If I see Person X as a man who doesn't follow traditional male gender roles instead of "A man who identifies as a woman" or even "as a woman" and that difference in how I perceive the world make no difference in how I treat this individual in anyway that isn't pure semantics, I'M NOT A BAD PERSON.
Of course you’re not. I think at this point in the thread I’ve said so at least once before.
I think one of the problems here is that a lot of people perceive someone going on a discussion forum and saying “they obviously aren’t actually a woman though” with the same feelings they’d use on someone going to a dressing room, peering around the corner of the stall, and saying to somebody “you obviously aren’t actually a woman though.”
People discussing these issues tend to conflate people who’d say the second thing with people who’d say the first thing, even though not all fish are trout.
The current difference WRT religion is that 99% of the religious people know that everyone except atheists takes them seriously even if they disagree on which religion is best. So we can post in here and say “religions are a bunch of hooey especially this particular religion” and nobody really feels very threatened, and everyone understands that this doesn’t generally mean that the poster goes around giving religious people dirty looks.
That is not currently the atmosphere with trans issues, so while lashing out in the middle of a discussion is still not good tactics, I can see the defensiveness for what it is and adjust how cranky I am about it accordingly.
They’re used to people starting with the wedge of “sex is immutable, gender is sex, pronouns are gender” and going on from there to be a giant ******* at Thanksgiving dinner, rather than stopping at the ‘this is what it means to me, how bout you guys’ internet round table level.
Of course their impressions are not your fault, and obviously you are not a bad person for what you think they think are your thought crimes.
