12h ago

Priorities Don't Seem Spotty

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Just consider. How many trans people do you know? Of the people you know, how many trans people do they know?
High odds both you and all the people you know in your personal life, don’t know anyone who is trans. If you’re actually member of that community of course the numbers go up. We are talking tail or the bell curve here.
Consider, on the point, how much trans affects your life on a daily basis. Again, high odds, they do not.
For whatever reason, in spite of that, turning trans into the great whipping boy of America made for an effective political campaign. Republicans used it because it worked. Elon Musk did phone text spam centered on trans, in swing states, because it worked. So we end up with this societal focus of abject cruelty in which a margin and marginalized population is put on display, with or without consent, like a scientific sample under a glass display, complete with magnifying lenses, for scrutiny.
Why is a very interesting question but in more practical terms, when you get right down to it, none of this has impact on your personal life.
That said, there is a separate argument for how much it impacts lives in the specific sport, per individual circumstances.
- as someone who is college-aged, I know about 8, one of which being my boyfriend :p
- Yupp. I am part of a local gaming community, and that is how I know trans people. But everywhere else in my life, especially work in a office building, zero signs of anyone be trans. Not going to lie, it is a very hard mental shift to not say the wrong pronouns when I jump social circles. Always feel like a dick.
  Hell, I know for a fact that many people in my office wouldn't even have the concept of a trans person if it wasn't for social media.
- I play a niche sport that is extremely progressive and has a large trans community. The sport is often played mixed gender with people of all genders on the field at the same time. I play this sport at a high competitive level and have qualified for the national championships a few times.
  I have certainly had friends impacted by this. I've have friends who had to match up on a gender match that may have benefited from their bodies sex at birth. I've had friends who didn't make a team because the team took a trans athlete over them. I've had friends who are nonbinary/trans athletes choose to compete against people born male when they could have matched otherwise.
  In the end, I'm so proud of my community because those impacted are often happy for the welcoming environment we're creating for people. I don't mean to minimize the impacts to some members of the community, but the benefits are so large I'm glad we choose to support our friends who need welcoming environments. Our trans and non binary community need more environments like these where they just get to be themselves and feel welcomed.
- High odds both you and all the people you know in your personal life, don’t know anyone who is trans
  What are you talking about?
  Many people know someone who is trans. My conservative mother knows someone trans from her church (and she is supportive of them)
  GLAAD has done studies on the % of non-lgbtq people who know or work with someone who is trans and that percent has gone up from 8% in 2008, to 16% in 2015 , and to 28% based on a quote from GLAAD in this recent press release. A 2021 gallup poll also put this number 31% .
  While 28-31% isn't great "odds", i think it's quite reductionist to pretend that trans individuals don't exist at all.
  Transgender prevalence over time has been studied and estimated to have increased to between 0.5% to 1.6% which makes the whole knowing someone who is trans "tail end of the bell curve" a dated and/or misleading comparison.
  I do agree that the trans community has been targeted and i agree that most people aren't personally impacted by someone being trans, but let's not pretend trans individuals don't exist. They do. And we're watching their human rights be stripped away.
  Instead of trying to tell people they shouldn't care about trans individuals because they don't exist, let's acknowledge their existence, understand the challenges they face, and consider how policies affect real people in our communities. The politicization of trans individuals has real consequences on people who are our neighbors, colleagues, family members, and fellow community members.
  
  Whether it's 0.5 or 1.6 percent it's still literally the tail end of the bell curve. You're talking about falling within the third standard deviation of a normally distributed bell curve.. you just strengthened his point with this statistic.
  
  The original context was specifically people not knowing someone who is trans, and i provided sources that indicate this to be between 28-31% of non-lgbtq people to know someone who is trans. This by definition cannot be the tail end of a bull curve.
  But im glad from everything i wrote, you took away that i strengthened their point. Go have a cookie, you've won the internet today
  
  Akshually 🤓 the original context was how many trans people are actually targeted by the Trump administration's antics. Which would be the numbers you so helpfully provided.
  
  🍪
  
  You call 1 % not the tail end of a bell curve? That is like an IQ of >140, which also applies to 1 %.
- How many trans people do you know
  I mean I know at least 3 personally.
  
  Same here, 2-3 sounds about right for me. But it's around 5-6 if I count people I come across on a daily basis but don't know personally.

28 comments