I’m refining an answer I started on Quora. I went ahead and posted it but I was not content. It is just a really complex issue. The original question had to do with trans “hysteria”.
I don’t know that we will ever fully know what causes people to be transgender in the details. We will doubtlessly know in general ways to what extent it results from genetics, from environment, from prenatal hormone issues, from modern environmental issues and more things than I can imagine.
Regardless of the actual cause that results in some individuals not feeling comfortable in the body they were born into, there seems to be an objective reality that such a condition exists. Many of my dear readers and myself all can bear witness to the truth of this.
The condition, regardless of cause, responds well to cross sex hormone therapy, living as the target gender and in many cases surgery to acquire most of the sexual characteristics of the target gender.
Regardless of the actual chromosomes the body started with, there are many biological realities that may underlie this condition related to the expression of the genotype, aka the phenotype, and that may be related to the mix of characteristics in the brain as described in the chromosomes.
The condition is not seen to be rare, affecting about one in 300 individuals in the general population.
Objections to equal rights for such individuals are based on the following flawed premises:
Radical feminist view – they aren’t women because they don’t reproduce, have periods or have a female upbringing. All such individuals are well aware of this, and would choose the option if available. There’s no such thing as a standard female upbringing so that part is moot as a definition. All trans women experience sex discrimination as women as soon as they transition and after living some years one can make a pretty compelling argument that only duration and not kind separates the experiences.
Right wing view (in the US) – they want to assault women and little girls or are perverts. Aside from the trope becoming entirely too worn, there’s simply no evidence of it ever having happened. As to being perverts, at least transwomen getting estrogen have roughly the libido of women which is not really conducive to perversion.
Children are in far more danger from their own relatives then from the odd trans man in the men’s room or trans woman in the lady’s room.
Religious views – These are, of course, quite varied. I generally am respectful of different people’s beliefs as long as they keep their fingers out of my pie in public. If they object to teaching sex ed in the public school and prefer that their child contracts anal herpes because St Swithun’s school for the ignorant about all but the more heteronormative sex practices didn’t explain that any kind of contact between sex organs, genitalia, the anus and the mouth can cause transmission then I guess their child is to bear the burden.
More disturbingly are the arguments about children. I heard about a christian father explaining about how it affected his son to see this trans girl wear dresses and I wanted to hold him up and yell “well how about how it would make the trans girl’s parent’s feel to find their child dead by suicide because she can’t?”
You get these arguments about it being against God’s will or about the modification of the body. Much of this may be true from a religious viewpoint, but it should not steer public policy. It is at least as abhorrent as a group of men calling the shots for women’s health care choices.
Yet here dear reader is the bottom line. If the condition seems real and the treatment works than these people really have no standing.
My Gifted Life 