Last week the Victorian Government (Australia) posted a video on YouTube. The new campaign is called “The Unsaid Says a Lot.” There are two versions of the elevator ad. But the video about a woman walking out of an elevator is the one I want to focus on.
The first ad version starts off by saying, “3 in 4 trans and gender diverse people have been treated unfairly because of their gender identity.” Then you see a woman alone in an elevator. A larger-than-her man in a dress decides to step into the elevator as well. He drops his smile and gives her a look of contempt when he sees that the woman recognizes that he is indeed a man, not a woman.
It’s interesting that the ad actually portrays this man to have contempt for the woman instead of casting a wispy young man to play the part. They could have gone with a petite man who smiled as he got on the elevator instead. They had a choice to make the man who is pretending to be a woman to look sympathetic, like a “victim.” But, the director and casting almost go out of their way to make him look like a “persecutor.” That’s the opposite of their so-called intention, isn’t it?
The smart woman goes into fight-or-flight mode and decides to flee before being stuck in an elevator with a man who literally looks down on her with contempt. The man then seems shocked that he has scared the woman away. Here is that longer video:
There is a shorter ad where it is just the elevator scene and that’s the one I wanted to talk about here. I’ll add the video to this post. At the end of the video, text appears saying, “Trans and gender diverse people deserve to feel safe.” The man in a dress then seems to sigh visibly.
“Trans and gender diverse people deserve to feel safe.”
Feeling Unsafe While Alone?
The woman got out of the elevator. The man is left alone in the elevator. Why is the man feeling unsafe? Who is inside of that elevator with the man making him feel uncomfortable or unsafe? There is no one but himself. He is making himself feel uncomfortable. I talked about that in my “Real Reason You’re Offended” article/audio here:
He has a negative limiting belief tied to the action of the woman leaving the elevator. We are meaning-making machines. We come up with ideas of what actions mean. And when someone wants to play “victim” they will come up with negative meanings for simple innocuous things. People who like to play “Victim” don’t care what the actual meaning behind an action is. They are looking to make it mean the worst possible thing so they can get some emotional need met in playing the “Victim” card for sympathy.
“Deserve To Feel Safe”
Before we ask the question “Do Trans People Deserve to Feel Safe?” We should ask the question, “Do humans deserve to feel safe?” I wrote about why people don’t “deserve” to be represented in media before. I wrote, “The word ‘deserve’ means ‘to have earned or to be given something because of the way you have behaved or the qualities you have.’”
No, humans don’t deserve to feel safe. In fact, we have a 100% chance of death. We like to feel safe, and I think it’s something we can and should work towards mentally. But all humans don’t simply “deserve” to feel safe in the world because they exist.
Do you think humans deserve to feel safe? Comment below. If we humans don’t deserve to feel safe, then I don’t know why people who see themselves as transgender think they’re above the rest of us humans.
Your feelings of safety are your personal responsibility.
Oh, they’d probably say we do deserve to feel safe in this world. I don’t know where they’re getting that idea. Your feelings of safety are your personal responsibility. I wrote about how those who have so-called preferred (though they’d like them mandated) pronouns place the responsibility to make them feel comfortable onto other people.
The Drama Around Pronouns & Gender Identity
DARVO
Deny-Attack-Reverse-Victim-and-Offender
This advertisement denies that the woman was correct to be wary of a man looking down on her with contempt, and then attacks her, saying she is the offender and he is the victim. The ad suggests that the man is the one who feels unsafe, when in reality it’s the woman who who went into fight-or-flight mode and took action.
Why Direct Him to Be Angry?
You can see the look on the man’s face at the end is one of anger, not fear. Again, I want to point out that the commercial maker could have directed the man to have a look of fear.
It seems like the point of this ad is to make it socially unacceptable for normal women to trust their senses when they come across men who are pissed at them for not believing their perception of reality.
The Existential Threat
I think this man looks angry. But let’s consider this man feels like a woman and really does feel unsafe. This man who says he’s a “transgender woman” feels unsafe while riding an elevator alone. The feeling not being safe is coming from his beliefs. It wasn’t the action of the woman leaving the elevator that made him feel unsafe, it’s what he believes that that action means that makes him feel unsafe.
