I fucking hate these shitheads, I was arguing with one earlier and no matter how many facts I gave him with proper sources he just refused to actually show any kind of respect

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[–] millie@lemmy.film 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I don't think it's possible to have a significant impact on transphobia on the internet purely via debate and text. I do think it's very possible to have a substantial impact in real life just be being a visible trans person out in public life interacting with people.

A lot of people have never once in their life had a conversation with a trans person. It's a lot harder to weaponize someone's existence when they become a fixture in your life. It also gives you an opportunity to occasionally share some of your struggle with people and educate them in a more direct way, but I think the former is often more valuable.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

A lot of people have never once in their life had a conversation with a trans person. It's a lot harder to weaponize someone's existence when they become a fixture in your life.

I saw this happen in real time at a previous job. An FtM trans person was hired to work in a very male-dominated industry, in a deep red state. There was some grumbling at first, but the dude turned out to be really good at his job, which had everyone treating him like "one of the guys" after a month.

[–] devil_d0c@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've learned a bit about trans life and issues from boards like these. The problem is that people assume that you know everything, and making a bad assumption is a personal attack.

So learning about trans issues is this annoying game of: put my foot in my mouth, get piled on by a bunch of pissed off internet commenters, try to engage so I can learn something, wade through the vitriol to find the one or two people not putting words in my mouth, learn a new thing.

It's exhausting and makes me not want to try most of the time.

[–] pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

That's an unfortunately side-effect of living in a particularly politically charged time. The internet in particular is an awful place to explore these topics as an outsider, because you can't read almost any kind of context, tone, or intention.

Think of it like getting into cigars online (or any community). You join a cigar forum and lurk a whole bunch, and only after you've learned how things work do you try to make your own post. You don't just sign up and be like "Cohibas suck, and Cubans are overrated" - you've got to build up some goodwill first, lol

[–] pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

Absolutely. Just to piggy back, number one: bigotry is almost always an emotional reaction (facts barely enter into it), and number two: people rarely change their minds in real-time. Instead, they have an interaction (or usually several) and then, very privately and imperceptibly -- even to themselves -- start to challenge their previous assumptions when no one is looking at their faces.

That's not to say that facts don't matter, but if facts aren't behind your opinion in the first place, challenging them won't change much.