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"Demisexual" is another one I felt was kind of extraneous when I first heard it (it wasn't mentioned in the OP, but it means that a person has to have a personal relationship with someone to consider them sexually attractive, something along those lines), but I guess now I realize it kind of has a place where someone doesn't just immediately look at an attractive person and think "Oh they're hot." It's not asexuality but I can understand someone wanting an easy way to say "Look, just seeing a person and wanting to bang them right away isn't something that happens with me." So I've kind of come around on it, a little bit, anyway.Timeless Appeal posted:I think what's incredibly frustrating though is that trans folks make up such a small part of the population I know you said this in reference to health care funding, but I feel like this is probably a big reason why the GOP is trying to go all in on banning talk about being trans and doing everything they can to unperson trans people. Most people probably knew at least one gay person growing up, but there may be people who don't know any trans people and thus don't have that personal connection that makes them realize "This is a person I know and respect and they deserve rights too." I feel also like there's a larger disconnect between being able to accept a trans person and a gay person to some people. Like "I'm a dude like you, I just like having sex with other dudes instead of women," someone can still see them as "normal" and who that person is dating doesn't really change much about them. Whereas "I maybe biologically male, but I identify as a woman" is kind of alien thinking to people, since if you can be the opposite gender of your sex, why can't you be all sorts of other things that you can't normally be (which is also why you get The One Joke)? And assuming the trans person wants to be out of the closet about it and start dressing and acting in a way that's more in line with the gender they identify as, this does to an extent change a lot about the person that can make interacting with them feel weirder. It also doesn't help when you have assholes like Ted Cruz making jokes about how "Gosh if I'd known I could sexually harass women by saying I identify as a woman I would've done it in high school." And it also doesn't help that there are gay and lesbian people who are absolutely willing to throw trans people under the bus, like Martina Navratiloa, a lesbian tennis player who's adamantly against trans women competing in sports, which helps give the idea that "Even a lot of the people in the LGBT acronym don't like the T part" which can give people who don't personally know trans people the idea that it's something that should be opposed. It's frustrating and I've said elsewhere it worries me a bit, because the right feels really empowered for two reasons: one is the victories they got in elections last year, like in Virginia where the CRT stuff were a big reason Youngkin won since the right succeeded in framing it as "Parents should have a say in what schools are teaching" which was easy to start applying to other things conservatives hate like gay rights. The second is the Dems are doing an incredible job of loving up governing to the point that Republicans might win a lot of elections in the midterms even if people don't agree with their anti-gay/trans policies, but the politicians will take it as a mandate that "This is what the people want." And of course if lawsuits pop up and it gets all the way to SCOTUS, there's a conservative majority. I don't know what the solution is either because it seems like the right is convinced this is the way to move forward, and as others have said, the fact that there's plenty of transphobic Dems or even ones that may be supportive but fear backlash means even an overwhelming Dem victory in the midterms would still probably not be enough to move forward on trans rights.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:02
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some plague rats posted:I mean, isn't this true of basically everyone? I would say the fact that porn, where you do not know the actors on a personal level and are just there to see naked people, is very popular would indicate "no, this is not true of basically everyone." Unless the entire porn industry is just a handful of people watching videos thousands of times a day to inflate numbers.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:54
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some plague rats posted:You think people approach watching porn and basic social interaction with strangers in the same way and with the same goals...? Hate to say it but you need to get some better friends The entire point of "demisexual" is "I do not get sexually aroused by random people being naked." The fact that porn, a thing in which the entire point is to get sexually aroused by random people being naked, is popular would indicate that the majority of people do get sexually aroused by random people being naked. Thus, I see the value in a label that indicates that the person is not like that. I don't think it's a matter of "I'm better than those other people who get aroused by random people" either, since the times I've heard it used the person was in fact hesitant to bring it up, and worried how it would be perceived. Like, the very fact that your first response was "Oh so you just want to be special?" and your followup after the explanation was "Wow sounds like they're hosed up people!" kind of shows they were right to be worried about how it would be perceived. BigRed0427 posted:My only concern is that the reason there wasn't one was that these type of threads tend to attract the bad faith assholes. Oof.
