Why the ultrarich come after trans people ?
Why the ultrarich come after trans people ?
elon musk, mark zuckerberg, J.K rowling! Are the names that come to mind.
3 from different background: a African immigrant benefiting from government spending, an American smart young engineer, and a female English successful writer.
They are no politicians, and cant be accuse of trying to gather some vote. Multi-billions amongst them.
I get they lean to the right to protect their cash, with less tax and regulation. I get they are racist because they fear some poor people will take their cash.
But why the hatred for trans people ? It's 1% of the population, they cant do anything, dont threaten anyone. There is no rational or psychological reason
*EDIT: I read all the comments. A lot of interesting explanation: smokescreen/scapegoat, maintaining the male/female power structure, new face of anti-gay , projection / self-hatred , just louder voice ...
I realize, may be, I didn't post a good question. May be it is less about the ultra-rich but more about why that rhetoric work on the general population (else it would not have taken hold as it does). For that I have a 2 cent theory: The raise of the cult of Nature we have since the global warming. The idea, that everything natural is better. The ugly version is only natural male and female are worthy*
Its alla diversion.
Find some group that is different, then shit on them and make them look bad publicly while this relatively small group can't so much to talk back publicly.
It'll outrage the public, they'll start looking at the group while trump and Co then go and rob the state blind while no one is looking
Yep.
To add to that, I've found a lot of people in the working class care a lot about class differentiators and will spend a lot of time trying to profess how they should be viewed at a higher relative ranking since they can't rely on money or heritage to do it for them.
So, if you create an out group for them, a lot of them will latch on to that idea since it raises their relative value in a meaningful way.
Divide and conquer. A united population is harder to subjugate.
A useful distraction to prevent class warfare and protect their wealth with a convenient and reliable scapegoat designed to ensure a divided working class.
I do wonder what their end game is. History surely will not look on them favourably, so who would want to be the villain on the world stage? Yes history is written by the victors, but only for a short while until the truths come out. I just can't understand why anyone would deliberately want to be on the wrong side of history.
most real-life villain thinks they are doing good. JK Rowling rhetoric is all about "protecting women". She probably is certain she is some sort of martyr trying to save the world
I can actually believe that JK thinks she's doing the right thing. She's losing friends, money, reputation for saying what she truly believes, no matter how messed up. She never pretended anything but.
Elon is not like that. Elon knew how to play the progressive part and have a progressive wife, and do/say progressive things to make himself look good when it suited him. The face-mask reveal and the 180 turn as he ditches his old friends (they served their purpose) for new ones, whilst his wealth skyrockets.... this man surely deep down can't believe that he has noble intentions.
Just the latest social group that's still broadly acceptable to shit on.
There's not a ton of global census data out there, but in Canada trans and non-binary people make up 0.33% of the population. Which means there's a lot of people who don't know anyone who is trans or non-binary. Unfortunately there's also a lot of people who are unwilling to emphasize, or even sympathize, for those they feel are different or strange to them. It take time and effort to listen to others' stories and to gain appreciation for their perspective, and it's an effort many people are uncomfortable making if it feels they are deviating too far from society's norm. What you're observing is those in power taking advantage of the same human weakness that's been used forever to discriminate on whoever the current permissible outgroup to hate is.
How many times have you heard, "I don't care about anyone being/doing Y, but...", and then proceed to say some sort of transphobic, homophobic, racist, or sexist shit? When I grew up it was the G in LGBT. When my parents grew up it was African Americans. Women only got the right to vote a century ago, you better believe some of our great granduncles had some shit to say that would make today's uncles look like saints.
Because it's nothing more than a trick to divide public opinion and control it.
It's called smokescreen. Turns the attention of the masses away of their wealth and power
I get it. But that smokescreen is achieved with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Throwing Trans in , seems so random
This smoke screen around LGBTQ+ and anti immigration has been stoked for nearly 30 years in order to veer away from the actual discussion and laws around wealth inequality, healthcare, etc. It's all a guise against minority groups who can't fight back. Sometimes positive sometimes negative, but at the end of the day billionaires stoke the fear around these minority groups and they get to keep growing their billions without restriction.
In the case of Rowling, it wasn't a smoke screen so much as black mold.
