Worrying Increase in Transphobia

[PorcelinaV]

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/09/09/transphobia-uk-press-media-negative-coverage/

An increase in transphobic sentiment among the British public has been fuelled by hostile coverage of trans people from the right-wing press, argues data journalist Ell Folan....

Unfortunately, newspapers still have a great deal of influence on the public and political agenda in Britain, and nowhere is this more obvious than in how perceptions of trans rights have changed.

As recently as Feburary 2021, an absolute majority of British voters (51 per cent) agreed with the statement “a transgender woman is a woman”, including 6 in 10 women. Just 34 per cent disagreed. But after years of negative coverage from the press, those numbers have changed.

In April this year, only 33 per cent of voters agreed that trans women are women, with 47 per cent disagreeing....

It is clear that the media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions, and unless their negative coverage is corrected and refuted, public opinion will continue to worsen.

Trans women are not women. It's called biology.

I blame The Guardian for not doing enough to refute the Daily Mail.

Now we have a majority of people denying the existence of trans people.

I've seen very little negative coverage from the media - most of it's positively fawning. I wonder if this complaint actually refers to factual news coverage of crimes committed disproportionately by trans-identified males, their unfair insertion into women's sports, and overbearing presence in women's prisons & shelters?

I'm still waiting to hear what rights trans people lack.

Oh, and trans women are men.

“Is this a car?” “Is this a horse?” These are questions to which the answers should be factual, not ideological. The idea that whether something or someone is properly categorised as this thing or that thing should be influenced by negativity or positivity towards a group is precisely what is wrong with this whole phenomenon.

If it is true that a larger number of the public believes TW are not women than a few years ago, I tend to think it’s because the media’s coverage is less obfuscating than before and more people are aware of the issues. I know when I first started thinking about this more around 2017 I was open to the blue/pink brain stuff because that idea was being pushed quite heavily the previous time I’d looked into it and as a non-scientist I’d absorbed the idea without thinking about it too much. If you’d asked me then, I might have said that tw may be women in some sense, but have obvious differences to other women and should be treated accordingly. I wouldn’t say that today.

I think you mean "denying people can change sex".

I don’t think people understand what is being asked.

Absolutely. I expect many who answer yes think transwomen have had sex change surgery and hormone therapy.

@PorcelinaV

yes is there an increasing number of bigots coming out from under the covers yes.

It's not transphobic to not believe that human beings can change sex, just as it's not Islamophobic not to believe in Allah.

I think that’s possible but I think more likely they think a transwoman is a biological female who believes they are a man. So when they say they think a transwoman are women they are asserting that biological females will always be female. So they are rejecting the idea that any “transition” takes place not affirming it.

Why is biological reality bigoted?

Exactly, being an atheist does deny the existence of people of faith, and being a person of faith doesn’t deny the existence of atheists.

You may be right. I'd like to see further research on what people actually believe. I expect there is a lot of confusion.

I know.. you’re so right.. they just won’t see that persistently arguing that men can be women is completely irrational, unscientific and discriminates against women… especially when they try to discredit the factual news reports that let people know for example that rapist males have been locked up with women on the basis of this lobbying. I wish the gender ideology bigots would just fuck off and stop harming women.

(BIGOT according to OED “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”)

I think the questions are framed to confuse because the askers don’t want to know that most people while they are happy for you to wear and feel whatever you like, don’t believe on any level that human beings can change sex.

"Transphobic" is a meaningless word now.

This is Pink News, I do not believe for a single nano second that 6/10 women ever believed trans women were women. Ever. Did they include a disproportionate amount of trans women in the poll 🙄

6/10 people may have Been Kind, but they didn’t understand the implications of what was happening by stealth. Now they’re beginning to.

sorry if I missed something here but I can’t read Pink News as the red mist stops my sight.

I’ve never understood what this “denying trans people exist” thing is supposed to mean. Clearly people exist who have gender dysphoria. Clearly men exist who have autognephelia. Clearly lesbian and gay teens with internalized homoephobia exist. “Being trans” is a belief system and a mental health issue. Trans does not exist in the same way a table exists, or a cup. It’s not a material reality.

