Growing Up Alyssa

https://rosenzweig.io/blog/growing-up-alyssa.html

by kevincox • 3 years ago

163 68 3 years ago

api• 3 years ago

I think the right has seized on trans people because it's become socially unacceptable to go after gay people (at least directly), so going after trans people is a substitute. "Othering" some group and uniting people against them is powerful brain stem stuff, and elections these days are won or lost on turnout rather than changing anyone's mind.

I'm not sure what they're going to do when there aren't any groups left to "other." They might have to argue for their ideas and policies on reason and merit. That's gonna be hard. It's a lot harder to convince the neocortex with reason than to rally the limbic system with outrage porn.

It's gross of course. It's using people for political cannon fodder. At least the left mostly just tries to scare me and make me hate right-wing politicians, which is like striking a military target rather than a civilian target.

I hate the culture war in general. It's a godsend to incompetent politicians. All they have to do is grunt correctly on culture war issues and they don't have to actually deliver anything of substance or solve any real problems.

Veen• 3 years ago

The most vociferous "anti-trans" people tend to be left-leaning feminists, in my experience.

cashmonster• 3 years ago

The article is clearly about political and legislative anti-trans machinations though, not TERFs at dinner parties or whatever. In that context it’s the right that is the issue.

ribit• 3 years ago

And your comment might even be relevant if “left-leaning feminists” were a non-fringe political power threatening to take over legislative, executive, and judicial branches of power. We have real problems to deal with, not some imaginary “bad feminism”.

tombert4• 3 years ago

I don't know; it seems like DeSantis and his ilk are pretty happy to just directly go after gay people under the guise of calling them "groomers". I mentioned this here a few weeks ago, but part of the reason that my wife and I have dismissed the idea of moving to Florida (despite us both having family there) is because she's planning on becoming a biology teacher, and the broad and idiotic "don't say gay" law in Florida is likely to make our lives extremely unpleasant if she taught there.

hersko4• 3 years ago

What specifically in the "don't say gay" law are you against?

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what they're going to do when there aren't any groups left to "other."

Sadly, this will never happen. We've been at this for tens of thousands of years, and we always find "others."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78

LV123• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what they're going to do when there aren't any groups left to "other."

There's always going to be an "other". If necessary, some arbitrary social divide will be invented. Most of the "groups" we've split ourselves into are not particularly meaningful to begin with, and it doesn't take much to become an outsider when people really want there to be outsiders.

dale_glass3• 3 years ago

The whole discourse over this in the US is getting nuts as of late.

We justifiably get annoyed when uninformed lawmakers make sweeping laws without understanding the technical issues involved. It's frankly bizarre to have some 80 year old fossil who can barely understand using a cell phone be involved in something like deciding net neutrality or AI regulations.

We should be equally annoyed at the current trend of throwing medical issues into the public sphere. There's no reason whatsoever why random people like my mom whose education is in textile design and mostly watches cat videos all day should participate in the public drama of who should get what medical treatment when. We have professionals who specialize in medicine for a reason.

whitemary• 3 years ago

It distracts from the economy. Simple as that.

brucethemoose2• 3 years ago

There are downsides to technocracy, like doctor groups or AI companies pursuing their self interests a little too much.

And at the federal level, many of the older congressional members are not as uninformed as you might think. They have a big information machine around them.

...But, in general, yeah. Its absurd how uninformed the debates can get these days.

notacoward3• 3 years ago

There's no reason whatsoever why random people...

Having "random people" participate is a cornerstone of democracy. As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy.

The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves. Nobody seems to do that any more, including here. This is the foundation that's failing. Fix the broken cornerstone, not the one that's still intact (though under assault in the form of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement).

antisthenes5• 3 years ago

As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy.

Having "random people" (or people without specific domain knowledge) in a democracy doesn't really do anything to prevent oligarchy, it's tangential at best and orthogonal realistically.

The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves.

That seems like a tall order in a culture that consistently promotes ignorance as a virtue for the wide masses.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

I think that you are both right on different levels and possibly talking past each other.

Yes, on the level of franchise, it is good that everyone is involved.

Its bad, on the other hand, that the form of the debate in this concrete instance has been directed to trying to make decisions on specific medical procedures as electoral politics issues.

Belief in democratic franchise does not imply belief that all democratic decisions are equally correct, or that all possible framings of debate within a participatory system are equally correct.

dale_glass3• 3 years ago

On the big policy level, not on the detail level. We specialize for a reason.

It's not in any way reasonable for a random person to make specific decisions about what kind of medical intervention is appropriate for what people in what conditions. Figuring out tricky details is what we have experts for.

Just like 99% of the time, it's not appropriate for the CEO to decide which framework, algorithm or programming language should be used to solve a problem.

Nor can we even try successfully. There's too many deeply complex subjects for the general public to have time to research them well enough not to make completely stupid decisions, let alone good ones.

bsaul• 3 years ago

« I’m on the board overseeing Linux graphics. Half of us are trans »

From a purely statistical POV, this is absurdly bizarre.

dj_mc_merlin5• 3 years ago

It's not a random pick from the population, or the 95% male ratio in engineering would also be somewhat weird.

