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One of the things I've noticed about the media is how they define the narrative by promoting the things that people should be talking about, rather than simply dismiss and ignore. Case in point:
AP News: "New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates"
Note that it's about how trans people must use the correct gender marking (i.e. gender assigned at birth), rather than their own preferred gender, on their drivers' licenses.
I notice that I'm confused as to what "transgender rights" are, and what rights specifically transgender people are demanding that Americans don't already have. Trans people have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for instance. However, the demand that other people refer to you with a specific designation is not really a natural right, and in fact, suppressing or compelling the speech of others is a violation of other people's rights to free speech.
The question of if gender can "change" is purely philosophical and not something that can be settled by research. I can't begin to imagine how research could settle it, unless the research in question is from a hyper-advanced sci-fi future where reversible body modification is possible with no ill side effects.
Is the contradiction here that they can't be protecting women if they don't use favorable labels? If we accept that premise (which I don't), then surely calling women "menstruators" is also not protecting them, but that terminology has been advanced in the name of being inoffensive to trans-identifying males.
I love the multiple layers of lies that get packed into this one sentence. It's like a masterclass in lying while saying something that is technically true.
First, attributing it to unspecified "transgender people" in general. So you can't blame the journalist for printing this statement if it's blatantly false, he is just the messenger.
Second, attributing any supposed harassment from others to carrying ID that "misgenders" them, rather than other factors. They're painting this world where a trans woman (man who says he is a woman) is just like a woman in every other respect of the word, except that he just happens to have "M" on his license, and that causes him to be unduly questioned. In reality, a trans-identifying male can be spotted from a mile away, and if he was ever asked about it (which IME most people are too polite to even do), it was because he was clocked as a man and it's obvious to everyone that he's a man.
Finally, the assertion that they face violence. (To be clear, I mean violence as in physical violence, something that can at the very least be legally categorized as assault. I don't believe that mere speech is violence.) I am going to assert that there are vanishingly few cases where a trans person has faced violence simply on the basis of being trans and nothing else. Out of all the cases I've seen, they faced violence for other reasons, such as being the aggressor or for being involved in sex work.
I'm not saying it's impossible or hasn't happened, but I just haven't seen a case yet that could support the assertion that there are people who want trans people dead or genocided. There are no roaming death squads of extremists hunting down trans people. Being a trans person is quite a safe demographic in America. By and large, most people just don't care about trans people, but they are interested in making sure that trans people don't inflict negative externalities on society.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, we have the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Why the quotes around biological reproductive system? Are biological reproductive systems not a well-defined, scientifically-grounded concept?
My bigger point is just asking why anyone should even care in the first place, including trans people themselves. If I was trans, I would shrug and just accept the "M" designation on my license. To the extent that I would have a problem with the current state of affairs, I would find that the entire licensing regime that the government imposes on the people -- forcing them to register and pay fees in order to drive and participate in society -- is the actual problem here, not merely an unpreferred gender marker. But my stance is that it's not worth it to fight the licensing regime and it's better to comply. Hence, too, I wouldn't care about having the "M" on my license. It seems rather silly to me to question and reject one social construct (gender) while being completely subservient to another (driver's licenses).
And my biggest point is that this shouldn't even be worthy of discussion. If you're going to accept that the government has the right to force you to get licensed, who cares what kind of silly labels they give you? But a mainstream news article publishing this as a headline implies that it's a newsworthy item, a topic of controversy, something that people should care about even though it's really not going to have an impact on anyone's life.
I agree, violence for the most part is not actually that common in the US unless you hang out with bad crowds and a few examples otherwise are statistical anomalies.
Ok but how the heck you gonna dismiss violence against trans people as just a few small cases but then cite a single anecdote of violence here? There are not roaming death squads hunting down and killing conservatives either.
A few examples to the contrary does not change the statistical truth that basically any demographic in the US (besides black male really) is a rather safe demographic.
Now this is just blatantly not true, I've seen plenty of passing trans people. It's a toupee fallacy at best and delusional wishful thinking at worst. There's a lot of overlap in male and female appearance, there's even plenty of men (who identify as male) that can make for a convincing female appearance without even having the feminizing effects of hormones, a lot of the "femboys" can do that.
Yeah there's lots of people who don't, but there's plenty who do without any trouble.
How the heck do you know what you do there? If you were trans, how do you know you wouldn't be able understand their problems? Certainly in this hypothetical you would have those same feelings of discomfort about being identified as male.
Because it is, and it's not a genocide? I've mentioned this before, but I've gone through two of the lists from the Trans Day of Remembrance List of Murdered Genocided Trans People, and about three cases were "yep, this person was murdered solely for being trans".
When your supply of Trans Genocide is so skimpy you need to include "fatal hit-and-run traffic accident" as "Deliberately MURDERATED FOR BEING TRANS!", I think we can indeed safely say "violence as trans people is just a few small cases". In fact, the lists should be celebrated as being true achievement of the aims of being accepted as your preferred gender, given how many domestic violence and murders by ex-partners happened, just like cis women! Yay! You are being treated like a Real Woman!
(That last is not meant as anything more than black humour, just to make it clear).
(And I wish I was joking about the transphobic automobiles, but that was a seriously intended explanation for including such cases in the stats: systemic how's your father bingo card phobia and -isms mean that, uh, if a trans person is killed in a car accident then it's equivalent to being deliberately murdered for being trans, society to blame).
This feels like you read half of the sentence and immediately decided to write up several paragraphs without any interest in the rest of the comment. Go back and give it an actual read, I never argued that violence against trans people is a common or major issue.
The thing is, claims about epidemics of anti-trans violence are used to back up "and this latest legislation/storm in a teacup is yet more encouragement to commit trans genocide!" and are unquestioningly repeated by the media.
Such lists, as I have exampled, get issued by the activists and are propaganda. Instead of fact-checking (and I only needed about twenty minutes with Google and the names, I didn't even use AI!) "is this really true?", the media is happy to parrot "56 murders of trans people according to this list from Reputable Organisation" when the truth is "56 unsubstantiated claims according to this propaganda from activists".
One example from a previous list was "Trans man murdered for being trans!" Turns out the person was an environmental activist who was shot inside a tent during a police raid on a camp. You can argue over "was this murder?" but it is undeniably a lie to say it was "trans man murdered for being trans".
So the next time you, or anyone, sees a news report about "X number of trans people murdered due to transphobic hate crimes", you should assume that this is probably a lie, at least about "murdered for being trans due to transphobia as instanced by state of Y legislation about not putting rapists with functioning male genitalia into women's prisons, which is dysphoria-inducing hate legislation against innocent trans people who just want to be treated civilly and which encourages crazed murderers to go out and murder trans people".
Really validating the "not actually reading my comment" claim, I was already dismissive of the idea that violence against trans people was common.
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