I know 8 trans people well and many more as acquaintances. The 8 people I know well range from being an old childhood friend, to coworkers, to students, to neighbors.

I'm mostly aware that they are trans at all due to the increase in anti-trans laws and blatant transphobia in the US. Were it not for that? I might not know or even care. I worry about them.

In each case the fact that they are trans is one of the less interesting things I know about them.

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?

And if you don't like slightly sheltered nerds who wince when we hear swear words there are people who are more outgoing & bodacious: some of them are trans. It's very normal and boring. No one cares.

Whatever cultural daily norms you find ... normal could include trans people. It wouldn't matter. It has no impact on your life.

Why has your fear reached across the country and made one of my students nervous that he can't get his medicine?

How fucking dare you.

@futurebird while I am not a Christian any more, I do wonder why it is so difficult to accept that God might put a soul in the wrong shaped body as a test of compassion for other people.
Do they attempt to help and alleviate the discomfort? Or do they vilify the person in the wrong body and in doing so condemn themselves?
@Taco_lad @futurebird the believers in the dominant form of Christianity in the US don’t really do a lot of compassion, for anyone…
@c0dec0dec0de @futurebird gonna be a big surprise when they kick the bucket and get told to fuck off
@Taco_lad @futurebird right? As a Christian apostate, they should really hope that their religion’s source material is all wrong because they’re not following it and the listed consequences are pretty dire.