate to a degree and willing to entertain the “fiction” that a biological man is now a women for the sake of that person’s mental health: see them at the shops presenting female? carry on as normal… talk to them? use their current name and pronouns out of politeness… BUT… if they want to access a female shelter, draw a line… if they want to teach young children, risk assess them including their pre-trans gender and history etc. Rowling then got into increasingly fractious arguments on Twitter, largely arising from other people she followed and liked and what the trans community inferred from that. At that point she doubled down declaring advocates on Twitter to be increasingly hysterical and deluded whilst simultaneously insisting she would treat trans people humanely in person. She’s then lashed out in numerous ways including in her writings aligning herself with increasingly extreme anti-trans people. FWIW, I think she would have carried on being a mildly tolerant (if dated) person of a certain age had she just stayed off Twitter entirely. But lashing out, being misinterpreted and misinterpreting others had led her to spiral down into viciousness and bitterness.
I consider your theorizing of “pre-transition history” being within the “rights of society” to “keep in touch with reality” as misleading and problematic.
In fact, these are the axioms of trans erasure I discuss in my other response. In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”, but only apply this to trans women (victims themselves of cis violence in bathrooms and all other settings). Why? Because you register trans women in the semantics of sexual perversion. Then, the “right” to know anyone’s medical history does not exist, on the contrary people have the right to privacy to medical interventions of any type.
Due to stigma and discrimination trans people are furthermore entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences. But this is also hypothetical now. The amount of cis-passing is different for every trans people.
Some may pass for cis, most don’t. Besides the existential crisis some people experience when they can’t tell a person is trans, in practice stealth trans people are relatively rare, and there is not an iota of evidence that there is any societal harm from stealth cis-passing trans people. So there is no reason behind your purported “societal right to know”, apart from cisgenderist entitlement.
Enforcing such right is not only infeasible, but it sufficiently and necessarily leads to banning public trans life, with no other explanation other than cis people’s uneasiness. The civil rights movement has established that majoritarian uneasiness with minorities sharing their bathrooms is not enough to justify perpetuation of discriminatory segregation practices.
This is textbook transphobia.
In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
I don’t believe that, just to be clear. But I think that’s the view of a lot of people, and that’s what i was outlining. because that was relevant to OP’s question.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”,
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically…
even if you are talking generically, i don’t think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex. there are many contexts where (for example) men will accept they are treated differently but will not resort to calling this “misandry”. at least in the settings i’m familiar with and amongst the people i’ve lived alongside here in London, UK. you may have very specific incidence in mind or may not be intending to speak universally, but you said “all other circumstances”, which sounds pretty universal, so i’m just pointing out that’s not correct…
entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences.
I don’t know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic…
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically…
That’s right
Ieven if you are talking generically, i don’t think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex.
I am talking about the notion that all men are potentially sexual predators. I am not discussing the truthfulness of the idea, or whether women are justified to be afraid of men in general (to an extend they are). But regarding this narrower notion, there is plenty of evidence online that men find the fear outrageous (Not all men etc). If they think trans women are (*) simply men (I disagree) then they are simply not consistent. This naturally leads to the next step, that their interpretation of transness in AMAB people is registered as a sexual perversion (*). It isn’t. It is a personal identity thing, like being a (cis) woman also isn’t inherently a sexual thing. To think the former is transphobia, to think the latter is misogyny. I am not saying, nor I care, about you subscribing to either, personally. We are both discussing the sociological popularity of these notions.
I don’t know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
I am a nomad, but I was talking about the US, where this grim picture is true in some states, especially with black trans women whose murders the police is particularly inadequate to solve.
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth
I was talking generically. That having been said, I wasn’t sure about your personal take, since the lack of tone in this written medium can be very misleading.
in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic…
I really tried to put arguments forth, and conscientiously not target you, while not giving you a free pass. I don’t think I exaggerate, I just present in distilled form the things that people might mean but not necessarily say out loud.
As for being combative, I just try to be thorough and concise. When I said this is textbook transphobia I weren’t attacking you. This is factual. If someone looks up a textbook on transphobia they will find the points I have asterisk-ed above. It would perhaps come down as less combative if I said “this is the dictionary definition of transphobia”? I don’t know. Transphobia is an ugly thing and much like racism, there is no pleasant way to say it, but this is what the word means.
I think Peanuts is speaking from JKR’s perspective, not justifying it
But I also skimmed bits of both of your comments. It’s ironic really, because I’m equally verbose
The wording is such that lends legitimacy to these viewpoints. The breakdown is right there for anyone who want to build upon this discussion, but it would be naive to give the benefit of the doubt to just anyone, when ignorance and misinformation is ubiquitous, nay, institutionalized.
