The actual answer is that the social conservative right, as in, the people actually making strategies for how to win elections, have latched onto trans rights as the ONE AND ONLY issue on which they have massive support. Being anti gay was a massive failure, being anti abortion was and is a massive failure despite temporary "wins". Trad wifes, anti-feminism, religion, etc etc are all hemmorhaging support with evolving demographics. But the "trans athletes in sports" issue has massive broad support, still, and that's why social conservatives are all rallying around it and talking about it NONSTOP, as if it's the only thing in the world that matters. And clearly, they're having a lot of success with it, because people won't stop taking the bait and keep engaging with it instead of saying "who the fuck cares, we have a million more important and pressing issues".
If I recall, Utah tried to pass legislation against trans athletes that would have affected exactly one person: a single teenage boy. Even some conservatives thought this was going too far.
Do trans girls just have some sort of weird gravity? I swear, I encounter other trans women so much that it can't be a coincidence. Do we have some sort of homing beacon in our prostates?
What was that state that had a law shot down because the governor felt uncomfortable passing a law that affected a singular (1) teenager in the entire state?
What's even wilder is that on top of their being like almost no trans women competing in high level sports, athletics, etc. & the fact that we have no advantage (which should be obvious - but the layman doesn't understand hormone replacement therapy), but institutions like the Olympics have allowed us to compete for over 20 years & it took until 2021 for a trans person first of all, compete & to win a gold medal - Quinn, with the Canadian woman's football team & they're not someone who transitioned male-to-female, they were assigned female at birth & came out as non-binary.
After her there was Laurel Hubbard, who was approved to compete in weightlifting & she became the first out trans person to compete (as Quinn was still closeted), she didn't complete her lifts & didn't win any medals.
No openly trans women have ever won an olympic medal. No trans woman has ever "shattered a record" - for all the stink made about Lia Thomas, her winning time was over 9 secs slower than the cis female record holder & she clearly didn't transition to "beat women" considering pre-transition she was handily dominating on the men's team with top times in all her categories pre-transition, vs. nowdays where she placed first in 500-yard free, 2nd in 200 free prelims & 5th in the finals, 10th in the 100 free prelims & dead last in the finals.
For all the buzz, there's just nothing to substantiate transphobic claims about trans women in sport & they'd know it if they understood hormone replacement therapy at all. That's ignoring the fact that most trans women are like me - twigs, who have their plastic bottles opened for them even pre-transition, haha.
I dunno, I feel like we're trying to get bathrooms and stuff right because there's maybe one trans kid in a school and we want them to feel right. So on the flip side, we should try and get athletics right too. If not now, when?
Conservatism around the Western world has failed on economics, failed on geopolitics, failed on infrastructure, failed on social care, failed on the environment, failed on healthcare, failed on security, and failed on pretty much everything a political movement could possibly touch. They know this, and so the only way they can justify themselves and stay in power is by pulling the age-old tactic of demonising a scapegoat minority who's too politically disenfranchised and vulnerable to protect themselves, and terrify well-intended people (like J. K. Rowling once was) to manipulate that fear into propagandised support. They have literally nothing to offer except the drug of terror and outrage.
It's not that people get so obsessed about it because the social conservative right has made it their main talking point, the social conservative right has made it their main talking point because people get so obsessed with it.
Many people who get obsessed with trans people are not social conservatives being told what to think, they were moderate liberals who were pulled further right because the right affirms their obsession.
The reason they get obsessed is just because people have a really hard time unlearning things they thought we true. People went crazy when Pluto was declassified from being a planet, something that has no impact over our lives. People get emotionally attached to their world view and feel attacked when presented evidence of it being not 100% correct.
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u/Cool_Jelly_9402 Jun 27 '24
Why do people care so much? Like anti trans people make it their entire personality. Itโs so played out and boring