You 'right, mate? So in this video, we're gonna be talking about transphobia.
[sarcastically] yay...
but no, in all seriousness, there does seem to be a lot of confusion around what is transphobic and what isn't transphobic,
and although I'm not going to be able to go over every instance of what is transphobic in this video,
I can give you the basic fundamentals of what transphobia is,
and then there's always comments, resources, all that stuff that is always in a Trans101 video.
But also, little trigger warning:
if talking about transphobia is a psychological trigger for you,
don't watch this video. Please take care of yourself.
I would hate for this video to cause undue distress.
Please take care of yourself.
Transphobia is the discrimination and bigotry against trans people that is rooted in the incorrect belief
that trans people are not, in fact, their true gender, but rather the gender they were assigned at birth.
There you go, video done, bye!
Nah, I'm just kidding. There's way more to say.
So, let's get into this idea of bigotry and discrimination a bit more.
In my experience, people with a certain level of social bias and privilege
tend to think of the KKK or Nazis or witch hunters or groups like that when they hear the word 'bigotry'.
But those groups are examples of explicit and violent bigotry.
But, like with most things in this series, there's more than one brand of bigotry.
So what are those different brands?
Now we've already touched on explicit bigotry,
it's the kind the KKK, the Nazis, TERFs and the alt-right use.
It's an active form of bigotry that undeniably discriminates against
and oppresses people based on who they are.
Explicit bigots fight against the civil rights, and sometimes even the human rights of their victims.
We can all agree that they're assholes.
And the best approach for them then is to just ignore them
because giving them exposure just gives them more followers, which gives them more power,
which gives them influence over public perception of their victims.
The other form of bigotry is a bit more insidious.
It's casual bigotry, and it typically expresses itself as thoughts and opinions
that people learn from their elders or from older pieces of media
and they were able to nestle their way into our beliefs
because we didn't realise when we first
were given them, that they were bad,
and the reason for that is our social biases.
For example, the outdated idea that sex and gender are the same
results in the transphobic idea that trans women
are actually men dressed as women.
Those who express casual bigotry don't typically realise that their views are bigoted
and when faced with that reality, they can sometimes
feel personally attacked. This is often because
when they hear the word 'bigoted', they think of explicit bigotry, and they're not explicit bigots, so
they get defensive, and that defensiveness
shows itself as heel digging
and they refuse to believe that
their views are built on bigoted foundations, which
is what makes casual bigotry so pervasive
because it can trick those that it's infested
into being its bodyguards.
This is also why it's really hard to rid the world of it, because in order to do so,
every single person is gonna have to go through a period of introspection
where they evaluate all of their beliefs and biases,
identify the ones that are casually bigoted
and then go through the hard work of ridding themselves of them.
But as we've seen recently, the victimhood felt from being told that
you might harbour some casually bigoted beliefs
can be so strong that it results in a person developing explicitly bigoted behaviours.
For some examples of this just look at
the rise in white nationalism, or
the return of the Nazis.
I mean, it's been 74 years. Only 74 years,
and they're already back.
*sighs*
It's all of our responsibilities to interrogate our biases
and rid the world of the casually bigoted views that they can nurture.
And what makes doing that easier, or at least what has made it easier for me, is realising that
having biases doesn't make you a bad person.
It's entirely fine to have biases, but
what makes you an irresponsible person is
not keeping an eye on
what beliefs those biases are allowing into your mind.
As always, I'm going to be down in the comments, so
feel free to leave me questions or comments or expansions or whatever,
I'm going to be down there talking.
There's also the resources for more stuff on this subject in the description.
And, if you want more of these videos,
then please do hop over to Patreon
or throw me a little loose change in my PayPal
because I like making these, and I like eating, and I like
being able to give my editor money for helping.
So, yeah, anyway, see you down there, and
bye!
