I’m with you on this, but I’m also against the opposite: the blind praise and promotion of being trans for some reason. Look, if you have something wired in your brain different that makes you present as another gender, go ahead. Present yourself how you want, I can’t imagine why I’d give much of a shit. It’s a free country. But why do people have to constantly yap and take over every non right wing chud internet space to make it about being trans or related like talking about how hot femboys are. It’s like…I mean honestly? A trend. And something major and life changing like that shouldn’t be a trend. I’m sorry but that is dumb. Have your own spaces where you can talk about your own issues, sure. Don’t be afraid to mention it in other spaces, sure. I’m cool with that. But maybe don’t take over everyone else’s spaces and make everything about you. Being annoying on purpose just doesn’t work in your favor.
Also related, if psychologists and such agree that the best way to treat gender dysphoria is hormones, that’s cool. But like maybe don’t push socialized treatment for that so hard when we have literally nothing else socialized in healthcare. Priorities, you know? People are dying, every day, and cosmetic appearance for something a lot of people find weird and off putting is too easy of a target to keep healthcare terrible. I’m not saying it’s right, but you have to pick your battles sometimes. Just like if you want to make someone not racist towards black people, maybe show them something like jazz or soul first, not hip hop. Is hip hop art? Absolutely, one of my favorite genres. But it’s going to be an immediate turnoff if you jump to bad language and drug dealing and bitches and the other rap tropes. Should you have to cater to someone racist or transphobic? No, but that’s the world we live in. Everyone gets to vote. and everyone starts somewhere with understanding people different than themselves.
Trans rights are human rights in the sense that you should be free to look and present how you want and not be harassed about it. But that doesn’t mean you get to have everything you want, for free, and everyone has to not only treat and react to you exactly how you imagined it in your head, but also praise you for being different. That’s not how the world works, for anything.
I definitely understand the annoyance, but I let it go because I understand how “Pride” works as a concept.
Bigots and Nazis need to feel “popular”, like they live in a world of their making. One of the biggest weapons against them is showing how unpopular they are. The day that they make an offhand crass comment, and the whole room turns against them.
Pride moments, raising trans positivity unwarranted, are meant to trap and push out those mentalities; keep reminding hateful bigots that “You are not welcome. Cut it out.”
Where it gets tricky is for the many people who are fine with it and don’t care, but just get gradually annoyed. I’m partly there, but I also understand that Trans people have put up with enough of the world’s shit that they’re allowed to vent back for a generation or so at all the baseless hate.
Priority in socialized healthcare is a tricky fight. Everyone wants their cause supported, when really all of them should be. The infighting is based around fear, and not entirely unwarranted, so I don’t have easy answers.
I think this is well said. You should be proud to be who you are, and sometimes bigots need a reality check, but it gets to a point where it is counter productive. I remember a few years ago when people were upset about the Proud Boys militia, and leftists made memes about gay dudes wearing banana hammocks being our “proud boys” because of gay pride. And, uh…no. First, it’s just not funny, so it fails as a meme. Second, being gay does not make you the representative of leftist/progressive ideals, I’m sorry. And third, I don’t particularly want to see a dude’s dick imprint on my home page either, please stop.
Granted, I am in more leftist spaces than most people, but I see the trans flag more than any flag, even the US flag. Even during the world cup where every country was patriotic, I still saw more trans flag spam than anything else. And that is absolutely ridiculous to me, especially for a cause such as being trans, whose identity is generally “I want to be seen as the other gender and I’d prefer people don’t make a big deal about it”, not “my identity is being trans and I will never let you stop thinking about what’s in my pants”.
