The idea of "bourgeois decadence" is the leftist-flavor-but-same-brainworm fed to the others, tailor made to work your emotions and think of the target as morally inferior. chuds get jesus and kids baths, libs get 'cheating' and 'terf stolen honor', leftists get 'bougeiosie decadence'. Easy to prop someone when your nudge our human wish to be superior. Dunno where they picked up that glitch but maybe if you pointed out how similar it is to the brainworms they've shed to get this far there's hope.

The idea of "bourgeois decadence" is important here. It's not something I ever found to be very compelling so I don't have much analysis to counter it.

The obvious answer here is that there are millions upon millions of trans people who have just never come out or transitioned, because it's just unsafe or not materially feasible for them. Calling transitioning "bourgeois decadence" is like saying that having clean drinking water is bourgeois decadence, simply because the wealthy don't struggle with acquiring it like the poor do.

Anyways I'd handwritten a whole essay maybe a year ago presenting a case for supporting trans rights from a materialist perspective, but it was too long to fit in a Lemmy comment so maybe I'll share that as its own post later. I'm not sure if I agree with it 100% in hindsight but it's still got some interesting thoughts.

Otherwise Marxism Today made a video on trans liberation, and I've been meaning to check out Feinberg.

Good luck! Hope you can pull them out, but just be ready for a tough struggle.

Break their jaw?

You could beat them up. It probably won't do anything when it comes to being anti trans but it might feel good. Plus they deserve it.

That fighting against culture of bourgeois decadence is, in itself, decadence of material philosophy. Being exploited doesn't give a shit about someone being trans, but it surely helps when there is society around them ostracize them. Or there are socialists to rally around dividing working people, fbi would be thrilled.

They can just join pinkertons and cutout the ideological middleman in their head, if they (plan to) organize not against capital, but against fellow workers or divide them across ~~racial~~ gender lines. usa has rich history of unions doing that with race and immigrants, didn't work out so well

i have no advice on this but it scares me this is starting to creep into the left like this

i've had plenty of experience getting chuds to become either pro-trans rights or at least neutral on it but never fellow leftists

I tried to save one such person, all they did was try to use me as a token. It sounds like they are properly cooked. Even putting out my disagreements in text didnt help - i tried other approaches. Usually they dig their heels in very fast and are too embarassed about losing face bc leftist pecking order dictates you have to be correct all the time or face social oblivion (not really, but people can think this is the case)

Same thing happened to me. Unfortunately the way it went is every social call I had with them devolved into long tedious and infuriating discussions that quickly dispelled the large amount of respect I had for them. I had to become like some kind of fucking journalist in my off-hours searching out info to debug random shit they read online. Eventually we just stopped talking as there was nothing positive actually keeping the relationship together. They're probably off running for schoolboard so they can better prosecute their bigoted shit now.

NGL, if you can't have a face to face conversation with them multiple times, you're probably not going to be successful. You can't really out theory someone online bc it often just turns into debatelord shit (even if that's not your intention.) this is especially true with TERFs because they can be very cult-like. There's a good chance that if you find the theory you want, they're gonna take that theory to some TERF community and a bunch of people are gonna reverse-engineer some objection to it.

the problem is, if someone is a leftist and they can't see the obvious reality that anti-trans bigotry is a tool the ruling class uses to divide and conquer, and they're willing to live in a country where trans kids are literally committing suicide and/or being bullied by their classmates and the state, they're kinda a lost cause at that point. I'm nonbinary, there's a group of people who just refuse to see me as a human being, nothing I'm gonna say is gonna convince them to.

You might be able to come at them from a practical perspective that anti-trans bigotry makes them less effective as an organizer because it turns them into a wrecker.

I'm not saying this is impossible because I don't know you or know them, but you gotta be really prepared for this to fail before you go into it. What you're doing is admirable! I'm not being a naysayer, but a lot of legit TERFs often end up in that place because other TERFs weaponized some kind of trauma against them to make them think that way. For example, look at Dave Chappelle. Though he's not a legit TERF, it's been speculated that part of the reason he took the transphobic path was out of a real and valid anger at how white queer people weaponize racism against Black men while still claiming the oppressed class status. I don't think that justifies hating trans people but it is a valid criticism since many white trans people are still fine being racist (see: lib trans people supporting Israel)

the real issue is the claim that trans is bourgeois decadence. someone spouting that nonsense doesn't know anything about trans people. most of us are poor! most trans people live in the Global South. if someone ends up taking that position, they're just completely out of pocket to the point where they might not be reachable.

theory to understand trans* from marxist/materialist perspective

maybe i'm in over my head here but perhaps this fits? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/vikky-storm-the-gender-accelerationist-manifesto

A human being's individual choices about what we do with our own bodies is not up for debate, and doesn't require any explanation. It's creepy to be so obsessed with it and it really shows the sexual pathology of politics theory. It is a derailment of the actual material goals of leftist movements, because "eeeww, a trans!". Like, if suddenly trans people didn't exist, how would his life be any different? It wouldn't, and any suggestion to the contrary by them is an admission of fabricating things because they're plane bigoted.

A rare W for Trotsky: "if you cannot convince a fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement".

What's sort of things? Post their concerns and I'm sure hexbear will be there to answer every point.

Hey comrade I only just saw this, just incase you havent already already read transgender liberation

https://hexbear.net/post/72043

also if you dont end up being able to talk sense to this person, have a little faith people in organising spaces know what transphobia is and will attempt stop them (i hope)