Finalization 3 - The Politics One
It’s come to this.
Ok girls, so this is a letter I really hoped wouldn’t need to be written and one that I hope can be removed from the course at some point in the future because what it covers simply ceases to be an issue, but we need to get a little political.
Don’t worry too much, I’m not about to suggest you put on your best frock and highest heels and head out to overthrow capitalism, not least because for that kind of work, overalls and sensible shoes are a better choice of outfit.
What we’re going to talk about is the current furore surrounding trans rights.
Origins
The people opposing trans rights fall into two broad camps. A small number of them, who are the motivating force behind it, are either true believers who are fundamentally opposed to the very notion of trans people, let alone their existence, or people who want personal or political power by swimming with the tide and trying to directly benefit from it.
The other group, which make up the vast number of its supporters, are misinformed, either by choice or by accident, or working off old prejudices without applying any thought to or about them.
This is another case where the tail wags the dog, the small group of true believers at the top use their money, power, social media status etc to push or even just promote ideas that are then filtered down to everyone else.
Most people won’t even notice them but if you’re someone who has been led to believe that trans people are getting more than their “fair share”, getting special treatment or are a danger to you or other people for **insert reason here** then these talking points will be adopted and forwarded on even further.
Methods
Because social media often works as an echo chamber, it can be hard to realise you’ve even started down this path and once you do, it can be even harder to get out and it can lead to the individual been drawn deeper and deeper into it as they decide that the people who don’t agree simply don’t understand and you can find many heartbreaking messages from people who have lost friends and family because they can’t get out of this vicious circle.
This is especially dangerous because sites like YouTube work off a measure called “engagement”, videos that provoke the most comments and discussions are promoted to more people (to generate more comments and discussions aka engagement) which is why a lot of people will find that videos on the far right of politics or conspiracy theories start to creep into their recommended watch list, even when they have no history of watching anything even remotely connected to them.
Once they reach a point where they are too far in, anyone disagreeing with them is at best ignorant and at worst dangerously uninformed. This will lead to them either trying to persuade them that they are wrong or they’ll give in, become angry and aggressive and begin to push people away.
Some people don’t really support the position at all, they’re just opportunity leeches who see the engagement this kind of thing gets on social media and want it for themselves and the benefits in money and fame (which leads to the money) that it can bring. If tomorrow it turned out that banning model trains led to the same kind of heated debates and audience numbers, they’d be passionately for the banning of model trains.
Even worse, traditional media (print, TV) fall into the same trap, they see the numbers generated by transphobia and start to either cater to it by attempting to “both sides” the issue or just accepting it as mainstream and copying them almost verbatim.
Goals
One of the many sad things about this form of transphobia is that a lot of the people who make up the mass of its supporters are arguing in good faith and standing up for what they believe in, it’s just that they’re doing it about a topic they have no direct experience of and all of their information comes from people who are dead set against it.
On the whole, these won’t be “bad” people per se, if you were to point out that the ultimate end goal of this kind of thing is, at best, relegating trans people to second class status they would be aghast at the very idea, surely you’ve misunderstood they just don’t want them to be in a better position than everyone else and they’ll struggle to accept that trans people are a frequently persecuted minority.
Commonly these will be people from older generations, we’ve talked about prejudices like this before and how it’s not uncommon for your great-grandparent/grandparents to be at least a little racist or homophobic because they’re a reflection of the times in which they were raised.
Transphobia springs from a similar place that homophobia comes from. A lot of people don’t really know too much about it and the little they do know is at best a mix of fact and fiction but from that, the idea of it strikes them in a very odd place.
A lot of the media and language that is used springs from the same place too. It’s mostly warmed over nonsense from any number of “gay scares” from earlier decades. It would be funny if the goals they were aiming for weren’t so bad. The panic always resolves around toilets, children and women whether the minority in question is ethnic, homosexuals or trans people.
