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Thread: Is Transphobia Survival Instinct, or a Social Construct

  1. #26
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    As in most mainstream religions it is a "sin" (why, I've always wondered, and "because the LAWD said so" isn't a good enough answer for me) to wear a woman's clothes or behave as a woman, I'm pretty sure it is a socialized trait and not something that is instinctive. While many of the filled-with-hate religious people do act like Neanderthals, I can't accept that this is something that predates organized religion. This is another one of those things that stems from ignorance and forced ignorance, in which because this is a "sin", you're expressly forbidden to ask why or even explore why - it's taboo, you know, and the LAWD won't like it if you ask questions.

    Simple enough test: take 10 babies under the age of 1, dress half them all as the opposite sex, stick them in a room and watch what happens. Do this over and over, and also do a control group where they're dressed "gender appropriately" a few times as well. Observe behavior. Do any of the babies start trying to kill the crossdressed ones? As an observer of behavior in young children, I've never seen this sort of behavior at all, not that I have replicated this exact experiment. But if it is indeed instinct, the non-crossdressed babies will start trying to kill the crossdressed ones. I just don't see that happening.

    It takes years of socialization to build up that sort of hate, and babies haven't been exposed to it yet.
    ~Linebacker Melissa

  2. #27
    Silver Member LilSissyStevie's Avatar
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    Persephone - What an utterly outrageous thing to say!!! And how TRUE! Thank you for the momentary reprieve from all the eye rolling I was doing reading this thread. I was starting to get a headache.

    Transphobia is just another form of xenophobia and xenophobia seems to be hardwired to a certain extent. But once we realize the "strangers" are not an immediate threat, we need ideology to keep them in the "other" category. So the answer is "yes," transphobia is both survival instinct and social construct. And, by the way, so is transphobiaphobia - the "there's haters under every bed" syndrome.

  3. #28
    Member Aeslyn's Avatar
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    It might be my solid rejection of positivism when dealing with human cultures and behaviour but I don't think you can find a single reason and you would need to look at groups as individuals.
    There was a construction of values which is intrinsically linked to survival and evolution but that would only have been applied to actually existing physical qualities. Strength was valued but a muscle bound dress wearer would have just as much ability to survive and provide as a muscle bound pants wearer (keeping in mind here of course that most of these earlier societies didn't actually have pants or dresses and most had little if any difference between male and female attire). But this set of values could very easily have lead to the prejudices in that they may have been the founding reasons. The prejudices themselves though, I would say, are socially constructed and transferred. Even the oft mentioned ignorance and fear are socially constructed and not physical or natural because while fear may be a natural response those things we misunderstand or fear are results of our constructed understanding of the world (world view). As all the people of the world are not a part of the same society of beliefs (including prejudices) it is likely there may be different reasons.
    Some of the reasons could, and do, include ignorance and fear, as previously mentioned by others here but also beliefs about right and wrong that were constructed for various reasons and would probably require a full book to de-construct. For example, stating that the Bible says that wearing the clothing of the opposite sex is wrong would not be enough to understand why traditional Christians believe it is wrong. What the Bible says is only a statement of what the society believes, not why it believes it. The passage in the Bible reproduced the belief but did not create it.
    Something that often seems to be over looked, however, is that it is not a necessity that such prejudice be shared or distributed across a culture. A person might have a prejudice against something for their own reasons. One which comes to mind is deceit. There are probably many who see crossdressing as an attempt to deceive. Imagine being a "typical" male, completely heterosexual, and checking out and hitting on every girl in sight and then realizing that some of those girls might have something different between the legs.
    The unfortunate part of this is that it make prejudice that much harder to overcome because you have to fight against so many different founding beliefs.

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