"Transphobic dogwhistle"

[SoftlySoftly123]

I've been watching the TRA/GC debate for a couple of years now and have noticed that recently a new term has entered frequent usage when dismissing GC concerns: "transphobic dogwhistle". I find it infuriating! It seems to be used any time someone expresses a specific concern (e.g. transwomen prisoners assaulting fellow inmates) that others have also expressed. The implication I guess is of bigots repeating other bigots / "signalling" themselves to each other... rather than multiple people pointing out the same thing perhaps being a sign of genuine concerns?

It seems the conversations go like this: a GC commenter is asked what specific rights they fear women could lose if self-ID comes about. They mention specific things, but those are dismissed because they are "dogwhistles".

Can we pick apart where this term originated and how to challenge it when it is used?

I do think that dog whistle is a valid concept (the antisemitism example above is one of them, where people ignore that most Jewish people are not the Rothschild’s and if they had massive power the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened).

But everything that the TRAs write is at the very least a mysoginstic dog whistle and at often open bigotry. So while it is a useful concept it has been stretched very far.

I tried not to get angry and questioned it. He saw how ridiculous he had been and apologised but not before trying to explain that referring to big hands / long legs / a lady moustache were all "transphobic tropes" designed to show how transwomen are not real women.

Ahhhhhh. Someone once mentioned we should not talk about Trump's tiny hands, because talking about tiny hands is transphobic. (Trans men might have tiny hands and what that might have to do with Donald Trump I'll never know.)