Is Trans fear driven by a fear of being deceived?

Great Debates
1

I had a thought, I don’t know how insightful it is, but I put it here for others to consider with me.

One thing that stands out in all the anti-Trans conversations and topics is the fact that a lot of us are uncomfortable with the whole concept. I’ll admit my own past ideas were rather rude - I’m not proud of it. I hope I’ve become more enlightened, and I’ve actively worked to adjust my own mindset.

But that discomfort is a common reaction, especially with older folks who grew up with more rigidly defined gender roles.

My observation is that I think a big part of that fear might be a sense that someone is trying to trick us. Our social nature makes us primed to look out for people not being who they say they are. Now most people aren’t actually very good at sporting someone who is actively trying to con them. But the idea someone is trying to con us, to thereby take advantage of us in some way, is a part of our social makeup.

So when we see someone who’s clothing and manners obviously clash with our preconceived ideas about identity, that clash triggers our wariness.

You can see this in the bathroom bill issues, for example, the assertion that Transwomen aren’t sincere and are freaks trying to prey on women and little girls. That’s a simplistic take on not believing what someone says about themselves, and I think it is rooted on something deeper than just “that’s weird”. I think it’s an unconscious bias to perceive the person as trying to fool them. That feeds the hysteria.

Look at it in the context of “The Crying Game” concept. “I DON’T WANT ANY SURPRISE PENIS!”

That’s very much “you’re trying to trick me”, even though Trans people aren’t trying to trick anyone. They aren’t trying to steal. Getting you to have sex with them isn’t some prize they just have to have any way they can. There’s no upside to deceiving you.

I think this innate fear of someone pretending to be someone they are not triggers a defensive reflex of discomfort as one tries to figure out what the trap or con is. And that cognative dissonance is what makes the disbelievers so worked up.

What do you think?

2

I believe that is a large element of that, yes, and exactly as you mentioned, reinforced by all the movies and gags about it. If you’re of a certain age it’s part of your cultural programming, although like you, I’ve worked at moving beyond it, although I still have a kneejerk emotional reaction due to said conditioning before the rational mind kicks in.

But there’s also exclusivity, see all the trans-exclusive radical feminists (including some from our own board) who felt that accepting trans meant in some way diminishing themselves, or at least, weakening their own protections and definitions.

So as always, it’s not just ONE thing.

3

IMHO, there is a certain “call a spade a spade” rebellious attitude against transgenderism. When people see someone who has the voice of a man, and still looks like a man, demanding to be referred to as ma’am or her, it leads many people to say “No, I will call you what I see you as.” A certain anti-emperor’s new clothes attitude.

4

Perhaps it is a need to have an enemy that you think you can defeat.

5

But I would argue that is itself a manifestation of what the “con” achieves, some lessening of their own status or attempt by men to steal their status.

6

Maybe? But your original statements were about “fear of being decieved”. For the trans-exclusive, there’s it’s not about the deception (intent or otherwise) but about distinct definitions that inform their own self-judgement, as well as their perception of past, present, and future treatment.

My maybe is of course, fully acknowledging that many, possibly even MOST of the trans-excluders do define trans-women as a con, the same way that some of the inveterate trans-excluders in sports think they’re only doing it to get an advantage. But I do think that it’s a separate but related issue.

To me, mentally it also overlaps with the tropes and realities of cultural appropriation. Although in this case, it’s gender appropriation. Those that see trans through that filter are always going to believe that it’s not genuine. I find that is also distinct from the “con” - if I dress up as another ethnicity, I’m personally not likely to “pass” or con anyone. But I can be seen as definitely stepping on, and possibly insulting (regardless of intent) the culture and history that I do not share.

For you, it may be a distinction of limited merit, but for me it exists and informs my views.

But again, for straight AMAB guys, yes, I still think the majority of the fear comes from the fear that an “creepy” guy will deceive you and “infect” you in some way. Make you “less” by their definitions. The whole Brad Majors sort of thing. What it says about some of those guys, and their own fears or possibly closeted tendencies… well, that’s another thread.

