There's something about the traumatizing aspect--which is what often makes folks involved in certain arms of supporting survivors/the survivors who encounter terfs (and I think JKR is one of them?)--that makes them literally insane. Like they are so hypervigilant, it's like probably clinical
and I say this like as a trans person and also as a survivor who had to work through a lot of shit. it's sad, but it would be more sad if they weren't just constantly hitting down and contributing to violence
I buy the contrapoints arg that a lot of this style of transphobia is rooted in displaced trauma scapegoating trans people for the prior crimes of men. but then as people get more and more obsessed it curdles their brains
I mean I think it's also like fear that you can recognize a cis man but you can't always recognize that a person is trans. The traumatized black and white thinking is troubled by it so you become obsessive in "being able to tell" (of course you can't).
I think it fits in with a general conservative desire to maintain the hierarchy - to preserve your own ability to punch down at those below you, you also defend the right of those above you to punch down at you.
The conservative hierarchy is based on men being aggressive sexual predators who can’t fight their biology so women need to be submissive and placate men’s emotions. Just like male anger is considered being ‘over emotional.’ Male aggressiveness is excused as natural and projected on to trans women.
“Men can’t help themselves.” “Boys will be boys.” Are just excuses for bad male behavior. But the hierarchy needs that excuse. To conservatives, trans women are men. Therefore, they have all the in-born aggression of men. Conservatives want people to believe men are dangerous to keep men in power.
I don't think transphobia primarily sees trans women as men, it sees them, like other LGBT folks, as "deviants" who pose a problem because they depart from conservative norms around gender and sexuality.
I dig. The idea being that if you accept on some level that sexual violence is biologically based and hence worthy of tolerance, then it really is all about biology.
Not endorsing it by any means, just grokking the idea of how people fixate on the wrong things.
