this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
735 points (98.7% liked)

Not The Onion

20984 readers
2089 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 34 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I don't give a damn what kind of porn people watch. I do care that this colors their perspective on how trans people actually live. Most of us aren't sex workers. And most of us that are don't do it by choice. We're just people trying to live our lives. This kind of thinking is incredibly dangerous, as it leads to believing that someone just being themselves in public is an act of sexual exhibitionism. I didn't transition as a sex thing. My life is not a costume. I transitioned and have lived my entire adult life as myself, worked my entire career and built my entire life around my transitioned name and gender. Rather than a 24/7 drag act, most days I'm wearing jeans and hoodie.

We're just trying to live our lives in peace. But a bunch of perverts are using their porn habits to inform their moral judgments about an entire class of people.

[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

This ties into a bigger issue where almost nothing related to sexuality can ever be healthy or normal to many conservatives.

Sex to these conservatives is inherently deviant and filthy. Making conscious life decisions related to sexuality or sexual identity will never be just a life decision. It will be equivalent to actively engaging in sexual acts.

Being trans to them is actively paedophilic because it exposes children to the concept of sexuality and gender. Sex ed will be paedophilic to them because it does the same. Each person's actions are not the sole thing that defines them, but also their position in society as dictated by "what it has always been". Men have always led households by marrying women and having kids, therefore men that don't are a threat.

Conservatism is quite black or white when it comes to things like identity or introspection. It is an ideology that very frequently wages war on self questioning and exploration in exchange for compliance and conformism. It's why many conservatives hate universities, scientists and partially why they hate immigrants. The entire ideology grows by appealing to people who do not want to be intellectually challenged. It's especially attractive to those that don't want to understand other ways of thinking.

Conservatism as an ideology always exploits the greatest potential weakness of the left wing: naivety, and presents itself as the "responsible" or "reasonable" solution to a reckless and harmful left wing. They frame things like empathy and humanitarianism as weaknesses rather than virtues.

It's why most of the conservative rhetoric revolves around "being taken advantage of" or "being scammed by" this or that group. They love stories about immigrants exploiting the system, cheating or stealing because it proves their worldview that what's foreign and unknown is out to get them. It is an ideology driven by fear.

And the biggest problem is that, unlike progressivism (which also has its ideological vices and weaknesses), conservatism never seeks to help the weak or empower the vulnerable. Instead it seeks to maintain the hierarchy and keep people in their place. In the US that translates to keeping immigrants weak, keeping black people down, keeping women in the kitchen, keeping white men ahead, keeping the US as an imperial power, and keeping its allies subservient.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world -5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

What? What the hell does transporn have to do with, 1. Your personal identity and 2. How everyone else perceives trans people? Porn is fantasy not real life.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Project 2025 literally has as one of its planks the idea that simply living life as a trans person is a pornographic act. This belief comes from men who see being trans and being pornographic as one and the same. Where do you think that belief comes from?

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Not from transporn. That's for sure. These assholes watching transporn is a symptom of what makes people believe in maga, nationalism and project 2025 in the first place. The porn comes after the indoctrination.

Hold on... Hold on. I know. But think about it. If you're some bloke pulling your pud to transporn and liking it you're not going to all of the sudden become a conservative.

But if you're a maga asshole conservative and you're being bombarded by anti trans bullshit and go on the internet, you know... Just to take a look to see what the fuss is all about... Then all of the sudden dang that's hot where's the jergens.

🤷

[–] BaraCoded@literature.cafe 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Man, you can't just ignore how porn molds the way people see others and what they expect of them, be it men, women or trans people

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I mean ya... But this can be said about anything at all. How about the 24 hour news cycle... Just constant news all the time screaming in your face. Or flat Earth videos on YouTube... Millions of people believe the earth is flat. Or maga propaganda permeating literally everything nowadays.

We're humans and can be easily influenced.

Furthermore I don't see a mechanism that would support what's being said under the original comment here that would be present in porn to support what you're saying in context.

[–] BaraCoded@literature.cafe 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

... How can you both understand and not understand at the same time? Are you american?

To sum it up, minorities suffer from the gaze that is cast upon them, especially if this gaze is exploitative, degrading, objectifying and made by and for the pleasure of the oppressor, thus reinforcing the oppressor's bias against the minority.

If trans porn is the only way these men are confronted to the existence of trans people, they'd oversexualize the idea of trans, which in turn leads them to blame/despise the trans even more (because of both their conservative views and unhealthy relationship with sex), not even leaving trans people the space to be something else in their eyes than objects to jerk off to (aka "people").