Libertarian DEBUNKS Steven Crowder Psuedo-Science Transphobia | Skeptic TaraElla 2020.8

Welcome again to Skeptic TaraElla, where we take a stand against biased beliefs that not only defy facts and logic, but also make effective political consensus and action difficult. Subscribe if you are interested.

Today, I am going to respond to a recent Steven Crowder video, where he showcased a few examples of trans people behaving violently, and sought to make a general point about trans people and hormone therapy.

Let's start with this. The fact is, while Crowder could find a few examples of trans people behaving badly, and I'm sure you can find even more examples out there, they clearly don't represent the vast majority of trans people. As even Crowder knows, there are at least more than 1 million trans people in America alone, so even if you can find a few dozen cases of trans people behaving badly, that's like less than 0.01% of all trans people. As for his claim that trans people are more likely to behave badly than others, he pulls a few statistics to justify his claim, but those weren't presented objectively. For example, the higher incarceration rate of trans people includes those who have been forced by economic circumstances into sex work to pay for their treatments, which is illegal in most places. Comparing these people to violent criminals is clearly unfair.

The other thing is, what Crowder was essentially doing was taking a few bad apples of the trans community, and using them to paint all trans people with a broad brush. He even made a highly unscientific hypothesis, that trans hormone therapy is responsible for making those people act violently. At this point, I should say that this claim is simply based on speculation justified by pseudo-science, coming from somebody who has no medical training and doesn't fully understand how HRT works. Needless to say, it is also not backed up by any clinical studies, which means it's essentially no better than that anti-vax stuff. Shameful indeed.

But let's get back to the point. Crowder's approach of trying to generalize the bad behavior of a few individuals to trans people as a whole is not only statistically and scientifically invalid, it is also against the fundamental values of classical liberalism. As classical liberals and libertarians, we are individualists. We believe in individual responsibility, and we believe each individual should be judged on their own character alone. That's why, for example, when some radical feminists say that men as a group are responsible for toxic masculinity, we rightly say something like 'not all men' in return. There's no reason why your average decent family man should be responsible for Harvey Weinstein's crimes, for example. Similarly, there's no reason why your average decent trans person should be responsible in any way for the bad eggs of the trans population, or be judged because of their behavior. That would simply not be in line with the personal responsibility we all champion. It would indeed be much closer to judging people as a class, just like those radicals who blame 'straight white men' for everything. As libertarians, we should condemn this kind of behavior every single time.

Real Libertarian Talks Sense To Kaitlin Bennett & Liberty Hangout | Skeptic TaraElla 2020.7

Welcome again to Skeptic TaraElla, where we take a stand against biased beliefs that not only defy facts and logic, but also make effective political consensus and action difficult. Subscribe if you are interested.

Today, I will be talking about Kaitlin Bennett again. Last time, I spoke of how I sort of admired her at first for having the guts to stand up to political correctness, but on further thought I didn't admire her anymore because I believe she was only going to make things worse in the end. The thing I now worry most about is that, part of Kaitlin's brand is standing up for liberty, and she even uses the yellow and black colors, which means she could be seen as representing libertarianism. This, I fear, could reflect badly on libertarianism broadly and liberty activists more generally.

Which is why I think it's time to rescue the libertarian brand from Kaitlin Bennett's so-called activism. I guess the ideal thing to do would be to get Kaitlin herself to have a rational conversation, to point out why we real libertarians disagree with her quite a lot, and why her project could only backfire on liberty. But since I think she wouldn't agree to such a request anyway, we'll have to settle for the next best thing: responding to comments she's already made elsewhere.

"This is me. I'm Kaitlin Bennett, I'm the most hated person on the internet."

The problem is, you seem to enjoy the attention that comes with the hate. And that gives you a conflict of interest in our goal of restoring free speech on college campuses. Because, if you think about it, if campuses became bastions of free speech overnight, your voice would be reduced to just one more opinion in the peaceful free market of ideas. No students would try to stop you from saying anything, which means you won't get to be a political celebrity anymore. This conflict of interest means that I just can't trust you to really work hard for free speech.

"What do you think about starting an intitiative here on campus to be more inclusive to trans women, and put urinals in the women's restroom for them?"

