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.

I can understand the fears that people have for their children. "be yourself" is good advice but being yourself can be dangerous. And that's often not fair. You might tell your teen daughter "you're not leaving the house dressed like that" you know she could be hurt. It's "better parenting" to make it clear why you are making such demands, but there is this practical impulse to keep young people safe.

I've spoken to parents of trans kids filled with fear.

But, having seen decades of trans lives as an outsider I think it's better to still be yourself in the end. It's healthier. It's safer.

That it is less safe to be a trans kid than a cis kid isn't the fault of trans kids.

Like, we all knew that, right? But it's worth saying anyway I think.

Even if we enter a more repressive world I will still know the same number of trans people.

This is nothing new, and maybe we are painfully turning a corner.