Asklemmy

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 easy for many people to think trans wars is a distraction, scapegoating, or a genuine threat to the authoritarian world view. I ask you to carefully consider that anti-trans hate is genuine.

Nazis had prioritized Jewish genocide and pursued it to an irrational degree, even prioritized the genocide to actually winning the war. Some analysts say that this shows their war was always and primarily against civilian Jews.

We have evidence to think this is the case with trans people now.

The recent "anti-christian bias" order outright frames trans rights as an enemy of their ingroup.

Reed has covered the leaked Christian emails that show them believe trans people are demons and evil incarnation and want to wipe them from the face of the earth.

Rowling has been caught on tape saying she wants to minimize the number of people transitioning so that they have less work to do "special accommodations later" for trans people.

For those aware of the term Sonderbehandlung this leaves no doubt: trans people are their primary enemy, they have poured their millions into the pockets of nutjobs and politicians that will relieve them from having to live side by side with trans people.

Don't be fooled that this is just distraction and/or scapegoating by power-mongers.

They have a trans Holocaust in the making and they have already put the plot in motion. ACT NOW

Edit:

I realize I might have not responded directly to OP's question. See the following for my take.

My analysis linking Bathroom Bans as early signs of completely banning trans people out of public life https://lemmy.ml/post/25037664

I wrote this while still believing that anti-trans hate was an election-winning distraction. It partly responds to where anti-trans hate comes from https://lemmy.ml/post/24711061

In this sense many people are deeply transphobic, but billionaires have the resources to eradicate trans people from public life. The rest can only curse, badmouth, trash, verbally attack, workplace harass, fire, refuse healthcare, sexually or physically attack or mob-lynch trans people. Every transphobe does as much as they can get away with. Billionaire transphobes can get away with genocide so they're doing that.

Additional resources in support of the argument

Summary of early Holocaust course of events and why targeted people were not mobilized https://lemmy.ml/post/25008729/16208799

Erin Reed article on fundamentalist anti-trans lobbyists' leaked emails https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2600-leaked-anti-trans-lobbyist-emails

My conjectures:

Musk: Trans kid who disowned him for being shitty so obvipusly it must be trans peoples fault and not his.

JKR: I firmly believe she's selfhating in the closet trans. The equivalent to the homophobic pastor who eventually gets caught with the choir boy. We just haven't seen the choirboy yet.

Zuck: Not transphobic, just a sociopath (at worst) who will go whatever way the wind blows.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. the division of reproductive labour is the social basis of gender. 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.

sorry it's kinda an incoherent thought dump, there is plenty more to say this is just a quickie of the root superstructural reasons that we are perceived as a threat to patriarchal capitalism. of course, most transphobes won't have these specific reasons in mind (in fact probably couldn't comprehend them at all due to ignorance) and have just been convinced by capitalist propaganda and transphobic media to hate us because we are icky etc. the prevalence of misogyny also is why it's so easy to get people to be transphobic, a lot of it just boils down to either "hah! why would a man want to be a woman?", or "hah! a woman could never be a man".

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

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.

They may not be politicians but they spend money to get themselves into positions of political power as these few days have shown with Musk. And these people get most of their power from the masses that are dumb enough and bigoted enough to be swayed by a shared common hatred of groups to scapegoat for everything.

Because there are alot of ignorant people in the world afraid of what they perceive as different.

In your first two examples, regardless of not being politicians it's clear that by helping put politicians in power they benefit, so whether they genuinely care or not, it's just about money and lack of compassion to them. And continuing to drive class warfare continues to benefit them.

In your last example, I think that person is just in the ignorant and afraid of change category with an unfortunate amount of exposure.

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