elon musk, mark zuckerberg, J.K rowling! Are the names that come to mind.
3 from different background: a African immigrant benefiting from government spending, an American smart young engineer, and a female English successful writer.
They are no politicians, and cant be accuse of trying to gather some vote. Multi-billions amongst them.
I get they lean to the right to protect their cash, with less tax and regulation. I get they are racist because they fear some poor people will take their cash.
But why the hatred for trans people ? It’s 1% of the population, they cant do anything, dont threaten anyone. There is no rational or psychological reason
*EDIT: I read all the comments. A lot of interesting explanation: smokescreen/scapegoat, maintaining the male/female power structure, new face of anti-gay , projection / self-hatred , just louder voice …
I realize, may be, I didn’t post a good question. May be it is less about the ultra-rich but more about why that rhetoric work on the general population (else it would not have taken hold as it does). For that I have a 2 cent theory: The raise of the cult of Nature we have since the global warming. The idea, that everything natural is better. The ugly version is only natural male and female are worthy*
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As far as I can tell, they didn’t. J.K is a straight example, but Elon went looking for an edgy movement to align with, and Zuckerberg just wants to stay rich.
Your everyday regressives want to go after trans people because they don’t think they can take gay people on anymore. Some political movements have capitaised on this to gain their support, and have captured rich supporters as well because trans abuse is compatible with the rich continuing to gain more and more power.
How rich are the Wichowski sisters? You bet they’re not a fan of any of this.
Actually it’s because Elon thinks the “woke left” took his child away from him. Even though he was an absent father who was never around. He has a trans daughter who he refers to as his son because he’s a sack of shit.
Elon has a trans daughter
Huh. He wouldn’t be the first person to shit on their trans kid, I guess.
You might be right: it’s a rebranding of anti-gay sentiment.
It is easy for many people to think trans wars is a distraction, scapegoating, or a genuine threat to the authoritarian world view. I ask you to carefully consider that anti-trans hate is genuine.
Nazis had prioritized Jewish genocide and pursued it to an irrational degree, even prioritized the genocide to actually winning the war. Some analysts say that this shows their war was always and primarily against civilian Jews.
We have evidence to think this is the case with trans people now.
The recent “anti-christian bias” order outright frames trans rights as an enemy of their ingroup.
Reed has covered the leaked Christian emails that show them believe trans people are demons and evil incarnation and want to wipe them from the face of the earth.
Rowling has been caught on tape saying she wants to minimize the number of people transitioning so that they have less work to do “special accommodations later” for trans people.
For those aware of the term Sonderbehandlung this leaves no doubt: trans people are their primary enemy, they have poured their millions into the pockets of nutjobs and politicians that will relieve them from having to live side by side with trans people.
Don’t be fooled that this is just distraction and/or scapegoating by power-mongers.
They have a trans Holocaust in the making and they have already put the plot in motion. ACT NOW
Edit:
I realize I might have not responded directly to OP’s question. See the following for my take.
My analysis linking Bathroom Bans as early signs of completely banning trans people out of public life https://lemmy.ml/post/25037664
I wrote this while still believing that anti-trans hate was an election-winning distraction. It partly responds to where anti-trans hate comes from https://lemmy.ml/post/24711061
In this sense many people are deeply transphobic, but billionaires have the resources to eradicate trans people from public life. The rest can only curse, badmouth, trash, verbally attack, workplace harass, fire, refuse healthcare, sexually or physically attack or mob-lynch trans people. Every transphobe does as much as they can get away with. Billionaire transphobes can get away with genocide so they’re doing that.
Additional resources in support of the argument
Summary of early Holocaust course of events and why targeted people were not mobilized https://lemmy.ml/post/25008729/16208799
Erin Reed article on fundamentalist anti-trans lobbyists’ leaked emails https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2600-leaked-anti-trans-lobbyist-emails
good post
trans people are a threat to the status quo of the patriarchal-capitalist Gender regime. the ideology of patriarchal capitalism is that your gender assigned at birth is immutable and there are only two. in patriarchal capitalism your gender defines a lot of what path your life will take, the societal expectations placed on you, and importantly what opportunities and privileges are afforded to you. obviously the setup is men dominating and oppressing women which has been going on for far longer than capitalism but worsened significantly under it. the division of reproductive labour is the social basis of gender. according to traditional gender roles, women are expected to act as broodmares to reproduce more worker stock and also perform most or all domestic labour in essentially a slave role. the existence of trans and trans nonbinary people disproves the two axioms on which this all rests, that your gender is immutable and one of just two. gender in capitalist ideology is little more than a tool or system of oppression, and by existing and living our lives as we see fit and not railroaded by traditional expectations based on assigned gender at birth, we show clearly that it doesn’t have to be that way. so to answer your question they come for us because we are a genuine threat to capitalist patriarchal orthodoxy, we show by our actions and existence that a better social order is possible, one where individuals are actually afforded self-determination instead of being locked into a predetermined role based on what genitalia you are born with.
sorry it’s kinda an incoherent thought dump, there is plenty more to say this is just a quickie of the root superstructural reasons that we are perceived as a threat to patriarchal capitalism. of course, most transphobes won’t have these specific reasons in mind (in fact probably couldn’t comprehend them at all due to ignorance) and have just been convinced by capitalist propaganda and transphobic media to hate us because we are icky etc. the prevalence of misogyny also is why it’s so easy to get people to be transphobic, a lot of it just boils down to either “hah! why would a man want to be a woman?”, or “hah! a woman could never be a man”.
