The Most Confusing Part about Anti-Trans Activists is, Why do they Care?

From the way stories about trans people fill the news, or rather stories about the things that have been done to trans people, the laws controlling the lives of trans people, the protests against the general existence and daily activities of trans people, more than the people themselves, you’d think that the entire trans population sprang into being out of the ether just in the past decade to give regressive bigots something new to harumph histrionically about. You also might get the impression from said bigots that trans people are the greatest threat to the country and life itself.

Right wing neo-fascist legislators have been on a frenzy, writing and forcing anti-trans laws through state houses. It’s obvious why they’re doing it. It’s not to protect children, as they often falsely claim, or because there is a genuine threat to any aspect of society from trans people. It’s because they’ve decided that it is politically advantageous to do so. Politicians with no actual ideas or skills, let alone the will, to improve society have always targeted scapegoats in order to obfuscate, and gain public support in spite of, their feckless impotence. American society has progressed to the point where it is more difficult to openly scapegoat people on the basis of factors like race and sexuality. So, they turned to trans people, figuring that such a relatively small demographic would be unable to mount a strong defense. These politicians are cowards, after all. They are, however, only able to rally a commensurately modest portion of their bigoted base with their disingenuous hate mongering.

But why is it that they’re able to build any support with obvious scapegoating and paper tiger tactics? What’s the deal with their supporters?

The biggest question that comes to mind:

Why do they care?

Why do they give a shit about something that has nothing to do with them?

Most anti-trans arguments are meritless. They don’t groom or recruit other people to be trans. They don’t corrupt children anymore than anyone else. They don’t worship Satan in higher numbers than average folk.

I will grant that the untying of gender from sex and shifting perceptions of gender from being binary and uniform to a more fluid spectrum can be confusing for people. There’s nothing wrong with being confused. Everyone has a right to confusion.

It can be difficult to remember people’s preferred pronouns, especially when their physical characteristics or the ways they present themselves do not align with one’s bias of how a person of that gender typically looks. It can also be difficult to change the way that you think of or talk about a person, if they identify as a gender different from that which you knew them previously. If you know someone by one name and a set of pronouns, but then they tell you they’ve taken a different name and identify with a different set of pronouns, it can take time and effort to correct how you think and speak about them. That’s happened to me. People I’ve known for a while as one gender have identified later as another gender or as nonbinary, and changed their names, and I trip up all the time. That’s normal; it can happen with anything. It took time for my brain to get used to “Boston Market” after calling it “Boston Chicken” for the brief time I knew it by that name as a child. Everyone is going to slip up and call a person or a chain restaurant by the wrong name at some point. Most people who are being misnamed won’t be dicks about it, and in turn we shouldn’t be dicks about it either.

That should be the standard for everyone and how they live their life.

Let everyone live their lives.

Don’t make their lives worse.

Mind your fucking business

Don’t be a dick.