Michael Tae Sweeney: I think the historical context on this is really important to understand and promote because the reality is that there's no inherent aversion to trans people in our culture, it's one that's been cultivated by explicit right wing propaganda as another way to divide the working class against itself

I think the historical context on this is really important to understand and promote because the reality is that there's no inherent aversion to trans people in our culture, it's one that's been cultivated by explicit right wing propaganda as another way to divide the working class against itself

This wasn't unheard of at the time, the first public trans surgery in America was done as "Former GI now smoking hot!"

The "bash gays" play started not working and backfiring in the early 00s and conservatives had to look around for their next target to other and demonize and settled on trans people as a group that was still vulnerable enough to run effective attacks on.

if you look at conservative propaganda they also conflate it to like, people with lots of piercings, or women who dye their hair unnatural colors. ultimately it's just trying to find people who are different in their community and other them bsky.app/profile/insa...

Ya I meant to type "10's" the 90's and early-00's were very homophobic bsky.app/profile/nied...

My memory is it started more in the early teens following the rapid collapse of gay bashing as a political strategy after it was highly effective for them in '04.

Correct bsky.app/profile/mbha...

These forces also seek to reinforce a patriarchy that is increasingly under threat.

This would be much less effective if not enabled by parts of the liberal media that always assume, in a culture war context, that urban = wealthy = privileged = elite = educated = unpopular = fair game for attacks.

Meh. There is no liberal media.

bsky.app/profile/mx0x...

unironically i blame youth adoption of tumblr for most of the rapid (and sticking) sea change on social issues since the 90s

Any women who do not conform are the target of this kind of opprobrium. There are hordes of transvestigators pickling their brains trying to find evidence that women they don’t like are trans and, therefore, worthy of justified hate.

Conservatives are authoritarians, and authoritarians lose their goddamn minds every time they encounter someone different than them. Just insecure, terrified, and full of hate for anyone not exactly like them.

My memory is it started more in the early teens following the rapid collapse of gay bashing as a political strategy after it was highly effective for them in '04.

Yeah I was gonna say, "early" is there wrong modifier there. It was still going strong in 04 and only started to wane later.

Prop 8 passing in 2008 felt so wrong and backwards at the time, and maybe it was the last victory of that cohort of homophobia.

youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo?...

Lies from the "National Organization for Marriage"youtu.be The National Organization for Marriage is airing this ad on television telling lies about marriage equality. Fight back at http://www.EndTheLies.org

youtu.be/PhaihBGD2tc?...

A Gaythering Stormyoutu.be Become a fan on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/funnyordieThere is a storm being caused by gay marriage and we are all in serious trouble. This is a parody...

They keep targeting smaller and smaller groups hoping we don’t know someone in that group. Black people, Jewish people, single women, gay people, trans people… the out group will be small conservatives will blame everything on one person no one knows or can find because they aren’t on social media.

Then they’ll get online and post photos of everyone they think is this one bad person. Then they’ll boycott every product they think the one bad person uses. “What do you means they drink water?! Let’s boycott water!”

Feel like they might be heading this direction but that person is bizarrely Taylor Swift

Maybe we can get Taylor to promote drinking water and breathing oxygen.

You think that started turning after Matthew Shepard?

I think it started turning when people started knowing LGBT people as their relatives instead of abstractions.

It is perhaps a bit weird but while incredibly homophobic generally until recently, trans coverage was long more like "wow that is interesting"

“Huh. okay then” is tolerance

I can remember seeing an interview between 2 trans women and Michael Barrymore (yeah, I know, I know). Although some of the framing language wasn't ideal, the tone of host and audience was one of curiosity and respect. And the trans women led the conversation too.

Not going to claim coverage was perfect but it was notably more positive than coverage of homosexuality for a long time

yes. more ignorance, less bigotry than today

NYT and the Atlantic working overtime to turn up the ignorance dial all the way.

I remember a Time or Newsweek story in the late 90s about a pregnant man, and the tone was very much, "wow that is interesting." It's really discouraging to be moving backwards on trans acceptance.

It’s honestly kind of impressive that the right-wing managed to talk a bunch of straight dudes into being completely against more hot women existing.

A lot of modern transphobia can probably be traced all the way back to the case of Ewan Forbes. The British started getting nervous at the idea that someone could change their gender and inherit a bunch of stuff they'd otherwise never receive. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Ewa...

Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The other early case I remember was Jan Morris, who I remember my mother praising in the early to mid seventies. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mor...

There's an amazing, sensitive and empathetic BBC interview with her from 1975. Searchable on youtube.

Is it my imagination or was the reaction to Jan Morris' transition a complete non-reaction? Barely a raised eyebrow?

As a cis het child I was certainly unaware of anything other than mild curiosity. I don't think the rage came along till much later. The trans episode of Jon Ronson's Things Fell Apart podcast is interesting, though as well all this things, I can't be confident about the accuracy from the outside.

Though I do think it's dangerous to look back at the even fairly recent past as a time of tolerance, when in fact it was monolithically and viciously intolerant of more or less every deviation from the Establishment norm.

I mean yes but I think it’s also important to remember that a handful of trans people who could be talked about as novelties and aberrations is different from millions of trans people asking the world to reconsider the gender binary. That critical mass is the big threat that sparked backlash, IMO.

Trans people were tolerated and somewhat accepted when they weren’t seen as a threat to norms and then violently rejected when they were

I think this is a lot of it. One trans person who is obviously otherwise conforming to gendered expectations isn't a threat to anything. Millions of trans people nationwide demanding to live their lives without anybody's approval and challenging the entire idea of gender is something else entirely.

These forces also seek to reinforce a patriarchy that is increasingly under threat.

Yeah in a even more pornographic angle there’s a very large “straight people looking at trans porn” contingent too. It’s been a part of our culture since forever. Trans people are normal! People like them!

i think the default is it's interesting! it causes you to think about the nature of Self in a way that white cishet neurotypical people aren't normally forced to. Like, what parts of Self are fundamental to who I am and what is trimmings?

I don’t know about this - according to this article from 2010, she suffered a lot of prejudice and the procedure she sought was illegal everywhere but Sweden. www.wired.com/2010/12/1201...

Dec. 1, 1952: Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beautywww.wired.com 1952: It’s front-page news when George Jorgensen Jr. is reborn as Christine Jorgensen, gaining international celebrity and notoriety as the first widely known person to undergo a successful sex-change...

Not to say I don’t agree that currently the right and ‘center’ is doing what you’re saying re trans rights. I just think that these articles we see from the past existed in a different context, and not one that was some kind of uncorrupted tolerance that only right wing propaganda could corrupt.

The big difference is that Jorgensen coded as "passing", i.e. "a blonde beauty". It was a novelty story, most people didn't "accept" it as much as shrugging and saying "wow that's something new." Had it started a trend, spilling into everyday experience, it would've played out then like it has now.

and the fact that it didn't become a widespread trend in the 50's tells you everything about how "tolerated" it really was. Almost nobody dared try it, they'd have been ostracized and probably assaulted.

it's obvious that right wing politicians and pundits are attempting to use transphobia as a cynical political tool but I don't think we can conclude from the fact that the buzzwords, framing, and talking points weren't formed generations ago that there was no aversion to trans people before them

I think we can recognize how much of it is manufactured while also accepting that xenophobia and such are basic human instincts that we can and should teach ourselves and society out of, and we have to fight bigotry and ignorance both internally and externally to get rid of it

much like abortion

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