Sigh. I apologize. Yes, “gay”. That’s swype when you don’t pay enough attention. 
I’m not sure that’s fully true. I mean, I think you are right about a lot of closeted men who are outwardly anti LGBT. And I think someone who is confidante with their own feelings of same-sex attraction are very likely to be more accepting.
Where I question is the machismo male who is straight and then finds a woman he is attracted to is trans. She may be very feminine in appearance. The issue isn’t her appearance, it’s the idea that he somehow found a “man” attractive. That’s very much the premise of the “trap” concept.
I know trans woman aren’t going around trying to set up men, “trick” them. That’s a fear by men who think the existence of trans women is threatening. The fear of being labeled gay, the anti-gay bigotry that doesn’t necessarily manifest outwardly until his own identity is questioned.
Certainly there are men who are comfortable with their own sexual identity and gender preference that if presented with a trans woman they find attractive, they understand that woman is triggering the right feminine vibes. They may not want a relationship on those grounds, but are comfortable enough to accept the situation and not question what it says about their own preferences.
I know I’m focusing on the transphobic experience and not the transgender experience. It’s not my intent to neglect or diminish their experiences. I’m just coming at this topic in this conversation for a look at psychological factors affecting people’s resistance to accepting trans people. In part to understand the transformation of my own ideas and growth to acceptance and support.
Part of what I’m trying to sort out is how much of the discomfort with transgender is due to general discomfort with the unusual or different, and how much is specific to transgenderism itself. In other words, as society comes to have more trans exposure, as it becomes more commonly seen, how does that affect how people react? Is it a case where the next generation just grows up with it being there and it’s no bid deal?
And how much of the resistance to transgenderism is because of that liklihood, resistance to allowing the normalization?
Eh, the racism part strikes me as a bit contrived. Racism/xenophobia of some sort is as old as misogyny, I don’t think one precedes the other and certainly isn’t causative.
Given how I see teenagers deal with gender identity, I’m thinking yes, it is largely a problem cured by normalization.
Otherism seems to be a human trait. It’s not limited to white people.
Defining the other as less is common. It’s an accident of history1 that white Europeans became a predominant force in shaping the world, and put whites as the privileged class.
Misogyny and racism both have roots in power structure and hierarchy traits of human interaction. Strength, dominance, control are the inherited social structure of the species.
Misogyny comes from the natural strength advantage of men. Othering is a form of status protection. But it creates the ability to see someone as lesser. Both have similar roots in the deep psychology of the species, and are related, but I don’t think either causes the other.
I do feel that misogyny plays a strong role in transphobia. It’s that hard break classification of sex and gender roles that foster the machismo culture and the feeling of loss of status many men feel when confronted by transgenderism.
1 Some may argue against my phrase “accident of history” and say that geographic features drove the cultural development and social interactions that led to white European success. I used that phrase because it succinctly captures the overall events. Geography is included in some of those accidental conditions. Let’s not debate that in this thread. I only explain to acknowledge that some may have a differing opinion on that statement. It’s a little more complicated than my comment suggests.
Racism really isn’t that old. Scientific racism is actually a construct of the 18th century, and has evolved over time - early British racism was heavily directed at the Irish and Catholics. See for instance this article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17496977.2020.1794161#d1e206 (there is tons of scholarship on this topic if you care to delve into JSTOR and I’ll admit this is the first one to come up in a search - I scanned it to see if it was pretty consistent with similar scholarship).
Prior to the 17th century, there simply wasn’t that much mixing of races - most people didn’t travel that much. There were a few people that weren’t white in Europe, but not many. The Spanish Moors were more Middle Eastern than sub Saharan African. The exception of course were the Jews and with the start of the Inquisition, the Muslims in Spain. But that wasn’t really framed as race as we know it - it was framed as otherism and a refusal to conform. (Arguably, the requirement to conform in medieval Europe had a lot to do with survival and not hate or power - I’m not sure if I buy that, but its arguable). This is getting off topic of transphobia, but where we are is based off of where we came from - even if where we came from is 400 years ago.
The ties between racism and misogyny are not direct, they are admittedly a little convoluted. But it has a lot to do, especially in America, with the fear of black men’s assumed sexual attraction for white women, the ownership of white men over black women’s bodies, the fetishism involved in Asian women and the asexualization of Asian men. All those ideas start from “women are property” and “it is ok to remove power from a human being based of what they look like.”
Racism in America is very heavily tied to slavery. And you get slavery from owning someone. Which…is part and parcel of being a women thoughout most of human history.
The VAST majority of white women who immigrated to the American colonies in the 18th century did not do so voluntarily and did so as functional sexual and household slaves - basically forced into marriage to provide for the settlers (who also did not often come voluntarily - Britain sent more convict immigrants to the future U.S. than they ever did to Australia - but men were sent to work, tame the land, and die - women were sent to provide the next generation to work, take the land and die. By the way, you can be convicted at this time in Britain for just being poor).