Gender critical
Most people never even think to question or explore their gender, just as most people never really used to think to explore their sexuality so the idea that some people do hits them somewhere they’ve tried to avoid thinking about and when it does, it starts raising all kinds of questions in their minds.
No one can make you gay or trans but if you’ve never been confronted with the idea then it can bring up all kinds of thoughts and feelings you’ve never had to contend with before and if you find they have some basis, you can mistake whatever incident started you exploring as the cause of what you find, not just something that motivated you to look in the dark corners you’ve been avoiding.
Trans people, sissies, and anyone who makes the effort to explore themselves in this manner are gender critical, not the people who claim this title for themselves.
Goals
At best the goal of this kind of material is to want trans people reduced to second class citizens and at worst they want to make it impossible for them to exist in public (for example by legislating about toilet access) or even to mandate their existence at all, by applying ever stricter legislative control and access to puberty blockers and hormones.
This can be done very quietly and with almost no one noticing by defunding trans healthcare and making it take longer and longer before they can get the paperwork, prescriptions etc that they need.
Even worse, it doesn’t stop there. This is the first step on the path to “split the rainbow” of the LGBTQIA+ community. They are attacking what they view as the smallest and easiest group and once they’ve done that they will move on to the rest.
You can find some early examples of this in some online forums, discussions about how bisexuals are “confused” or slogans like “Get the L out” as the first step for splitting bisexuals and lesbians off from the wider community.
Once you break a large community down into smaller pieces, they are much easier to tackle and disenfranchise.
Even if they managed all of this, it wouldn’t stop, they’d cast around for another group to begin the same process with because nothing will ever be enough. If you get people riled up by telling them that a certain group is “the enemy”, what happens when that group is dealt with and the original problems aren’t solved? Turning around with a, “whoops my bad!” isn’t going to be enough and the only way to avoid any responsibility for your actions is to blame someone else and the cycle begins again.
What can we do?
In the same way that racism is something that ethnic minorities suffer from but it’s not their responsibility to solve, transphobia is something that trans people can’t solve on their own.
Hopefully it’s obvious from what we’ve covered here that getting into online screaming fights isn’t the best way to deal with this. Most of the people feed off anger and fire and if you end up talking with someone about this (because like most forms of bigotry, people will rarely announce themselves as a bigot) be calm and give polite, factual answers.
As with most debates, you’re not necessarily trying to convince the person you’re talking with but onlookers.
The main thing you can do is to support trans people. If you’re a student at the Academy then there’s a very good chance that you’re somewhere on the rainbow so remember your responsibility to have solidarity with everyone else who is and always keep in mind trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are valid!
If you’ve made it this far then I hope you’ll choose to stand with us but if you’re undecided I will end on one final note that may well strike much closer to home for you. Recently sissy hypno has become a hot topic in the transphobe discussion sphere and it is now treated as almost an article of faith that even if it wasn’t specifically designed to do so (and plenty of people think it was) sissy hypnosis videos are making people trans!
Having reached this point in the course, the very idea should strike you as ridiculous but that doesn’t actually matter. If enough people believe it, then it will be treated as a fact. Sissy Hypno was something that suffered tremendously because of the Pornhub purge at the end of 2020 and the number of places where it’s welcome online is dropping. It won’t take much for it to be either banned or heavily restricted.
Even if this happens, it won’t disappear entirely but it will become harder and harder to find and the number of people prepared to make new videos will drop and then what was once a thriving ecosystem will be on the verge of extinction.
Good news
To end on an up note, this are signs that we’re winning. The people who are pushing this agenda are the ones who lost the argument on gay marriage and have moved on to another topic that they feel is similar but where they feel they will have an easier time persuading people.
In a few years time, they’ll lose again and move on to something else or if we’re very lucky, give up entirely but for now, we just need to be alert to people who do not have our best intentions at heart...despite what they might claim.
Homework
Put on your best frock and highest heel and head out and overthrow capitalism…
No! No homework for this letter, carry on with what you’ve been given in the last one. We’ll write to you again in a couple of days.
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