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There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. The two primary components are: 1. Parents and sexual violence victim

• whateveracct 5y ago
  > Feminists (TERFs) One note: Nobody self-identifies as a TERF. Or at least not originally (I'm sure in Internet ire people do it ironically by now.) It's mostly a label used to crush nuanced conversation.
  • ska 5y ago
    > Or at least not originally I've heard it was the other way around, i.e. it started off as a self identification for a niche group which people started to reject once it begun to be used pejoratively.
    • raffraffraff 5y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-credited-with-having-coined-the-acronym-terf-heres-how-it-happened https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-cre...
      • ska 5y ago
        Interesting, thanks! Although I supposed it doesn't really speak to whether it was initially embraced (by the identified niche group) before being rejected.
  • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
    Interesting to compare that with WASP.
  • handoflixue 5y ago
    No one self-identifies as an asshole or a bigot, but there sure still are a lot of them out there. I'd hardly say that the only use of those labels is to "crush nuanced conversation" - people just aren't inclined to take ideas seriously when they emerge from people they fundamentally disagree with. Telling a democrat that something is a "republican" idea will produce the same result, and vice-versa.
    • joshbert 5y ago
      I disagree, those labels have many aims, none of which are good and most of which seem to be a form of ending conversations before any meaningful conclusion is reached.
• deadite 5y ago
  >Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These ground exclusively concern themselves with trans-women. I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I don't think we have much of a dog in this race so I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN considering most of us here are men. Boring day at work? I do feel bad for the women's Olympics, but I'd like to ask the Olympics committee what the hell were they thinking long before I start any kind of anti-trans crusade. This is one discussion that doesn't seem to be happening much. The diatribe is as always directed among the proles and the decisionmakers get a free pass. Someone must have said, "Yes, lets allow a 35 year-old recently transitioned man to compete with early 20 year-old women," and some approval process must have happened. Those are the people you want to start asking the hard questions, not look at LH and blame her for participating in the Olympics that she's allowed to participate in. Or as someone else put it: "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?"
  • caeril 5y ago
    > I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population. There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.
    • notamy 5y ago
      > Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest. Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.
• plank_time 5y ago
  TERF is a pejorative term, I wouldn’t use it unless you are trying to attack feminists.
  • millzlane 5y ago
    In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether or not TERF constitutes a slur. But if we want to be accommodating to those who take offense with the term, we can use the term Gender Critical.
    • plank_time 5y ago
      “Trans-exclusionary radical feminist” sounds pretty pejorative, most especially the “radical” part.
      • paulv 5y ago
        "Radical feminism" is a branch of feminism. It is not used as a pejorative in the acronym.
      • ratww 5y ago
        "Radical Feminist" is the only part of the term that everyone agrees is not pejorative. It is a real branch inside feminism, which lots of women identify with, and it doesn't mean what most people think it does. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism
        • truffdog 5y ago
          For some reason I cannot recall, a friend of mine had me read a bunch of proper radfem terf blogs back in like, 2010. I remember being impressed with the coherence of their worldview, even if it, uh, was not flattering. Men were all inherently bad, penis-in-vagina sex was inherently rape, lesbians were good, trans-women were infiltrators and trans-men deserters.
      • 95014_refugee 5y ago
• swebs 5y ago
  >2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males. I'd wager that most people believe this. Not just feminists.
  • ben_w 5y ago
    Unless I have wildly misunderstood you, I believe you would lose that wager: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Public-Opinion-Trans-23-Countries-Dec-2016.pdf https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Pu...
  • chc 5y ago
    Polling suggests otherwise: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-women-support-self-identification-transgender-people-boris-johnson-gra-a9616136.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-women-supp... https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/548775-new-poll-finds-americans-oppose-anti-transgender-laws-by-wide-margin https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/548775-new-poll...