You know that's a troll question, and a silly one because trans women don't use urinals. By the way, real libertarians have consistently supported LGBT rights as long as they don't infringe on other freedoms. For example, the Libertarian Party supported gay marriage long before the Democrats! You will also find many pro-LGBT articles on respected libertarian sites like Reason and Cato. Anyone who has a basic libertarian understanding would know that, from the libertarian perspective, the bathroom issue should be treated as a private property issue, which means that it is not even a political issue at all! The fact is, real libertarians don't have a problem with LGBT rights as long as they don't infringe on free speech or religious liberty. Conservatives who keep using LGBT issues as political wedges aren't real libertarians. They are just the mirror image of the authoritarian SJWs you despise so much. And at least back when I was in college, we real libertarians despised them, and their dear leader President Bush, just as much.

"You guys want to pick fights about my content, you don't know a damn thing about my content."

But the problem is, a lot of your content is about confronting college liberals. You don't talk enough about liberty, what is liberty, how do we restore or ensure it, you don't have enough intellectual talk on these matters. And you don't even explore the origins of the free speech problem on campus. You know, there was once a radical thinker called Herbert Marcuse, who in 1965 published an essay titled 'Repressive Tolerance', in which he called for the suppression of conservative ideas. Marcuse became very influential among the student activists of the late 1960s, who went on to have a huge impact on intellectual culture throughout the West. The fact is, college SJWs only act the way they act because they have been unknowingly encouraged by radical baby boomers. But that's probably too much history and too much intellectualism for your style. So you just blame immature college students for a conflict that is way beyond their ability to create, and ignore the real roots of the problem.

"What's it like being conservative on campus?"

You and I both know it's difficult. I'm not a political conservative, but I am a philosophical conservative, in that I admire great thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and the like, and I strongly reject thinkers like Nietzsche, Sartre, Marcuse and Foucault, who were all what I would call atheist fundamentalists looking for chaos. The campus conversation around the humanities is now so imbalanced that it simply rejects people who think along the more conservative or classical liberal cannon, with all the associated political implications. But I think people like you are only making the problem worse, because your confrontational attitude makes conversation impossible, and conversation is needed to fix this bias.

"You got to speak out. Come on, look, you get a lot of fans if you speak out."

Yeah, but I'm not after political celebrity like you. I actually want to have the necessary conversations to fix things, and as things stand, I'm not able to have that conversation started. Even if I speak out, and be completely honest about my thoughts, I feel like I'm just going to be misinterpreted, and used to further the polarization. I guess what we need to do is to have the necessary conversations, do the necessary work to restore free speech and respect for diversity of thought on college campuses and elsewhere, so that when people do speak up, they are properly understood, and we can have constructive debates in the free market of ideas. But then, in that case, you wouldn't be a political celebrity anymore, so you personally might not want that to happen.

The bottom line is, we desperately need a new intellectual culture that is wrapped around the basic ideals and intellectual canon of classical liberalism. The rise of such a culture is the only hope of restoring balance to the intellectual discussions on college campuses. However, your crude activism is part of the problem preventing that from happening.

Why Not Dating Trans People IS NEVER Transphobic | Skeptic TaraElla 2020.5

Welcome again to Skeptic TaraElla, where we take a stand against biased beliefs that not only defy facts and logic, but also make effective political consensus and action difficult. Subscribe if you are interested.

Today, I am going to respond to yet another video that claimed that not dating trans people is somehow transphobic. I truly thought we were over and done with this topic. Yet it refuses to go away. It is my view that, should this idea be allowed to continue to spread unchecked, it will only bring hostility from others to us trans people. Therefore, let's start debunking this all over again. This time, in the form of a video from trans BreadTuber Gutian.

Basically, Gutian asserts that, if you are initially attracted to someone, then you find out they are trans, and this one fact makes you no longer willing to date that person, then you are transphobic. And when I watched it, it had a like-to-dislike ratio of 592-69, which means that, sadly, 90% of people who watched the video were buying this argument. Of course, it's completely unreasonable.

Why? Because attraction is ultimately biological, and not sociological. Transphobia is a sociological concept, not a biological one, because it is something people do socially rather than having anything to do with biology. Therefore, the concept of transphobia cannot apply to anything that is purely biological, like attraction. Explaining this more in layman's terms, people don't generally have a choice over their biological reflexes, like who they are attracted to, and under what circumstances. On the other hand, transphobia is an attitude that people can choose to have or not have. Attraction is scientific fact that generally cannot be altered by human will, but tranphobia is a social relational condition that can indeed be altered by human will.

