👁️🗨️ "Where Do We Draw The Line On Human Rights?" - Minority-Scapegoating Arguments Trans Communities Are Falling For Too
Last Updated: 3 months, 2 weeks ago
How Fascists Pit Minorities Against Each Other and Incentivise Them To Create Their Own Minorities
It is tempting to think that a minority within a minority would be immune to nazi attempts to divide through granting unequal privilege, but this is not the case. Even the most targeted communities can still end up falling for this pressure, the belief that there is a "need" to pull up the ladder at some point, and that one can become "too" open to further marginalisations within our own communities.
This is due to the fact that these marginalised communities are often falling for these bad-faith nazi division-tactics of pitting communities against each other in the hopes that they will finally be "granted" rights by those weaponizing the threat of those rights' ellimination in the first place.
In reality, the only way to win against nazis is to unite to fight against them, and not fall for their division propaganda to pit us against each other.
An Anecdotal Tale about Transmedicalism
I am transgender and part of the greater trans community. I once had a friend who is a binary trans woman who was very invested in transmedicalism, which is something the transgender community and trans activism by and large rejects.
In her case, she clings to the idea that she only "became a woman" after certain surgeries (and also tended to not feel comfortable in circles which would say that you don't have to have surgeries to be who you identify as, as if they were undermining the reality of her dysphoria).
The fact that dysphoria can be very real for some people shouldn't undermine that they still are how they identify, whether that involves requiring transition surgeries or not, and I found it strange that some people feel that it's necessary to properly cling to the claim that they weren't how they identify until they got certain surgeries - which is ultimately transmedicalism towards other trans people by extension, or at the very least towards those who feel the same dysphoria but aren't able to get those procedures - for financial, legal, medical or other reasons - by claiming that the dysphoria itself or need for certain surgeries invalidates your current gender until such time as you are able to have certain cis-conforming procedures.
CPTSD and how Abusers and Oppressors Weaponise Progressive Arguments in Bad Faith
I guess my conclusion from this, being a CPTSD sufferer myself and knowing the complete lack of support she had in her life when it came to her own transition and how life-changingly positive the procedure was for her, would be that my friend may have been experiencing unprocessed trauma from the fight to make this happen, and that she was re-living a defensive response against being medically gatekept (by cis people) through bad faith "reassurance" that people "don't need to transition" by weaponizing the "you are valid" argument (when in reality it was just more powerful people denying medical care to less powerful people).
My parents used a similar pseudo-progressive "oh but gender is just a social construct" thing against me to avoid using my pronouns, but only in those situations of course - it didn't stop them relying on gender expectations, norms and cisnormative assigning of gender to people in every situation. Similarly, my mother used "don't label yourself" when I told her I am solo polyamorous but has no issue with labelling herself and my sisters as married women, or as Christians or calling herself a mother.
Fascists Scapegoat (even Trans) Minorities within the (Trans) Minority
Maybe the people holding onto that belief that they weren't valid until getting certain procedures, even if it invalidates their identity, haven't dissected that bad faith argument as being abuse and think that it's the "you don't need surgery to be valid" message itself that is invalidating or gaslighting of their experiences cause they're used to abusers (who are skilled at this) speaking proxy messages instead of saying what they REALLY mean which is: "I am convincing you you need to justify your experiences to me and gain my permission to get medical help, and then I am going set myself as a blocker to your access regardless and give a confusing message of validation you've heard from other trans people so it's hard for you to know how to argue with me and you get distracted by blaming other trans people as the cause of this instead of all of you uniting against me, your gatekeeper."
Nazis: Fascists Create Inequality Through Nationalism and Scapegoating To Sieze and Maintain Power
In reality, this argument is something fascist movements and fascist-influenced societies do in general through nationalism: scapegoating the most vulnerable minorities within minorities, granting uneven levels of privilege to incentivise whomever is the most conforming to the status quo to stop allying with those least conforming, and pitting marginalised groups against each other so they don't unite.
This is something the Apartheid government did in not only separating different race groups with different levels of privilege, but also dividing African people by language and culture and spreading disinformation to keep them from uniting against the white minority ruling government.
This is happening in the USA's own Nazi Fascist Movement
Similarly, this is happening in the USA with specifically targeting trans people first on multiple fronts (- not just legislative but "drop the T"/TERF/"LGB" movements aimed at persuading even cis gay people to stop supporting trans people with the message that equality has been reached for gay people if they could only "unyoke" themselves from trans people with the convenient message that trans issues are not [cis] gay concerns and that these intersections "don't matter" - despite the Pride movement being started by black bisexual transgender sex workers) and then later more specifically targeting gay people second with the recent discrimination bill rendering them now second-class citizens once trans people are so overwhelmed that it is time for the nazis to move on to the next target now a sufficient portion of the LGBTQIA+ community are already struggling being targeted for being trans, black, femme or having a uterus.
So this is all just something that's been rattling around in my brain, and I do wish we'd stop falling for it.
The Playbook of Nazis is Division, The Endgame of Nazis is Elimination
Nationalism, Fascism, Naziism are part of the same game and it's a game of division and more division.
We should not be trading more oppressed groups as playing cards because the reality is the nazi endgame is elimination, and their playbook is always division and getting marginalised groups to sell out other marginalised groups that were, thought we didn't know it, protecting our own rights through their own, so they don't unite, like a big game of Risk.