So, he would probably think she is transphobic. He would consider her running away was caused by “her fear of transwomen.” He would not consider that she was afraid of him because he was bigger than her, or because he was looking at her with contempt. Those thoughts and meanings wouldn’t occur to him. But he would think that she did not agree with his beliefs that he is a “woman” and instead he would think that she thought he was a man. Those beliefs can seem contradictory, but he’s got a lot of cognitive dissonance already.
When that woman got off the elevator it was a “trigger” to him that other people don’t see him as a “Transgender woman.” It is a reminder that some people consider him a man. They are denying that he is a woman.
His whole identity is tied in being a “woman.” Up until this point he has been placing the responsibility on other people to “affirm” that he is who he claims to be, a woman. When this woman doesn’t play “Ally” (Savior) for him by not affirming him, he immediately switches her over into the “persecutor” role (which is why he has contempt for her, not fear).
When another person stops taking the responsibility to make him feel comfortable by affirming him, the responsibility falls back on him, but he’s neglected that, so he doesn’t know how to feel comfortable or safe any longer. This anxiety is why he gets angry.
Triggering an Identity Crisis
He may start to have doubts about whether or not he’s passing or actually a “woman.” That can lead to an identity crisis.
wrote on Twitter (X) a bit ago about how jarring it can be to have such a crisis. It can shake your whole world. And, he’s right, that the only way to healing is through letting that world crumble.
If you spent a large portion of life believing you were one thing (label) like a Christian, and start to question it, the way you view your entire world can shift because of how central to your self-identity that was. It branches into other things like the friends you have chosen and how you interact with your family, for better or worse.
I have questioned my faith and other beliefs to the point that the world looked completely different and I have lost all my friends because of realizations. And it’s worth it, no matter how horrible it feels going through the process.
But it’s a horrible process. It is actually like dying to the self you thought you were and being reborn into a new creation. And, I had faith that God would get me through it. A lot of these people don’t have that faith in God.
So, when people who claim to be transgender get “triggered” to question whether or not they’re “passing” or actually who they claim to be, they are brushing up against the idea that their whole world will change. It can be fully conscious or subconscious, but that thought is there and it’s terrifying.
Because it can be a sort of (in the manner explained above) life-threatening thought, it feels like a literal existential threat for someone to not see you as you feel you are. The reason it is triggering is because they’re not confident that they are what they say they are.
If this man was confident that he really was a “woman” then he wouldn’t feel unsafe at all. The people who call themselves transgender and demand you use their pronouns and affirm their beliefs do so because they don’t believe they are what they say they are. Anyone confident in their identity wouldn’t care what other people thought of them. They would just go about their lives like normal people.
So, the reason this man supposedly feels unsafe is because the woman is reminding him that he doesn’t actually believe he’s a woman and he doesn’t want to take responsibility for feeling confident and comfortable in his own skin and dress. So he shifts the blame for those negative feelings onto the woman.
DARVO Revisted
I wanted to write about the second version of this ad when it claimed the man was feeling unsafe. But the first version of the ad has the text:
“No way I'm sharing a lift with you. You make me feel uncomfortable. Don't look at me.”
The ad is claiming that the woman who exited the elevator (lift) was saying, through her actions, that the man made her feel uncomfortable. But, do you see how it’s the woman noticing his maleness (and the beliefs that brings up) who is making the man feel uncomfortable? There’s a bit of projection there.
The man did not want the woman to look at him the way she did. He had contempt for her, not wanting to share the ride with her as well. That line could have been said by both of them. That’s what happens with projection.
What Do You Think?
What are your thoughts on the video ad? Do you think they hired a self-described transgender woman “actress” to play the so-called transgender woman and that’s why he couldn’t hide his contempt? Maybe an actor who wasn’t identifying as transgender would have acted afraid instead. Do you think they thought that that anger was a look of fear instead? Am I wrong? Please let me know in the comments.
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The Transgender Existential Threat