I guess this confusion ultimately stems from the postmodern and postmodern-adjacent theory that is popular in some circles. In those theories, the biological and the sociological are often confused, and the sociological is sometimes mistakenly thought of as having powers over the biological, as in for example how gender is mistakenly viewed as a social construct that can be altered or even abolished. This is probably because the people who came up with those theories didn't have any college-level biological training, and because of the distrust of the neutrality of empirical science that is the hallmark of the work of postmodernists like Foucault. However, there is no reason to doubt the neutrality of empirical biological science or to see any sociological bias in that science; to do so would indeed be paranoid. In fact, this paranoia comes not from any scientific perspective, but rather it comes entirely from the sociological tradition of critical theory, which strongly upholds Karl Marx's idea that the dominant ideas of every era are the ideas that serve the ruling class. But to apply this idea to scientific facts is just hopelessly paranoid.

The fact is, if somebody isn't attracted to trans people, then they are just not attracted to trans people, period. There's nothing they can do about it, and there's nothing more to examine. Making people feel guilty over something that is biological and hence outside their control is the worst form of cultural totalitarianism.

Finally, just some extra comments on Gutian's video. She also sort of dealt with the argument around fertility, unconvincingly in my opinion, and she ended up limiting her argument to hook-ups, which I find offensive because it could be seen as painting a picture of trans people settling for hook-ups if they can't have permanent relationships, and I'm morally against hook-ups personally. Anyway, my point is that, this was what she argued, and my view is that, even if I accept her conditions, the argument is still inherently wrong.

Is Michael Bloomberg Transphobic? | Skeptic TaraElla 2020.4

Welcome again to Skeptic TaraElla, where we take a stand against biased beliefs that not only defy facts and logic, but also make effective political consensus and action difficult. Subscribe if you are interested.

Today, I will be looking at the recently circulating talk that Michael Bloomberg is transphobic. I will be looking at this impartially, separate from Bloomberg's political platform. Some people are accusing Bloomberg of being transphobic based on comments he made in England in late 2016, where he said something along the lines of the average person in the midwest wouldn't understand trans rights; that they would think it was about allowing men in dresses to use women's locker rooms. Bloomberg was probably refering to the North Carolina bathroom bill debate, which was a hot topic at the time. Taking these comments out of context, some have accused Bloomberg himself of saying that trans women are men in dresses.

Now, this is clearly ridiculous. It is clear from the comments that Bloomberg was talking about what he thought the average guy in the midwest was thinking, not what he himself was thinking. I think it is symptomatic of the wider trend among trans activists in recent years, of seeing enemies everywhere even though they're only imaginary. I think it's in the same vein of trans activists recently condemning JK Rowling as transphobic, by over-interpreting the words used in one tweet, even though Rowling clearly took a live and let live attitude. Of course, there was also the false accusation that Hillary Clinton was pandering to TERFs, when all she said was that there are issues that needed time to sort out. Overall, these incidents paint the trans community as paranoid about society, and unable to engage in rational conversation. To be honest, I am thorougly disappointed in our so-called community leaders and activists. If they aren't in the right state of mind to engage in open-minded and constructive discussion, then they should step down from their role and let someone else do it. The way they are acting now is very damaging to the conversation.

I guess another reason why trans activists were quick to condemn everyone from Bloomberg to Joe Rogan, from JK Rowling to Jordan Peterson, even from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders as transphobic, is because they simply can't face the reality. The fact is, if you think the whole world is against you, then it's much more likely that you yourself are the problem. For example, what Bloomberg said is certainly true of many people out there. Many people simply don't understand what trans rights is at best, and even fear that trans rights may endanger parts of the community at worst. It's simply what some people are thinking out there. Do I wish it were different? Of course I do. But we live in this world, in the here and now, and if there is widespread misunderstanding and even fear of trans rights out there, it is up to us to have the necessary conversations, to fix this problem. Refusing to face the reality doesn't help. Similarly, Joe Rogan's concerns about trans people in MMA, Rowling and Peterson's concerns about free speech, and Hillary's view that both sides need to work out their differences in time, are all very valid. If trans activists keep labeling people with legitimate concerns as transphobic, the term 'transphobic' will become meaningless. Besides, this kind of bad faith activism is simply not in keeping with the good faith engagement that the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement have long engaged in.

The other thing is, people who have concerns aren't necessarily our enemy. They are often good people with genuine concerns. It is up to us to engage in the conversation, and come up with solutions that adequately allieviate their concerns. I'm pretty sure most of them would agree to reasonable accomodations for trans people, if we come up with solutions that adequately allieviate their concerns. On the other hand, pushing people away, taking on a victim mentality, and treating the rest of the world like enemies is only going to make things worse for everyone.

