Is it really transphobia if no trans athletes were involved? Or rather plain old misogyny?
The root of it is transphobia because before the Olympics started, they predicted that because trans athletes are allowed like they have been for over 20 years, they’ll dominate every event despite that not happening before and nothing having changed recently. Since that didn’t happen, because admitting that they were wrong is very clearly not an option, they accuse cis athletes that they deem not sufficiently feminine of being trans. People who don’t really follow what’s going on but take the right wing position by default believe them, and it reinforces their biases, so it works as propaganda despite a complete lack of basis in reality.
Transmisogyny is its own goddamn entire ass terrible thing, and a really useful concept for understanding all kinds of shit in The Discourse.
yes. first of all transphobia is very closely linked to misogyny, if not rooted in it.
but also if bigots were educated they would stop being bigots, so it’s a guarantee that they are fucking illiterate fuckwits.
and in being so you can’t really expect them to be accurate with their hatred; in fact they are specifically bad at telling people who aren’t like them apart which makes it very easy for them to target the wrong people.
post-covid cinophobia affected non-chinese asians, as post 9/11 islamophobia affected sikhs and other brown people, as transphobia so often affects cis women who may look a little less than traditional. i can keep going for all kinds of bigotry.
it doesn’t mean they’re not doing something in the name of hating a specific group just because they’re fucking idiots who don’t know who’s in that group or not.
There are plenty of highly-educated, highly intelligent bigots. Likewise, there are plenty of people with almost no education to speak of who are opposed to bigotry. Bigotry isn’t about education or intelligence, it’s far more insidious and rooted in our psychology. A lot of it is subconscious - we all have innate in-group bias, for example.
All of us are susceptible to bigotry, and the best way to prevent it is to be aware that you’re not immune to it and check whether your knee-jerk reactions are justified or not.
i should say educated in related issues. it’s demonstrable that even simple exposure to different kinds of people reduces bigotry.
people who are bigoted can be educated, of course, but most likely they won’t really know much about the people they’re bigoted against, even when they dedicate their life to thinking about them.
transphobes for example, barely think about anything other than trans people all day. they start transvestigating cis people as we’ve seen here.
I’m also not trying to suggest being uneducated automatically makes you a bigot either. some obvious hyperbole has been used.