I just want to add that it’s not just the idea of gender being immutable, it’s identity as a whole. So much of society is built around stuff like legal names. They use them to track and control people. And then trans people are out there deciding to change them just because we want to, or using prefered names that don’t match our legal names. The idea that people can just decide who they want to be is threatening to them.
Musk: more politically oriented than just money now, had aligned himself with a very large part of the population that thinks at a minimum that even if some people need to transition for their own health, society retains the right to consider their pre-transition history to still be part of reality
Zuckerberg: profit driven, is aligning Facebook etc with the political reality in America and the real prospect of being fined or embargoed by a Trump administration, would flip back if a democrat won in 2028
Rowling: belongs to a British generation of certain age where trans people are superficially accepted BUT regards their pre-trans history to be something still relevant. That’s where this started and it escalated / deteriorated from there E.g. compassionate to a degree and willing to entertain the “fiction” that a biological man is now a women for the sake of that person’s mental health: see them at the shops presenting female? carry on as normal… talk to them? use their current name and pronouns out of politeness… BUT… if they want to access a female shelter, draw a line… if they want to teach young children, risk assess them including their pre-trans gender and history etc. Rowling then got into increasingly fractious arguments on Twitter, largely arising from other people she followed and liked and what the trans community inferred from that. At that point she doubled down declaring advocates on Twitter to be increasingly hysterical and deluded whilst simultaneously insisting she would treat trans people humanely in person. She’s then lashed out in numerous ways including in her writings aligning herself with increasingly extreme anti-trans people. FWIW, I think she would have carried on being a mildly tolerant (if dated) person of a certain age had she just stayed off Twitter entirely. But lashing out, being misinterpreted and misinterpreting others had led her to spiral down into viciousness and bitterness.
I agree with your analysis. I think on Musk’s case there is also his estranged daughter, it has entrenched his position
True
I consider your theorizing of “pre-transition history” being within the “rights of society” to “keep in touch with reality” as misleading and problematic.
In fact, these are the axioms of trans erasure I discuss in my other response. In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”, but only apply this to trans women (victims themselves of cis violence in bathrooms and all other settings). Why? Because you register trans women in the semantics of sexual perversion. Then, the “right” to know anyone’s medical history does not exist, on the contrary people have the right to privacy to medical interventions of any type.
Due to stigma and discrimination trans people are furthermore entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences. But this is also hypothetical now. The amount of cis-passing is different for every trans people.
Some may pass for cis, most don’t. Besides the existential crisis some people experience when they can’t tell a person is trans, in practice stealth trans people are relatively rare, and there is not an iota of evidence that there is any societal harm from stealth cis-passing trans people. So there is no reason behind your purported “societal right to know”, apart from cisgenderist entitlement.
Enforcing such right is not only infeasible, but it sufficiently and necessarily leads to banning public trans life, with no other explanation other than cis people’s uneasiness. The civil rights movement has established that majoritarian uneasiness with minorities sharing their bathrooms is not enough to justify perpetuation of discriminatory segregation practices.
This is textbook transphobia.
In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
I don’t believe that, just to be clear. But I think that’s the view of a lot of people, and that’s what i was outlining. because that was relevant to OP’s question.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”,
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically…
even if you are talking generically, i don’t think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex. there are many contexts where (for example) men will accept they are treated differently but will not resort to calling this “misandry”. at least in the settings i’m familiar with and amongst the people i’ve lived alongside here in London, UK. you may have very specific incidence in mind or may not be intending to speak universally, but you said “all other circumstances”, which sounds pretty universal, so i’m just pointing out that’s not correct…
entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences.
I don’t know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic…
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically…
That’s right
Ieven if you are talking generically, i don’t think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex.
I am talking about the notion that all men are potentially sexual predators. I am not discussing the truthfulness of the idea, or whether women are justified to be afraid of men in general (to an extend they are). But regarding this narrower notion, there is plenty of evidence online that men find the fear outrageous (Not all men etc). If they think trans women are (*) simply men (I disagree) then they are simply not consistent. This naturally leads to the next step, that their interpretation of transness in AMAB people is registered as a sexual perversion (*). It isn’t. It is a personal identity thing, like being a (cis) woman also isn’t inherently a sexual thing. To think the former is transphobia, to think the latter is misogyny. I am not saying, nor I care, about you subscribing to either, personally. We are both discussing the sociological popularity of these notions.
