I sometimes want to just explain to the bigots, this could all be very normal if you'd stop huffing bigoted media and get to know someone who was trans. It's just like ... a hormone imbalance that can be treated. It's like being mad at people for having red hair. If only you knew how boring this could be, how normal. How easy to forget that they are trans.

And I could just forget, if it weren't for the bigotry and the threats to their safety.

In decades of knowing trans people and being in places that are more accepting of trans and LGBTQ people I've never once had someone say "how dare you misgender me" though if someone had I don't know if that would matter, it's just nothing like what people expect and fear.

No one is pole dancing. I do not live in a gay pride parade.

I'm a Christian, I go to church now and then. I'm inwardly kind of prudish and I don't even like being around people swearing much.

All these nerds are so normal. And we are all robbed of feeling normal by the bigotry.

I'm glad that I'm not exceptional among the cis people I know in these communities, who are like me frustrated and angry that people we care about are being used as political props.

But how do you explain that everything is normal? How do you make a big sensation about how there is nothing sensational about the fact that people may change their name, or their gender?

@futurebird

I mean, fishes change gender as part of their natural life cycle; frogs can as well; many animals are hermaphrodites; some are gynandromorphs; homosexuallity is very common (double-digit percent) in a number of mammals and birds, inclusive of the rearing of chicks. Beyond vertebrates, there’s even more variation. As a biologist, these debates are bizarre, because all that matters is that the population persists over time, and individuals contribute what they want or can to that success. And being nice to each other sure smooths everyday life, increasing chances of success. We are all in it together, here on spaceship Earth.