Nazis tend to eventually get overthrown when they've eventually gotten to the point of division where they've diminished their own numbers sufficiently through constantly slicing off more and more "others" in their never-ending quest for purity, but GOD DAMN do they commit a lot of atrocities in that process and decimate human rights, setting societies back decades or even centuries. For once, it would be nice if we could all just learn to unite earlier.
A lot of people don't even remember what a queer and trans hub pre-WWII Germany was, and it makes me want to cry every time I hear someone say that the world now is more progressive than it has ever been, when nazis literally erase history and progress every few decades to every century or so, and with it, roll back our memories, our expectations, and the Overton window, so that we keep thinking THIS is the first time gay and trans people have had rights in history, and "oh look how far we've come!". Not a lot of people know that extensive medical research was done into trans people decades, near a century ago, before the WWII Nazis burned the German Institute of Sexological Research's archives. And today we act as if transgender people are a new phenomenon. The damage of nazis lasts far beyond their reign.
Deals with the Devil: Selling Each Other Out for the Illusion of Safety
But the problem is, too many of us harbour the idea that it'd be ok or even convenient to let some of us die off before we're ready to help. Maybe people of an opposite political perspective to ours which we feel is destructive to society are less worthy of life than our group are - we're the "good" ones. And even if not, the group being targeted isn't us, so we might be ok... the bystander fallacy tells us that someone will step in at some point before it's our turn to get targeted, if that ever comes around... and did we really need that particular set of rights?
And with that conditioning, the idea that if we just sell out the others, we might be safe, we might finally be considered acceptable by the fascist group, we might finally buy the freedom and equality we need... the fascists are telling us we're so close to being approved and safe... Do we really need to align ourselves with the group that is dragging us and our rights down? Aren't they fighting a bit too hard and being divisive, they're provoking the fascists and making them angry...
When in reality we should be uniting against the nazis.
Giving up Each Other's Rights as Allied Territories to Hitler to buy "Peace"
When I first learned in school about how Hitler acquired one territory after another, and how the allies just kept letting him do it, I wondered how anybody could be so stupid as to feed a would-be dictator more and more power in the hopes that being rewarded would somehow incentivise him to stop pushing for power.
But now, as a adult, I know. We do that all the time. The trick is, it's about allowing long enough periods of time to elapse and the Overton window to shift. Then, when enough power has been lost, in the endgame, the Nazis rake in the chips. That is how the USA managed to get someone like Donald Trump in power, through decades of preparation and ignoring warning signs.
It Starts with Rhetoric
You may think I am taking this a bit far. Nobody said that holding transmedicalist ideologies just as an opinion means that trans people should be denied rights or humanity, surely?
But rhetoric is exactly how it starts, just as scapegoating of minorities starts with spreading misconceptions: Jewish people are parasites gay men are paedophiles, trans women are predators.
Yes, we've heard of the harmful, obvious and deplorable lies that people would be hard-pressed to get away with now. But we forget how the Overton window shifts.
What about those more subtle and normalised, insidiously making their way into our rhetoric and sowing the seeds for further marginalisation down the line?
Like people helping trans children are groomers. And getting back full circle to how these divisions come up within the trans community, what about: nonbinary people aren't really trans - they're holding back REAL trans people's opportunities to get transition care by muddying the waters for cis people who want to help.
Where Do We "Draw The Line" of Acceptance and Human Rights?
You see, even trans people, a targeted minority asking other minorities to not disregard them, still fall into this trap of having our own "othered" groups. What about enbies? What about enbies who don't conform to enby assumptions? What about enbies who use neopronouns? What about otherkin? At what point is it okay to say "these people are the ones we can sacrifice when the nazis come, the rest of us are valid and pure"?
If someone is telling you that you can't transition or have rights because of the existence of nonbinary people, your enemy is not those nonbinary people.
If cis gay and lesbian people are being told they will get equality so long as they "unyoke" themselves from the "burden" of supporting trans and queer people, the reason they don't have equality is not because of those trans and queer people.
If men in power are telling women they can't have protection from creepy men as long as trans women, as a "loophole" are permitted access to women's bathrooms, and even cis women are being targeted for being misread as trans women, your enemy is not those trans women, who are also women needing safety.
And yet it is a common question I hear: "But where do we draw the line?"
And that's just it. Why does there have to be a line? Why does there have to be an "us" and a "them"?
Why do we think we have to other someone?
This brutal way of thinking, that someone has to be excluded, whether it is an instinct or a conditioned response, is we have to learn to overcome.
Unless All Of Us Are Free, None Are
These plea bargains we are offered, that if we just sell out others' more pesky rights, we ourselves will be protected, are in reality an illusion of safety.
Those among us who are most marginalised and most vulnerable - they are the ones pushing back the hardest, and in reality, those trying to take their freedoms don't actually care for our own.
Once the freedoms of the loudest and proudest are gone, we are next as the Overton window shifts and our own window of opportunity to fight back without bloodshed gets ever more narrow.
Their safety makes it so we all can live freely, and in reality, many of the rights they are denied intersect with rights that authoritarian regimes are trying to deny us too, like rights to dress as we feel comfortable, work, interact in society, love whom we choose, worship or not worship what we choose, not be targeted based on our appearance, not be murdered, or enslaved and treated as property - not even if we have been convicted a crime, not have violence condoned under any circumstances.
Unless all of us are free, none of us are.
Much as our history may get erased, that statement holds just as true as it always has.
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