7

I’ve been saying transsexuals are just the modern equivalent of toupees for years and years. And where has it gotten me? Banned from the YMCA and facebook.

8

I think as a general rule people fear and may even hate the strange and unusual. Bigots hate when others don’t conform to their expectations, they don’t like that the world around them is changing so they want to lash out at something or someone. Trans people are easy targets, there’s not many in the general population and bigots won’t be universally shuned by polite society as in the case of racism.

9

Anyway, I do think part of it is that a lot of guys who buy into toxic masculinity are afraid they are secretly gay if they are attracted to a MtF transgendered person who they don’t know is transgendered.

But a lot of this hysteria seems to be the same as the hysteria that surrounded gay men 20 years ago. Back during the Bush administration gay people were being vilified everywhere. 20 years later and people don’t really care. Maybe in another 20 years people won’t care about transgender issues, its just that as a society we haven’t accepted transgender issues as much as we have gay or lesbian issues yet.

10

I mean, yes, extremely evidently so. In many far less enlightened corners of the internet, trans women are referred to as “traps” under the logic that the they became trans women to trap men into having accidental gay sex.

11

I think another part of that same toxic masculinity is some sort of default assumption that every female I encounter exists to potentially serve my sexual requirement - thus, if you’re continually weighing up every woman as if they are a consumer product, you’re going to feel disappointed, possibly angry, if you believe that product is being deceptively sold to you.

Not the whole picture, I’m sure, but this accounts for some of it I think.

12

I see that as not wrong. But …

I also see it as a tiny spark which reactionary wacko propaganda has fanned into an inferno raging unnecessarily in a big fraction of the populace.

Your attempt to find the spark is honest analysis. As are other folks’ attempts to identify similar sparks.

But to the degree finding the spark excuses the inferno, or lends it intellectual credibility, we’re all in effect joining the nodding chorus, the “silent” majority" that watch as folks are loaded into the boxcars.

Be careful about that because the evil ones mostly need the rest of us to rationalize what’s happening.

13

I observed 40 years ago that there was an enormous overlap between people who were homophobic, and men who made me personally uncomfortable. And i speculated that men who look at me as prey are terrified that there might be guys out there looking at them the way they are looking at me.

So it’s plausible to me that some transphobes are similarly upset about those whom they wish to prey on.

As mentioned above, that doesn’t explain the trans erasing feminists. But it can certainly be more than one thing.

14

I think that conformity is a HUGE part of it. Having seen it from the other side, it’s part the same toxic masculinity disdain/hate for men who don’t conform to the same gender ideals that they do- they say and have much the same irritation and anger about men who are too flamboyant, have “girly” hair, etc…

And it’s part confusion and fear about the unknown- for most people, their gender is something that’s basically immutable and not something they ever had to consider, unlike their sexuality. So they just flat out don’t get that some people may not identify with the gender of their private parts.

In a larger sense, it’s a cultural divide. I’d say that most of us who aren’t trans and aren’t hateful toward them don’t actually “get it” in the truest sense, but we try to understand and empathize. And I’d be willing to bet that we have much the same attitudes about race, poverty, foreign countries, other religions, etc.

The other side of the divide isn’t so tolerant, and basically draws a line in the sand that says “Everything on this side of the line (the way things are/were for me) is good, and everything on that side is strange, foreign, and not well understood, and it’s BAD.” And since it’s bad, they treat it much like they’d treat anything they dislike- they try to stamp it out, and if not, they sullenly tolerate it and pay lip service to it.

They’re not at the sullenly tolerate it stage yet, but we’ve almost got them there with gay people, so I suppose it’s a matter of time.

15

Is there a meaning of “toupee” that I don’t know and can’t find by googling? And if not, how are trans people the equivalent of hairpieces?

Yeah, I think a lot of it is people shouting ‘You ought to be upset by this!’ at people who otherwise might have barely noticed such a thing as existing, and been only mildly concerned about it if they did.

I think there are multiple factors; but that a lot of it is that “distinct definitions” part.

