Why do people seem more transphobic than 4 years ago?

[Daisy Jane]

I would say there are more people speaking negatively about trans people in the media, but I've been on a road trip for the last month, which included two weeks spending time in cities in the deep south. I never had any problems. People were either friendly, or minding their own business. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in rural areas, but the few times I did make stops I was treated well.

[AnneK]

Yes, really. Trump himself is not the establishment.

And who is it who's backing him?  Take a look at the shady deals that seem to be going on around him.  Look at VP Pence, who used to be Indiana governor.  You think he supports us?  Look at all the recent stuff about gun control, with Georgia blocking a fuel tax cut for Delta Airlines, simply because they no longer give NRA members a discount?  It that left wing?

[Faith]

My take is a generalization and then I'm out of this topic.

Extreme left == bad
Extreme right == bad
Extreme anything == bad
When you go extreme views on anything you lose objectivity for things (anything) as a whole.

my opinion on the actual topical question based on my personal experiences:
vocal anti-trans is high. human nature is that what you disagree with gets the loudest voice. If people were as loud with compliments and agreements as they are about disagreeing or complaining I believe the perception would change.

I have run into avoidance but not hatred. The avoidance seems to be based on discomfort, not hate, they just don't know how to act. Overall people are more friendly with me now then ever. People as a whole are accepting, individuals stand out when in opposition.

Why do people seem more transphobic than 4 years ago?
Because that is what is being spouted the loudest right now. Media is ratings and entertainment, they will go with what's most dramatic. Don't let the vocal few taint your perception.

yes, I know, there are areas very anti-trans, really anti-anything that upsets their simple b/w belief system. Your local area experience is likely different than mine. Like I said, this is a generalization from my experiences and that forms my opinion.

[HappyMoni]

Whenever I look at US outlets, they're endlessly complaining about anything and everything Trump, from NK to his hair to his kids. All kinds of outlets from Vice to TNYT to CNN to Metro to The Guardian, MSNBC, NBC, Buzzfeed, Huffpost, Washington Post, the Economist, Politico, and the BBC all appear to have leftist bias on most issues. On the other end of the scale sites like Breitbart / Drudge are regarded as dens of bigotry and deserving of being shut down. About the only one left with any remote 'cred' on the right of center appears to be Fox. 

Yes, I'd say there's a liberal bias in the mainstream today for the most part.

That's not even mentioning that Google and YouTube have begun censoring independent commentators on their platforms who don't have leftist bias, or making it increasingly difficult for them to output content without strikes. And I'm not even talking about people on the far right. They've been demonetizing leftists and centrists who dare discuss "controversial issues" for more than a year now, because advertising companies have a leftist bias and don't want their ads shown on these channels. They've now stepped up the censorship against many of those for real as well.

Yes, really. Trump himself is not the establishment. He wasn't supposed to win, by the looks of things, but did on a technicality. By the establishment I refer to the machinery that runs/underpins government, including elements of the government itself, and I'm referring to academia, and the press, and globalists, most of which appear to loathe him with a passion. If he was their golden boy, he wouldn't be having any optics issues. As it happens they seethe every time the man's terrible hair so much as blows in the wind.

I could sit here and point out how I know a very different reality from what you stated here. What good would it do? My blood pressure goes up, maybe you get upset with me. It really doesn't address the original post. The fact is trans people are under attack by the waste majority of 'right' sided politicians in my country. They either are actively working against us or are silently standing by while their colleagues work their hate or play games with our lives for reelection purposes. The 'liberal' media said absolutely nothing about the anti LGBTQI organization that this Billy Graham created who was lying in state at our Capitol recently. It is neither liberal nor conservative to call someone out when they act like a jerk. No disrespect to you personally Kylo.

[Kylo]

Big difference between free speech & offending someone. On the whole I can't say transphobia is any worse or better over here (UK). There is a lot more racism/xenophobia however

Look at it this way. Anything - anything at all that you or I might say has the potential to offend somebody, somewhere. I could say, for the sake of argument, that your last post offended me. And if there was a law in place that said the person who felt offended has the right to get you censored to protect their feelings, then you will be censored.