I hear you with healthcare but in most cases, “my cause or your cause” is the same cause, even if it doesn’t specifically apply to you. If life saving medicine is free, we all win, period. Nobody is like “fuck people with type 1 diabetes, my tax dollars shouldn’t go to them getting insulin which would be negligibly cheap in a socialized system” unless they’re just vehemently anti-socialized medicine in general. Trans “healthcare” is, ultimately, not health related, it is cosmetic surgery or changing your body for cosmetic reasons. Mental health related? Arguable, and I do agree that it is personally. But VERY arguable, and not a lot of people support it. So leading the charge on socialized medicine by making it about trying to psy-op people into thinking “trans rights=human rights, and trans rights=access to expensive treatment paid by tax dollars” only hurts everyone by being an easy scapegoat. Not to mention the whole related psy-op of trying to convince people being trans, particularly “girldick” is hot in porn and whatnot, which is a whole other can of worms. Trying to trick people with thinly veiled propaganda is not the move if you’re trying to start a serious movement. And it makes the trans movement, which is already polarizing and on shaky ground, come off to outsiders like a fetish, ESPECIALLY if you don’t personally know a trans person and only see what’s online. Which is a lot of people, since trans people are like 1% of the population, Trump is president so it is not popular to come out, and many trans people i didn’t know were trans until years of knowing them, because once again, the idea is to be quietly accepted as the other gender. Which makes all the trans spam even more perplexing. Who is actually posting all of this? LARPers? Well meaning supporters? Russian trolls trying to flanderize the movement?
Trans “healthcare” is, ultimately, not health related, it is cosmetic surgery or changing your body for cosmetic reasons.
In the same way someone getting their face reconstructed after a brutal car accident is “cosmetic.” Both are ultimately about making people comfortable in their skin.
Trans care saves lives. It saved mine. I don’t know what kind of monster can look at a 41% suicide attempt rate, look at the only care proven to massively reduce those rates, and then try to trivialize that care. Trans health care is one single most effective classes of medical care in modern medicine. Gender reassignment surgery has far better long term outcomes than knee replacements.
As for why there are so many trans people on Lemmy. Most of us left other spaces, often to get away from enlightened centrists who see our lives, healthcare, and civil rights as privileges to be granted if it’s politically convenient.
It is not about people’s lives being privileges, I resent you saying that. I thought I made it clear that I support trans people and do not tolerate bigotry. Everyone matters. Even if in a theoretical situation “just” 1% of the population is getting genocided, it is still genocide. I don’t value you or anyone else less than anyone else. I simply disagree with your premise, which I believe to be a false dichotomy. The statistics do indeed say there is a higher percentage of suicide rates for trans people. And why is that? In my opinion from looking at the evidence, I do not believe it is primarily or even very much at all related to bottom surgery being expensive. A lot of trans people are not even interested in that at all. It is because trans people are under a spotlight and a microscope, often scapegoated, and it really wears on somebody to be hated all the time and not know where it is safe to be themselves. And why is there such a spotlight? Part of it will always be bigots and right wing politicians deflecting blame. But part of it is self inflicted.
And that’s what I mean by the “taking over spaces” part of my comment. You are perfectly welcome in Lemmy as far as I concerned. You shouldn’t have to “hide” that you’re trans or avoid talking about issues that concern you. That’s not what I’m trying to say.
Think about it like this: imagine the trans spam was literally anything else. Say like…it was about India. I have Indian friends and coworkers, Indian food is great, Hinduism is kinda foreign to me but I find the concept and ethos very interesting, traditional Indian clothing is pretty and cool. Positive opinions, neutral at worst. Now imagine if Indian people refused to shut up about India. Screenshot of a movie with a character wearing a white shirt, orange light from a sunset and green grass “OMG GUYS THE COLORS OF THE INDIAN FLAG, ARE THEY IMPLYING THAT THIS RANDOM CHARACTER IS ACTUALLY INDIAN?!” Every food or cooking sub is taken over by Indian food, people comment on non Indian food “why not just make Indian dish?” Any random brown person “yeah it’s giving Indian vibes” Comment on a pretty girl’s Instagram : “So cute! Glad to see a fellow Indian be loud and proud” “Actually I’m not Indian” “Not yet ;)”
I think you can imagine people would start to have more negative opinions on Indian people if this were the case, or at the very least find them immature. Except this actually makes a lot more sense because there are literally a billion of them, and there are nowhere near that amount of trans people.
This, combined with the false dichotomy makes the movement come off as immature teenagers to a lot of people. I have not found that to be the case from trans people i know in real life, but that is the perception.
Even if I were to believe the false dichotomy of “pay for trans surgeries with taxpayer money or trans people will die”, that’s not any more convincing than it was when my ex girlfriend threatened to kill herself if we broke up. Me having sex with her is not healthcare because of her potential actions. I think it is important to be precise with language. And to be clear, I would vote for covering trans stuff with universal healthcare if it got on the ballot, as long as there were legal protections from something like a mentally ill parent forcing transitioning on their child.
