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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

There is such focus on being tolerant regardless of sexual orientation, but many more people face much greater discrimination on a wider variety of issues, such as being handicapped, unattractive, mentally challenged, etc. I wonder why these groups don't get anywhere as much focus as the small number of gender non-conformist? Seems from a utilitarian perspective a much greater reduction of human suffering would be achieved by learning to appreciate the groups I mentioned, than the current mega focus on gender non-conformists. I think it is because gender-nonconformists can still be highly intelligent and attractive, thus are still useful from our society's image and performance driven perspective.

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I think you're misreading a few things, and inverting some causes and effects here.

There are people who, for political purposes, demonize people for their sexual orientation or gender identity, and actively seek to enact laws designed to punish and/or humiliate those people. However, I'm not aware at this time of any particular attempt to pass laws to make it more difficult and dangerous for, say, ugly people to use the restroom, or forbidding handicapped people from getting married (that's not to say these things are not possible! there's certainly plenty of systemic bias against these groups, and there have been political movements against disabled individuals in the past--including some which categorized "gender non-conformity" as a mental illness--but that's not the focus of current political movements that I'm aware of).

So, naturally the immediate focus is on pushing back against the currently demonized group. In the future, when the focus of demagogues who invent enemies to foment rage and gain votes shifts to handicapped individuals or overweight people, then it will be critical to focus on fighting those forms of hate.

> forbidding handicapped people from getting married

It's worth reading [0] If you think this is the case.

[0] https://wheresyourdog.com/2015/08/28/dont-be-fooled-love-has...

If the focus is on enacting laws to make society more accepting of ostracized groups, still the gender nonconformists are a very small minority of those who are oppressed in our society, see lists I've provided.

Now, if you are only focused on repealing laws, then you might have a case, but a lot of the gender nonconformist activism focuses on positive laws and other forms of punishment on those who don't accept them. So, insofar as there is a positive push, then it is only a small interest group out of the suffering multitudes that are benefited and my case stands that the focus on gender nonconformism is myopic.

I feel like this varies based on your personal experience. For example, I've been exposed to a variety of these things in close family and friends from a young age (mental handicaps, eyesight problems/legal blindness, and elderly relatives who are now wheelchair-bound or otherwise restricted). With these experiences in mind, and evaluating the people I surround myself with, I encounter very little discrimination towards these types of people in my day-to-day. But that's just based on my perception and my limited experience. It could be that outside of my social bubble, there are people who actively discriminate against those with disabilities.

Could you elaborate on the kind of discrimination you're thinking of? I'm sure people who can't see have a harder time getting jobs (and for sure have to work harder to overcome things like websites with screen-reader-hostile content), but I'm not sure if you're referring to subconscious discrimination or explicit discrimination.

The subconscious stuff is harder to deal with because it might not even hit a surface level. On the other hand, the open hostility that the LGBTQ+ people faced was easier to 'diagnose' or recognize, and thus begin dealing with.

It seems pretty plausible there is a very large number of the groups I mention that rarely or even never sees the light of day due to how they are looked down upon by society at large. Some cannot enter the normal realms of human interaction, such as the workplace, so we are almost unaware of their existence.

People not even knowing one exists seems, in a way, an even more dispiriting sort of discrimination than that faced by the current persecuted group du jour.

More of these 'unseen' groups: the elderly, the extreme rural poor, the home bound, the institutionally insane, those suffering from debilitating disease, foster children shut away in group homes. And this is only considering groups we can easily access within our own nation. Much more even greater suffering in other countries.

Rarely do I see these groups mentioned in the media focus on the suffering and oppressed, but it seems intuitively a much larger grouping, and possibly enduring much more suffering than gender nonconformists.

My guess would be because those in the former camp (sexual or racial minority) have been actively persecuted and deprived of life and liberty.

In many places homosexuals gets ostracized by family and community, gets beaten up and killed, get sent to hell (or at least told they will be). The other groups you mention does not face that kind of persecution. Although in some contexts like employment I'm sure It is more difficult to be handicapped than gay.

