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[–]lovelyspearmint 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The main difference between not supporting gay people in the past and not supporting trans people now is that you can get yourself cancelled if you say anything they don't like, so people tend to virtue signal simply to save their own skins.

It's difficult to gauge whether to stay silent or not. Because if you do, the misinformation continues, but if you don't, it can have consequences.

The main talking point I'd use is that the word phobia means an irrational fear of. While homophobia is an irrational fear, transphobia often isn't. Wanting sex-based protections isn't irritational, wanting sex-specific services isn't irrational. They wouldn't exist if there was no need for them.

[–]homosomes 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

While homophobia is an irrational fear, transphobia often isn't.

This is because transphobia can be literally anything. Trans people keep adding and removing things to the list of what is or isn't transphobic and expect us all to keep up. Seen them flip flop so much on whether or not drag is transphobic for example.

And trying to get a straight answer from them is so hard. If they're not namecalling you for daring to ask a question, they're giving non-answers or falling back on stock phrases that they refuse to clarify. It would be so much easier to work out compromise if they would actually talk. But they don't want to talk, they want total submission. So people either give in after abuse, pay lip service to trans rhetoric to avoid cancellation, or just remove themselves from the conversation entirely.

Honestly, seeing this all unfold convinces me that a lot of straight "allies" back in the day were also performatively virtue signalling for LGB rights. I hate to think it, but it's probably true. So many of these straight people are so comfortable being woke homophobic now that it doesn't make sense if they didn't hold homophobic beliefs before.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Damn. I didn't think about performative support for LGB people, like I understood what the straight "queers" were up to but thinking about the others make me sad. At least I know what to expect.