elon musk, mark zuckerberg, J.K rowling! Are the names that come to mind.
3 from different background: a African immigrant benefiting from government spending, an American smart young engineer, and a female English successful writer.
They are no politicians, and cant be accuse of trying to gather some vote. Multi-billions amongst them.
I get they lean to the right to protect their cash, with less tax and regulation. I get they are racist because they fear some poor people will take their cash.
But why the hatred for trans people ? It’s 1% of the population, they cant do anything, dont threaten anyone. There is no rational or psychological reason
*EDIT: I read all the comments. A lot of interesting explanation: smokescreen/scapegoat, maintaining the male/female power structure, new face of anti-gay , projection / self-hatred , just louder voice …
I realize, may be, I didn’t post a good question. May be it is less about the ultra-rich but more about why that rhetoric work on the general population (else it would not have taken hold as it does). For that I have a 2 cent theory: The raise of the cult of Nature we have since the global warming. The idea, that everything natural is better. The ugly version is only natural male and female are worthy*
Gender is a load bearing brainworm for capitalist society. Capitalists need stratification, having a gradient of various degrees of precariousness for workers to experience that would push them into accepting a worse deal for selling their labor. Gender is clearly one of the primary ways to achieve this: an absolutely incredible amount of domestic labor is performed without compensation by women every day, and society would fall apart if it wasn’t. The rigid structure of the patriarchy is a key feature of this system, which means that trans people represent a clear break in that logic; if AFAB individuals can just choose not to be subjected to gender-based exploitation, it starts to rip the whole thing apart. Equally, transfeminine people represent another break in the opposite direction. The patriarchy is more or less incompatible with the existence of trans people, at least without significantly transforming itself.
very interesting take. Thanks
I wanna add that the way I formulated it is incomplete, or at least too partial to the functional perspective that someone who wishes to preserve the status quo would have. Obviously trans people don’t just “choose” their gender, it’s much more complicated than that. But I think it’s worth looking at things from this lens to understand why the billionaires in particular are recalcitrant about gender.