r/ContraPoints • u/Legitimate-Record951 • 1d ago
I think transphobia is conspiracism
There has always been transphobia, but earlier it had another tone. In the mainstream, it was mostly a joke about a trans women tricking a hetero guy, or a cross-dressing serial killer. So the transphobic storyline was that of an individual über-perv, not an idea of some shadowy elite trying to eradicate women. With this in mind, I think the key to understand today's transphobia is the mindset that ContraPoints labeled conspiracism. Mind, this is mostly founded on my feels. But my feels are on point more often than not.
Let's look at the vids core beliefs if conspiracism. Transphobia seems to fit with Intentionalism and Dualism. But I was a bit unsure about the third principle, Symbolism. I guess there is Tala, and whatever pervy stuff they can read into Disney movie posters, which fits the idea of trying to groom children.
I think Symbolism belongs mostly in a specific more religious or spiritual motivated segment of conspiracist thought. I'm Danish and was rather into 9/11 conspiracies, and I don't remember encountering any Symbolism. I just don't think Symbolism and rituals resonates as much with atheists in a mostly atheist country as they does in a heavily religious country as America. What I do remember encountering, however, is the way conspiracies escelates, with a steady stream of new theories. Speaking of which ...
Nobody believes in a single conspiracy. The book Escaping the Rabbit Hole place each conspiracy theory on a horizontal line. The less extreme (JFK) are placed to the left, while the more extreme (flat earth) are to the right. Sorta like this:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
JFK--9/11--climate denial--Antivax--Chemtrails--Pizzagate--Reptilians--Flat Earth
Depending on where conspiratist thinkers are on the spectum, they will believe most of the ones to the left of their position. The left ones are where the rabbit hole begins.
I'd argue (stay with me) that transphobia falls on the left edge of the spectrum, since it for CIS people have the aesthetics of common sense. Female spaces and protecting women in sport sounds progressive and feminist. Thus, CIS people can buy into them without having to have been conditioned to this mindset through anti-vax or such.
But is TERF a rabbit hole to other conspiracies? I dunno.
Another aspect of conspiracism is that, much like centrism, it think of itself as outside the political spectrum. Also like centrism, it leans heavily far-right. The video J. K. Rowlings New Friends explores how the TERF movement range from declared feminists to anti-feminist and Nazis.
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u/Rough-Veterinarian21 1d ago
That actually would’ve been a really interesting and almost obvious thing to bring up in the video. I did enjoy the video, but there are so many ways she could’ve broadened it to cover more way conspiratorial thinking seeps into every aspect of politics and even everyday life instead of focusing so much on pizza-gate type stuff.
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u/canxtanwe 1d ago
From what I heard Natalie said she is tired of talking about gender issues and gender politics that might be a reason why she didn’t mention transphobia as much
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u/kingcalogrenant 1d ago
Yeah I would've honestly been tired hearing about that angle at this point.
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u/SontaranGaming 1d ago
TERF stuff is pretty known to be one of the gateways to conspiracism, yeah. The primary replacement for symbolism in transpiracy circles is transvestigation—transvestigators are constantly searching for signs famous celebrities are Secretly Trans. Margot Robbie, Dwayne Johnson, and Andrew Tate have all been pretty notable transvestigation targets. Adding onto these ties, there have been several prominent TERFs (some even directly platformed JK Rowling!) who bring the “follow the money” conspiracy approach to their TERFdom. You can read more about this if you look at one of the, at this point, many breakdowns of the way that TERFism is being linked to antisemitism.
That being said, I will argue with you on one thing: no, TERFs are not a primarily conspiratorial movement. They are a hate movement with some conspiracist sects. Many, if not most, transvestigators were conspiracists for years before they incorporated TERF rhetoric into their existing frameworks.
What is true is that conspiracists are now using TERF spaces to recruit, as they’ve historically used every hate movement under the sun. They created birtherism to recruit racists when Obama was elected. There’s been homophobic anxiety about (((the elites))) using homosexuality to ruin society for a while too—often as an on ramp to great replacement conspiracism if you look under the hood. Conspiracy requires people to be acting outside of logic, and hate is a motivator that causes people to behave illogically. Pretty much every hate movement eventually develops conspiracist ties as a result of this.
