Trans people’s very existence requires the rest of us to question our own upbringing. There are a lot of childhood experiences that boil down to you doing something or not doing something on no basis other than the fact that you were told.

You were told by your family, you were told by your friends, you were told by random strangers, you were told by the media, and they were all telling you the same thing. So you listened, even though you didn’t know why they were saying it. Surely EVERYBODY can’t be wrong, right? Some people might have told you something contrary but they were the losers, the outcasts, the villains. You don’t want to be any of that, surely?

For someone to transition, they are required to do the exact opposite of what so many told us all. They embrace the very outcome we were threatened with when we failed to conform, that we would not actually be the gender we were failing to conform to.

To accept that they are valid in doing so requires us to admit that many of our own guiding forces were actually just bullshit. We have to question why we are the way we are anew. If what they’re doing is strong, what we did, what we’re continuing to do, was weak.

When confronted with the idea that we were all just raised wrong and that much of what we collectively spend our time and energy stressing about is stupid and pointless, how many people do you know that will just shrug and say “oh well” and then move on with their lives? Easier to find an excuse to keep doing what you were already doing. “They’re just lying because they’re perverts that wanna cheat at sports.”

Some of these rich people are insidious and manipulative, no doubt, but the loud ones are usually just idiots no different from the uncle you don’t want to talk to except that being rich means they’re able to yell louder.

You can’t get ultra-rich while being a compassionate person

They are a fairly small group compared to other marginalized groups, and particularly vulnerable compared to others. There is already a lot of misinformation about them. Average people often dont run into them or understand them Well enough to make informed decisions. Its easy for billionaires and republicans to wield religion against them. They are often vocal about their beliefs. Intersectionality is also important (e.g. supporting and protecting other minority demographics’ rights because it is the right thing to do, and tearing each other down is counterproductive) to them, which isnt always the case. Disappearing them sets an example and is a test run for setting up the infrastructure and means to take control. See: nazi germany with the deaf, and current marginalization by the trump administration of the trans and disabled communities.

trans people are a threat to the status quo of the patriarchal-capitalist Gender regime. the ideology of patriarchal capitalism is that your gender assigned at birth is immutable and there are only two. in patriarchal capitalism your gender defines a lot of what path your life will take, the societal expectations placed on you, and importantly what opportunities and privileges are afforded to you. obviously the setup is men dominating and oppressing women which has been going on for far longer than capitalism but worsened significantly under it. according to traditional gender roles, women are expected to act as broodmares to reproduce more worker stock and also perform most or all domestic labour in essentially a slave role. the existence of trans and trans nonbinary people disproves the two axioms on which this all rests, that your gender is immutable and one of just two. gender in capitalist ideology is little more than a tool or system of oppression, and by existing and living our lives as we see fit and not railroaded by traditional expectations based on assigned gender at birth, we show clearly that it doesn’t have to be that way. so to answer your question they come for us because we are a genuine threat to capitalist patriarchal orthodoxy, we show by our actions and existence that a better social order is possible, one where individuals are actually afforded self-determination instead of being locked into a predetermined role based on what genitalia you are born with.

preface: conjecture

musk and zuckerberg benefit from “othering” a group so that the majority of people get caught up in arguing about the rights of that group. While you’re busy being distracted by that they can push for agendas that benefit their companies and personal wealth, which inherently fuck you over.

musk does seem to have a personal vendetta as well given his issues with his trans daughter but I truly think this is ancillary to enriching his wealth and power. He also seems to love getting involved in topics that rile people up because deep down he’s a 14 year old reddit troll

rowling is double down and attention. She has a shit take, posts about it, people call her out. She’s a literal billionaire “beloved author” used to being surrounded by hangers on so being challenged wrecks her shit. Rather than reflect and look at scientific consensus she doubles down on her shit take. Because of people like above this gets her increasing amounts of attention and relevance so her beliefs are reaffirmed and deepened constantly. Now she’s consulted to speak authoritatively on the matter despite having no actual qualification other than being a rich lady who got into twitter arguments about it

Many of these apply to nobodies as well. Your stupid anti trans neighbor benefits from “othering” someone because it gives them someone to deflect blame onto. For most of American history it was black people, or Hispanic people, sometimes Jews, basically any minority. They also will double down when called out on shit takes and will absolutely respond to attention given for shit takes.

Transphobia, just like any form of queerphobia, serves the maintenance of property rights and the reproduction of the workforce that generates billionaires’ wealth. This is where the antagonism comes from.

Also, please don’t call Elon Musk that.