They will pick whatever group they think will suddenly put as many idiots as possible under their control when they say "GROUP A IS BAD".
Most of them don't care they are trans, they only care that they can take advantage of the oppression of a minority group in order to consolidate control over people so that they can oppress more people.
When everyone alive and dead is either oppressed or under your control, you become god. This is the goal, but they don't care about the process to get there.
As far as I can tell, they didn't. J.K is a straight example, but Elon went looking for an edgy movement to align with, and Zuckerberg just wants to stay rich.
Your everyday regressives want to go after trans people because they don't think they can take gay people on anymore. Some political movements have capitaised on this to gain their support, and have captured rich supporters as well because trans abuse is compatible with the rich continuing to gain more and more power.
How rich are the Wichowski sisters? You bet they're not a fan of any of this.
You might be right: it's a rebranding of anti-gay sentiment.
Elon has a trans daughter
Huh. He wouldn't be the first person to shit on their trans kid, I guess.
All threaten the oldest hierarchy of all: man over woman.
As for musk, he has a trans child he hates and disowned. And he’s a Nazi, straight up. Family left Canada to go to apartheid South Africa because they agreed with apartheid and white racial supremacy. See the hierarchy here?
Zuck is an opportunist who will align with anything that makes him money. But he also has a weird obsession with Roman history that’s a red flag to me about being a closet fascist.
Jk Rowling is a second wave feminist and she’s big mad that people without vaginas can call themselves women and be in women’s spaces.
so 3 different agenda, with the same result. Probably it is as coincidental as that
an post op trans people be in women places?
Scapegoating
Oh so now we’re blaming the goats
what the heck!
They are frequently interviewed.
Which means they are frequently asked: “Why’s everything fucked up?”
They can’t give the real answer, which is “ultra-rich people”.
So they give no answer at all (in which case you don’t hear about it) or they cite the Enemy Of The Day.
You can't get ultra-rich while being a compassionate person
This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!
They saw /egg_irl and blame them for why eggs are now expensive.
Easy to scapegoat like most minorities that a large part of the population has never interacted with before.
Also, societal attitudes have changed to the point where at least open racism or homophobia aren't really acceptable any more. So they needed a new scapegoat.
Poor, trans, minorities, leftists, educated, and even moderate Republicans are all under attack. These billionaires participate so they can be part of the fascist takeover of this country, not through any personal conviction.
preface: conjecture
musk and zuckerberg benefit from “othering” a group so that the majority of people get caught up in arguing about the rights of that group. While you’re busy being distracted by that they can push for agendas that benefit their companies and personal wealth, which inherently fuck you over.
musk does seem to have a personal vendetta as well given his issues with his trans daughter but I truly think this is ancillary to enriching his wealth and power. He also seems to love getting involved in topics that rile people up because deep down he’s a 14 year old reddit troll
rowling is double down and attention. She has a shit take, posts about it, people call her out. She’s a literal billionaire “beloved author” used to being surrounded by hangers on so being challenged wrecks her shit. Rather than reflect and look at scientific consensus she doubles down on her shit take. Because of people like above this gets her increasing amounts of attention and relevance so her beliefs are reaffirmed and deepened constantly. Now she’s consulted to speak authoritatively on the matter despite having no actual qualification other than being a rich lady who got into twitter arguments about it
Many of these apply to nobodies as well. Your stupid anti trans neighbor benefits from “othering” someone because it gives them someone to deflect blame onto. For most of American history it was black people, or Hispanic people, sometimes Jews, basically any minority. They also will double down when called out on shit takes and will absolutely respond to attention given for shit takes.
There must always be an "underclass" in capitalism for the upper echelons to threaten the middle echelons. No exceptions. Wether that's the homeless, psychiatric patients, gay or trans people... doesn't matter. There will be some regional differences in what constitutes this underclass but the end result is always the same. Capitalism CANNOT FUNCTION without this implicit threat of excommunication and starvation.
The only real difference with the recent past is that all of this has become much, much more explicit than it ever used to be before. But make no mistake, even with a Biden or Harris at the helm, this would still be the case, just much more muted.
This is a feature of the system, not a flaw, and will never change as long as capitalism in its current form dominates.
