Really beginner question: How is the trans community a threat to anyone?

There's no threat posed by the trans community, unless you're in the business of keeping people oppressed or unhappy. Then the trans community poses a threat, because we are going to fight to let people live their true lives! (tl;dr, no, nothing, trans people are just trans)

I think a lot of people who don't like trans people are probably something between resentful and defensive. They've spent their lives dutifully cramming themselves into a little pink or blue box; when they see that we readily disregard what they see as binding them, I could see that either seeming unfair or scaring the hell out of them.

If I can become a woman, live in the world and be happy with it and even grow my own genuine home grown organic titties, that has implications for what's possible for others. Maybe even them. They may not want to transition, but there are probably things they'd like to do that they don't allow themselves because of gender.

They could just follow our example and just do whatever they want too, but there's probably a bit of a feeling of sunken cost, as well as the conflict between the obvious appeal and self evident goodness of freedom and the dumb bullshit they put themselves through.

60% sour grapes, 30% internalized fear of themselves, 10% thinking it's cool and funny to hate on queers; something like that. That's my guess.

What you are seeing in public is a phenomenon of Evangelical Christianity being amplified for political gain. There are religious puritans who genuinely and sincerely believe that the mere exposure to the existence of non-cis hetero people will cause actual cis hetero people to "become sexual deviants."

Which, in their world, it probably looks like that. Oh your perfect totally-and-completely-straight child "suddenly became" gay after learning online that gay people exist? To these ignorant puritans, it really seems like a magic transformation when in reality it's just standard-issue coming out of the closet. They have zero understanding that, if you wouldn't repress people in the first place, this wouldn't happen because there wouldn't be a closet to come out of.

But back in the 90s, they fully lost the crusade against cis gay people. Cis gay people are normalized to the point that my very evangelical aunt now happily accepts her lesbian daughter.

The politicians who used to leverage this bigotry against gay people to drum up votes know this, so they moved on to the new bogeyman of the day: trans people. I see the exact same verbiage used now against trans people that was used against gay people (and especially gay men) in the 90s. "They're really pedophiles, they're a cult that's recruiting and corrupting your children, they'll turn cis people into something they're not, it's not safe for children to be exposed to this ideology."

Those exact same things were said about gay people in the 90s, literally word for word. Even the "trans agenda." In 1992, it was the "gay agenda" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_agenda

This is why I have a patch on my bag that reads "Evil is boring." Because these bigots can't even come up with a new script. It's the same old thing over and over and over, just with new targets.

It's obvious to anyone who isn't completely terrified of sexuality that the existence of trans people is not a threat to anyone anywhere ever. What you're seeing is nothing but bigotry being leveraged for political gain.

First things first, the trans community is not a threat to anyone.

As for the existence of transphobia, my (limited) understanding is that there are a few origins:

1. Power

As Michel Foucault wrote in Discipline and Punish, gender and sexuality became an instrument of power. Society uses gender and sexuality to control its people. E.g. men should be strong, women should be weak, marriage must be done by a man and a women, etc.

The existence of LGBTQIA+ community challenges this discourse directly and is therefore seen as a threat by those with power.

2. Conservatives knew that the fight against same sex marriage were lost

Therefore the transgender community became their biggest target now. A lot of people still have limited understanding of transgender, and gender as a social construct in general. Conservatives and neo-reactionary think they could still push back against transgender. A small number of LBG people also thought they could gain acceptance among conservatives by throwing the transgender community under the bus.

It must be said that if they succeed, the rights of LGB people will be their next obvious target, and therefore we are all in the same ship together.

3. TERFs

Some women had bad experience with men, and they project this onto transgender women. We see them mainly campaigning on limiting the use of women's bathroom for transgender women, which made their lives very difficult.

It must be clearly said that their experience have noting to do with transgender women, who are some of the nicest persons I have ever met.

They're threatening to make the whole world cute as fuck.