Finally, I guess all this madness is ultimately rooted in negative thinking. This negative thinking is partially the result of the dark side of the activist culture of the past 50 years. For example, Herbert Marcuse, the thinker who had the most effect on the long 1968 movements, famously opposed positive thinking and championed negative thinking. Similarly, a lot of the postmodern and Foucaldian thinking that has affected activist communities is also very dark and paranoid. I think we all need to shake off these negative influences, and return to a more positive view of humanity. In short, we have to believe in the basic good of humanity. We got to have faith in humanity.

The Two Sides of the Trans Community Should Respect Each Other | TE Report Trans S3 E10

Hi everyone, welcome again to the special LGBT season of the TaraElla Report. This is where we talk about the diversity of views in the community, to show that diverse views do exist, and to promote mutual understanding. Subscribe if you are interested. This show is brought to you by my new book, Postmodernism, Skeptics & Transmedicalists, which is all about the battle between postmodern and Marcusean ideology vs skeptics opposing these ideas, and how trans people got entangled in this battle and got misunderstood by the world. Link is in the description.

Today, I am going to again revisit my response to the Transtrenders video by ContraPoints from last year. As I said last time, the video actually talked about two separate topics, transmedicalists vs anti-transmeds, and assimilationists vs those openly queer, for lack of a better term. This time, I'm going to focus on the assimilationist vs openly queer thing. This is actually separate from the transmed thing, because you can indeed be transmed and also gender non-conforming and very openly queer. As we discussed last time, there's no incompatibility there.

I am, of course, closer to the assimilationist end of the spectrum. And I guess it makes sense for me. Everyone around me is cis and straight. In fact, I've never had a close LGBT friendship in my whole life. All my friends are cis and straight, in other words. Therefore, I practically exist in the cis-straight culture in real life. It's simply my living situation. There should be nothing taboo about stating this, it's the way a lot of LGBT people live out there in the real world. And given that we all like to fit in with our family, our friends and our social groups, I'm naturally not going to make being trans a big part of my identity. Again, this is simply real life, not some form of 'respectability politics'. The other thing is, I can only take being reminded of being trans in small doses. If I were always reminded that I'm trans, it would be very dysphoric for me. Again, it's not internalized transphobia or anything stupid like that, it's simply the way my dysphoria works. I can go for days without consciously remembering that I'm trans, and I like it that way.

Now, I understand that not all LGBT people, not all trans people, like to live life the way I do. Some apparently want to celebrate their queerness every day. If that's their thing, then more power to them. As a Moral Libertarian, I'm very pluralist when it comes to cultural and aesthetic matters. Each to their own. Surely, I'm not going to wear trans pride badges or any rainbow stuff when I go out. But if other people do, I certainly don't mind. I even think it looks great on other people. Just not me.

The problem, I think, is that there hasn't been enough mutual understanding, respect and acceptance, and this goes both ways. For example, I understand that some of my fellow assimilationists have bad things to say about the very openly queer, and I don't agree with that. On the other hand, some of the people on the other side think that we have internalized transphobia, that we pursue respectability politics, or that we don't have a spine and will always bow down to mainstream society. This biased view of who we are, and the resulting disrespect towards our needs, is equally uncalled for. For example, parts of the LGBT community that mainly lived in 'queer ghettos', for lack of a better word, kept calling gay marriage a respectability politics issue. This was very unkind to those of us who live in communities where rights and dignity are only conferred with marriage, whether we like it or not. Similarly, a trans person living in mainstream society wants mainstream acceptance because we want a job, we want friends, and we don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. Honestly, I don't think this is too much to ask for. As assimiliationists, we do have needs and priorities to help us integrate into mainstream culture, because that's where we live our life. If you respected us more, you may become more empathetic to this need. Trust me, if you were living my life, and you suffered from the disadvantages of not living in a very pro-LGBT community, you too would prioritize some of the things I prioritize too.

The fact is, we may live under the same umbrella, but we have very different needs. I think it's time to respect and support each other, though our lives may be different. Let's end the pointless cultural and asethetic wars, so we may achieve some practical progress together.

