Comment by LexiMax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LexiMax | Hacker News Reader

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> I don’t understand why that particular thing works so well, even on some people you would not expect.

When you engage these sorts of people and ask the right follow-up questions, there's some common underlying concerns that underpin the polite fictions.

I've found that for men, they are scared that the next woman they look at covetously might have been AMAB. Even if they understand that there is a difference between sex and gender, they are scared that their acquaintances aren't, and are terrified of the prospect of being "tricked" into being attracted to someone who they see as a man. For women, I've found that they see men as biologically and intrinsically dangerous, and that a tiger doesn't change its stripes just because they are alienated from masculinity.

Not that I agree with either viewpoint. Being worried about being "accidentally gay" speaks more to underlying insecurities surrounding masculinity, and "men are inherently dangerous" is just misandry. But I'm no longer surprised by TDS.

I don't think this is happening organically. Trans people are such a small percentage of the population but we've been getting a ton of media coverage. There's a concerted effort on the right to demonize us and that filters down into the culture.

I can't speak to men but women are so much more comfortable around me since I came out. Most of my partners and friends have been cis women. One of the best parts of transitioning is random women will come up and talk to me when I'm running errands. This started happening early in my transition when I was very much visibly trans. People can be weird around me if they haven't met a trans person before but the people who are hostile tend to be terminally online.

I'm not trying to downplay the inordinate amount of media coverage transfolk are getting.

However, effective propaganda needs an audience willing to listen and accept the things they're being told. I don't think that propaganda turns good people hateful. Instead, I believe it gives people predisposed to certain hateful beliefs a socially acceptable excuse they can repeat for feeling the way they do.

> For women, I've found that they see men as biologically and intrinsically dangerous, and that a tiger doesn't change its stripes just because they are alienated from masculinity.

This is demonstrably true in many scenarios. Such as, males being transferred to women's prisons because they say they are women. As a consequence, female prisoners have been sexually assaulted and raped by these men. Drawing attention to this isn't misandry, it's reality.

So...there's a funny little consequence of putting in the work to have those real-life conversations, and that's that one starts to be able to see "past" post-hoc justifications like yours.

Trying to argue the "facts" with anonymous internet denizens is pretty much useless, because especially in today's post-truth landscape, you can find justification for any horrendous opinion if you dig deep enough. That is even assuming the person you're talking to is even real and not an AI, a bored sociopath on an alt account, a paid shill or otherwise.

Thankfully, spaces like these are very much not representative of real life, where most individuals are nice, decent people minding their own business, and "saving face" isn't seen as such an imperative away from the public scrutiny of the internet.

Depends who you talk to, I suppose.

In the real-life conversations I've had about this issue, most people are horrified when they find out that men, transferred to women's prisons due to trans activist policy, have been sexually assaulting and raping female inmates. Keeping in mind that this isn't a hypothetical about what might happen but is a direct result of harmful policy, and involves documented cases and real victims.

It tends to prompt a rethink about this whole topic.

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