Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks
in reply to 58692 [lunya] (beeeeeeeeeeeeeep)

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks
@Evil Floofling lunya :neocat_floof_flag_trans: Possibly, but the ones I'm aware of who have just completely turned their brains to mush rant pretty exclusively about trans women.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

@sleepybisexual what I've anecdotally noticed about how they see trans men is that trans men get pushed into the "poor confused girl we need to protect" box and trans women get pushed into the villain box. Nonbinary gets pushed into either of those boxes depending on how they get viewed.

There's different kinds of transphobes that do something different with trans men, but the particular kind described in the OG post seem to do it this way.

in reply to 58692 [lunya] (beeeeeeeeeeeeeep)

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

@sleepybisexual There's definitely a way that trans men are also a basilisk to a certain kind of person! Just haven't seen the pattern yet. Publicly right now the focus is on trans women so it's also hard to pick out an impersonal pattern. I know nonbinary umbrella is also something like that to a certain kind of person (the "you can do that?" realisation turns into a nasty "how dare you try" reaction). Shaking up of norms in a way that a person can't get out of their head, for good or bad.

I do like the reframing of basilisks. Sometimes it's nice to feel powerful like that instead of threatened or intimidated.

in reply to Sarah Brown

re: Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

@sleepybisexual it has to do with people being invested in gender sex normative roles in a certain way, so that facing the existence of transfemininity makes them conceive of it as such a threat, or absurd illogical concept, or whatever, that has them endlessly die trying to make sense of it.

obviously their cissexism affects all trans people, but trans women in particular are generally focused on due to the intersection of oppositional and traditional sexism in our case

in reply to 58692 [lunya] (beeeeeeeeeeeeeep)

re: Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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in reply to Sarah Brown

i have, in the past, referred to this as OOB (Out of Band - from the TCP protocol, i.e. data that has priority and jumps the queue directly to the hind brain). I also like the Out Of Context idea from Iain m banks's Excession, of something that is just do far out of a civilisalisation's (or person's) experience that it basically causes a hard stop and breaks it.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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in reply to Riley S. Faelan

re: Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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in reply to Sarah Brown

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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in reply to Sarah Brown

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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Tattie

@geekylou ok so this is interesting, if it isn't a coincidence: JKR and Glinner both have history of first being criticised from the right. JKR for "promoting witchcraft", Glinner for "mocking the church".

It's almost as if they fell into a trap of thinking "well, at least the left will support me no matter what I do", and then when they actually get (correctly) criticised from the left, they feel betrayed. And not coincidentally, a lot of their cope seems to be strawmanning their critics to make it sound like right wing rather than left wing criticism.
@goatsarah

in reply to Sarah Brown

Long form - on transphobia and trans women as basilisks

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in reply to Tattie

This reminds me of a video analysis of JKR's work (from Shaun..?) where they noticed how actions were seen as justified or cruel depending on what character did them. If a character was considered one of the good ones (like Harry, Ron and Hermione), barely anything they did to others would be portrayed as bad or cruel, and vice versa. If this is not just a book thing but how she genuinely believes the world to be, a bunch of good and evil people, not a world where everyone is capable of doing all kinds of actions.... It makes sense she feels like she is in the right, no matter what she does, and that every cruel action against trans people would be justified and wouldn't actually be considered cruel to begin with, because in her mind, she is inherently good and trans people are inherently bad. And nobody with a clear mind and also be one of the good ones would doubt her, so everyone speaking up against her is clearly rotten as well and pretending not to be, no matter if left or right.
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in reply to Tattie

@Tattie @geekylou
Terrible people have a weird sort of solidarity. They recognize that growing social awareness threatens to destroy power structures they thrive in, so they can work together to some extent against the Woke Mob. This is the source of virtually all the "why I left the left" stuff. The right is full of terrible people who will extend their twisted version of solidarity to the former "leftist" so they can preserve the power structures they all depend on.
in reply to Sarah Brown

This is an interesting take, the basilisk framing makes sense! But I still don't get what the trigger is. What is the SOMETHING you refer to? Do you know?

I'd like to understand it, because I like to understand why people think the way they do, especially when I disagree with them. I can't fathom TERFs. It doesn't make sense, it is so irrational. With ordinary bigotry is possible to understand where it's coming from. Racism kind of makes sense, conservative transphobia and homophobia kind of makes sense, etc.
The position that trans women is a threat to cis women is a complete mystery to me. It is, as you say, fucking stupid.