The meme uses the “man checking oven” template to mark Trump supporters as stereotypically “gay” and contrasts this with a picture of the assassin in which there are no stereotypical signs of sexuality, which of course implies straightness in our heteronormative society.

Sure it is entirely possible the assassin could be gay IRL by coincidence, but this isn’t a helpful for understanding or interpreting the meme, since contrast between gay and straight is clearly created and this contrast is used to make a normative claim, i.e. Trump supporters are gay (i.e. bad) for being hypocritical, while the CEO killer is based by living up to the Punisher anti-hero vigilante ethos and thus not gay (i.e. straight, normal, good).

Maybe the meme uses homophobia because it will upset homophobic Trump supporters more, since they don’t want to be associated with being “gay”. Still, it appeals to and uses homophobic logic by associating the marked-as-gay traits with something villainous and the “unmarked” (which is the heteronormative default of “normal” straightness) with a hero.

I read it as straightforwardly homophobic, it’s not a top vs bottom as much as gay = bad, cowardly, weak, inauthentic while straight / “normal” = good, heroic, principled.

I figured you didn’t intend offense, and I’m not offended personally - just mulling over your comment and realizing several things struck me as a little wrong upon reflection.

I still think you’re probably right overall that the current anti-trans moral panic (and the anti-trans activism that led to it) has resulted in the average American thinking of gender-affirming care for minors as “controversial”, and that this average American also probably thinks that gender-affirming care for minors is a part of a trans rights movement.

I think gender affirming care for minors has more support than trans participation in sports, for example.

EDIT:

In 2023 69% of Americans believed trans people should only be able to play on the team of the gender they were assigned at birth, according to this Gallup poll.

In 2024 62% of Americans oppose banning gender affirming care for minors in this Gallup poll.

EDIT2:

It’s also a little weird to call gender affirming care for minors a controversial part of a “trans rights movement” when it’s primarily supported by the mainstream medical organizations. Of course the trans rights movement wishes to oppose anti-trans legislation to ban such care, but gender affirming care for minors is not a fringe, controversial practice being pushed primarily by trans rights activists.

Here is a list of the links to statements by the medical organizations supporting gender affirming care, which includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, etc.

The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of providing gender affirming care, and the only “controversy” comes from objections pushed by anti-trans activists who lie, make bad faith arguments, and appeal to pseudo-science and debunked theories to advance their cause.

The reason cats can’t be vegan is that they cannot produce an amino acid called taurine, which is something dogs and humans can produce (but which we also get sometimes from dietary sources).

Most dietary sources of taurine are meat. This is why dogs and humans “can be vegan” but cats “can’t”. However, vegan taurine is made and can be bought as a supplement, both for humans (if you want to ensure you get some taurine in your diet), but also in properly made vegan cat food.

It seems to me then that cats can be vegan, just not without intentional effort to ensure proper supplementation of taurine. That is, they couldn’t be vegan in the wild (where the only source of taurine is meat) and you can’t just start to feed them a vegan diet without taurine and expect the cat to be healthy and survive.

In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/

I think the question is really what you are feeding your “vegan” cat: if you have managed to find (or make) a properly fortified vegan cat food it is theoretically possible to feed your cat a vegan diet.

This all feels a bit like the “controversy” around feeding young children and babies a vegan diet: done poorly it can be catastrophic (pun not intended), but it’s entirely possible to have a healthy vegan diet when enough effort is put into ensuring nutritional needs are actually satisfied.

That said, I also know of two other vegan responses:

1. for some vegans, having pets is not vegan to begin with, so a “vegan cat” is a contradiction in terms even if you fed them a vegan diet, you still wouldn’t be an ethical vegan by owning a cat. This is admittedly a less commonly held view which centers ethical veganism on the rights of animals to have autonomy, which if plausible in some ways seems at least impractical in the case of domesticated animals. There are questions of the harm that might be caused by choosing to treat cats not as pets but as autonomy-rights-bearing “wild” animals, but those ethical vegans might rightly point out this doesn’t undo the cat’s rights and the practical questions should be handled separately.
2. most vegans I know IRL just feed cats a non-vegan diet, acknowledging it is safer and more reasonable for their cat than trying to figure out a way to feed them a vegan diet. Good vegan cat food isn’t that common or easy to find as far as I know, and I assume it would be outrageously expensive.

There has been plenty of research into the etiology of gender dysphoria, but the current science considers gender identity as fixed and biological, which makes sense of why conversion therapies have been so unsuccessful (otherwise the conservative medical establishment would be more likely to recommend conversion therapy to solve the “problem” of trans people, as talk therapy is much less intervention, much cheaper, and much more socially acceptable than medical transition).

Here is a relatively accessible paper on the topic by esteemed endocrinologist Joshua Safer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31027542/

It’s behind a paywall, but that can be circumvented if you know how.

More interesting than whether mental illness is more common in trans people because of how they are treated by society (which seems almost obvious, though worth confirming empirically) is whether mental illness might be more common for trans people because of the biology, such as from having the “wrong” sex hormones in their body.

Gay men who were forced to take estrogen in the UK experienced symptoms like depression and suicidal ideation, and lots of the same things trans people report (there is speculation whether Alan Turing being forced to take estrogen may have contributed to his suicide).

