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

I deeply object to the notion that G-d made me to test other people.

Like, wtf I can't even

@celesteh @Taco_lad

Now that I think about it more it's odd.

@futurebird @celesteh if there were a Christian G_d, They'd have made *everyone* to test other people. How you treat people who are in distress, showing compassion and empathy... Same for everyone in our LGBTQIA+ collective.
I view it the same for myself - if I tell someone what I am and they vilify me, that's not on me, but if there was a G_d, that would be a judgement on them.

Do unto others etc.

@celesteh @Taco_lad @futurebird About 20 years before Roko's Basilisk existed, also before I'd heard of Pascal's Wager or Homer's Heresy (which refutes them both equally well: "What if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder")...I recall some other little kid in West Virginia told me that the pretty seashell fossils in the playground aggregate were "sent" to test our faith, and I precociously blasphemed, what's the point of worshipping a God who plays tricks on us
@n1ckfg @celesteh @futurebird the test being 'are you a decent human and kind to others', it's also known as the golden rule because it turns up in pretty much every religion.

@n1ckfg @Taco_lad @futurebird

When I googled Homer's Heresy, I got a bunch of stuff about the Homeric Question, but my hunch this was a Simpson's reference lead me to Wikipedia.

Anyway, G-d wrestling is categorically not blasphemy.

@celesteh @Taco_lad @futurebird Oh yeah I meant blasphemy in the Evangelical context I grew up in outside the home; we were raised Jewish, so the specifically Catholic theology of Pascal's Wager/Roko's Basilisk doesn't really translate. Judaism is "sola opera", which makes the intent behind good deeds irrelevant; no Hell, and Satans (plural) are God's subordinate employees. It doesn't really solve the problem of "but why evil" though, so the Jewish equivalent of Pascal's wager I think is Maimonides' Via Negativa (We doubt that God is entirely good, because we see humans doing evil; we're certain that God is not entirely evil, because we see humans doing good)...seems to me this ends up as encouragement to act in alignment with our beliefs while hoping for something better than the worst case outcome (we're trapped in a universe with an entirely evil God)...rather than altering our actions to perform belief out of fear of the worst case
@celesteh @Taco_lad @futurebird Anyway what I love about Homer's Heresy is how it tl;dr's that whole Reform Jewish lore dump in two sentences