They have a small team: https://asahilinux.org/about/

People like to team up with others like them, so the fact that they're more likely to collaborate with other trans people is not weird at all.

umanwizard2• 3 years ago

I don't think she was referring to Asahi there.

minimaul• 3 years ago

I suspect it was actually a reference to https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/.

X.Org Foundation's (or X.Org for short) purpose is to research, develop, support, organize, administrate, standardize, promote, and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack and the developers and users thereof. This stack includes, but is not limited to, the following projects: DRM, Mesa, Wayland and the X Window System.

Pretty neatly describes "I’m on the board overseeing Linux graphics.".

dale_glass3• 3 years ago

Not really.

Statistically there will be weird coincidences completely naturally. It's also quite arbitrary which we see as meaningful. If say, Linux networking has unusually many people called "John" that probably will be unnoticed because nobody pays that much attention to common, unremarkable names. If they all randomly turn out to have green eyes, then that's more visible. It's completely subjective which of those is more remarkable.

There are also likely social effects -- people stick together, and some side interests align with some fields. Eg, I think it's reasonable to guess there's going to be more furries than average in VR development. Part because VR allow you to look like whatever you want a lot of the time, part because people will invite their friends in.

umanwizard2• 3 years ago

It is not just a random coincidence. It's a phenomenon more broadly across programming, especially very low-level/hardware stuff.

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

Yeah. Trans men and cis women are like unicorns.

There are more cis women (>50% of the U.S. population) than cis men. Trans women are still like ~1% of the population, and that's being generous.

And there are more trans women than cis women in these spaces.

I don't know what it says (feminism failed? pre-transition heteronormative programming?? bIoLoGy???), but bizarre's the right word. (The smartest programmers I know are trans women too, fwiw.)

Ardon• 3 years ago

I think there's a few factors going into making this more likely (though still unlikely on the whole)

Much of the difficulty of being trans is social, which makes it more likely for people to come out / actively transition in environments with less social consequences. Programming, as an activity which can be anonymous and online fits that bill simply because there's less socializing at all.

And speaking of social difficulties, most people don't want to be social trailblazers. They don't want to be the first trans person in a group and deal with the potential existing prejudices, or more likely ignorance. So if you see a group that already contains trans people, you're probably seeing a group you can slide into without much difficulty.

jawns2• 3 years ago

if you vote Republican in 2024, you vote erasure. You vote oppression. You vote fascism

As a registered independent who finds both major parties unconscionable, this line of argument worries me. Frankly, members of both parties can ascribe the worst possible motives to those who vote for the opposition, precisely because both parties are a massive tangle of complex social, economic, political, and administrative issues, not necessarily all consistent with each other, and very often only invoked when it's politically convenient.

I'm not trying to engage in false equivalence here, because it is absolutely possible for one party to be worse than the other. But what I'm saying is that ascribing the worst possible motives to those who don't vote like you is only going to inflame our already polarized political discourse, and my great fear is that if the flames are fanned enough, we're going to end up how Rwanda ended up when the hatred between the Hutus and Tutsis boiled over.

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

They're not assigning the worst possible motivations to people who don't vote like them.

It's actually the opposite, they're trying to speak to the people who might vote Republican and who may not realise what they are voting for.

jfengel3• 3 years ago

I have a very hard time believing they don't realize who they're voting for. This isn't a secret. They're quite explicit about it.

I had been willing to believe that they simply put other issues first, which was merely selfish and short-sighted -- the kind of thing a democracy can be moderately robust for. But the culture war is front page news every day in every medium, and I simply cannot believe any more that it's not a deliberate choice.

_pjx92• 3 years ago

This is a bad moment to be playing the enlightened centrist.

The main point is that one party in particular is pushing discriminatory legislation against a minority group and demonizing them. That counts as oppression to me. People who vote for said party are therefore voting for those things - voting for despite not supporting such policies is still enabling said discrimination.

Your response seems victim blamey. Yes, the post is ascribing the worst motives at times. The cynic in me sees the anti-trans campaign as a political distraction from other issues that actually affect the voting base's lives. Doesn't change the fact it's hurting and likely taking human lives.

You compare the situation to Hutus and Tutsis. In this case she is a Tutsi, warning about the increasing threat of Hutus - whose rhetoric becomes more violent by the day - and is asking for help.

jawns2• 3 years ago

If you're familiar with the history of the Rwandan genocide, it was not simply a matter of the vulnerable Tutsis being massacred by the evil Hutus.

The genocide was the culmination of a hundred-plus years of power shifting from one group to the other. When the Tutsis were in power, they made life hell for the Hutus, and when the Hutus were in power, they made life hell for the Tutsis. Each group came to see the other as deserving of that punishment because of the way they had been mistreated when the other group was in power.

