Comment by JamisonM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JamisonM | Hacker News Reader

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I think you might be mischaracterizing the issue a little bit, not maliciously but still a mischaracterization.

The idea of the "existence" of a trans person is subject to debate. There are a significant number of people that believe that "being" trans is actually not something of substance, that it is "all made up". Being an immigrant is different, nobody questions that an immigrant that themselves attests to being from country A and is now living in country B is making that up.

Bostock was a ruling about sexual orientation, not about gender. I think if you are citing the 2020 PEW poll on this topic it is probably quite obsolete as it seems clear that the partisan valence of this issue has changed quite a bit very recently. And even before 2020 the truth is that disputing the legitimacy of transgender people is a low salience issue for a lot of people but very activating for others (much like immigration) so the proportional impacts of what seems like an unpopular opinion is inflated.

> The idea of the "existence" of a trans person is subject to debate. There are a significant number of people that believe that "being" trans is actually not something of substance, that it is "all made up".

The political debate is about language changes (e.g. "LatinX"), access to sex-segregated spaces, participation in sex-segregated sports, what to teach young children, etc.

> Bostock was a ruling about sexual orientation, not about gender.

Bostock involved multiple consolidated cases, one of which specifically involved gender identity.

> I think if you are citing the 2020 PEW poll on this topic it is probably quite obsolete as it seems clear that the partisan valence of this issue has changed quite a bit very recently.

No, the issues have changed (see above). This is common and unsurprising. People are generally a lot more accepting of civil rights than attempts at social engineering, especially social engineering directed at children.

>> The idea of the "existence" of a trans person is subject to debate. There are a significant number of people that believe that "being" trans is actually not something of substance, that it is "all made up".

> The political debate is about language changes (e.g. "LatinX"), access to sex-segregated spaces, participation in sex-segregated sports, what to teach young children, etc.

IDK what this response is supposed to mean exactly but I certainly have people in my life that think that being "trans" isn't "real". And as far as politics goes this is certainly also fairly common position to hear from prominent people.

"what to teach young children" certainly seems to be an issue, an issue where politicians are sheepishly pretending to do one thing while actually doing another through ambiguity. This all seems very easy to understand. It certainly reflects the idea that trans people either don't really exist or their existence is something so terrible that children can't be exposed to even the idea of their existence.

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