There is also the famous case of David Reimer whose penis was accidentally amputated during circumcision as a baby. Under the direction of the psychologist John Money, who believed gender was entirely determined by environment / social programming, was raised as a girl. Reimer consistently struggled being raised as a girl, eventually decided he was a man, and struggled immensely with mental health struggles before his suicide.

Suicide seems to be a common thread among those suffering from gender dysphoria, with over 40% of trans people reporting having previously attempted suicide and over 80% having considered attempting suicide (source), and it’s not surprising cis people when forced to take cross-sex hormones also seem more likely to commit suicide (though we don’t have as much evidence about this in particular, so take that as speculation on my part).

All this to say, religious trauma and sexual abuse certainly can and do complicate someone trying to figure out whether they are suffering symptoms of gender dysphoria or not, but the current evidence points to gender dysphoria not being caused by environmental factors (like sexual abuse) and likewise not being reversible with any kind of known treatment other than transitioning.

Furthermore, there have been autopsies of trans and cis brains that have found parts of the hypothalamus in trans women match cis women’s, even if not taking hormones. Here is a relatively accessible overview by neuro-endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky about those autopsy studies which were high quality and confirmed with follow up studies several times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ

Being trans cannot be adequately theorized in merely biological terms, so please don’t mistake me for implying there are no social aspects to being trans, but I do think there is sufficient evidence that gender identity and dysphoria have biological components that aren’t influenced by environment.

Regarding trans women and plastic surgery: many trans women transition before puberty and thus look and sound pretty much like cis women, i.e. they develop as cis women would. Obviously even in those cases some trans women opt for surgeries, and while neo-vaginas have some differences, they are more like natal vaginas than most people realize (both in look and function).

In that sense, it doesn’t sound like being trans is what you don’t like in a woman, but rather certain body features that might be more common in trans women who have transitioned as adults (breast augmentation, facial feminization surgeries, narrow hips, etc. are more common in trans women who went through male puberty). But there is a huge variety of trans women, even those who transition as adults don’t necessarily get breast augmentation or facial feminization surgery, though narrow hips are obviously more common still.

Perhaps this seems like nitpicking or like I am making an irrelevant or theoretical distinction, after all if most trans women you know look a certain way, is it that wrong to generalize this way. The problems of stereotyping aside, part of the problem is that trans people in general are under a lot of pressure to conform to cis-sexual norms, and those who can go “stealth” typically do. That means, a bit like sexual minorities, it can be an invisible identity, but where a subset of adult trans folks especially early transition are more likely to stand out as trans. What we think of as a paradigmatic “trans woman” is someone who doesn’t conform that much to our cis-normative notions of a “woman”, and that is because of that unintentional sampling bias.

I acknowledge this is a lot, so let me stop here and see what you think so far.

Interesting. Well, first - thanks for being an ally!!

It does seem like trans folks have a pretty rough road in most societies, and predictably that leads to poor mental health outcomes. The statistics about how well a trans person does post-transition has a lot to do with whether they are accepted by their family and friends. (Mental health issues are also common before transition while closeted, or not-yet aware of being trans, which might have biological as well as social / psychological reasons behind it.)

It also makes sense you might not personally know trans women you are attracted to as there are far fewer trans folks compared to cis folks; though, it sounds like you were even able to list a trans woman you do find attractive.

Digging into that more, if there were someone who had the right personality and looked like Jaime Clayton, would being trans be a deal-breaker for pursuing a relationship with that person? I guess I wonder if it’s really being trans that is the problem for you, or if this is just a short-hand for a bunch of other traits that in practice just make you less likely to be attracted.

I ask because at this point it sounds like you would be pretty open to dating trans women who you find attractive (personality and looks wise), but that it is more practical reality that you just aren’t attracted to most trans women (probably for a variety of reasons).

Does that seem right, or am I off base here?

Hi! I know this might just be the wrong context at this point as you are already getting flak, but I was curious and wanted to ask why you have exclusive sexual interest in cis women?

For example I would imagine some heterosexual cis men would have a hard time dating a trans woman who haven’t had bottom surgery or who are early in their transition (in which case sometimes the sexual preference is phrased as a genital preference rather than about exclusively dating cis people).

Some women who for various reasons pass well as cis are not distinguishable from cis women, and in that case I assume based on your statement you still would have a hard time dating that person if you found out they were trans.

For example, based on your statement I assume you wouldn’t date or be attracted to Nava Mau.

I understand if you don’t want to answer, it’s not like this is the best context and it is a vulnerable topic - just wanted to extend an olive branch in case you wanted to talk and think about it with less judgement.

omg 🤦‍♀️

Thank you! Is there a reason Dale Earnhardt is in these memes? Is he a leftist Nascar driver? (Maybe your video will answer my questions, but I don’t have the time to watch an hour long video essay right now, though I’m quite interested and hope to in the future, thanks for the link!)

I see he died in 2001, so all the reasons I could think of as to why he’s in two memes representing the Left are falling short …

I’m out of the loop - who is the person with the “Plus” hat? Maybe the same person as in this meme?