Opinion | How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War
www.nytimes.com
There is an enormous gap between what people are willing to say in public and what they really think.

Alternate title: Ross Douthat "both sides" the trans/gay panic bullshit to make his liberal readers feel better about being bigoted.

  • Good_Username [they/them,e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    since a system that encourages “tomboyish girls or effeminate boys” to “identify as the opposite sex” ends up confirming “all the hoary gender stereotypes that made generations of gay and lesbian people (and many straight people) miserable.”

    Transphobes say this shit a lot, and I have yet to see any evidence or even hear any anecdotes (that aren't transphobes on the internet) of this happening. Where on earth are people encouraging tomboys to transition? Now of course there are young trans men (and people with various other transmasc identities) and maybe what's happening is transphobes read these young trans people as tomboys and see their transitions as externally coerced. That's the only sense I can really make of this claim, but maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone have any stories or evidence that GNC young people are encouraged to transition when they otherwise wouldn't?

    Edit: Fucking hell, this article has all the greatest (transphobic) hits. Now we're fear-mongering about parents afraid for their children who have been put on a path of surgical intervention. As a child whose father seriously freaked the fuck out when I told him I was getting top surgery, I think I'm in a position to say here that parental fears should have very little bearing on what transition-related steps trans people take. Fuck this article, seriously.

    Edit 2: Ok, what the fuck is he even saying here (below)? What is "the skeptics' case" he's talking about? Write clearer, asshole!

    This uniquely American climate also raises uncomfortable questions for the few conservatives, like myself, who enjoy a substantial liberal readership. You will notice that I have written this essay in a studiously cautious style, on the theory that as I am in fact a known social conservative, my too-vigorous prosecution of the skeptics’ case would serve only to reinforce the current progressive orthodoxy — enabling the response that, see, to doubt the wisdom of puberty blockers or the authenticity of teenage self-identification is the province of Catholics, religious conservatives, the out-group.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Where on earth are people encouraging tomboys to transition?

      No one is. This is the same bullshit the same people pulled in the 90s, saying you can't allow gay people to be teachers because they will convince students who aren't gay to be gay.

      To understand them, you have to start with their core belief: that no one is really transgender. Most religious conservatives like Douthat (I'd ballpark at least 25% of the US) believe that without external influence, no one would be transgender. Their faith dictates that this must be true. Because if God made someone who was one gender but with the body of another, then that implies that God is ok with being trans. They might concede that maybe you have some thoughts or feelings about gender, but those are "sinful" so just repress them, pray to ask Jesus into your heart, and you won't have those feelings anymore.

      So, you and I know the real situation. There are trans kids who want to identify as their correct gender say at school, and there are now some schools and teachers that are encouraging that. All very cool, shouldn't be controversial. But to religious conservatives, they cannot conceive of kids being inherently trans. So they see the same situation and think "someone" is pushing this on the kids. Add to this to the fact that they think the current zeitgeist at schools is that you ain't cool unless you're LGBT, so they think kids are under constant pressure from students, teachers, and society to be trans... and you can start to see the contours of their ridiculous ideologies.

      Personally I think this is all leading to both pogroms against LGBT folks, but will also be used to demolish public schools and get the country to adopt vouchers.

    • riley
      ·
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Where on earth are people encouraging tomboys to transition?

      I took the tomboy-to-butch-lesbian pipeline and at literally every point in my gender presentation journey was the exact opposite, where I'd be discouraged from doing anything that was any more tomboyish/butch/masc than what I was already doing and would be encouraged to be more traditionally feminine and heterosexual.

      For example: When I finally cut my hair short like I'd wanted to when I was 8, I was in my 20s (a whole ass adult a thousand miles away from where I grew up and where my parents lived) my parents still had a conniption, and had another one when I started cutting it a little shorter than that.