ext_36709 ([identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] steepholm 2015-08-15 10:05 pm (UTC)

one's own moral and/or visceral (i.e. vomiting) objections

I don't think you can slide those two kinds of objections together in this context. Before, you were positing a person who believed morally in fighting anti-Semitism but was repulsed by the idea of making out with a Jew. Presumably someone like that doesn't have a moral objection to making out with a Jew, only a "visceral" one. The same argument holds if you substitute the word "transphobia" for "anti-Semitism" and "trans person" for "Jew".

Biden, by contrast, is not campaigning in favour of abortion or arguing that abortion is a good thing. By your account he actually has strong moral objections to it. He campaigns for choice not because he believes in abortion but because he believes in choice itself.

If the person who finds the idea of making out with a trans person (to stick with that example for now) repulsive has no moral objection to doing so, then the analogy with Biden's position really loses force. So where does their revulsion come from, if it rests not in a moral position and not in any lack of physical attractiveness of the part of the trans person, but in the mere knowledge that they are trans? If that's not transphobia, I don't know what is.

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