And what if that post was something gravely important, something about the state of things or their own situation that needed to be said? Some truth that needed out. Anyone who didn't want you to say it now has carte blanche to get you shut up under such offence laws. That's what we've allowed to happen in the UK now. It's a mistake.

Yes, it's not nice when people get their feelings hurt, but it is so much more important than mere feelings that speech remains free, and we don't make it so that people's rights and speech ends where someone's sense of feeling offended begins. Because there is no end to what they might be offended by. No way to limit or police that, and it will be abused, because that's human nature.

Take the immigration issue. There's good and bad sides to that and people should be free to discuss those. Germany however recently passed laws that mean criticizing immigrants or government policy on it could be a potential criminal offense, and over here now if you start tweeting about it and someone gets offended by what you said you might just get a knock on the door from the bizzies. If people can't see what's wrong with this picture, there's no help for them. These aren't real crimes. Real crimes are the ones happening out on the streets. Why on earth is our police force worrying about and spending public money arresting twitter users and prosecuting opinions and racist jokes when we have actual terrorism and criminals to worry about?   

I could sit here and point out how I know a very different reality from what you stated here. What good would it do? My blood pressure goes up, maybe you get upset with me. It really doesn't address the original post. The fact is trans people are under attack by the waste majority of 'right' sided politicians in my country. They either are actively working against us or are silently standing by while their colleagues work their hate or play games with our lives for reelection purposes. The 'liberal' media said absolutely nothing about the anti LGBTQI organization that this Billy Graham created who was lying in state at our Capitol recently. It is neither liberal nor conservative to call someone out when they act like a jerk. No disrespect to you personally Kylo.

If you live in the US and I don't, I'm sure you see much more. I'm just saying what I see from here when I look at the news outlets - and I look at them all, I don't have a favorite. You can't have a favorite if you want to avoid the rampant bias and omission that goes on. There's generally little criticism that I can see of the behavior of the left or the far left, on average compared to the coverage of the far right activity. I would expect local news between states might vary a bit since the states themselves have different political demographics too. There are people on the right calling out people like us. But how frequently and at how much volume compared to people who don't, or people who are in protest on our behalf, or people who don't say anything? I can say that during the election, the mainstream media appeared to be almost wholly in support of Hillary and had been ridiculing Trump for over half a year beforehand, and the general tone after his election among it was hysteria. I was genuinely surprised he won because I figured the press had well and truly ground him underfoot in the eyes of the public, and they were trying to. I've never seen them try so hard at it in my entire life.   

We should make this a separate issue from Trump's decision about trans folks, because what he says and does is not the will of the average American citizen. The press is also largely independent of him and he seems to have a little war going on with some of it, doesn't he? Just the sizes of the protests and marches that have been going on since he got in is enough to tell me Trump's word isn't America's word. I'm not surprised many right-side politicians would be on board with his policies for trans people though, I'd expect at least some of them to in the same way I'd expect the Pope to be against gay marriage. So when he makes decision for the military on us or removes us from official websites, I can't assume most Americans are cheering it on. I also noticed several of my friends in the US chose to vote Trump in the hope he will take measures to revive the economy that Hillary wouldn't, not because they're xenophobes or bigots.

But I agree, the current government will use this opportunity to try to knock our progress down a few notches if they can, that's to be expected... the more high-profile an issue we become for positive purposes (and we have lately) the more visible a target we are for negative ones also, earning a few cheap brownie points from some of their voting block to knock us back. My main point though is that from the outside, there is an extreme amount of media and public panic over "the rise of the far right" and almost none over the dangers posed by the rise of the far left, which has actually done a great deal of damage and meted out uncalled for violence as well, and now we seem to have got to the point where progressives can burn signs with free speech on them in America of all places, or start calling for a reintroduction of racial segregation in universities, and nobody seems equally hysterical about this. Perhaps it's because most people are aware of what the far right and "modern Nazis" are, but have almost no clue just what Antifa is, where it comes from or what its plans are.

[Lady Sarah]

It would appear the extremists say that the only freedoms anyone should have, is the things that those extremists do. That goes for extremist conservative and extremist liberal, just as it does extremist Muslims. Fortunately, most people are moderates. The extremist views posed by certain groups are encouraging such behavior in those that are seeking a way to express the anger they've been keeping inside them for years, even if the anger being expressed has nothing to do with whom they are expressing it at. The internet certainly has it's share of trolls, those who hide behind the anonymity of a computer screen to make other people miserable. Sadly, these trolls have learned they can even swing a political election in a direction they like.