Mostly a people to blame and for others to fear monger, it’s a way to make people look the other way also, a common “enemy” instigated from the true enemy. And sense there is not a lot of trans people statistically it’s hard for them to defend themselves. It’s all about manipulation and control over the people

Point 8

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

My personal opinion is twofold:

1. they need a diversion. Like a magician (or more accurate a pickpocket) they will take anything to make people blind while they amass their power. It is a sickness of the mind. They are addicted to power and ever anxious to loose it. Minorities are a good enemy for the people to blame the problems on that these people either cause themselves or dont want to take care of. In the past it was witches, nowadays it is other minorities.
2. minorities have been fighting for a place in the world for a long time and there have been significant improvements. But that is not a positive development if you want to rule supreme. If you‘re power crazed, you need people to fall in line. Otherwise it wont work. We have ample evidence that only a sufficiently subdued population will not rise up against authority.

There are a lot of other good answers, but it seems worth remembering lots of poor powerless folks hate trans folks too.

Part of the reason they’re coming after trans people is because it’s human nature to hate or fear those you don’t understand and who are different. A dark, and sad part of human nature, but part of human nature nonetheless

All the other stuff folks are talking about is also a true, but it’s not like they’re unique in their contempt for people who are different

They want you fighting a culture war to keep your mind off the class war.

The mainstream “left”, such as the Democrats benefit from this too.

Draw the national party lines between bigoted and non-bigoted. Now everyone can fight over that and nobody has to address the fact that two thirds of the country want universal healthcare.

Correlation is not causation.

Personally I just think they’re just pandering some group of people who have real power to determine how money flows in a society and they happen to be right wing conservatives.

US democracy is collapsing and the future throne is probably already set and they might have inside information.

Like you said, trans people can’t really do anything. Perfect target when you want to show where you are planning to stand.

There must always be an “underclass” in capitalism for the upper echelons to threaten the middle echelons. No exceptions. Wether that’s the homeless, psychiatric patients, gay or trans people… doesn’t matter. There will be some regional differences in what constitutes this underclass but the end result is always the same. Capitalism CANNOT FUNCTION without this implicit threat of excommunication and starvation.

The only real difference with the recent past is that all of this has become much, much more explicit than it ever used to be before. But make no mistake, even with a Biden or Harris at the helm, this would still be the case, just much more muted.

This is a feature of the system, not a flaw, and will never change as long as capitalism in its current form dominates.

It is a useful distraction from the surplus value extraction from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The Bourgeoisie hire workers and pay them for their work. But with what money? The money made by selling a product or service. But who did the work to create said product or service? The workers did. So workers do work, which makes money for the company. But do the workers receive all of it? After all, they did all the work. But no, no they don’t. If the Bourgeoisie gave all the money the workers to back to the workers, them how could the Bourgeoisie make a profit? It thereby must follow that the Bourgeoisie pay their workers less than the value they produce, thereby stealing that money from the workers.

You might say “but the bourgeoisie own the company! And they also do some work themselves! Some people’s work just contributes more than others.” Yeah, yeah, but who gets to decide how much of the pie each person gets? How much should be reinvested and what not? Who gets to decide what is done with the money made? The Bourgeoisie! But why them? Why do the workers not have a say in how the money they made is used? Because the Bourgeoisie had enough money to buy the means necessary to make money (the factories, infrastructure or whatever) and the workers did not. How did the Bourgeoisie get all that money you ask? By stealing worker’s wages.

What does this have to do with trans people?

1. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

This whole anti-trans thing is a useful distraction. Bad people will believe it’s those dam trans people’s fault their country is shit and not investigate any further. Good people will be distracted arguing against the bad people on why being trans isn’t evil, all the while the real culprits laugh as we fight each other.

Remember: Desperate people make great workers and distracted citizens. Keep people busy with basic necessities and they won’t have time or energy to realize who is really exploiting them.

2. It makes trans folk more exploitable

Racism a misogyny is useful for the Bourgeoisie as it allows them to pay lower wages. The bourgeoisie want to pay their workers a little as possible. Desperate jobless people are more willing to take a bad deal because any job is better than homelessness. That means the more desperate people there are, the lower the wages they can pay, as they can replace workers who demand a higher wage with workers from this reserve.

Racism keeps people of color in poverty allowing them to be more easily exploited. Misogyny justifies paying women half the wage of a man, which is exactly what the Bourgeoisie want.

Likewise, if trans folk are illegalized that will make it hard for them to find a job, adding even more people to the reverse army of labour.

Most people agree with the ultrarich on this issue (at least initially, before social media insanity), but only the ultrarich can afford making arbitrary people hate them without any good reason. That’s why it looks like only the billionaires are doing it.

Then they go to Twitter with these opinions and go insane and the whole thing enters a neverending tailspin.

Elon is slightly different insofar that one of his own kids is trans. So that’s not entirely due to Twitter, but there’s also some lived experience at the bottom of it all (I assume here that he spent time with said child).