You’re just voicing your intuition, right? That’s not based on anything you’ve seen measured?

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that uglier people are more subject to family violence, loan discrimination, etc. I am not aware of the science on the subject. But are you saying you are certain enough about the science that we should forget about it?

I suspect many of these comments are perceiving that OP is trying to minimize the seriousness of race and sexuality based discrimination, and pushing back on that. That’s valiant, but I don’t think that’s what OP said.

I think we should care about racism and care about other forms of discrimination too. I don’t think it’s a zero sum game, and the more practice we have finding empathy the better we will treat everyone.

This is a perfect example actually... sometimes racism manifests as “ugly policing” and so taking appearance policing more seriously will actually help us be less racist.

Not based on anything? Are you trolling? Some countries literally have death penalty for being gay.

Many kinds of discrimination exists and some get overlooked, but you are not really helping anyone by denying reality.

Not trolling, no, just trying to understand.

So you’re specifically focused on institutionalized violence? I agree that gay people and many racial groups have special status there.

I thought we were talking about violence that’s not overtly state sanctioned, like violence against women, etc. That was my confusion. I live in the U.S. and that’s the bulk of the violence I see against gay people, black people, etc. What I would call illegal violence, held in place by cultural norms more than overt institutions.

I'm not specifically focused on anything, I just mention a single well-known fact (which you can easily verify) to dispel that I'm just "voicing my intuition" and "not based on anything".

Now if you sincerely believe ugly people face even worse persecution than this, go ahead and argue this with the knowledge and evidence you have. Don't just poison the well and move the goalpost - that makes people assume you are not arguing in good faith.

Yes, I see an almost exclusive focus on just a few types of discrimination, but there is discrimination that is more crosscutting, widespread, and more ignored.

Captain Obvious here:

Its not that we are a lot more tolerant towards race/orientation but rather humans being vastly intolerant towards anything that is biologically negative.

Our brain is programmed by thousends of years of evolution to reject unattractive/sick/(insert any disability) partners.

This is something our whole civilisation is based on and i dont think it will change.

And i say that as a pretty unattractive person. Fortunetely trumps like power, money and status exist to help few of us.

Wouldn't that apply even more to gender nonconformism which stops reproduction?

You try to mix psychological concepts with pure biological ones. Those values are burnt so deep in our DNA that something we comprehend with our mind like "gender" has nowhere near the same magnitude of impact.

This feels a bit off to me. Most of the people I've met who are really passionate about fighting discrimination against LGBT people have also been very interested in fighting fatphobia (discrimination against overweight people) and ableism (discrimination against the disabled). I think the difference may be that accommodations for disabled and obese people are often more difficult or expensive, although I don't have numbers or anything to prove that.

Accessibility for the disabled is also less of a "culture war"-type issue, so progress (or lack of progress) doesn't tend to be as visible.

The unspoken one is heightism for men.

It’s well known that tall people earn more, are promoted preferentially, as another example.

American society has come a long way in treating mentally challenged people with dignity and respect. But for some reason it's apparently still culturally acceptable to mock and discriminate against people in the roughly 70 – 90 IQ range; they're on the low side of normal but not low enough to be diagnosed as intellectually disabled. I see that attitude all the time among technologists and the cultural elite.

>There is such focus on being tolerant regardless of sexual orientation, but many more people face much greater discrimination on a wider variety of issues

So you think you know more about how commonly LGBTQIA+ people are discriminated against than LGBTQIA+ people themselves? You think you are an authority on something you seemingly have never experienced. Think about that for a second. This is implicit bias. Learn to trust minorities when they say they're being disrespected, marginalized, etc.

Also, gender-noncomformists are gaining respect in mainstream society because of their own work. Don't try to theorize away the blood, sweat, and tears of LGBTQIA+ activists.

Starts with the media narrative, and the media narrative starts with those preferred by or employed in the media. One can watch marketing content containing humans to see trends they attempt to drive or trends they don't. I'll reserve comment on whether it's good or bad that this influence works (if you believe the results of these studies and how they apply at a macro level vs a micro one).

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