In a much wider sense – a lot of people see the universe as essentially divided into neat categories. It’s not just about the specific categories – species divisions, sexual divisions, “right” or “wrong” religious beliefs. It’s about the underlying structure of whether everything, to put it in the terms of formal logic, is “either y or not-y”.

Some people’s heads work that way. We’ve got entire logic systems built on it, and people don’t look at them and say ‘wait a minute, that isn’t how the universe works’.

But it isn’t how the universe works; or, at any rate, the universe only works that way for certain very carefully designed instances. Everywhere from particle-or-wave through species evolution through pretty much everything about human (and to varying extents other species) sexuality or gender is a glaring example shouting that the universe doesn’t work that way.

And some people just can’t stand it; because accepting it feels like being adrift in a huge foggy sea of uncertainty, in which nothing can be decided, and in which they have nothing solid to hang on to. What to some of us looks like a huge opening out of possibilites looks to others like drowning.

Individual examples of The Universe Doesn’t Work That Way may be over time accepted, as they come to be seen as another clear category of their own. But ones new to the person and/or community, and/or not accepted by enough of them, may be taken as casting doubt on everything else they think that they know.

16

The authoritarian personality tends to be doubtful, even suspicious, of change in general. When certainty is removed, it becomes fearful and hostile and angry. It then reacts from the “lizard brain” rather than any higher brain/emotional functioning. It responds positively to anger and hate, which are more likely, in theory and according to the lizard brain, than thought and reason, to provide safety. It reacts with fight, flight, or freeze.

Our society has a crippling relationship to authoritarianism and hierarchy. We are told we are free and equal, but for most of us, our daily experience is we are neither. We are slapped when we are born, made to line up and take orders in school, are subjected to the whims of teachers and employers, and our ability to look after ourselves and our loved ones depends on our taking orders from bosses and politicians, neither of whom has our best interests at heart.

Meanwhile, the authoritarian personality is reeling in the face of this. But it has neither the support, experience, time, or community to think the issues through and take useful collective action. Rinse and repeat.

17

So-called “cheater detection” is a well-known part of human psychology. In this case I think it’s less about being deceived than about being taken advantage of. After all, if you’ve clocked somebody as trans, that’s no longer the unknown to fear. So it’s less about “you’re tricking me as to your real nature”, and more about “you’re trying to get away with something, but I can’t figure out what.”

I think this is why people lean so hard on the bathroom and locker-room scares. The unfamiliarity suggests some kind of cheating. What could a biological male gain by “cheating gender”? Certainly not dominance or higher status or higher pay. What does that leave? Not much, except gaining access to women’s spaces to watch them undressing, or getting involved in women’s sports to use the natural size and strength advantage. And those are exactly the wedges that are being driven the hardest.

This is also true. Categories are one of the most important innovations in human psychological makeup, they’re an incredibly critical skill for existing in the world. Having a good sense of category can be a life-or-death skill, and that’s why people have dramatic and violent reactions against being forced to adopt different ones.

18

True.

And also true that using that sense of category when it’s inapplicable can also kill you; or, all too often, kill somebody else.

Is that noise behind you the tiger that might eat you, or the rabbit that you might eat? Decide fast, if you want to live!

Or is it your own child?

– or the child of the strangers who might have been your friends, if you hadn’t put an arrow through their kid and thereby gotten half your own group killed off?

19

I.O a large issue w categories is they have fuzzy edges. And the more closely you look, the fuzziervthey get.

Which take mental effort to understand and operate accurately. Much easier to assume bright lines like “is x” or “is anti-x”.

In bulk, humans are mentally lazy. Which makes them waay too easy for bad actors to trigger a stampede whenever they want.

20

I’m not sure what the point of this is, but it sounds like arguing that categories aren’t all that great, by pointing out that they can lead to flawed conclusions, by using examples of things that aren’t actually categorization?

Hopefully you understand that I was pointing out one reason that people have strong resistance to updating their ideas, without actually endorsing that resistance. We can observe why people find certain things important without actually supporting or agreeing with them.