Is it transphobic of me to completely filter out trans-related topics from all the media I consume? It’s just that there are so many topics I follow that I have to decide which ones I actually want to pay attention to. It’s not even that I have anything against the topic; I’ve just always been completely uninterested in it, because the concept of gender has simply never held any significance for me. It’s never been something that carried much weight for me; even in social interactions, I’ve always perceived the person I’m talking to simply as an individual – everything else was secondary.
A coworker once told me a trick for knowing where the line is when referring to marginalised groups.
(Please remember that this is before the big Hamas attack in 2023 led to the current state of affairs).
His advice, replace the group you’re referring to with jews, and reread the sentence. His reasoning is that we have a much better feeling for what’s acceptable. So, this would be:
So how to answer?
If you’re blocking a ton of topics that don’t interest you, to create a highly personalised feed, then that probably wouldn’t seem that weird. If it’s the only thing you’re blocking, then that might be more easily explained by prejudice.
At the end of the day, though, you’re the only person who knows whether you’re transphobic or not. It’s easy for someone to say that being indifferent to a marginalised group’s suffering is as bad as actually persecuting them, but that ignores the fact that some people are barely keeping it together as it is. We live in horrible dangerous times - your feed is your own business, but I’d suggest trying to keep abreast of the broad strokes of what is happening in the world.