“What if we ask ourselves about ourselves, and we don’t like the answer?”
That’s it? That’s the question that’s going to shut down transphobes? Has this guy ever met a transphobe? Cuz that ain’t going to do it
Transphobes, like most bigots, don’t actually give a shit about the logical consistency of their worldview. They just hate people and want to make their lives harder as punishment for not blending in to their arbitrary definition of “normal” existence. All of these anti-bigot “gotcha” posts are so exhausting, they’re just leveraging the fantasy of effortlessly convincing people to accept others in order to get internet points.
The frustrating thing about articles such as this, is that it all feels like performative liberal elitism.
My daughter is trans, so my wife wrote a book, and I discovered a deep philosophical question that solves transphobia. You see, people need to ask themselves something, and if they do, they’ll understand and stop being transphobic. So I wrote an opinion piece for a LGBTQ+ website, to let everyone know that I, a cishet white man, have woken up.
Meanwhile, Trans Daughter: I was thinking we could talk about a new hairstyle and clothes?
Who is this article for? Because this really reads as “I am enlightened, now recognize how progressive I am.”
“What if we ask ourselves about ourselves, and we don’t like the answer?”
Can someone help me understand what is meant with this question?
I think … potentially that many people don’t every put a second thought into it, they just are, and he might be saying what if you looked inside and you found an answer you didn’t like? Ie: one of the transphobes realizing they are trans.
Theres also the angle he brings up of ‘feeling like a rejection of them’, or rather their way (being cis)
This of course is not really how it works, my being trans isn’t a statement either if anyone else or their being cis.
The introspection that a lot of trans people have done because they are trans can be scary, what if someone who thogutht they were straight and cis looked at themselves and realized that’s not the actual them?
I actually like that a lot more than just assuming they’re closeted. Many of these people don’t even have the courage to figure out if they’re closeted.
It means that if one stops to figure out when they ‘chose’ and they are honest with themselves, then they will realize that nobody chooses and that the ‘norm’ enjoys unearned privilege and overtly harms others without cause. A person with the capability of this level of introspection will leave them with a lot of difficult feelings like guilt and regret. The same can be said for racism and sexism.
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I take that quoted question to be a very primitive definition of self-reflection on the part of the author.
From the article:
“I’m cisgender. Everybody always assumed I was a man, and I actually am a man. And until my daughter came out, I never really had to think about my gender identity or even about anyone else’s. It was like transparent to me. I never consciously checked in with myself. People just assumed something, and it happened that they were right, so it just sort of ‘was’”.
He accepted that he was supposed to be heterosexual because someone told him he should be and he never examined his own feelings on that statement. I’m glad that he eventually got there, but I have no idea how someone can arrive not only at adulthood but even past that into parenthood without self-reflection. What other things in his life has he been believing simply because someone told him to believe it instead of him examining the evidence, thinking critically, and arriving at his own opinion?
It doesn’t have to be something as life changing as sexual preference to “asking [yourself] about [yourself], and not liking the answer”. Back in my young adulthood used to be someone that paid debts back late. I looked at myself reflectively and didn’t like realization of the negative impacts it was having on those I owed and also myself. So I made changes in my behavior and fixed that problem so it didn’t happen anymore. Doesn’t everyone do this kind of self examination and self improvement on a regular basis?
I totally get how you don’t think about it. What you were told worked fine enough. The only reason I thought about my gender was the dysphoria. Someone who maybe they’d be happier if they were a bit more androgynous or something, or someone who might be interested in dating a member of their own gender of the opportunity presented itself can very easily just not notice into adulthood if they have no reason to, and for some of them noticing comes with a nagging feeling to act on it. Suddenly a person who had been more or less content as a guy who just doesn’t engage in any of that macho stuff, may feel the desire to add feminine touches to his wardrobe and use he/they pronouns. Or a guy who had been perfectly content thinking of himself as entirely straight actually starts noticing when a guy is his type and now has to worry about judgment from partners and family regarding his bisexuality.
I agree with you that all healthy adults should regularly be engaging in self reflection of all sorts. But also, self reflection is painful and difficult. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if a significant portion of adults just block out those thoughts every time they arise, at least given how people act.
A clumsy and weak way of calling out the fact that a very large portion, if not a majority, of people go through life on the cognitive level of a lap dog. They don’t question the would around them, they don’t question other people, they don’t even question themselves.They have no inner world and don’t even know they are supposed to.
there are a million better questions than this weak rhetoric though; ask a modern ‘christian’ why they don’t actually follow the Bible or ask a MAGAt why trump supports pedophiles. There is no universal question, you find the thing they’ve papered over and poke it. to kickstart a dead mind you have to cause discomfort or pain that it can’t ignore.
Is it really necessary to post clickbait as clickbait?
