The reasons generally start out personal and become generalized as a political “position”, which really consumes your life after a while.

Rowling has said that she had a queer “phase” and that if she were going through that nowadays, she would likely have ended up considering herself trans (incorrectly, by her assertion). That reads to me as some internalized bigotry that she never worked through. Musk has a daughter who’s a trans woman and disowned him for being a piece of shit. He started posting about “pronouns” soon after. And Zuckerberg seems to have seen the way the winds are blowing with the current administration and jumped on the anti-trans bandwagon because he’s a lizard man with no soul (metaphorically, not in the David Icke antisemitic way). These are all guesses, but not based on nothing.

It ends up being socially unacceptable to say, “trans people remind me of my estranged daughter so I don’t like them,” and rightly so. So you have to retreat and bury the context, taking it up as a matter of principle. And your mind can backfill the justification over and over again, further cementing the ideas as people start to ask you to talk about trans people over and over again. After all, you’re a public figure who doesn’t like trans people. That’s a hot topic. People on Twitter want to talk about it. Reporters want to talk about it. So it snowballs from there. Transphobia can absolutely take over the life of a public figure.

Philosophy Tube has an excellent video on something called phantasms and how people get stuck in irrational worldviews. Would recommend.

So there is definitely more to it as plenty of people have already explained, but when it comes to Elon and Rowling they both have personal reasons for their anti-trans beliefs. Rowling was sexually assaulted, and now finds the idea of, in her words, “men pretending to be women” utterly terrifying due to her PTSD, and is seemingly incapable of seeing trans women any other way.

Elon on the other hand went through a bunch of drama bs with his family, he’s got at least one trans kid who has disowned him, and he spiralled out from there, eventually finding a place among the far-right Nazis who have only reinforced his preconceptions about trans people and trans kids.

No idea what the fuck Zuck’s trans villain origin story is though.

1. They’re a scapegoat
2. People fear what they don’t understand. If they actually went out and talked to trans people they may realize they’re normal people just like anyone else.

I always thought it was about power. Maintaining power structures requires a clear dividing line, somewhere. The line between women and men is artificially upheld, to create the illusion that there’s “naturally two categories in everything”. If people got the idea that you could “transition”, that would overthrow a whole lot of the artificial divides that we have in our society today.

Rich/famous transphobes’ voices are louder because they’re rich, unfortunately. It’s the same problem with every other awful opinion that rich/famous people have.

I do suspect though that it also has to do with social class and thinking that they are “above”.

Its a thing of domination and power. If there are less people with human rights, you can exercise your power more without restrictions.

first the trans, then the gays, then the “other races”, then the women, then the poor. and boom, only the elite have rights.

A useful distraction to prevent class warfare and protect their wealth with a convenient and reliable scapegoat designed to ensure a divided working class.

Divide and conquer.

Divide and conquer. A united population is harder to subjugate.

They keep you fighting a culture war so you don’t fight a class war.

As far as I can tell, they didn’t. J.K is a straight example, but Elon went looking for an edgy movement to align with, and Zuckerberg just wants to stay rich.

Your everyday regressives want to go after trans people because they don’t think they can take gay people on anymore. Some political movements have capitaised on this to gain their support, and have captured rich supporters as well because trans abuse is compatible with them continuing to gain more and more power.

How rich are the Wichowski sisters? You bet they’re not a fan of any of this.

Products of their generation. As they die off others will take their place and society will move on to other groups to target.

they’re the newest scapegoat, the bourgeoisie always need a scapegoat to redirect the other classes grievances to them.

I do wonder what their end game is. History surely will not look on them favourably, so who would want to be the villain on the world stage? Yes history is written by the victors, but only for a short while until the truths come out. I just can’t understand why anyone would deliberately want to be on the wrong side of history.

It is a useful distraction from the surplus value extraction from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The Bourgeoisie hire workers and pay them for their work. But with what money? The money made by selling a product or service. But who did the work to create said product or service? The workers did. So workers do work, which makes money for the company. But do the workers receive all of it? After all, they did all the work. But no, no they don’t. If the Bourgeoisie gave all the money the workers to back to the workers, them how could the Bourgeoisie make a profit? It thereby must follow that the Bourgeoisie pay their workers less than the value they produce, thereby stealing that money from the workers.

You might say “but the bourgeoisie own the company! And they also do some work themselves! Some people’s work just contributes more than others.” Yeah, yeah, but who gets to decide how much of the pie each person gets? How much should be reinvested and what not? Who gets to decide what is done with the money made? The Bourgeoisie! But why them? Why do the workers not have a say in how the money they made is used? Because the Bourgeoisie had enough money to buy the means necessary to make money (the factories, infrastructure or whatever) and the workers did not. How did the Bourgeoisie get all that money you ask? By stealing worker’s wages.

What does this have to do with trans people?

1. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

This whole anti-trans thing is a useful distraction. Bad people will believe it’s those dam trans people’s fault their country is shit and not investigate any further. Good people will be distracted arguing against the bad people on why being trans isn’t evil, all the while the real culprits laugh as we fight each other.

Remember: Desperate people make great workers and distracted citizens. Keep people busy with basic necessities and they won’t have time or energy to realize who is really exploiting them.

2. It makes trans folk more exploitable

Racism a misogyny is useful for the Bourgeoisie as it allows them to pay lower wages. The bourgeoisie want to pay their workers a little as possible. Desperate jobless people are more willing to take a bad deal because any job is better than homelessness. That means the more desperate people there are, the lower the wages they can pay, as they can replace workers who demand a higher wage with workers from this reserve.

Racism keeps people of color in poverty allowing them to be more easily exploited. Misogyny justifies paying women half the wage of a man, which is exactly what the Bourgeoisie want.

Likewise, if trans folk are illegalized that will make it hard for them to find a job, adding even more people to the reverse army of labour.