#of course there are transphobes everywhere but they are not as prominent as their online presence

[ryan-sometimes]

TERF shocked to discover that the real world is not an online echo chamber, and that instead the average woman either supports or just doesn’t care about trans people the way they do

[piqued-curiosity]

https://www.tumblr.com/piqued-curiosity/714434581926936576

i really don't think this is true.. basically everyone around me, minus conservatives, are very much supportive. i can't breathe a single 'transphobic' word around anyone ages 20-30.

plus, if this were true, how would they have managed to achieve everything they have? you need a very decent amount of support to have the backing of the literal president...

I’m sort of on the fence about it.

On one hand, I really REALLY want to believe that it’s not as widespread as it seems. And it’s absolutely true that “normies” are famous for not subscribing to queer/gender ideology, so there’s something to be said for online exposure contributing to belief in these ideologies, and it being more rampant online.

At the same time…I think there’s more fair weather liberals who just agree with whatever makes them look good than we think. As you said, there’s a reason it was able to take off so quickly and become so powerful. There’s a reason sports teams and apparently ballet schools are changing their rules to allow men in. There’s a reason there’s whole university courses called “queer studies”. There’s a reason I’ve seen that word plastered around my university, and I had to talk to a straight professor after class requesting that he not use a slur to talk about LGB people. There’s a reason the majority of people can’t say their true thoughts about gender ideology in their friend groups or even at family dinners. There’s a reason women are getting fired from their jobs for not calling men by “she” or “they”. There’s a reason women in rape shelters are being told to “re-examine” their trauma about the weapon used to rape them. Etcetera etcetera. And those reasons aren’t that this is a small group of online people pushing a niche ideology.

I also question if the only group that supports this is said fair weather liberals. The thing about queer/gender ideology that makes them so popular, is that there’s something for everyone. It tells straight liberals that they too can be part of the group they’ve spent so long advocating for!! They too can be special!! It allows them to stop thinking too hard about subconscious homophobia they have (for example, they never thought we weren’t weird/“queer”. They always thought of us as “queer”…it’s just now it’s okay for them to say so) and instead embrace it. They also don’t have to work too hard to discard gender norms in their head. Instead they can just say “femininity” = woman and “masculinity” = man. For conservatives, it allows them to lump LGB people in with “queers”, and call us the slur they’ve been wanting to say for so long without social backlash, as well as have an excuse to hate us and make the slippery slope argument. (“Look!! The LGBTQIA+ I can’t remember the letters community is transitioning kids and saying you’re special if you need to be attracted to somebody to fuck them!! Remember when I said slippery slope? Remember when I said they’re all a bunch of people trying to be special? I was right!”) And of course, they get to transition gay kids as a form of conversion therapy and be applauded for it by liberals.

The hopeful, optimistic side of me says that it’s just this terminally online group of liberals doing whatever they can to support the cause of the decade without actually knowing anything about it. Because look, I’m female and homosexual. These movements hit me hard. I desperately want them to just be an online fad!!! I am SO TIRED of having men walk all over me and my sex, and being pushed incredibly homophobic rhetoric by the people who convinced me they were on my side. I gain nothing from believing it’s doom and gloom.

But the realistic side of me says what I said in the tags…that there must be a reason I’m seeing this shit everywhere. With how prominent these ideologies have become, it’s hard to really believe it’s a small thing mostly confined to the online world.