[Deborah]

@kylo
The situation you describe with free speech is nothing like the USA.  People here remain free to say the most outlandish and often insanely idiotic things to their heart's content.  This is to the point that some of our "free speakers" who never suffer any domestic consequences for their words are banned from many other countries in Europe, Africa, and some places in Latin America.  This is particularly true for some of our monotheistic exclusionary preachers who take such joy in telling people they're going to burn in Hell and that the latest natural disaster was their fault.  We're used to those idiots and they face no legal restrictions.  They do however face the reaction of public opinion and the free market, as it should be.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MistressStevie]

In public discourse it easy to find many examples of disagreement with any position other than your own being attacked with far more vitriol than not than long ago.  Or maybe that is just tainted by the idea that the past is much more golden than the present.   Both are fed though by tons of channels of information from mass media to websites devoted to the most extreme. 

The media and by inclusion our internet may be contributing to the demise of intelligent people agreeing to disagree POLITELY as it is now so easy to find believers of nearly any extreme position.  I try to read information from a variety of sources even those I disagree with.  It is important to know your enemy as was pointed out by Sun Tzu. 

I suspect, if we could get a good count, there are many more positive trans events than not all that long ago.  But, the voices of dissent have platforms galore.  With confirmation bias we can find nearly anything we expect to find.   Find good where possible, be good with others, and hope it keeps working.  We could live in areas with significantly less freedom. 

[BT04]

It's many years of reactionary behavior reacting to reactionary behavior reacting to reactionary behavior. It goes back a long time, but nobody wants to hear me talk about Oswald Spengler again lol.

What I want to see is less time lamenting the situation and more time spent doing something about it; learning self-defense, getting a carry permit, reaching out to people in proximity to us instead of fretting about what's going on 1000 miles away, and being open to accepting kindness or tolerance from people that the news would have us believe want us dead - or be skeptical of people that the news tells us are our allies.

The US's two-party system is largely a lie used to keep people divided and scared of each other. Try not to buy into it.

[MistressStevie]

The US's two-party system is largely a lie used to keep people divided and scared of each other. Try not to buy into it.

George Carlin pointed this out many years ago and in all to many of his presentations. 
This video from 1992 pretty well sums it up: 

Warning about language and anti-political correctness required for any Carlin work.  But he spent a career
pointing out that we focus more on what divides us--possibly to our own demise. 

[yayo]

It's a byproduct of exposure. People hardly knew trans people existed when I started in 2012. Caitlyn and Laverne put trans women on the map. In my opinion, neither are the best examples. Either way, once people are aware of something, there is an adjustment period before acceptance. My guess is it won't take as long as it did with gays because these things are exponential.

[AnneK]

We should make this a separate issue from Trump's decision about trans folks, because what he says and does is not the will of the average American citizen.

I guess you haven't met the Walmart crowd.   

[BT04]

Caitlyn and Laverne put trans women on the map. In my opinion, neither are the best examples.

There is no best example, unfortunately. Social conservatives are not a monolithic voting demographic who could all be swayed by a single 'best example' trans person. Liberals would do well to remember the concept of plurality whenever they see to it to try to convince anyone of anything.

RE: George Carlin, yes! Political correctness is a disease of rhetoric as far as I'm concerned - there is being rude to the company that you're in or not. We'd do well to remember Carlin and other truth-sayers who give far more of a damn about polity than politeness.

[pamelatransuk]

It's a byproduct of exposure. People hardly knew trans people existed when I started in 2012. Caitlyn and Laverne put trans women on the map. In my opinion, neither are the best examples. Either way, once people are aware of something, there is an adjustment period before acceptance. My guess is it won't take as long as it did with gays because these things are exponential.

Transgender matters only really came into the public domain around 2000. Certainly since 2010 there has been a gradual increase in discussion generally - media, news, internet and of course people coming out of the closet.

So basically I agree with Yayo. More exposure meaning more trans news good and bad. More of us breeds sadly more opposition on internet and elsewhere. But again just like gays had to wait, our time for acceptance will come as times are gradually changing.

Pamela