After Elon Musk launched the 'Cancel Netflix' Campaign, Netflix shares down 2.2%
forbes.com
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Wow. Replace "transgender" with "homosexual" and you get the homophobia of the late 20th Century. Are some people really so afraid of their kids learning that some people are happy being transgender?
Elon disowned his trans daughter Vivian, so yes. It doesn't matter to him that she is happy, what matters is that this isn't what he wanted, and now he's lashing out at the world for letting this injustice happen to him.
Vivian alleges that Elon uses sex-selective IVF with a preference for boys, implying those control freak tendencies go back to before she was even born. He didn't just want a son, he demanded one, and then that child turning the tables on him broke his brain.
(Interestingly, early noughties transphobia had a fairly different character; the “think of the children” aspect is fairly new.)
This kind of moral panic around kids is new (though, as I mentioned, it very much echoes the homophobic movement a few decades ago), as is the bathrooms thing.
I’m convinced that its emergence at least in this part of the world was almost entirely due to the British right needing a new wedge issue after Brexit; you see it being suddenly pushed very hard out of nowhere there post-2016, and especially post-2021. From Britain, it leaked out, with European transphobia having a strong British flavour.
As to the sudden shift in the UK, Cameron and May's Conservative governments planned to introduce self-ID (and Cameron was very noisy about the UK's high rating on LGBT rights - of course it has since slid quite a bit in those rankings...), Boris was kinda transphobic but not particularly loud about it, but then by 2022 you see Penny Mordaunt basically facing a sort of transphobia purity test in her leadership campaign (https://news.sky.com/story/penny-mordaunt-dismisses-claims-a...). It was a really rapid about-face.
In fact, the recent UK Supreme Court case which resulted in a ruling that references to "sex", "woman" and "man" in the Equality Act refer to biological sex (as in, a person's sex observed at birth), was brought by a small group of women who met on FWR.
More generally, I think much of the reason that the UK has been so successful in resisting and reversing policy that prioritises self-declared gender identity over sex is that we have a strong tradition of women's advocacy for single-sex provisions, that has been pursued regardless of other political affiliations.
> Current policy debates regarding transgender people’s access to restrooms and other gendered facilities are predicated on narratives about protecting the safety and privacy of women’s spaces. These narratives lack evidence showing any negative impacts on safety and privacy in women’s restrooms or other facilities when transgender people can use restrooms according to their gender identity. However, transgender people consistently report having negative experiences in restrooms perpetrated by others, including denial of access, verbal harassment, and physical assault. Evidence suggests that transgender people are put at added risk if required by law to use restrooms in accordance with their sex assigned at birth.
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/safety-i...
Looking at crime statistics won't capture the discomfort and intimidation that many women will experience upon encountering intrusive males in female spaces, nor their withdrawal from public life as a consequence of this.
Also it focuses heavily on toilet facilities but this is just a part of the wider issue. Like for example there's a much worse problem in women's prisons where males are being transferred in based on self-declared gender identity, with sexual assaults, rapes and impregnation of female prisoners by these men occurring as a direct result of such policy.
I agree that these are important things, and there's a discussion to be had about it. There's an argument for some safe spaces such as women's refuges having some kind of biological criteria. But I think the Supreme Court ruling is too broadly sweeping and I have doubts that it's a net positive.
This is slightly derailing from topic though, which is about how transphobia has surged in recent years. I'm curious to know if you think it's reasonable to boycott Netflix because they have produced kids shows with transgender characters.
As an example of how this should work going forward: a male work colleague who decides to start calling himself a woman and putting "she/her" in his email signature and so on can't be discriminated against because of this, which is fair. But also his female colleagues can be assured he has no right to start barging in on the women's toilets or changing rooms, which is also fair.
Back on the topic of boycotting Netflix, I personally think it's an overreaction. The whole gender identity ideological system sits somewhere between ludicrous and sexist, depending on exactly which beliefs someone takes from it, but there's loads of other shows on Netflix that are also ludicrous and also sexist. I feel it's an opportunity for critique of these ideas, rather than a blanket boycott of the whole platform.
That said, I wouldn't want my child to start believing this nonsense when she gets older but it feels like a fad that's on its way out. I don't think it'll be a problem. I'm more concerned about all the other misogynistic messaging that shows no sign of disappearing any time soon.
What if they've fully committed to the process and undergone gender reassignment surgery, hormone therapy etc... Should that change anything in your view? At that point it's clearly more than just labelling themselves.
> I wouldn't want my child to start believing this nonsense when she gets older but it feels like a fad that's on its way out.
Transsexuality is a fad? Hasn't it existed in some form or another throughout all human culture and history?
Like for example, women in prison won't have any problem if they don't look stereotypically feminine. But they certainly are under significant threat if male prisoners are locked up with them.