First of all there is no way those original figures are legit or representative of the general population.

I only know of one person who truly believes trans women are women (and trans men are men). Everyone else I know and have ever met who I’ve gotten to this area of conversation with have very much the same opinion - trans women are biological men who live and socialise for all purposes as women.

i don’t make a habit of knowing and talking to bigots or horrible people, the vast sentiment is always “live and let live but don’t deny reality”

If there has been a decrease in people supporting the ideology then it isn’t phobia, it is the increasing awareness of what the ideology means in practical life and people don’t want it and don’t agree with it.
examples being a rape crisis centre ran by a man, young girls being forced to share lockers and changing rooms with biological men with fully intact genitalia, NHS LYING about the rape of a female patient on a mixed ward. And so on.

That’s a bit hyperbolic, you’d look a fool if you tried to say someone alive doesn’t exist. About as foolish as saying men can be women IMO.

There's an enormous difference between "acknowledging physical reality, and denying someone's "existence"

Of course trans people exist and have equal rights, and need to be able to love their lives free from discrimination.

There is nothing incompatible with that fundamental principle, and nothing transphobic, about also disagreeing with the slogan "Transwomen are women"

Fundamentaly the phrase is meaningless because if you believe that a woman is anyone who says they are a woman then TWAW just means "people who say they are women are people who say they are women" -tautologous and without any substance and it's a sign of rationality and sense to disagree with it. That doesn't deny the existence of trans people, just declines to believe that humans have the power to change reality by declaration. Transwomen have as much right to respect, safety and opportunities for self-actualisation as anyone else but they do not have the right to control other people's thoughts or beliefs.

People are allowed to believe that onions are apples and can choose to eat a delicious apple,that-happens-to-look-like-an-onion every day if that's their choice, but other people are equally free to recognise the difference and choose a braeburn for themselves, and let the believers make their own choices.

There's a difference between gender and sex. The idea that personally type, preferences and modes of behavior should correlate with biological sex is called "sexism" and we've been trying to get rid of it for some time now. The fact that some people are rebelling against the cultural pressure to conform to sexism is brilliant.

Humans are sexually dimorphic. Mushrooms are sexually megomorphic and I think there's a worm that has a high prevalence of hermaphroditism but that doesn't stop there being 2 morphological types of human and certainly doesn't mean that everyone one one type has to conform to the sexust stereotypes that soxiety created for that type. So of course male people can embrace and adopt the package of personality and preference and behaviour and clothing that was historically expected of female people

There are specific consequences of living with a female body that are discriminated against and need accommodation and support and significant resources and opportunities which need to be exclusively reserved for female people (including female people who are living within the cultual gender role that a sexist worldview would reserve for men) and male people cannot identify in to qualifying for those.

An increase in transphobic sentiment among the British public has been fuelled by hostile coverage of trans people from the right-wing press, argues data journalist Ell Folan....

I dare say an increase in less sympathy for trans people has been fuelled by the actions of trans people, themselves.

And then the media coverage is the media coverage. It simply reflects what has happened - Isla Bryson, Lia Thomas, what happened to Jenny Watson, etc, etc.

People are making up their own minds due to what they see. The utter outrageousness of trans demands.

Women matter too, and women’s rights are important too.

Being concerned about the erosion of women’s rights is not bigoted.

What do you mean by this? People exist. It’s a fact.

Trans people exist, and deserve support. But trans women are not women, and trans men are not men. Maybe more people are beginning to realise that.

In my view the extreme trans activists have completely trashed the cause with vulgar stunts and demanding so much (like erasing the word woman, mother. Demanding convicted rapists are put in women’s prisons etc) that most of the public have had enough. It’s totally turned them off.

Drag queens in fetish gear reading toddlers trans stories, urine splattered everywhere in protest, the systematic degradation and hatred of real women and girls and their identities has killed the ideology stone dead, nothing to do with the media.

Had the movement remained reasonable, and taken a nuanced stand understanding the need to protect women’s spaces, sports and rights rather than seeking to crush and erase them I have no doubt they would have continued to enjoy higher levels of public support.