I tried to read the wheel of time once and what i learned is that gender is the ultimate defining factor in some peoples lives. It is their whole defining principle in interacting with others. Everything about you is a direct consequence of your sex. Mess with sex/gender and you destroy their entire way of interacting with humans. Hunans dont exist for them, only men and women. The sexes are actually incapable of communication or cooperation of any kind. Effectively different species. This makes trans people a literal impossibility. A leopard cannot become an attack helicopter. A trans person threatens their world view in a fundamental way.
These people also want control of everything, probably due to inability to cope with anything they don't understand, which is a lot. I don't understand being trans, but i undetstand the right to health and happiness and i wish it for you.
That could be an interesting explanation of why gender studies have been a target so often, even during the Nazi era
Other scapegoats have changed, while this comes bsck
I read that book and it felt like satire, but apparently this extreme belief in gender differences is the norm and im a freak.
Im ok with that, but i do raise it to make the point that some of us just dont see your sex/gender as particularly important information and anyone changing their gender is a massive threat to the status quo beleif that such things are not only natural and right but the basis for who you are and how to interact with you.
I remember people calling for sex/gender to be declared as part of your reddit profile. This is why, they cant interact with people as humans, they need a sex/gender to tell them how. It's very disturbing to me.
My personal opinion is twofold:
- they need a diversion. Like a magician (or more accurate a pickpocket) they will take anything to make people blind while they amass their power. It is a sickness of the mind. They are addicted to power and ever anxious to loose it. Minorities are a good enemy for the people to blame the problems on that these people either cause themselves or dont want to take care of. In the past it was witches, nowadays it is other minorities.
- minorities have been fighting for a place in the world for a long time and there have been significant improvements. But that is not a positive development if you want to rule supreme. If you‘re power crazed, you need people to fall in line. Otherwise it wont work. We have ample evidence that only a sufficiently subdued population will not rise up against authority.
Musk: more politically oriented than just money now, had aligned himself with a very large part of the population that thinks at a minimum that even if some people need to transition for their own health, society retains the right to consider their pre-transition history to still be part of reality
Zuckerberg: profit driven, is aligning Facebook etc with the political reality in America and the real prospect of being fined or embargoed by a Trump administration, would flip back if a democrat won in 2028
Rowling: belongs to a British generation of certain age where trans people are superficially accepted BUT regards their pre-trans history to be something still relevant. That's where this started and it escalated / deteriorated from there E.g. compassionate to a degree and willing to entertain the "fiction" that a biological man is now a women for the sake of that person's mental health: see them at the shops presenting female? carry on as normal.. talk to them? use their current name and pronouns out of politeness.. BUT.. if they want to access a female shelter, draw a line.. if they want to teach young children, risk assess them including their pre-trans gender and history etc. Rowling then got into increasingly fractious arguments on Twitter, largely arising from other people she followed and liked and what the trans community inferred from that. At that point she doubled down declaring advocates on Twitter to be increasingly hysterical and deluded whilst simultaneously insisting she would treat trans people humanely in person. She's then lashed out in numerous ways including in her writings aligning herself with increasingly extreme anti-trans people. FWIW, I think she would have carried on being a mildly tolerant (if dated) person of a certain age had she just stayed off Twitter entirely. But lashing out, being misinterpreted and misinterpreting others had led her to spiral down into viciousness and bitterness.
I agree with your analysis. I think on Musk's case there is also his estranged daughter, it has entrenched his position
True
I consider your theorizing of "pre-transition history" being within the "rights of society" to "keep in touch with reality" as misleading and problematic.
In fact, these are the axioms of trans erasure I discuss in my other response. In the core of this reasoning is the idea that "men are inherently dangerous to women" therefore "women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with".
So you can't go past the "transition" history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as "misandry", but only apply this to trans women (victims themselves of cis violence in bathrooms and all other settings). Why? Because you register trans women in the semantics of sexual perversion. Then, the "right" to know anyone's medical history does not exist, on the contrary people have the right to privacy to medical interventions of any type.
Due to stigma and discrimination trans people are furthermore entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences. But this is also hypothetical now. The amount of cis-passing is different for every trans people.
