Political Memes

If only a fraction of people who reposted images with “facts” would take this advice, we’d have a lot less misinformation out there!

I'd be shocked if there's only 10 trans college athletes. My college fencing club had three I could name, 15 years ago. My current college has at least one.

Now, out trans women who competed in NCAA sports, certainly a smaller set of people.

Also, totes agree it's ridiculous to care about (I don't know how to call it) the "integrity" of college women's sports more than something that is actually harming and killing kids.

It works because religion (specifically Christianity) has poisoned our society.

as someone who is college-aged, I know about 8, one of which being my boyfriend :p

Are you sure it’s that rare? Off the top of my head I can think of 4 I’ve known personally, plus all the trans people online that I follow (shout out Jimquisition, Contrapoints, and Philosophy Tube). It’s not that rare, unless you live in a place full of bigots, then yes, I bet they don’t come around or stay in the closet. Not a whole lot of gay kids in my highschool, not because no one was gay, because they’d bully the shit out of you if they suspected you were gay. So ymmv depending where you’re at.

High odds both you and all the people you know in your personal life, don’t know anyone who is trans

What are you talking about?

Many people know someone who is trans. My conservative mother knows someone trans from her church (and she is supportive of them)

GLAAD has done studies on the % of non-lgbtq people who know or work with someone who is trans and that percent has gone up from 8% in 2008, to 16% in 2015 , and to 28% based on a quote from GLAAD in this recent press release. A 2021 gallup poll also put this number 31% .

While 28-31% isn't great "odds", i think it's quite reductionist to pretend that trans individuals don't exist at all.

Transgender prevalence over time has been studied and estimated to have increased to between 0.5% to 1.6% which makes the whole knowing someone who is trans "tail end of the bell curve" a dated and/or misleading comparison.

I do agree that the trans community has been targeted and i agree that most people aren't personally impacted by someone being trans, but let's not pretend trans individuals don't exist. They do. And we're watching their human rights be stripped away.

Instead of trying to tell people they shouldn't care about trans individuals because they don't exist, let's acknowledge their existence, understand the challenges they face, and consider how policies affect real people in our communities. The politicization of trans individuals has real consequences on people who are our neighbors, colleagues, family members, and fellow community members.

I play a niche sport that is extremely progressive and has a large trans community. The sport is often played mixed gender with people of all genders on the field at the same time. I play this sport at a high competitive level and have qualified for the national championships a few times.

I have certainly had friends impacted by this. I've have friends who had to match up on a gender match that may have benefited from their bodies sex at birth. I've had friends who didn't make a team because the team took a trans athlete over them. I've had friends who are nonbinary/trans athletes choose to compete against people born male when they could have matched otherwise.

In the end, I'm so proud of my community because those impacted are often happy for the welcoming environment we're creating for people. I don't mean to minimize the impacts to some members of the community, but the benefits are so large I'm glad we choose to support our friends who need welcoming environments. Our trans and non binary community need more environments like these where they just get to be themselves and feel welcomed.

Yupp. I am part of a local gaming community, and that is how I know trans people. But everywhere else in my life, especially work in a office building, zero signs of anyone be trans. Not going to lie, it is a very hard mental shift to not say the wrong pronouns when I jump social circles. Always feel like a dick.

Hell, I know for a fact that many people in my office wouldn't even have the concept of a trans person if it wasn't for social media.

How many trans people do you know

I mean I know at least 3 personally.

Not OP, but my cursory Google search turned up 198 cases of measles in Texas associated with the new outbreak and an NCAA person saying they believe <10 trans athletes are competing. A site lists 44 openly trans athletes, but not all are even current. Some are from early 2010s, so I'm guessing the post is probably accurate, but I didn't dig too deep. Of course, it shouldn't matter if there were more or less, but it's nice to not spread misinformation.

Less than one percent of the population is transgender. Yes, this is accurate.

I looked up some stuff and it checks out. It's difficult to mail down exactly how many trans athletes there are but there's a pretty high confidence level there are less than 100.