This is the answer. It’s the intersection of those with strong personal opinions and the power (money) to speak their mind without true repercussions, and the power (money) hungry who are following the strongest zeitgeist in the halls of power.
The zeitgeist exists because the entrenched powerful ones are currently using trans people and migrants as a wedge between different parts of the working class. It used to be homosexuals and communists. Or abortions and hippies. Or slaves. Or indigenous people. Ad nauseum. It’s about keeping the working class divided and maintaining power. This is the latest version. And it’s not just in the US BTW
People like Rowling are new money working class that fell for the con
I agree with your analysis. I think on Musk’s case there is also his estranged daughter, it has entrenched his position
They are frequently interviewed.
Which means they are frequently asked: “Why’s everything fucked up?”
They can’t give the real answer, which is “ultra-rich people”.
So they give no answer at all (in which case you don’t hear about it) or they cite the Enemy Of The Day.
I tried to read the wheel of time once and what i learned is that gender is the ultimate defining factor in some peoples lives. It is their whole defining principle in interacting with others. Everything about you is a direct consequence of your sex. Mess with sex/gender and you destroy their entire way of interacting with humans. Hunans dont exist for them, only men and women. The sexes are actually incapable of communication or cooperation of any kind. Effectively different species. This makes trans people a literal impossibility. A leopard cannot become an attack helicopter. A trans person threatens their world view in a fundamental way.
These people also want control of everything, probably due to inability to cope with anything they don’t understand, which is a lot. I don’t understand being trans, but i undetstand the right to health and happiness and i wish it for you.
That could be an interesting explanation of why gender studies have been a target so often, even during the Nazi era
Other scapegoats have changed, while this comes bsck
I read that book and it felt like satire, but apparently this extreme belief in gender differences is the norm and im a freak.
Im ok with that, but i do raise it to make the point that some of us just dont see your sex/gender as particularly important information and anyone changing their gender is a massive threat to the status quo beleif that such things are not only natural and right but the basis for who you are and how to interact with you.
I remember people calling for sex/gender to be declared as part of your reddit profile. This is why, they cant interact with people as humans, they need a sex/gender to tell them how. It’s very disturbing to me.
We do not know for sure. But couple things are clear. Once you have money - you have the power. Meaning you can express your opinion with less fucks given. They probably associate trans people with sexual perversion. Where a man becomes a woman and then goes to womens bathrooms or sucks other men dicks and some probably do have sex without ever getting pregnant and bringing another slave into capitalism. I think transition from women to men could be seen with less stigma and reasons for transitioners could differ. But again think if you had children and kindergarten teacher is some dude who become a woman but probably still has penis and man’s brain and you leave your little one with them for a few years to grow and develop. I dont know i dont know… 😂 problem is trans associated with sexual perversion and normal people are usually not comfortable with that.
Deeply unserious of you to consider yourself “normal” when this is your understanding of gender and sexuality. Touch grass and talk to people.
Must resist temptation to see what the comment said…
Not worth it, just someone doing
CW: Transphobia
the whole “I’m not transphobic, but I can see why people might be!” deal where they invalidate gender identity as a concept and portray it as a fetish and harmful for children to be around.
Hope they cop a perma.
“but” is a bigot’s favorite word!
It’s a shield made out of tissue paper.
so tell me what do i need to know to understand it better? What else is there? ;D
Just the general fixation on gender as a sexual thing and not a gender thing, the dehumanization of transgender individuals, and vague connections to pedophilia and “child corruption” that don’t exist, as well as erasing trans identities and othering them, referring to brains as “male brains” for transwomen, the list goes on. Touch grass.
and that is exactly what them rich people think and you can do nothing about it, because you poor.
It’s exactly what you seem to think, me not being a billionaire has nothing to do with your intense transphobia.
oh I am the problem now? :D some of you people are hilarious. Touch grass
You’re a massive transphobe, and that’s a problem.
We don’t have men’s brains. Scans actually show that our brain structures are more similar with our gender identity than our assigned gender at birth, especially after hormonal and social transitioning.
what the fuck is wrong with you
Alright, poster, I’m revoking your right to lump yourself in with “normal” people as you clearly do not meet the requirements
The reasons generally start out personal and become generalized as a political “position”, which really consumes your life after a while.