Lastly, you say “politically convenient” as if I’m running for office. As previously mentioned, people die every day because they can’t afford healthcare, and it’s only getting worse. I know someone who divorced his wife so she won’t have to pay his medical bills after he got cancer. After burning through his life savings that he worked hard on and made sacrifices for, for THIRTY YEARS. Not only does he not get to enjoy any of the money he saved by working overtime, but he can’t even die young in peace knowing that his wife will be supported. He now has to worry that debt collectors will sue her after his death if they suss out that their divorce was due to debt. That is dystopian, a nightmare. And that is not “my problem vs your problem”. It can happen to you. And it is probably more likely to happen to you, as transitioning can be hard on your body. I’m not a fan of politics, I just recognize the reality. To some, people, being trans is an affront on god himself. It sure is stupid, but they will vote against their own self interest just to spite you. There is no universe where we will be able to jump to “trans people should get whatever they define as healthcare paid for by someone else.” from absolutely nothing being covered. Not anymore than we should have campaigned Frederick Douglas for president of the United States before we, you know, got rid of slavery. Could he have been a good president in a vacuum? Yes, he was an intelligent and wise person. But you knowing that, and me knowing that doesn’t mean it would have been a good idea. And NOTHING exists in a vacuum. Ever.
You fundamentally do not see trans people’s healthcare as legitimate. You are not welcome here.
People come to Lemmy precisely to escape enlightened centrists like yourself. Stay on the mainstream sites where you won’t have to see the icky trans people talking about their issues.
This is the thing that really bothers me. So many kids claiming to be “trans”, when they are very clearly going through common teenage rebellion/finding themselves. It does a disservice to those who really do have gender dysmorphia. The conservative “anti-trans” crowd can point to this and say “see, they’re all just being weird”.
And sure, there are kids who really are that way. My old ass thinks they should wait until they’re actually adults to go messing about with their hormones. That shit is permanent and they’re still developing. They can live as another gender in the meantime, no reason to stop that. But at least make the body modification decision as an adult.
I’m with you on this, but I’m also against the opposite: the blind praise and promotion of being trans for some reason. Look, if you have something wired in your brain different that makes you present as another gender, go ahead. Present yourself how you want, I can’t imagine why I’d give much of a shit. It’s a free country. But why do people have to constantly yap and take over every non right wing chud internet space to make it about being trans or related like talking about how hot femboys are. It’s like…I mean honestly? A trend. And something major and life changing like that shouldn’t be a trend. I’m sorry but that is dumb. Have your own spaces where you can talk about your own issues, sure. Don’t be afraid to mention it in other spaces, sure. I’m cool with that. But maybe don’t take over everyone else’s spaces and make everything about you. Being annoying on purpose just doesn’t work in your favor.
Also related, if psychologists and such agree that the best way to treat gender dysphoria is hormones, that’s cool. But like maybe don’t push socialized treatment for that so hard when we have literally nothing else socialized in healthcare. Priorities, you know? People are dying, every day, and cosmetic appearance for something a lot of people find weird and off putting is too easy of a target to keep healthcare terrible. I’m not saying it’s right, but you have to pick your battles sometimes. Just like if you want to make someone not racist towards black people, maybe show them something like jazz or soul first, not hip hop. Is hip hop art? Absolutely, one of my favorite genres. But it’s going to be an immediate turnoff if you jump to bad language and drug dealing and bitches and the other rap tropes. Should you have to cater to someone racist or transphobic? No, but that’s the world we live in. Everyone gets to vote. and everyone starts somewhere with understanding people different than themselves.
Trans rights are human rights in the sense that you should be free to look and present how you want and not be harassed about it. But that doesn’t mean you get to have everything you want, for free, and everyone has to not only treat and react to you exactly how you imagined it in your head, but also praise you for being different. That’s not how the world works, for anything.
I definitely understand the annoyance, but I let it go because I understand how “Pride” works as a concept.
Bigots and Nazis need to feel “popular”, like they live in a world of their making. One of the biggest weapons against them is showing how unpopular they are. The day that they make an offhand crass comment, and the whole room turns against them.