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Apr 14, 2022 23:06
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I was going off what I remember someone who called themselves that explaining what it was a few years ago, so thank you for the correction. I'd agree with you that they're probably not oppressed, but I can't speak for everyone, and whether oppression exists or not if it's a label that makes them more comfortable to apply to themselves and helps other people understand them, I'm all for it. To get off that subject a bit since someone mentioned it earlier, it's kind of amazing how much casual transphobia there was in the mid 90s played off as comedy. Ace Ventura is the big one of course but you also had Naked Gun, and comedians like Rodney Carrington. I'm sure there's even plenty more I've forgotten or didn't even know about.
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Apr 16, 2022 16:28
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doingitwrong posted:It’s not hard to imagine (if the demographics were different) a movement that had won rights for binary heterosexual trans folks that threw everyone else under the bus, since it preserved the sanctity of marriage being between a woman and a man. In fact, there are (outdated/odious) standards of care for treating transgender people that include a requirement that the person be living as their desired gender and one of the tests of that is their heterosexuality. Actually that does remind me, I dunno if it was/is true, but I'd heard that in a Middle Eastern country (don't remember which one) that if they find out you're gay, they force you to undergo a sex change and that way you can still marry your partner since that makes it between a man and a woman. Which I guess would be kind of nice for hetero trans people, not so much for gay/bi cis people. UCS Hellmaker posted:And I fully believe part of this push is still the same as most classic transphobia, that fragile egos are absolutely terrified of being sexually attracted to a trans man or trans woman. Because that would mean they are gay!!!!!! Yeah, that was basically the form transphobia took in a lot of movies, was playing it off for comedy when a guy saw a woman and went "Wow she's hot I want to have sex with her oh no she has a penis now I must run away/vomit because I don't want to be gay!" It also explains why most male transphobes don't really care about trans men. Since they wouldn't be attracted to someone who looks masculine in the first place, it's not really something they're worried about. Well, it's a combination of that and the  stuff, anyway. The idea that men are inherently strong and women are inherently weak, so trans women are viewed as strong men trying to get access to women's spaces to attack them (be it through sexual assault, or just "dominating at women's sports"). But since trans men are viewed as weak women, they couldn't possibly pose a threat to strong men, so there's no reason to care about them (as illustrated in this lovely Skelley cartoon).
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Apr 17, 2022 21:26
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So I feel like this is probably a better place to ask than the right wing media thread, though I'll try and keep these kinds of questions to a minimum (I just think people here may be more knowledgeable). Some right wing radio show was talking about how some European country (I don't remember which one. Sweden maybe?) was very accomodating to trans people and supportive of their gender identity, and said that research showed that suicide rates for trans people was actually higher there than it was elsewhere. It's a right wing guy, so this is obviously either outright bullshit, the country wasn't as accomodating as he claims, or he's twisting some facts, but I'm not sure what. I know that this is very little information to go on, but does anyone know what research this guy was referring to and how it's bullshit?
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Apr 27, 2022 16:58
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Guavanaut posted:Then you can point out that there is an epidemic of infant genital mutilation to force intersex children into one of two binary boxes, and it's been going on for decades, and that's a perfect example of a real world harm caused by viewing sex and gender as binaries, and is far far worse than anything caused by supporting a child to socially transition. I think the usual right wing response to that is to just say "But intersex people are an incredibly small percentage of the population," which of course doesn't answer the question and is purposely dodging it, since they're just against the existence of trans people and don't actually care about infant genital mutilation.
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May 14, 2022 05:33
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killer_robot posted:Bisexuals seem to have this bad rep with the people I know where both sides think they're odd sluts that need to pick a side. Het think they're just flirting with the other side and should settle down, and gays think they're trying not to be gay so they can't represent/solidarity/etc. How can you trust someone to have your back when they can just play with the opposing team? To add to this, I don't know how prevalent the idea is anymore but I do know that there was a time when bisexuals who married someone of the opposite gender were accused of being straight people trying to gain LGBTQ+ cred or whatever. Especially before same-sex marriage was legalized federally, it was kind of an annoyed "How can you claim you're part of the same oppressed group as us when you've already married the person you love?" sentiment. I'm not even sure what the people upset about it wanted. Should bisexuals only marry people of the same sex? Should they just never get married at all?
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May 14, 2022 08:01
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