Rowling has said that she had a queer “phase” and that if she were going through that nowadays, she would likely have ended up considering herself trans (incorrectly, by her assertion). That reads to me as some internalized bigotry that she never worked through. Musk has a daughter who’s a trans woman and disowned him for being a piece of shit. He started posting about “pronouns” soon after. And Zuckerberg seems to have seen the way the winds are blowing with the current administration and jumped on the anti-trans bandwagon because he’s a lizard man with no soul (metaphorically, not in the David Icke antisemitic way). These are all guesses, but not based on nothing.
It ends up being socially unacceptable to say, “trans people remind me of my estranged daughter so I don’t like them,” and rightly so. So you have to retreat and bury the context, taking it up as a matter of principle. And your mind can backfill the justification over and over again, further cementing the ideas as people start to ask you to talk about trans people over and over again. After all, you’re a public figure who doesn’t like trans people. That’s a hot topic. People on Twitter want to talk about it. Reporters want to talk about it. So it snowballs from there. Transphobia can absolutely take over the life of a public figure.
Philosophy Tube has an excellent video on something called phantasms and how people get stuck in irrational worldviews. Would recommend.
astute observation. Zuckerberg with all his new 'masculine energy" stuff, could still fit in your approach: he dont accept his woman side
Rich/famous transphobes’ voices are louder because they’re rich, unfortunately. It’s the same problem with every other awful opinion that rich/famous people have.
I do suspect though that it also has to do with social class and thinking that they are “above”.
yeah may be it’s just rich people having a louder voice . But trans existed for a long time, and we never heard so much vitriol against them until a few decade back
It is a useful distraction from the surplus value extraction from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.
The Bourgeoisie hire workers and pay them for their work. But with what money? The money made by selling a product or service. But who did the work to create said product or service? The workers did. So workers do work, which makes money for the company. But do the workers receive all of it? After all, they did all the work. But no, no they don’t. If the Bourgeoisie gave all the money the workers to back to the workers, them how could the Bourgeoisie make a profit? It thereby must follow that the Bourgeoisie pay their workers less than the value they produce, thereby stealing that money from the workers.
You might say “but the bourgeoisie own the company! And they also do some work themselves! Some people’s work just contributes more than others.” Yeah, yeah, but who gets to decide how much of the pie each person gets? How much should be reinvested and what not? Who gets to decide what is done with the money made? The Bourgeoisie! But why them? Why do the workers not have a say in how the money they made is used? Because the Bourgeoisie had enough money to buy the means necessary to make money (the factories, infrastructure or whatever) and the workers did not. How did the Bourgeoisie get all that money you ask? By stealing worker’s wages.
What does this have to do with trans people?
- All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
This whole anti-trans thing is a useful distraction. Bad people will believe it’s those dam trans people’s fault their country is shit and not investigate any further. Good people will be distracted arguing against the bad people on why being trans isn’t evil, all the while the real culprits laugh as we fight each other.
Remember: Desperate people make great workers and distracted citizens. Keep people busy with basic necessities and they won’t have time or energy to realize who is really exploiting them.
- It makes trans folk more exploitable
Racism a misogyny is useful for the Bourgeoisie as it allows them to pay lower wages. The bourgeoisie want to pay their workers a little as possible. Desperate jobless people are more willing to take a bad deal because any job is better than homelessness. That means the more desperate people there are, the lower the wages they can pay, as they can replace workers who demand a higher wage with workers from this reserve.
Racism keeps people of color in poverty allowing them to be more easily exploited. Misogyny justifies paying women half the wage of a man, which is exactly what the Bourgeoisie want.
Likewise, if trans folk are illegalized that will make it hard for them to find a job, adding even more people to the reverse army of labour.
It’s called smokescreen. Turns the attention of the masses away of their wealth and power
I get it. But that smokescreen is achieved with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Throwing Trans in , seems so random
This smoke screen around LGBTQ+ and anti immigration has been stoked for nearly 30 years in order to veer away from the actual discussion and laws around wealth inequality, healthcare, etc. It’s all a guise against minority groups who can’t fight back. Sometimes positive sometimes negative, but at the end of the day billionaires stoke the fear around these minority groups and they get to keep growing their billions without restriction.
The rhetoric against immigrants serves as a more general purpose blaming scheme. Economy bad because immigrants. You’re unemployed because immigrants. Crime because immigrants. Your bad grades are immigrants.
LGBTQ+ rights have always been a contentious point because it has always worked incredibly well for diverting attention on all sides, especially the media. The right always paints them as these depraved monsters that will convert children into gay communist sex on schools, which is a “threat” that’s “up close and personal”
Reality has a left leaning bias. Immigrants have largely become normalized, so they need something else to scrape goat.
In the case of Rowling, it wasn’t a smoke screen so much as black mold.