Pride moments, raising trans positivity unwarranted, are meant to trap and push out those mentalities; keep reminding hateful bigots that “You are not welcome. Cut it out.”
Where it gets tricky is for the many people who are fine with it and don’t care, but just get gradually annoyed. I’m partly there, but I also understand that Trans people have put up with enough of the world’s shit that they’re allowed to vent back for a generation or so at all the baseless hate.
Priority in socialized healthcare is a tricky fight. Everyone wants their cause supported, when really all of them should be. The infighting is based around fear, and not entirely unwarranted, so I don’t have easy answers.
I think this is well said. You should be proud to be who you are, and sometimes bigots need a reality check, but it gets to a point where it is counter productive. I remember a few years ago when people were upset about the Proud Boys militia, and leftists made memes about gay dudes wearing banana hammocks being our “proud boys” because of gay pride. And, uh…no. First, it’s just not funny, so it fails as a meme. Second, being gay does not make you the representative of leftist/progressive ideals, I’m sorry. And third, I don’t particularly want to see a dude’s dick imprint on my home page either, please stop.
Granted, I am in more leftist spaces than most people, but I see the trans flag more than any flag, even the US flag. Even during the world cup where every country was patriotic, I still saw more trans flag spam than anything else. And that is absolutely ridiculous to me, especially for a cause such as being trans, whose identity is generally “I want to be seen as the other gender and I’d prefer people don’t make a big deal about it”, not “my identity is being trans and I will never let you stop thinking about what’s in my pants”.
I hear you with healthcare but in most cases, “my cause or your cause” is the same cause, even if it doesn’t specifically apply to you. If life saving medicine is free, we all win, period. Nobody is like “fuck people with type 1 diabetes, my tax dollars shouldn’t go to them getting insulin which would be negligibly cheap in a socialized system” unless they’re just vehemently anti-socialized medicine in general. Trans “healthcare” is, ultimately, not health related, it is cosmetic surgery or changing your body for cosmetic reasons. Mental health related? Arguable, and I do agree that it is personally. But VERY arguable, and not a lot of people support it. So leading the charge on socialized medicine by making it about trying to psy-op people into thinking “trans rights=human rights, and trans rights=access to expensive treatment paid by tax dollars” only hurts everyone by being an easy scapegoat. Not to mention the whole related psy-op of trying to convince people being trans, particularly “girldick” is hot in porn and whatnot, which is a whole other can of worms. Trying to trick people with thinly veiled propaganda is not the move if you’re trying to start a serious movement. And it makes the trans movement, which is already polarizing and on shaky ground, come off to outsiders like a fetish, ESPECIALLY if you don’t personally know a trans person and only see what’s online. Which is a lot of people, since trans people are like 1% of the population, Trump is president so it is not popular to come out, and many trans people i didn’t know were trans until years of knowing them, because once again, the idea is to be quietly accepted as the other gender. Which makes all the trans spam even more perplexing. Who is actually posting all of this? LARPers? Well meaning supporters? Russian trolls trying to flanderize the movement?
In the same way someone getting their face reconstructed after a brutal car accident is “cosmetic.” Both are ultimately about making people comfortable in their skin.
Trans care saves lives. It saved mine. I don’t know what kind of monster can look at a 41% suicide attempt rate, look at the only care proven to massively reduce those rates, and then try to trivialize that care. Trans health care is one single most effective classes of medical care in modern medicine. Gender reassignment surgery has far better long term outcomes than knee replacements.
As for why there are so many trans people on Lemmy. Most of us left other spaces, often to get away from enlightened centrists who see our lives, healthcare, and civil rights as privileges to be granted if it’s politically convenient.
It is not about people’s lives being privileges, I resent you saying that. I thought I made it clear that I support trans people and do not tolerate bigotry. Everyone matters. Even if in a theoretical situation “just” 1% of the population is getting genocided, it is still genocide. I don’t value you or anyone else less than anyone else. I simply disagree with your premise, which I believe to be a false dichotomy. The statistics do indeed say there is a higher percentage of suicide rates for trans people. And why is that? In my opinion from looking at the evidence, I do not believe it is primarily or even very much at all related to bottom surgery being expensive. A lot of trans people are not even interested in that at all. It is because trans people are under a spotlight and a microscope, often scapegoated, and it really wears on somebody to be hated all the time and not know where it is safe to be themselves. And why is there such a spotlight? Part of it will always be bigots and right wing politicians deflecting blame. But part of it is self inflicted.