Why Transmeds Aren't the Enemy of Non-Binary People | TE Report Trans S3 E9

Hi everyone, welcome again to the special LGBT season of the TaraElla Report. This is where we talk about the diversity of views in the community, to show that diverse views do exist, and to promote mutual understanding. Subscribe if you are interested. This show is brought to you by my new book, Postmodernism, Skeptics & Transmedicalists, which is all about the battle between postmodern and Marcusean ideology vs skeptics opposing these ideas, and how trans people got entangled in this battle and got misunderstood by the world. Link is in the description.

Today, I am going to revisit my response to the Transtrenders video by ContraPoints from last year. When the video came out, I did some response to it, but it wasn't systematic, and it wasn't very well thought out. Thinking about it, the video actually talked about two separate topics, transmedicalists vs anti-transmeds, and assimilationists vs those openly queer, for lack of a better term. This time, I will try to examine the two topics again, in a more systematic, and may I say, more concilliatory and constructive manner. Today, I will talk about what transmedicalism should actually be about, why the gender non-conforming isn't our enemies, and why, if you are a gender non-comforming, openly queer trans or non-binary person, the transmedicalist point of view is not your enemy.

Firstly, I identify as a transmed. But what is a transmed? The word is a combination of 'trans' and 'medical', and taken literally, it should mean seeing the trans condition through the biomedical point of view. As somebody who is trained in the biomedical tradition, I think it can accurately explain almost everything about the human condition, hence I am very committed to explaining things like the trans condition through this model. In other words, I am of the firm belief that gender dysphoria, and in fact, even gender non-conformity more generally, is biomedical rather than sociological in origin. This, of course, is closely linked to my firm belief that gender is biological, not sociological. Now, I understand that gender non-conforming and non-binary people are sometimes very skeptical of transmeds. As I said previously, I think this has to do with the behavior of certain controversial transmed online personalities, who go around and attack people as 'transtrenders'. But the transmed view actually has nothing to do with that kind of behavior.

As a transmed, my primary fight is not even with 'trenders'. My primary fight is with the science denying postmodernist gender philosophy that comes out of certain sections of academia, for example gender studies. The more these ideologies are taken up, the less attention is paid to the science, and we, as trans people, suffer for several reasons. We suffer because people out there will think that being trans is a choice, a choice that they can prevent us from making. We suffer because basic trans rights become entangled with postmodern nonsense, and people will start opposing trans rights thinking that it's part of stopping postmodern nonsense. We suffer because there would be less support for scientific research into gender dysphoria, and hence less progress on understanding and helping trans people. Make no mistake: anti-science postmodern gender philosophy is one of the biggest oppressors of trans people right now. As a transmed, I'm here to fight the fight to right this wrong. I'm certainly not here to waste my time and argue if certain people are transtrenders or not. I have much bigger fish to fry.

Another thing is, I personally think there is a real transmedicalist case to support the validity of gender non-conforming and non-binary people against societal prejudice, because the existence of gender non-conformity in a small number of individuals is clearly supported by both basic medical science and observations from clinical medicine. In the case of biological needs conflicting with societal expectations, biology should always come first. As I often say, medical science is the friend of discriminated minorities everywhere, because of its power to explain the truth of biological diversity. That's why I put my faith in medical science, and not anti-science postmodern philosophies, to explain the world.

The transmedicalist model also provides a lot of empowerment and freedom: after all, if what we feel is biomedical, then it is morally wrong for society to try to force us to suppress it, with all the bad health consequences this will cause. On the other hand, if gender dysphoria is sociological, then it becomes no more than a lifestyle choice. If gender were a social construct, then trans would also be a social construct, and it could be constructed away. If gender were performative, then trans would also be performative, and the rest of society could simply ask trans people to stop putting on that performance. Not to mention that, if gender were performative, then trans people would only be our identified gender when we perform it right! This would suggest that trans people who cannot transition for whatever reason, for example, are less valid. This is very cruel indeed! As you can see, the social constructionist model of gender, and the anti-science views that are taught in many gender studies programs and increasingly accepted in many LGBT circles, are incompatible with the basic dignity of trans people.

As I often say, the transmed model is the only attempt to understand the trans phenmenon, which was developed through actually studying and respecting trans people, our needs and our agency. On the other hand, all that stuff that comes out of gender studies departments weren't even developed with the reality of trans people in mind. Instead, they all share a root with 'gender critical' feminism, otherwise known as TERFism, and you can draw whatever conclusion you want from that. The fact is, believing that gender is a social construct is the root of gender critical-ness, which is why all that gender studies ideology don't actually accept trans people, no matter what they say on the surface. I would even go as far as to say that gender studies ideologies inevitably leave a backdoor for a trojan horse to enter and attack trans rights.