Some may pass for cis, most don't. Besides the existential crisis some people experience when they can't tell a person is trans, in practice stealth trans people are relatively rare, and there is not an iota of evidence that there is any societal harm from stealth cis-passing trans people. So there is no reason behind your purported "societal right to know", apart from cisgenderist entitlement.
Enforcing such right is not only infeasible, but it sufficiently and necessarily leads to banning public trans life, with no other explanation other than cis people's uneasiness. The civil rights movement has established that majoritarian uneasiness with minorities sharing their bathrooms is not enough to justify perpetuation of discriminatory segregation practices.
This is textbook transphobia.
In the core of this reasoning is the idea that “men are inherently dangerous to women” therefore “women must know at all times the biological sex of any person they interact with”.
I don't believe that, just to be clear. But I think that's the view of a lot of people, and that's what i was outlining. because that was relevant to OP's question.
So you can’t go past the “transition” history for reasons that under all other circumstances you would decry as “misandry”,
I will assume you are not talking about me here as you have no idea of my point of view on the matter. I believe you are talking generically...
even if you are talking generically, i don't think your assumption here makes sense. many people feel free to discriminate between people on the basis of their biological sex. there are many contexts where (for example) men will accept they are treated differently but will not resort to calling this "misandry". at least in the settings i'm familiar with and amongst the people i've lived alongside here in London, UK. you may have very specific incidence in mind or may not be intending to speak universally, but you said "all other circumstances", which sounds pretty universal, so i'm just pointing out that's not correct..
entitled to hands down secrecy, given that a random bigot can just shoot them down for being trans with zero consequences.
I don't know where you live, but this is not true in the UK
while I agree with the thrust of what you are saying you have a writing style that puts words and assumptions in my mouth in a manner that comes across an unnecessarily combative. you also use exaggeration to make your point which is itself problematic..
This is the answer. It's the intersection of those with strong personal opinions and the power (money) to speak their mind without true repercussions, and the power (money) hungry who are following the strongest zeitgeist in the halls of power.
The zeitgeist exists because the entrenched powerful ones are currently using trans people and migrants as a wedge between different parts of the working class. It used to be homosexuals and communists. Or abortions and hippies. Or slaves. Or indigenous people. Ad nauseum. It's about keeping the working class divided and maintaining power. This is the latest version. And it's not just in the US BTW
People like Rowling are new money working class that fell for the con
They want you fighting a culture war to keep your mind off the class war.
The mainstream "left", such as the Democrats benefit from this too.
Draw the national party lines between bigoted and non-bigoted. Now everyone can fight over that and nobody has to address the fact that two thirds of the country want universal healthcare.
It is easy for many people to think trans wars is a distraction, scapegoating, or a genuine threat to the authoritarian world view. I ask you to carefully consider that anti-trans hate is genuine.
Nazis had prioritized Jewish genocide and pursued it to an irrational degree, even prioritized the genocide to actually winning the war. Some analysts say that this shows their war was always and primarily against civilian Jews.
We have evidence to think this is the case with trans people now.
The recent "anti-christian bias" order outright frames trans rights as an enemy of their ingroup.
Reed has covered the leaked Christian emails that show them believe trans people are demons and evil incarnation and want to wipe them from the face of the earth.
Rowling has been caught on tape saying she wants to minimize the number of people transitioning so that they have less work to do "special accommodations later" for trans people.
For those aware of the term Sonderbehandlung this leaves no doubt: trans people are their primary enemy, they have poured their millions into the pockets of nutjobs and politicians that will relieve them from having to live side by side with trans people.
Don't be fooled that this is just distraction and/or scapegoating by power-mongers.
They have a trans Holocaust in the making and they have already put the plot in motion. ACT NOW
Edit:
I realize I might have not responded directly to OP's question. See the following for my take.
My analysis linking Bathroom Bans as early signs of completely banning trans people out of public life https://lemmy.ml/post/25037664
I wrote this while still believing that anti-trans hate was an election-winning distraction. It partly responds to where anti-trans hate comes from https://lemmy.ml/post/24711061
In this sense many people are deeply transphobic, but billionaires have the resources to eradicate trans people from public life. The rest can only curse, badmouth, trash, verbally attack, workplace harass, fire, refuse healthcare, sexually or physically attack or mob-lynch trans people. Every transphobe does as much as they can get away with. Billionaire transphobes can get away with genocide so they're doing that.