And that’s what I mean by the “taking over spaces” part of my comment. You are perfectly welcome in Lemmy as far as I concerned. You shouldn’t have to “hide” that you’re trans or avoid talking about issues that concern you. That’s not what I’m trying to say.
Think about it like this: imagine the trans spam was literally anything else. Say like…it was about India. I have Indian friends and coworkers, Indian food is great, Hinduism is kinda foreign to me but I find the concept and ethos very interesting, traditional Indian clothing is pretty and cool. Positive opinions, neutral at worst. Now imagine if Indian people refused to shut up about India. Screenshot of a movie with a character wearing a white shirt, orange light from a sunset and green grass “OMG GUYS THE COLORS OF THE INDIAN FLAG, ARE THEY IMPLYING THAT THIS RANDOM CHARACTER IS ACTUALLY INDIAN?!” Every food or cooking sub is taken over by Indian food, people comment on non Indian food “why not just make Indian dish?” Any random brown person “yeah it’s giving Indian vibes” Comment on a pretty girl’s Instagram : “So cute! Glad to see a fellow Indian be loud and proud” “Actually I’m not Indian” “Not yet ;)”
I think you can imagine people would start to have more negative opinions on Indian people if this were the case, or at the very least find them immature. Except this actually makes a lot more sense because there are literally a billion of them, and there are nowhere near that amount of trans people.
This, combined with the false dichotomy makes the movement come off as immature teenagers to a lot of people. I have not found that to be the case from trans people i know in real life, but that is the perception.
Even if I were to believe the false dichotomy of “pay for trans surgeries with taxpayer money or trans people will die”, that’s not any more convincing than it was when my ex girlfriend threatened to kill herself if we broke up. Me having sex with her is not healthcare because of her potential actions. I think it is important to be precise with language. And to be clear, I would vote for covering trans stuff with universal healthcare if it got on the ballot, as long as there were legal protections from something like a mentally ill parent forcing transitioning on their child.
Lastly, you say “politically convenient” as if I’m running for office. As previously mentioned, people die every day because they can’t afford healthcare, and it’s only getting worse. I know someone who divorced his wife so she won’t have to pay his medical bills after he got cancer. After burning through his life savings that he worked hard on and made sacrifices for, for THIRTY YEARS. Not only does he not get to enjoy any of the money he saved by working overtime, but he can’t even die young in peace knowing that his wife will be supported. He now has to worry that debt collectors will sue her after his death if they suss out that their divorce was due to debt. That is dystopian, a nightmare. And that is not “my problem vs your problem”. It can happen to you. And it is probably more likely to happen to you, as transitioning can be hard on your body. I’m not a fan of politics, I just recognize the reality. To some, people, being trans is an affront on god himself. It sure is stupid, but they will vote against their own self interest just to spite you. There is no universe where we will be able to jump to “trans people should get whatever they define as healthcare paid for by someone else.” from absolutely nothing being covered. Not anymore than we should have campaigned Frederick Douglas for president of the United States before we, you know, got rid of slavery. Could he have been a good president in a vacuum? Yes, he was an intelligent and wise person. But you knowing that, and me knowing that doesn’t mean it would have been a good idea. And NOTHING exists in a vacuum. Ever.
You fundamentally do not see trans people’s healthcare as legitimate. You are not welcome here.
People come to Lemmy precisely to escape enlightened centrists like yourself. Stay on the mainstream sites where you won’t have to see the icky trans people talking about their issues.
Couldn’t agree more.
This is the thing that really bothers me. So many kids claiming to be “trans”, when they are very clearly going through common teenage rebellion/finding themselves. It does a disservice to those who really do have gender dysmorphia. The conservative “anti-trans” crowd can point to this and say “see, they’re all just being weird”.
And sure, there are kids who really are that way. My old ass thinks they should wait until they’re actually adults to go messing about with their hormones. That shit is permanent and they’re still developing. They can live as another gender in the meantime, no reason to stop that. But at least make the body modification decision as an adult.