IDK, friend. It is true that trans folks are over-represented in leftist movements but I think that’s attributable to dissent being natural when the status quo doesn’t uphold social contract for you and people like you.

Most of us have mundane lives like everyone else, just made possible by transition.

In no particular order:

Organized Christianity needs original sin.

If people believed could achieve righteousness on their own, they wouldn't need a church. To keep people perpetually indebted, organized Christianity needs people to feel not just that they did something wrong, but that they are something wrong. Enter the self-appointed apostle Paul (don't get me started on that guy), telling you that every natural desire you have is evidence of your sinful nature. This is why the most widespread denominations heavily regulate sexuality and identity.

Patriarchy needs masculine superiority to be immutable.

Patriarchy doesn't say men deserve authority because they do better, but because they are better. A man is assumed to have a set of masculine virtues suited for authority, and so to claim that authority, a patriarch just needs to show up and remind people he’s a man. But what if a man could lack one of those masculine virtues (such as aggression)? And what if a person who looks male isn’t, or vice-versa? The more things a man could be, the harder a patriarch has to work to prove they're the "right kind" of man by flaunting their masculinity (see also: truck balls). And for women who gain privileges by sucking up to the right patriarchs, every stripe on the rainbow flag is yet another thing they have to prove they’re not. So punching down on “deviants” isn’t just a way to reassert one’s position in the hierarchy, it’s also revenge against those “deviants” for stealing or diluting the patriarch’s claim to his birthright.

The heteros are upseteros.

Heterosexual people are very accustomed to society and commercialism catering to their sexuality. Objectification is rampant. People are so accustomed to sexualizing anything on two legs that the mere mention of homosexuality has them vividly visualizing the act. Even devout religious people. Especially devout religious people. And that can be unpleasant if you’re not into homosexuality, or trigger a self-loathing spiral if you are but don’t want to admit it. This is why so many homophobic people make exceptions for whichever kinds of queerness they like to see in their porn, and others make exceptions for every kind of queerness except the ones they like in porn.

Fascists need a scapegoat

Fascism is a form of authoritarian ethnocentric ultranationalism based in a social-darwinist backdrop that promises mythical palingenesis if the weak and treacherous are purged. Fascism has deep ties to religion and patriarchy, but it is uniquely reliant on having a scapegoat or “other” to cast as treacherous, powerful, and responsible for the nation’s failures – after all, if there’s no scapegoat, then there’s no reason to grant power to a fascist dictator. Critically, that scapegoat must not actually be powerful, or else purging them would be a self-defeating endeavor. While fascists regularly change their formula to avoid categorization, they almost invariably target sexual minorities thanks to their disenfranchisement by religion and patriarchy.

Self-determination is an act of rebellion.

I saved this for last so I could end on a less depressing note. If you believe mankind is inherently evil (see also: original sin), then you also believe that giving people the power of self-determination is dangerous. I believe that art is the battlefield upon which the wars for the identity of a nation are fought, and America in particular has a long history with this battle. In a 1787 letter to his nephew, Thomas Jefferson wrote that morality is a construct by and for society, and that individuals should ignore peer pressure and trust their instincts when choosing their moral and religious beliefs. Jefferson was a Unitarian, a denomination later sadly but predictably deemed heretical. In the mid/late 1800s, the American transcendentalists spat absolute fire like Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (a guide to radical self-acceptance and being a bad boy sugar daddy), Thoreau’s “Walden” (a guide to rejecting capitalism and living in a cabin thanks to your sugar daddy) and “Civil Disobedience” (a guide to big dick energy which would later inspire Ghandi), and Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (a guide to getting high in a field and realizing there’s nothing evil or gross about you). Many years later, this philosophy inspired works like Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” (a guide to punching me, specifically, right in the feels). The very concept that there’s nothing wrong with you and that only you get to decide who you are continues to be radical, dangerous, and completely unstoppable to this day.

