cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22334414
Summary
Two transgender women, Dahlia and Jess, were attacked at a Minneapolis rail station, with onlookers cheering their assailants instead of helping.
After confronting a man yelling transphobic slurs, the situation escalated into a violent assault involving four or five others, leaving both women unconscious.
Advocates attribute the rise in anti-trans violence to emboldened transphobia fueled by misinformation and political rhetoric, including Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
The local trans community is responding with solidarity rallies, self-defense classes, and firearm training to prepare for a potential increase in attacks.
Police are investigating, but no arrests have been made.
Oh, so one of the cities with the lowest levels of racial equality also has a problem with transphobia? I’m not shocked, I’m not surprised. Between this and the people in Springfield Ohio instilling fear in the towns Haitian residents, I will never understand how people can become so hateful.
People are emotional, tribal, creatures. It’s very easy for us to hate the out group. That was probably beneficial for pre-history humans, where the other tribe could be a real threat. It’s not so useful today, where “the other group” is just some people waiting for the train.
I think the best paths forward have to make people believe more people are in-group. That’s a reason why stuff like representation matters. People might be like “who cares if there’s a trans main character in a movie?”, but that helps people be less hateful. They don’t hate the character from the movie, they relate to them, and then a person in real life gets seen in that light.
It should not be forgotten that it was not the wider ‘people of Springfield’ who pushed that shit. There were certainly kooks/nazis in Springfield who were willing to say it, but the responsibility falls on the politicians/media organizations who maliciously propagated it.