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How did transgender issues become your hobby horse? Personal interactions with trans people (online or offline), gender issues of your own, workplace politics…? I’m generally curious as to why non-trans people get invested in this when it seems easy to ignore (especially now that it seems to be fading from the culture war issues du jour).
In any case I agree that white Western trans women probably aren’t at an extremely elevated risk of murder and that the trans genocide narrative is overblown, but even in the West, being trans can lead to discrimination, being ostracised by your friends and family, and make you more at risk of low level violence and hate crimes.
I’m not sure that follows. A romantic partner might commit murder because of the shame of being publically outed as being in a relationship with a trans gender person, and honour killings of trans people by their family members do occur. This is more common in cultures that do not accept trans people, which is why victims tend to be non-white or non-western. If transphobia becomes more widespread and accepted, it seems obvious that violence and discrimination will increase as a result.
As a trans woman, I don’t avoid the men’s room because of the risk of violence, but to avoid unnecessary attention and disruption when I’m in a public place. It’s not as dramatic and convincing as saying I need to use the men’s room or I’ll get punched, but eh, I don’t see why I should needlessly inconvenience myself, and a bathroom bill would just make things even worse due to false positives, enforcement issues, etc.
If you have a large enough family, trans issues are going to happen to you at least once.
One of my cousins became trans in high school. She didn't show any sign of being masculine as a child, was a very picky eater, wanted to marry a lead singer of a boy band to the point where she plotted killing his wife... and then a year later her mother was dying and she decided that men are better able to handle such awfulness and transitioned into a boy, hormones and all.
We once pooled resources with my husband's friend to rent a house together and one of our friend's sons married a transwoman who dressed in a way that was really inappropriate all the time.
Another of that friends' sons is super autistic, didn't finish high school, and decided recently that he's a woman.
The last of that friend's children was raped as a teenager and decided to become a man in response. All three of these young adults suffered obvious physical and mental health challenges that were exacerbated by their belief they could improve their lives by trying to live as another sex.
Now I have a family reunion coming up on my husband's side, and my sister in law messaged our family to say that her oldest son was transitioning, that her husband still used masculine pronouns and my sister-in-law used female pronouns, my nephew was still using the same androgynous first name and was wearing androgynous clothes, and it was up to us how we want to prepare our children to see their cousin.
Trans people are everywhere and each individual has to figure out what to do about it. How do you address them, do you encourage them or discourage them from transitioning, do you even feel a gender? A small group of people can't just change how all of society thinks about sex and language and think, "Why do people keep talking about us?"
I have a very large family and trans issues are entirely theoretical, just some weirdos that come from other, worse, families. Ditto for my in laws.
How old is your family? What percentage is under 25 years old?
You've never even had a coworker change gender on you?
Four of my examples are from Washington State, but one is from Texas.
Going back four generations. Probably roughly a third 20’s and younger. Keeping track of exact ages is a woman thing, thats a best guess.
No? Is this a common experience? I don’t work in big tech, I don’t think I’ve ever had a coworker transition.
Yeah kinda. A software developer who is ill fitted to their position changes gender and then for a year becomes unfire-able.
Am I just really unlucky here?
It does seem to be a tech thing, but not necessarily un-fireable; at the same time James Damore was the big public firing from Google, a less publicised case of a transman, Tim Chevalier, getting let go also happened (they tried bringing a case against Google but I think the employment contract was held to apply). Chevalier tried to claim they were being persecuted for being queer, disabled, trans, and speaking out against racism and sexism and the rest of it, but the facts seem to be that Chevalier spent more time being active on the internal chat channels being activist than doing actual work.
Chevalier actually spent a good deal of time policing the internal chat channels and making complaints against wrongthinkers. At one point he was going after people (partially successfully) for asking the wrong kind of questions at the "TGIF" company presentations from the founders and upper management. I suspect his firing was mostly because many of those on his side realized he would turn on them sooner rather than later.
I did think at the time it was very unusual for a member of a protected class (maybe multiple classes, given they were going for 'I'm trans and queer and disabled and fighting for the rights of the oppressed' as a rationale for why Google was picking on them) to get the boot, particularly when the Damore firing was such a hot topic, but the little I could dig up did suggest Chevalier was more interested in being the Thought Police than doing any coding and that's why the hammer dropped.
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