No Stupid Questions

I'm going to get all sorts of fun responses for trying to empathize with those with whom I disagree (instead of just writing "dumb bigots") but here goes:

First, remember that even gay marriage is fairly new to America, it's been around for less time than the MCU.

There are a lot of folks who almost have mental whiplash, gay marriage went from illegal to "you could get fired for being vocally uncomfortable about it" in fairly quick order.

Now, to make things even more wild for those folks, mainstream culture is pretty insistent that gender isn't even a thing anymore. Add in some pretty wild news stories/videos*, worries for their kids and the notion that the Left refuses to say there might be any issues whatsoever and you can kinda see where a backlash could crop up.

• eg: trans women being reassigned to women's prisons and then assaulting the women etc, a 6"2, 220lb woman practically murdering her handball oppoisition, some fairly sketchy research practices by some of the authorities (WPATH) on the subject etc.

After it became less acceptable to explicitly hate the gays in public they needed a new target. There's a lot of people who like being riled up with hatred, who are fearful and need a bogeyman, etc. It's either human nature or something deeply embedded in our culture. Eventually they will move on and find a new target to focus their hate on.

Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

It seems that way because the minority of people who are against trans people are very loud and obnoxious, and their voices are heavily amplified by sites like Facebook and Twitter.

This video explains it better than me, but mostly a combination of religion being against trans people and bad science.

What?

Because conservatives are smooth brained and small minded. They need someone to hate in order to make themselves feel superior so they don't feel like complete losers

At this point I'm assuming that loads of them either want to be trans, want to have sex with a trans person, but they feel they can't do either because they were told it's evil

It's the same as the gay hating, any guy very visibly hating gays always ends up snorting cocaine from a gay escort dick.

Gender and separation of humans based on those lines have been a thing for longer than humans even called themselves "humans", and transpeople threaten that. So it triggers a flight or fight reflex in people who aren't used to the concept.

I find when people know me for awhile and THEN find out I'm trans, their reaction is less "I'm scared", and more "That's neat", but if people find out I'm trans before they get to know me, they will be hostile the whole time.

I see a lot of mostly correct answers here, but as a trans person myself I can't help but feel they are all missing the core concept.

People hate trans folk for the same reason "get back in the kitchen" is still said to women in any non-"traditional" role or the "angry black man/woman" is said about anyone advocating for their own rights. There are strict gender and racial roles that are enforced by our society so rigidly, that many have assumed them to be naturally correct laws of the universe. Anyone existing outside of those roles is seen as either mental illness to be corrected or malicious evil-doers wanting to cause trouble.

When in fact the reality is much simpler, that being human is a more diverse expressive and dynamic experience than those holding on to those "natural laws" would like to admit. To exist outside the role you were "assigned" is a threat to society that assigns the roles, ergo a threat to the very way of life for those who see gender, sexual and racial hegemony as innate truths.

Conservatives who hold high tradition are naturally the first to speak out and seek to regulate us back in to "normal society" via legislation but liberals are absolutely not immune. To reduce transphobia to a political wedge issue, while correct, doesn't quite explain the more innocuous yet quite prevalent transphobia inside left leaning spaces.

some schmucks want to exploit the very basic fear of the unfamiliar, and they pointed it at trans folk to get votes or whatever.