Most Americans are not. However, it’s an easy hot button topic that triggers the fight or flight response in a subset of people which motivates them to go be loud/aggressive in public/online.
At the end of the day, the same people who go around in public saying things like “if a man ever goes into the girls’ locker room at my daughter’s school, I’ll make sure nobody ever finds the body” are the same people who shrug their shoulders when confronted about how many children die in U.S. schools each year due to gun violence. They’ll contort themselves into a pretzel with excuses – gun violence doesn’t happen at my daughter’s school, you watch too much CNN, enough people around here have guns that if a kid tried that in our schools they’d be shot before they could do any damage, etc without acknowledging that there aren’t even any transitioned/transitioning children attending their tiny rural school.
In my neck of the woods, I suspect a lot of that “trans” outrage is all tied together with the Christian nationalist tendencies of rural, white America. They hate Muslims. They hate LGBTQ+. They hate anybody that’s not MAGA. Then they go to church a few times a week and even their church leadership is feeding into it all. Then they hang out with their friends and discuss conspiracy theories and literally just make up bullshit stories. Then they get online and have no understanding that all they are viewing is algorithmically curated content from within their own bubble.
Because it’s peculiar and a classic outgroup. Can’t kill gays and black people as freely anymore, so they went elsewhere.
A more comprehensive answer, because oligarchs need to steal money from somewhere in order to fuel their fortunes. They disenfranchise some to take from them and distract people with culture wars. It’s globally very politically consistent.
One of the easiest counterpoints to “blue” politicians that want to abandon Trans people as “they’re just not a huge voting bloc” is that fascists will just target another group next time the target stops working. First it was women, then black people, then gays. They will always have someone for hatred, and they don’t actually have any alliances (even in hatred).
Of course, the simpler counterpoint is “Ahhhh, you almost fooled me into thinking you weren’t fascist! It was a pretty good disguise though. Anyway, debating each other is a waste of time, since you don’t process thoughts and feelings, right?”
Yep. The anti gay propaganda failed hard over a decade ago so they pivoted to a much smaller group, less understood and harder to empathise with. Sympathy is one thing, but if you’re not trans, it’s damned hard to imagine yourself in those shoes. On top of all that, everyone knows a gay person, much less so trans folks.
And trans people have even more against them! Know how we automatically and instinctively identify someone’s sex from a quarter second glance of a quarter profile? Trans people can turn that sense on its ear and that freaks some people out.
I don’t give a shit, but I can see why they’re a perfect target. If we can keep our eye on, “trans rights are human rights”, we can overcome this thing eventually.
Why are Americans obsessed with gender reassignment more than much else? Of all the things.
Most Americans are not. However, it’s an easy hot button topic that triggers the fight or flight response in a subset of people which motivates them to go be loud/aggressive in public/online.
At the end of the day, the same people who go around in public saying things like “if a man ever goes into the girls’ locker room at my daughter’s school, I’ll make sure nobody ever finds the body” are the same people who shrug their shoulders when confronted about how many children die in U.S. schools each year due to gun violence. They’ll contort themselves into a pretzel with excuses – gun violence doesn’t happen at my daughter’s school, you watch too much CNN, enough people around here have guns that if a kid tried that in our schools they’d be shot before they could do any damage, etc without acknowledging that there aren’t even any transitioned/transitioning children attending their tiny rural school.
In my neck of the woods, I suspect a lot of that “trans” outrage is all tied together with the Christian nationalist tendencies of rural, white America. They hate Muslims. They hate LGBTQ+. They hate anybody that’s not MAGA. Then they go to church a few times a week and even their church leadership is feeding into it all. Then they hang out with their friends and discuss conspiracy theories and literally just make up bullshit stories. Then they get online and have no understanding that all they are viewing is algorithmically curated content from within their own bubble.
Because it’s peculiar and a classic outgroup. Can’t kill gays and black people as freely anymore, so they went elsewhere.
A more comprehensive answer, because oligarchs need to steal money from somewhere in order to fuel their fortunes. They disenfranchise some to take from them and distract people with culture wars. It’s globally very politically consistent.
One of the easiest counterpoints to “blue” politicians that want to abandon Trans people as “they’re just not a huge voting bloc” is that fascists will just target another group next time the target stops working. First it was women, then black people, then gays. They will always have someone for hatred, and they don’t actually have any alliances (even in hatred).
Of course, the simpler counterpoint is “Ahhhh, you almost fooled me into thinking you weren’t fascist! It was a pretty good disguise though. Anyway, debating each other is a waste of time, since you don’t process thoughts and feelings, right?”
Yep. The anti gay propaganda failed hard over a decade ago so they pivoted to a much smaller group, less understood and harder to empathise with. Sympathy is one thing, but if you’re not trans, it’s damned hard to imagine yourself in those shoes. On top of all that, everyone knows a gay person, much less so trans folks.
And trans people have even more against them! Know how we automatically and instinctively identify someone’s sex from a quarter second glance of a quarter profile? Trans people can turn that sense on its ear and that freaks some people out.
I don’t give a shit, but I can see why they’re a perfect target. If we can keep our eye on, “trans rights are human rights”, we can overcome this thing eventually.