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      There are a lot of shades of trans support, If you asked the most extreme questions you would probably get different answers. It is one thing to ask people should be able can use a bathroom, and another to ask questions about personal sexlife and behavior. i.e. if you asked people if you consider transwomen equally with women at birth as sexual partners, I bet the numbers fall through the floor.
      • chc 5y ago
        Well, sure. If you ask people whether they consider Black and Asian men equally as sex partners, the numbers would also fall through the floor. This doesn't mean Black or Asian men are less of men, or even that they're necessarily against either of those groups, it just means people have preferences in what their partners' bodies are like. My point is just that "trans women are women and trans men are men" is actually a common opinion, contrary to the claim in the comment I was replying to.
• umvi 5y ago
  > Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints doesn't appear to feel threatened by transgender rights. At least, not according to official stances here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender
  • nostromo 5y ago
    I'm sorry to be so frank, but this is more of the same mormon bullshit. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the typical line. The problem is our actions and identity are often intrinsically linked. They have the same stance for gay people. "It's ok to be gay, god still loves you! The only catch is you can't ever have a romantic relationship with the person you love. If you do you'll be excommunicated and ostracized from your family. No biggy! God bless!" Nobody wants this sort of faux compassion.
  • chc 5y ago
    From that link: > Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. The intended meaning of gender in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is biological sex at birth. > Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (“sex reassignment”). Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions. > Leaders also counsel against social transitioning. A social transition includes changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex. Leaders advise that those who socially transition will experience some Church membership restrictions for the duration of this transition. Their advice on what treatments they support for transgender people is kind of vague and circumspect, but the gist seems to be "A therapist should at least be open to conversion therapy," which is generally considered harmful. Given the LDS Church's open campaign against gay rights based on the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (the same document referenced above), it seems reasonable to interpret this as stating opposition to transgender rights. Though as the parent noted, they are much less vocal on this topic.
• paulv 5y ago
  > 2. Feminists (TERFs) I worry that this can be read as "all feminists are terfs", which is not accurate.
• pavlov 5y ago
  > ” sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have” This is such a bizarre leap of logic. Trans women are the pariahs of contemporary Western society. Yet the same people who uphold this subhuman status also assume that rapists are nefariously claiming trans female identity. That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power. Trans women are downtrodden and powerless — the least attractive position for a sexual predator.
  • delecti 5y ago
    I think your terminology is a bit backwards. A trans man is someone assigned female at birth but who later identifies as male. From context you seem to be talking about the hypothetical of male rapists professing they identify as trans women. A person born male who later identifies as a woman is a trans woman.
    • pavlov 5y ago
      Thanks, that’s what I meant. (You write an agitated comment on the phone and make a basic mistake. The usual.)
    • kaitai 5y ago
      I thought that was the idea being sold by Republicans in the US, though, that a woman who is trans is going to be lurking in the bathroom to rape your daughter after beating her in tennis?
      • delecti 5y ago
        Yes. Republicans are trying to pass bills under the guise of protecting against trans women. Trans women are people who were assigned male at birth, and now present as women.
  • mmmmmbop 5y ago
    You are of course right factually, but fear of sexual predators is not based in stats and facts, but in feelings. When people think about rape, they imagine a stranger in a dark alley, whereas ~90% of rapists are somebody the victim knows.
• freemint 5y ago
  I think the difference between treatment of mtf and ftm can be mostly boiled down to difference how males being female spaces VS females being in male spaces is perceived. For trans exclusionary feminists one is the patriarchy coming to female protective places and females claiming their place and undermining the patriarchy. As for parents males being less susceptible to forceful sexual exploitation is true but there is also a huge societal double standard when it comes women forcing themselves on men or abusing their male partner which is also reflected in parents being less worried about something happening to their children. Possibly also because of pregnancies onesidedness.