This comes down to something basic - don’t have sex with someone you don’t trust. Sex can have long term consequences (pregnancy, STDs) and puts you in a very vulnerable place for violence. Traditionally, these have been bigger concerns for women than for men, who seem more concerned with “will I get accused of rape that wasn’t rape” and “surprise penis” than “will I end up in a ditch.” I think “surprise penis” is the lowest risk and least serious of all those concerns.
Oh, I should add regarding the link between racism and misogyny. There is a HUGE component to racism that is based on the “the Irish are out breeding the good wholesome Protestant English” (replace Irish with ‘insert race here’ and English with “God Fearing (mumble mumble white) Americans” or your choice of people in power). The fear of women’s control over procreation, the desire to control their bodies for procreation, is one of those building blocks of misogyny.
I guess it depends how you define racism. The Romans dismissed their northern neighbors as “barbarians” (or maybe that was the Greeks.) I bet there’s been a lot of racism throughout history and prehistory.
There’s been a lot of othering. I don’t think it was generally framed in the terms of modern (“modern” as in “the most recent two or three hundred years”) racism.
Even with the broadest possible definition of racism, misogyny is more basic. Because your tribal neighbors are people you may other and go to war against, but humanity depends on men and women living together in the same place and the control of procreation. Even then, the tribal othering was often about control of resources, and women were often one of the resources.
Oh, and as I said, there is a ton of scholarship on this. My last foray into it was two years ago and I am not a professional academic - so I would encourage anyone interested in this to do start reading and not depend on my two year old amateur delve into the topic and my brief summaries (which, granted, probably involved reading a few thousand pages worth of academia on the related subjects - and its varied and related and interconnected - anthropology and sociology and economic history and imperial expansion and the Columbian exchange and the Enlightenment and…) to form opinions.
If you view racism as about Black and white, that’s true. If you view racism as ethnic differences, then the patterns of racism are there. Othering the Irish is a form of ethnic bigotry that is essentially the same.
The difference with the anti-Black version was othering was easier, and viewing them as inferior by judging culture made it easier. That fostered slavery.
Othering based on ethnic differences seems to me to differ from modern racism in that modern racism sees the difference (whether or not specifically the difference between Black and White) as physically inherent, and essentially inherent through generations. Othering based on ethnic differences often allows for adoption into the group of those who are willing to ditch their original ethnicity and take up the behavior of the new group; or at least for such adoption of their children.
It occurs to me that people upset about having American history taught to their White children are using that sort of definition and may be considering that others must be using this sort of definition – and therefore may be concluding that saying “white people did terrible racist things to other groups” must be the same thing as saying “white people inherently by their irrevocable physical nature must do terrible racist things”. Because they think that any behavior they disapprove of that they assign to non-white people is inherent to those people.
ETA: Racism in the modern sense can also be applied to what most people consider ethnic groups, because the entire idea of “races” is a social construct, whose lines move around all the time.
That’s where the Enlightenment comes in and “racism” being only a few hundred years old. Scientific racism as opposed to “we don’t like those guys over there because they are weird in their religious beliefs/dress funny or look different/or have land or women we want.”
I was quite careful in what I actually said. Yes, scientific racism is recent. Plain old ‘hate the other’ is not.
And racism doesn’t just mean the 4/5 race model beloved of the Victorians.
And it’s not accurate that people didn’t travel. Hell, entire historic periods are named for mass movements of people. When the Germanic Vandals end up in Berber North Africa, you think that wasn’t a mixing of races? Or the Asiatic Huns in Roman Europe? Hell, plenty of Roman figures were of Berber or Middle Eastern origin anyway, including emperors and early Christian figures.
But these are MODERN concerns.
More primitive men, impregnating a woman was always a bonus. One of your women, yeah they were protective of those relationships for reasons of paternity. But some random woman, shoot your shot, what have you got to lose?
Why would a man be less risk averse? Maybe because, historically, he has to be? We know from anthropology that a fewer percentage of men pass their genes along than women. So a “go with the flow” isn’t as biologically successful for me. We know there’s no “rite of passage” where a man becomes a man, unless you mean having sex with a woman. But it’s not the same. Many men miss out on breeding opportunities due to being driven out of their society, killed or whatnot.
Now to keep things on topic, I guess the question is WHY “surprise penis” provokes violent reactions when it’s “lowest risk.” Other than “original sin” misogyny. Cuckolding can provoke violent reactions, but somehow that isn’t quite the same either.
I think everyone fears being deceived at some level. Whether it’s gender, religion, politics, family background, number of previous partners, smoking/non-smoking status, musical interests, age, or what have you. A little mystery is nice, but at some point, one has to come clean about who they are. I have a number of trans friends, and I enjoy their company, but I am not attracted to them. Anything can change I suppose, but I’m pretty certain about what I’m attracted to in a potential mate.
My trans friends are mostly less than half my age, so no, I’m not attracted to them. But some of them are physically attractive people. You know, if they didn’t look like “kids”.
Isn’t it normal to be revulsed by the idea of having sex with the wrong set of equipment, for whatever value is wrong for you?