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u/justalittlestupid 1d ago
Damn, I’m Jewish and heavily invested in Jewish community and activism and I’ve never seen the link between terfs and antisemitism. Leave us alone!!!!
But also the terf to right wing pipeline is insane
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u/SontaranGaming 1d ago
Unfortunately, it’s fairly prevalent in their spaces. And not even in an interesting way, it’s just the standard thing. Every time you need to identify who the Shadowy Figures behind the conspiracy is, Jews are always the first scapegoat.
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u/Mission-Web4727 1d ago
It is (well the intentional transphobia is, ignorance isn't on its own). It's pretty much exactly like climate change denialism, ignoring of science and a lot of added conspiracy theories to support this science denial.
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u/ReturnToCrab 1d ago
Most forms of bigotry have conspiracy elements, because they are disproven by reality. Science says queer people have no differences from straight people in terms of relationship stability or mental health? Scientists are forced to say that. Experts ruled that George Floyd died of suffocation? Someone threatened them.
This doesn't feel like a conspiracy theory, but it technically is. You can't believe that trans people are going to assault women in bathrooms yet acknowledge that no such assault have been ever reported. You have to believe that there's a deceit involved
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u/System-Fail 1d ago
If u look at rightwing transphobic / queerphobic discourse, it is closely intertwined with conspiracy theories. Just think of all this talk about a hidden "lgbt-agenda" , "trans-propaganda", "they make our children gay".
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u/moh_kohn 1d ago
This video series from 4 years ago does a very deep dive on TERF/GCism as conspiracy theory, including the belief that trans people are part of a jewish billionaire plot to get us ready for transhumanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2TuitAJGWg&list=PL0hKGGkFJFurxqFx1CXBGY_ilKnSbL41h&index=1
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u/Direct-Big-8642 1d ago
There was a video by Lindsay Ellis (it also has Natalie in the beginning) that explores this topic, and tl;dr: your thoughts are not that far-fetched. It does come from a bigoted pov being a dominant one in mainstream culture, and can even be traced to a misrepresented real-life event that catapulted into whatever the fuck it is today
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u/WanderingSchola 1d ago edited 1d ago
So there's the canard "Fascism is the Socialism of Fools" which expresses the way fascism and other hate movements are sold as improving the conditions of people at large. We're going to get the off-the-books immigrants, the waste-of-money dei projects and the fake climate-friendly businesses off of the government payroll and actually look after the real people of our country. And I think what you're picking up on is a variation of that idea.
If trans people exist (to be clear, they do), then it follows that they're part of humanity. If they're part of humanity, they likely deserve rights, and we have to make room for them socially (economically, culturally and structurally). Transphobia gets sold politically by transforming trans-rights into pushback on majority rights (eg sharing bathrooms, using pronouns, trans healthcare being a waste of funds).
Just like in the conspiracy triangle, there are people who plot the conspiracy, people who fully believe the conspiracy, and people who are just confused by something that sounds plausible to them but is unfalsifiable. So I might yes-and your point by saying not everyone is in on the conspiracy, and depending on where people are in that hierarchy they might need to be engaged with differently.
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u/jsp378 1d ago
It makes sense, they managed to create a whole narrative with the religion + conspiracies things, that now target the trans ppl. 🙁
It's terrible when these popular far right wing influencers associating trans ppl to some satanic conspiracies. They deshumanise them and they wouldn't say this about other communities cause trans ppl are very, very marginalized.
It's pure hate. Instead of putting fault only on the elites, and seeing trans ppl as "victims" of the elites they use this to bully this community. Which doesn't make sense following their reasoning.
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u/Euphoric_Book5411 1d ago
Read part of this post today and the comments. Really thought about it about and it madness as lot of sense thank you
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u/Fluffy_Beautiful2107 1d ago
I don’t claim to be an expert in the topic but something has always struck me with transphobia, and that’s the similarities it has with anti-semitism. This element of conspiracism is a big part of it. I think it stems from the fact that trans and Jewish people vary from being easy to impossible to identify from the rest. So there’s this obsession of figuring out who is part of that group, because arguably anyone can. Claiming (many times falsely) that some historical figure is Jewish is like the bread and butter of conspiracists. Now we see something similar happening with transvestigating. It reminds me of the movie They Live. Anti-semites and transphobes have this constant obsession that these 2 communities are walking among them, difficult to identify while supposedly being drastically different and dangerous.