I'm sorry you went through that and I think it's interesting that you talked about a girl with a fluid sexuality. I think people get scared that it's like conversion therapy or just predatory behavior but since you went through those harmful experiences, you know what it looks like. So when someone says hey this trans person is a threat despite them having done nothing, you understand that isn't true.

I hope you're doing better now and taking care of yourself. It's always sad to hear as someone who used to babysit. The kids I watched could barely beat Mario on the Wii so I had to carry them through the whole stage.

Actually now that I think about it, I think the kids knew before me because they'd ask me if I was a boy and all I could say at the time was I didn't care what they called me. So transphobia is probably a learned thing where people project their fears onto us.

I think most intolerance comes from a mix of unfamiliarity and being informed by rumour. When you ask a transphobe what the issues are they talk about paedophilia, forced conversion of children, all these things that of course don't happen. It's the boogyman under the bed.

I have some relatives who are basically intolerant of everything, other races, any religions, gay people, whatever. But one of their best friends is a 60 odd year old transwoman who came out like 15 years ago now and they are absolutely fine with her, use her correct pronouns, they do use some old fashioned terminology, like "used to be a man" and that sort of stuff but she also does the same.

Not to say that it is ever up to trans people to put themselves in rooms with bigots, but like, bigots having trans friends would help no end.

The trans community, or any other community of marginalized people for that matter, is not a threat to any one person but to conformity and the status quo.

Throughout history, very similar people held the most power and wealth, and power and wealth were passed on not by means of merit but through connections.
But this power was always fragile and dependent on others, on servants, the lower casts and classes. Every now and then though, the lower classes unite, revolt and force the ones in charge to make concessions or straight up replace them.

The rich and powerful obviously want to limit these occasions and the most effective way to do so is to make the lower classes believe that they are not the enemy and someone else is to blame for the misery, someone else wants to take the few breadcrumbs the lower classes have, someone else is the villain. As longs the lower classes have another enemy to fight, they'll conform to the class system bestowed upon them by those who hold power, serve the system, consume the goods sold by the rich.

But you cannot vilify just anyone. If you make the majority and enemy, they'll resent and ultimately revolt. You have to pick those who are few and have limited capacity to fight back. Refugees, Sinti and Roma, Jews, the LGBTQ+ community.

The basic answer is to control people and build targets for them to go after. As gay and lesbians were gaining more rights, see: marriage equality, the GOP/Republicans/Neo-Nazi elements that were beginning to gain power needed a new target. So they settled on trans people and started pushing the bullshit idea that they're all pedophiles and mutilators of children's genitals.

The science and standards of care do not allow for what the right is claiming. They just needed an easy villain and since their base is full of people who are easily manipulated with fear trans people were the perfect target. Why? Because trans people make up like .03% of the population so most of these people have never met one.

Hard to get into everything as I'm on my phone, but yeah. I'm trans myself but even if I wasn't I would be able to see that their claims are absolute BS.

There are so many things to be concerned about in the world

That's exactly it. Present day conservatives don't have any solutions to current problems, so they have to make up a boogieman that has to take the blame for all that is wrong in the world (instead of the actual causes) and that only they can save their followers from (because everyone else is already "indoctrinated".) Anything that's against "traditions" is a good target (often a minority that's starting to get treated in a more equal way.)

Gay people have achieved too much public support, and the fascists cannot get away with othering them any longer. So they have moved on to a social group with less public support. This allows them to fabricate an enemy out of a relatively small group of nonthreatening people to keep the fear flowing which fascism requires to operate. That is one component.

Another is that our society is built on pretty strict gender roles. Trans people's mere existence exposes that gender roles are not naturally as strict as society would have us believe. So even though trans people are mostly ordinary folks who simply present at some point in the wide gradient other than strictly cis male or strictly cis female, and even though the trans people in my life are some of the best people I have known, the fact of sympathy to trans people is a threat to the status quo.