I don’t know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
I am a nomad, but I was talking about the US, where this grim picture is true in some states, especially with black trans women whose murders the police is particularly inadequate to solve.
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth
I was talking generically. That having been said, I wasn’t sure about your personal take, since the lack of tone in this written medium can be very misleading.
in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic…
I really tried to put arguments forth, and conscientiously not target you, while not giving you a free pass. I don’t think I exaggerate, I just present in distilled form the things that people might mean but not necessarily say out loud.
As for being combative, I just try to be thorough and concise. When I said this is textbook transphobia I weren’t attacking you. This is factual. If someone looks up a textbook on transphobia they will find the points I have asterisk-ed above. It would perhaps come down as less combative if I said “this is the dictionary definition of transphobia”? I don’t know. Transphobia is an ugly thing and much like racism, there is no pleasant way to say it, but this is what the word means.
I think Peanuts is speaking from JKR’s perspective, not justifying it
But I also skimmed bits of both of your comments. It’s ironic really, because I’m equally verbose
The wording is such that lends legitimacy to these viewpoints. The breakdown is right there for anyone who want to build upon this discussion, but it would be naive to give the benefit of the doubt to just anyone, when ignorance and misinformation is ubiquitous, nay, institutionalized.
This is the answer. It’s the intersection of those with strong personal opinions and the power (money) to speak their mind without true repercussions, and the power (money) hungry who are following the strongest zeitgeist in the halls of power.
The zeitgeist exists because the entrenched powerful ones are currently using trans people and migrants as a wedge between different parts of the working class. It used to be homosexuals and communists. Or abortions and hippies. Or slaves. Or indigenous people. Ad nauseum. It’s about keeping the working class divided and maintaining power. This is the latest version. And it’s not just in the US BTW
People like Rowling are new money working class that fell for the con
Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity), but only the ultrarich can afford making arbitrary people hate them without any good reason. That’s why it looks like only the billionaires are doing it.
Then they go to Twitter with these opinions and go insane and the whole thing enters a neverending tailspin.
Elon is slightly different insofar that one of his own kids is trans. So that’s not entirely due to Twitter, but there’s also some lived experience at the bottom of it all (I assume here that he spent time with said child).
“Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity)”
Are you saying most people are anti-trans? And that people who aren’t anti-trans are somehow not of sane mind?
Are you saying most people are anti-trans?
No, I think it’s more nuanced than just black-or-white allies and anti-trans people. The level of pro- or anti-transness within individuals falls on a spectrum that’s shaped like a bell curve, and the majority in the middle are usually amenable to trans rights if they bump into the issue in a way that resonates with them. Like for instance in their personal life with friends or family.
But less amenable if they mostly face the issue on TV, social media or via angry activists. You might then recognize these people as anti-trans, especially if the issue is deeply personal to you.
And that people who aren’t anti-trans are somehow not of sane mind?
No, that’s not what I was trying to say. In fact, I’d say that genuinely anti-trans people (the other end of the bell curve) are the insane ones. Socio- and/or psychopathic. My claim (possibly a bit extraordinary claim in this day and age) is that most people are not at that end.
I agree with what you’ve said for the most part but I find no correlation between it and what your initial comment said. Maybe I’m just tired.
You can’t get ultra-rich while being a compassionate person
This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!
preface: conjecture
musk and zuckerberg benefit from “othering” a group so that the majority of people get caught up in arguing about the rights of that group. While you’re busy being distracted by that they can push for agendas that benefit their companies and personal wealth, which inherently fuck you over.
musk does seem to have a personal vendetta as well given his issues with his trans daughter but I truly think this is ancillary to enriching his wealth and power. He also seems to love getting involved in topics that rile people up because deep down he’s a 14 year old reddit troll
rowling is double down and attention. She has a shit take, posts about it, people call her out. She’s a literal billionaire “beloved author” used to being surrounded by hangers on so being challenged wrecks her shit. Rather than reflect and look at scientific consensus she doubles down on her shit take. Because of people like above this gets her increasing amounts of attention and relevance so her beliefs are reaffirmed and deepened constantly. Now she’s consulted to speak authoritatively on the matter despite having no actual qualification other than being a rich lady who got into twitter arguments about it
Many of these apply to nobodies as well. Your stupid anti trans neighbor benefits from “othering” someone because it gives them someone to deflect blame onto. For most of American history it was black people, or Hispanic people, sometimes Jews, basically any minority. They also will double down when called out on shit takes and will absolutely respond to attention given for shit takes.