  • kaitai 5y ago
    The protection of female virtue is also an enormously successful political tactic, from the "yellow peril" in the late 1890s in Europe and the US to the "white slavery" panic (specifically referring to the cultural phenomenon in the US that gave rise to the 1910 Mann Act; check out the contrasting commentary of Emma Goldman and Rose Livingston) to the murder of Emmett Till and the burning down of Black Wall Street in Tulsa -- all of these are really responses to larger questions of opportunity and freedom of movement for folks that crystalize in the threat to a white woman's sexual virtue and the justification of violent response to crush the threat. The bathroom bills, the panic over sports, the violence trans and gender-nonconforming people encounter (especially on racialized lines) -- it's all part of a larger political narrative. As you can see from the comments on this HN thread, you get a daddy all worked up about his daughter's virtue/place in life and you can move political mountains because it is an Existential Threat that Must Be Removed. That's weaponizable in a way that talking about military spending or tax law or gerrymandering is not.
    • freemint 5y ago
      Interesting I wasn't aware of all of these patriarchic laws.
• kingsuper20 5y ago
  >There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. I'd say that's a vast overreach. It isn't like the Trans Army is going to come burn down your house. If anything, it's a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. In a sense, that it's not different than people who want their limbs amputated or wear animal costumes at all times.
  • rootusrootus 5y ago
    > a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. That seems like a defensible position to take. At least as plausible as the common alternative -- that it is a physical illness (thus we 'fix' the body to match the mind).
• spamizbad 5y ago
  > Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. While it's true there's little animosity directed at them, there is a lot of stuff Shrier's view that "gender ideology" is seducing lesbian women into thinking they're not actually women. Which, honestly, as someone who lived through lots of the dumb gay panic in the 80s and 90s sounds exactly like what people thought about homosexuals (eg: gay people can seduce/recruit straight people and turn them gay). So trans men get treated like dupes or victims of some social phenomena, rather than treated like actual human beings with agency of their own. In fact, pretty much every anti-trans viewpoint I see, even from otherwise highbrow publicans like the Economist, are really just rehashes of what we heard about gays in the 80s and 90s, before we realized they were, in fact, not a threat to society.
• eropple 5y ago
  > Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. One of the interesting things about spending the last few years studying Western European post-Roman history has been the discovery that, in the West, there has historically been relatively little resistance to AFAB folks "presenting" (speaking of the interpretation at the time--the dichotomy between "presenting" and "being" is one I am thoroughly not qualified to negotiate) as male unless tied into homophobia. There are historical examples of folks who outwardly identify as women taking on male roles in monastic life, and it's often portrayed as a good and pious thing. The reverse, it seems, is generally not true, though not exclusively so. I've read of, but don't have offhand, accounts of Church investigation into "male nuns" that ruled that the erstwhile offender, a male who had suffered prepubescent genital damage, had committed no crime being raised by a particular convent as a woman. But cases going the other way round are much more common. In terms of today's relations, however, my intuition is that the fear regarding transwomen is that it's largely a performative flavor of misogyny and the fear of those of the "superior" set somehow damaging all men, much as the performative flavor of homophobia does the same with regards to gay men but shockingly much rarely with regards to bisexual or homosexual women. But, of course, that is just an intuition.
• jollybean 5y ago
  Wow - I don't think so, unless by; "2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a" ... you mean the groups they represent i.e. 'a lot of women' frankly many of them who are not 'radical feminist' or even 'feminist'. Huge numbers of women are uncomfortable with at least some parts of 'trans women' from 'changerooms' to 'sports' etc.. I don't think the very notion of 'trans' really upsets very many people at all, and that's the funny paradox. But as soon as it crosses paths with others, then it's an entirely different issue and there's a lot of dust raised by pluralities.
• zarzavat 5y ago
  To say nothing of the issue itself, the methods of "trans rights activists" frequently involve intimidation or vigilantism and generally cause a lot of resentment against trans people. People are afraid.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  I’ve always regarded transitioning gender — and how it is focused so much on men moving away from being a man — being equivalent to someone saying I am uncomfortable and I want off this ride, where the rollercoaster is testosterone. That’s what I’ve picked up anyway, from my friends who have transitioned. I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?