I’ve had someone openly claim I must be lying when I say I’m vegetarian; I’m just young enough to avoid my left-handedness being problematic (Latin: sinister); I don’t believe in any god, and some people think that is impossible; I’m bi and people deny that exists; I know people who are ace and the position of some Catholics is “Question: What do you call a person who is asexual? Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist.” [Vision, David Nantais, S.J. and Scott Opperman, S.J., 2002]; there are people who say black lives don’t matter; likewise refuges, gypsies, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, the disabled, communists, and billionaires; and for every successful woman you can find a man who thinks their place is the kitchen, for every lesbian a man who thinks they can be “turned straight”.
The trans people I became friends with around 2008 have gone from being open about it then to being in the closet about it now. The category “trans” a valid example of the violent-denial-of-existence that some groups face. And yes, some of those trans people have their existence denied by their parents, just as some gays and lesbians are sent to “straight conversation therapy” by their parents. How prevalent that is I can’t say, but I can say that overall trans people have a surprisingly high rate of violent-existence-denial compared to all the other groups I’ve listed.
> It was only in the Post-War years, under the influence of John Dewy’s progressive education movement, that a certain amount of tolerance for individual differences and non-conformity developed. But, even then, indeed as late as the 1960s and 1970s, Catholic school teachers in particular routinely inflicted corporal punishment and psychological pressure on left-handed students, ranging from accusations of being in cahoots with the Devil to, bizarrely, being Communist.
> Soviet bloc countries continued to maintain strict policies against left-handedness that persisted well into the 1970s. Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia and the Iron Curtain countries all made right-handed writing compulsory in school. In Albania, left-handedness was actually declared illegal and was punishable as a crime.
> Even in the relatively open-minded and informed society of today, parents and teachers may encourage a left-handed child to switch out of the best of motives, such as a genuine desire to make their lives easier in a largely right-handed world. The children themselves may impose their own peer pressure to conform to majority norms, and a good percentage of natural left-handers tell of their own self-inflicted attempts to switch hands during childhood.
The trans people I became friends with around 2008 have gone from being open about it then to being in the closet about it now. The category “trans” a valid example of the violent-denial-of-existence that some groups face. And yes, some of those trans people have their existence denied by their parents, just as some gays and lesbians are sent to “straight conversation therapy” by their parents. How prevalent that is I can’t say, but I can say that overall trans people have a surprisingly high rate of violent-existence-denial compared to all the other groups I’ve listed.