All threaten the oldest hierarchy of all: man over woman.
As for musk, he has a trans child he hates and disowned. And he’s a Nazi, straight up. Family left Canada to go to apartheid South Africa because they agreed with apartheid and white racial supremacy. See the hierarchy here?
Zuck is an opportunist who will align with anything that makes him money. But he also has a weird obsession with Roman history that’s a red flag to me about being a closet fascist.
Jk Rowling is a second wave feminist and she’s big mad that people without vaginas can call themselves women and be in women’s spaces.
All threaten the oldest hierarchy of all: man over woman.
Pretty much this. I remember being a teenager and hearing the most basic watered-down gender theory and being really confused and upset. Even back then I knew it was because, for it to be true, it meant a lot of things I take for granted about society were actually totally irrelevant. Unfortunately some people don’t ever have to confront their cognitive dissonance, they just use their money and power to enforce the status quo they’re used to.
Jk Rowling is a second wave feminist and she’s big mad that people without vaginas can call themselves women and be in women’s spaces.
Unfortunately you could have the best neo-vagina money could buy and terfs would still find an excuse to exclude you. It’s not truly about genitalia, it’s about being trans.
so 3 different agenda, with the same result. Probably it is as coincidental as that
an post op trans people be in women places?
There must always be an “underclass” in capitalism for the upper echelons to threaten the middle echelons. No exceptions. Wether that’s the homeless, psychiatric patients, gay or trans people… doesn’t matter. There will be some regional differences in what constitutes this underclass but the end result is always the same. Capitalism CANNOT FUNCTION without this implicit threat of excommunication and starvation.
The only real difference with the recent past is that all of this has become much, much more explicit than it ever used to be before. But make no mistake, even with a Biden or Harris at the helm, this would still be the case, just much more muted.
This is a feature of the system, not a flaw, and will never change as long as capitalism in its current form dominates.
They are frequently interviewed.
Which means they are frequently asked: “Why’s everything fucked up?”
They can’t give the real answer, which is “ultra-rich people”.
So they give no answer at all (in which case you don’t hear about it) or they cite the Enemy Of The Day.
They want you fighting a culture war to keep your mind off the class war.
The mainstream “left”, such as the Democrats benefit from this too.
Draw the national party lines between bigoted and non-bigoted. Now everyone can fight over that and nobody has to address the fact that two thirds of the country want universal healthcare.
A lot of them genuinely hate us. Don’t discount that.
No doubt. But if you look at the whole ecosystem, a lot of them are just maggots that are personally indifferent but are happy to get people killed to secure a pay rise.
Musk might have fried his brain hotboxing farts with his sycophants. Someone like Thiel however; I can’t imagine he really cares but he’s happy to fund whatever dorks will start a podcast about why they “left the left” because that shit will - he’s hoping - get people to vote for politicians that give him more economic power.
It’s called smokescreen. Turns the attention of the masses away of their wealth and power
In the case of Rowling, it wasn’t a smoke screen so much as black mold.
I get it. But that smokescreen is achieved with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Throwing Trans in , seems so random
This smoke screen around LGBTQ+ and anti immigration has been stoked for nearly 30 years in order to veer away from the actual discussion and laws around wealth inequality, healthcare, etc. It’s all a guise against minority groups who can’t fight back. Sometimes positive sometimes negative, but at the end of the day billionaires stoke the fear around these minority groups and they get to keep growing their billions without restriction.
The rhetoric against immigrants serves as a more general purpose blaming scheme. Economy bad because immigrants. You’re unemployed because immigrants. Crime because immigrants. Your bad grades are immigrants.
LGBTQ+ rights have always been a contentious point because it has always worked incredibly well for diverting attention on all sides, especially the media. The right always paints them as these depraved monsters that will convert children into gay communist sex on schools, which is a “threat” that’s “up close and personal”
My personal opinion is twofold:
- they need a diversion. Like a magician (or more accurate a pickpocket) they will take anything to make people blind while they amass their power. It is a sickness of the mind. They are addicted to power and ever anxious to loose it. Minorities are a good enemy for the people to blame the problems on that these people either cause themselves or dont want to take care of. In the past it was witches, nowadays it is other minorities.
- minorities have been fighting for a place in the world for a long time and there have been significant improvements. But that is not a positive development if you want to rule supreme. If you‘re power crazed, you need people to fall in line. Otherwise it wont work. We have ample evidence that only a sufficiently subdued population will not rise up against authority.
Poor, trans, minorities, leftists, educated, and even moderate Republicans are all under attack. These billionaires participate so they can be part of the fascist takeover of this country, not through any personal conviction.
Easy to scapegoat like most minorities that a large part of the population has never interacted with before.
Also, societal attitudes have changed to the point where at least open racism or homophobia aren’t really acceptable any more. So they needed a new scapegoat.