But my broader point is a criticism of the major-party duopoly, where every single social issue, economic issue, military issue, civil rights issue, etc. gets boiled down to these two choices. And often the philosophy that underpins them is inconsistent. So it's no wonder that each party is able to point out the inconsistencies and evils of its opposition; our political system is designed to make that as easy as possible. And the politicians who run within those parties benefit from that polarization.

krapp• 3 years ago

The Republican Party is moving in a very dark direction, and has been for years now. This isn't just red team/blue team partisan cheerleading. This isn't Trump Derangement syndrome. Both parties aren't equal in this regard. I think the author's fear is justified and maybe the onus should be on Republicans to finally smell the rot in their own house instead of on everyone else to be polite about it.

mgkimsal• 3 years ago

...Republicans to finally smell the rot in their own house...

I'm not sure it even matters currently. I've got friends who vote Republican, knowing stuff about their party/candidate which makes the uncomfortable (or worse). They still keep voting Republican, mostly because "democrats will kill babies and take away my guns and social security!". They've had more than a decade of "worst motives" ascribed to the opposition.

---

Republicans: decades of "they'll take away our guns!"

Democrats: "that's not going to happen."

Decades later, doesn't happen.

---

Democrats: decades of "they're going to take away your access to abortion/contraception"

Republicans: "meh... nah... why are you so paranoid?"

Decades later... access to abortion heavily restricted, on track for total bans in many regions.

jfengel3• 3 years ago

The Republican Party is moving in a very dark direction, and has been for years now.

Decades.

It's really hard to put a starting date on it. I think of it as beginning in the 1990s. But that's a follow-in from the late 60s, when civil rights caused the re-orientation of the parties. And before that, the anti-communist movement which upset the post-Civil War alignment.

Regardless... I have memories of the 80s and early 90s when it felt competitive and rude but not utterly hopeless. Since then it has seemed to me that it has grown monotonically worse -- and I see no reason to think that the direction is going to change.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

The Republican Party is moving in a very dark direction, and has been for years now.

Since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Republican Party decided to seize the opportunity it had failed to exploit in previous splits between the Democrats’ White supremacist faction and the rest of the broadened post-New Deal party by offering the former a new partisan home that would focus on the issues the Democrats had become inconsistent on.

jfengel3• 3 years ago

I find your last analogy kind of interesting. If it were 1994, and the Tutsis said "If you vote Hutu, you vote oppression, you vote fascism", would you tell them that they should not fan the political flames?

I hate to risk Godwinning the argument; it doesn't (yet) look like that. And you've already said that you don't want to draw false equivalences. But I think it's worth considering that sometimes the motives are the worst possible motives, and it's not up to the victims to reduce polarization.

This isn't just about "people who don't vote like me". It's about people who are actively voting to oppress me, to make harmless behavior illegal and to diminish my voting power to prevent it. Voting isn't harmless; it's ultimately a matter of compulsion.

That can often be benign. We'll never be unanimous and sometimes minorities on any issue will be compelled. That works when it's not done with malice. But malice is a real thing, and it only takes one side to have it. And it really looks to me as if it's being done out of malice in the US, right now. Maybe not genocidal... but I don't think it's up to the trans people or any other group to avoid inflaming Republicans just by existing.

jmclnx• 3 years ago

I fear the 2024 election

You and me both :(

With you being young and hopefully on social media, I hope you can help turn out the youth vote. I hate to say this, most people of my generation are about as close minded as a person can get, and sadly they turn out to vote in large numbers. And many of them vote only for hate.

I think the future of the US rests on your generation shoulders, and I hope your generation is stronger than mine is/was.

marcodiego• 3 years ago

Right wing political parties in the world are taking a crusade against LGBT rights. In brazil the situation is ridiculous: a parliamentarian used the tribune in the International Womens' Day to attack trans women[1].

A significant part of the population is against against trans rights basing their arguments on religion and "morality". There are great efforts to ban even talking about it in schools.

brazil is the country with highest number of trans people killings in the world[2] and homophobia is the rule rather than the exception.

There's is a reason why most women and LGBT people in brazil vote for left-wing politicians.

[1] https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censor...

[2] https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2022/01/23/brazil-continues-...

throwwwwww000• 3 years ago

brazil is the country with highest number of trans people killings in the world[2] and homophobia is the rule rather than the exception.

Not surprising when Brazil is a very dangerous country with a very high number of killings, period. It just naturally follows that the number of gay/trans people killings is also very high.

I mean, we can probably concoct some statistics to prove that Brazil is also one of the countries that kill more cis/hetero people too.

None of this to say that the right wing in Brazil is okay. They engage in this cultural war nonsense to try to stay relevant after Bolsonaro ridiculously lost the last elections even after all things he did to try and steal it.

uneekname• 3 years ago

c'mon HN, don't flag this. it's a perspective piece about being a trans developer in a harsh political landscape. we upvote and discuss this stuff quite often.

hersko4• 3 years ago

It's someones political manifesto. Not sure why it's relevant to HN.

chomp• 3 years ago

It's a blog post from a prominent person in the tech community sharing their pain and perspective. That's relevant. Human rights for people who work on our software is important.

Alekhine• 3 years ago

Asking to not be oppressed is a manifesto?

mrlonglong2• 3 years ago

@dang why is this flagged? It was a pretty good discussion of issues surrounding the trans community.

Growing Up Alyssa

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