This is similar reasoning to how it's always been obvious to me that the "being gay is a choice" argument bigots make is complete bullshit. If it were a choice, who the fuck would willingly submit themselves to all that discrimination and suffering?!
Well, all those Christians that are the victims of society for one. Them choosing the "difficult path of faith" explains at least part of the reason for why they are so unempathetic.
Religious people have been tortured horribly and killed for their religion while refusing to recant their beliefs, and religion is very much a choice. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this argument isn't great.
But the belief in religion like Christianity comes with an afterlife. If you truly believe that there is a heaven and hell, torture is not going to make you drop those beliefs. On the flip side, if being gay was a choice, all you're choosing is strife and being gay.
That's true, to a degree, but it isn't instinctual. You don't have people staring into the mirror in the middle of the night trying to figure out why they feel Christian when they've never even seen a bible before.
The big "naturalist" angle on gay/trans issues I see is that there are plenty of bi/fluid people who could choose to lean one way or another exclusively. They kinda get erased simply because they don't have this deep instinctual impulse towards the taboo end of the spectrum.
If it were a choice, who the fuck would willingly submit themselves to all that discrimination and suffering?!
That's where you really start falling down the rabbit hole and swallowing the "Being gay is a way to worship Satan" and "Homosexuality is a mind-virus created by the Communists to prevent the fittest western males from procreating" blackpills.
My sister's take has been that since trans women don't go through the pain of menstruation or giving birth, they have no right to suggest they "earned" being a woman.
I mean that and she thinks Disney became woke and they ruined her beloved 90s films.
I remember talking about Putin and how he said the most Bond villain thing with "you in the west believe history is a struggle between oppression and freedom, I see it as a struggle between chaos and order". Her take is history is a struggle between modesty and debauchery and we've gone too far in the debauchery direction.
I love her, and she can surprise me with her humor, but overall she can turn into Angela from the office, but she's not even religious.
What are their thoughts on post op trans women? Because let me tell you, screaming pain in the hospital, pouring blood out my snatch (seriously it was so much), wearing pads every day, intense cramping from the catheter, abdominal pain for months, getting the stirrups and speculum treatment, I sure feel like I'd have 'earned' it by now
When my wife was newly transitioned, we were out in a big box store and she remarks, exasperated, "everyone is just stopping in my way or way invading my personal space today! Wtf!"
Nope, thats just how people treat women in public lol.
You never needed to earn being yourself via suffering, no one owes that to anyone, but I have witnessed personally just how authentically the public mistreats all femme people.
I feel like if someone wants to be a gender without surgery that’s a totally valid choice. I don’t get the expectations around having the “right” genitals. Who decides what’s right? It’s trying too hard to conform to an understanding of gender identity that’s now archaic.
My sister’s take has been that since trans women don’t go through the pain of menstruation or giving birth, they have no right to suggest they “earned” being a woman.
What a bullshit pov since many people born as women don’t have children or menstruate, see this link
Some intersex people don’t menstruate, what are intersex people? They can choose to express gender identity as they see fit. Therefore, it’s not black/white about “menstruate = woman”
Also, 'debauchery', in this case just means more people are happier being themselves, and loving who they want to love, more than almost anytime in history.
These kind of people ignore all the regular kind of debauchery, like priests committing sexual abuse against children.
I doubt women willingly "earned" their womanhood going through all that, and whose to say I'd rather not deal with periods and stuff over literally not being able to be myself in my own skin? Making friends is so difficult when half my mind is recognizing that they're gonna see the stubble no matter what I do and form opinions and assumptions on that alone.
This is how I think about trans men. I'm a cis man, but I never liked men very much, I've just never thought of myself as anything else. A trans man--a person who would fight to be this gender? Reminds me that men have value too.
As if that “logic” would ever work on terfs. Case in point men hating lesbian terfs. If they hate men so much you’d think they would cheer on every man who wants to be a woman. Yet they hate trans women the hardest of all terfs.
Trans women, you see, are posers. They're evil perverted men who want to Infiltrate Women's Spaces™ to make us feel unsafe. They don't want to become women in any meaningful way. Men are evil by their very nature. As everyone knows, of course, the gene for being aggressive and hostile and lacking empathy is on the Y-chromosome. Any man who claims to want to try to become a woman is lying to gain your trust, and he's probably going to rape you down the line (or something idk I'm not a terf)
Trans men, though, them I will never understand. Why would anyone want to become an aggressive, angry, uncontrollable, lust-fueled monster unless they hated us and our cause and everything it stood for?
I'm pretty convinced that the only people that care that a person is trans has issues with themselves and are projecting. I'm a cis normie and I never, ever think about my gender. It just is and I find these haters incredibly weird. I really feel for the people who do as that must be an incredibly difficult thing to work through, so why make it harder for them. Plus, seeing loved ones bloom after transitioning is all the proof I need. Hate takes effort.
I think youre right for a lot of people, but conservative values require an out group. If it's not immigrants and transfolk, it's gonna be whomever else they can get people frothing at mouth over. Homeless people, mentally ill, it could be fucking left-handed folk. It's only the othering that matters.
Not every conservative that says you can choose your sexual orientation is gay, but that argument was started by a closeted gay conservative and was popularized by closeted gay conservatives. And that's the exact same story for most conservative bullshit. They all think they are the Standard Human™ and they feel some shame about part of themselves (because they aren't the Standard Human™) so they force that insecurity on everyone else. The rest of them follow suit as long as a line is already popular enough.
Just ask if they wake up and choose to be straight every morning. If they say yes, then you understand them. If they say no, then tell them they understand how gay people feel.
The cognitive dissonance will kick in at this point, but maybe they'll understand. Maybe...