Additional resources in support of the argument
Summary of early Holocaust course of events and why targeted people were not mobilized https://lemmy.ml/post/25008729/16208799
Erin Reed article on fundamentalist anti-trans lobbyists' leaked emails https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2600-leaked-anti-trans-lobbyist-emails
They are a fairly small group compared to other marginalized groups, and particularly vulnerable compared to others. There is already a lot of misinformation about them. Average people often dont run into them or understand them Well enough to make informed decisions. Its easy for billionaires and republicans to wield religion against them. They are often vocal about their beliefs. Intersectionality is also important (e.g. supporting and protecting other minority demographics' rights because it is the right thing to do, and tearing each other down is counterproductive) to them, which isnt always the case. Disappearing them sets an example and is a test run for setting up the infrastructure and means to take control. See: nazi germany with the deaf, and current marginalization by the trump administration of the trans and disabled communities.
I think this is an important part of the answer i don't see mentioned much. Lots of good answers that seem right to me, amd i think also because trans people are such a tiny part of the population, they are politically not very strong. Bullies always pick on those weaker.
There are a lot of other good answers, but it seems worth remembering lots of poor powerless folks hate trans folks too.
Part of the reason they're coming after trans people is because it's human nature to hate or fear those you don't understand and who are different. A dark, and sad part of human nature, but part of human nature nonetheless
All the other stuff folks are talking about is also a true, but it's not like they're unique in their contempt for people who are different
Products of their generation. As they die off others will take their place and society will move on to other groups to target.
Mostly a people to blame and for others to fear monger, it's a way to make people look the other way also, a common "enemy" instigated from the true enemy. And sense there is not a lot of trans people statistically it's hard for them to defend themselves. It's all about manipulation and control over the people
My conjectures:
Musk: Trans kid who disowned him for being shitty so obvipusly it must be trans peoples fault and not his.
JKR: I firmly believe she's selfhating in the closet trans. The equivalent to the homophobic pastor who eventually gets caught with the choir boy. We just haven't seen the choirboy yet.
Zuck: Not transphobic, just a sociopath (at worst) who will go whatever way the wind blows.
Rich/famous transphobes' voices are louder because they're rich, unfortunately. It's the same problem with every other awful opinion that rich/famous people have.
I do suspect though that it also has to do with social class and thinking that they are "above".
yeah may be it's just rich people having a louder voice . But trans existed for a long time, and we never heard so much vitriol against them until a few decade back
Correlation is not causation.
Personally I just think they're just pandering some group of people who have real power to determine how money flows in a society and they happen to be right wing conservatives.
US democracy is collapsing and the future throne is probably already set and they might have inside information.
Like you said, trans people can't really do anything. Perfect target when you want to show where you are planning to stand.
They may not be politicians but they spend money to get themselves into positions of political power as these few days have shown with Musk. And these people get most of their power from the masses that are dumb enough and bigoted enough to be swayed by a shared common hatred of groups to scapegoat for everything.
Because there are alot of ignorant people in the world afraid of what they perceive as different.
In your first two examples, regardless of not being politicians it's clear that by helping put politicians in power they benefit, so whether they genuinely care or not, it's just about money and lack of compassion to them. And continuing to drive class warfare continues to benefit them.
In your last example, I think that person is just in the ignorant and afraid of change category with an unfortunate amount of exposure.
I wouldn't say that JK Rowling was "going after" transfolk, she just didn't agree with their premise. I wouldn't go so far as to say that's hatred
she seems pretty vocal about it : https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk-rowlings-transphobia-controversy-a-complete-timeline
Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity), but only the ultrarich can afford making arbitrary people hate them without any good reason. That's why it looks like only the billionaires are doing it.
Then they go to Twitter with these opinions and go insane and the whole thing enters a neverending tailspin.
Elon is slightly different insofar that one of his own kids is trans. So that's not entirely due to Twitter, but there's also some lived experience at the bottom of it all (I assume here that he spent time with said child).