Trans & Cancel Culture: JK Rowling, Joe Rogan, ContraPoints, JBP... | TE Report Trans S3 E8

Hi everyone, welcome again to the special LGBT season of the TaraElla Report. This is where we talk about the diversity of views in the community, to show that diverse views do exist, and to promote mutual understanding, which is always good for humanity. Subscribe if you are interested. This show is brought to you by my new book, Postmodernism, Skeptics & Transmedicalists, which is all about the battle between postmodern and Marcusean ideology vs skeptics opposing these ideas, and how trans people got entangled in this battle and got misunderstood by the world. Link is in the description.

Cancel culture is bad. It denies free speech and takes away opportunities for education, debate and mutual understanding. Yet, the trans and broader LGBT community seems to be frequently involved in cancellation drama. This has not only given our community a bad name; it has also prevented more mutual understanding between trans people and other sectors of society. Today, I want to take a collective look at some of the cancel culture-type drama surrounding the LGBT community in the recent past, and see if we can find a way to break through all this and move forward.

Reviewing the past few months, I've been able to identify at least three big cancellation dramas. Firstly, there was the pronoun round drama surrounding ContraPoints, where she was essentially canceled for something she clearly wasn't guitly of. Secondly, there was the attempt to label JK Rowling a TERF, even though there wasn't adequate evidence of that. Finally, there was the outrage over Bernie Sanders's decision to accept Joe Rogan's endorsement, partly because Rogan said some insensitive things about trans people in the past. There were also numerous smaller dramas, from calling Hillary Clinton transphobic just for acknowledging some concerns in the community, to calling Tulsi Gabbard homophobic for her opposition to gay marriage 15 years ago, something which she has since apologized for. If we go back further, there's also the attempt to cancel Jordan Peterson, which the LGBT community was a big part of, and which pit the LGBT community against many Peterson fans, in a not-so-good way.

You see, I've just listed at least five or six incidents where there was perhaps some misunderstanding between the LGBT community and other parts of society, where some conversation could have fixed things and promoted mutual understanding. But in each case, except the ContraPoints case perhaps, LGBT activists seem to have chosen to be defensive, to quickly label the other party an enemy, and were generally not interested in conversation at all.

I guess they probably felt hurt by the comments made by those people. The hurt is understandable. But then, it's probably a matter of expectations. Personally, I never feel too hurt about comments like those made by Rowling or Rogan, because I've come to expect them. Maybe it comes from being on this planet for over 30 years, maybe it comes from a life of many disappointments, or maybe it comes from having struggled with trans issues in the much less understanding world of pre-2010 or so. I don't feel upset because I have realistic expectations about people. That perhaps the majority of people out there simply don't understand trans people yet. They don't understand our needs, and some of them even fear we may trample on their rights. I'm hopeful that, with more conversation and mutual understanding, things will change in the future. However, for the sake of our own happiness, and for the sake of productive conversation, I guess we should accept and work with present conditions as they are. Furthermore, a certain peace comes with the acceptance of conditions as they are. That's why I don't get too upset over mildly transphobic comments. I get a little uneasy but I don't get too upset, having gotten used to it since a long time ago.

Seeing things from a level-headed perspective, I don't see enemies everywhere. I don't think any of the aforementioned people are trying to hurt anybody. For example, I see Joe Rogan and people like him as passionate voices who are blunt in their words but generally well-meaning in their intentions. They may be wrong on some topics, they may hurt people without realizing it, but there's really no malice in it. I think it's good for everyone, and especially good for our own wellbeing, to recognize this fact. People may misunderstand us and hurt us as a result, but they don't actually mean to harm us. We don't actually have that many enemies out there.

Change can come, but it comes with understanding, and it comes with time. You can't force people to change; they have to be truly convinced on their own terms, in their own free will. That's why I think we should discuss the experience of dysphoria, and try to work with society on ways that trans needs can be compassionately accomodated, while taking into account others' concerns. This education and negotiation process can take some time, and we just need to be patient. Meanwhile, I think it's important to stay positive throughout this process. We need to remember that mainstream society doesn't generally want to oppress or harm trans people; the hurt only comes from misunderstanding that can be resolved one day. Only by remembering this will we stop pushing people away. Also, only by remembering this can we work constructively going forward.