My Gifted Life

Over the past several years I have nursed what I can only call an unhealthy obsession with posting on Quora. To those unfamiliar it is basically a questions and answers forum. I answered all kinds of questions, and there was no problem answering questions about software, or counseling a teen that for their parent to listen they also must feel heard.

What’s been destructive has been engaging with the many people with strong opinions about transgender people. Unfortunately a debate usually had without the benefit of facts and where the arguments are based on rumor and misinformation. This is not improved by the participation in the more general conversation of politicians trying to address their constituents concerns or the desire on the part of some trans activists who don’t acknowledge their concerns, even if those concerns are based on real situations.

Then you get understandable confusion wrought by labelling fundamentally different phenomenon under a single label transgender. So under this one label we consider a group of predominantly men who engage in the pretty harmless obsession of wearing women’s clothing. The guys are usually straight but some of them have other related paraphilias.

Then you have people like me who identify as being of the opposite sex. We feel like a mistake was made and there are studies that seem to suggest that this isn’t purely a psychological issue. Most transgender people who are not cross dressers fall into this category. Lastly people lump in drag performers, male and female, who cross dress for performance reasons.

Anyway, just an example why simplistic views are starting from bad places.

Let me provide an example of why reasonable compromises can’t be had. If you put a bunch of non activists together with state reps and explained that trans people, people with ordinary jobs and generally minding there own business that are the object of serious discrimination in housing, employment and for those who aren’t able to live stealth have to worry about physical assault. Is asking for protection from losing their jobs, or housing a radical request? Shouldn’t they be able to go shopping without harassment?

But the activists often will not be content with asking for people to treat people right and instead demand that you use their specific pronoun (all too often these sound ungrammatical or are made up), Now I believe people should use the right pronoun and that people often use the wrong one as a kind of insult, but it isn’t, in my view, as important as people being protected from assault or being thrown out of housing or public venues

A more extreme example is access to female only spaces. Some trans people have had reassignment surgery and it’s my belief that those who appear female can reasonably have access to female spaces. But someone with substantially male anatomy ought to be given a way to dress without exposure that would be triggering to a past victim of sexual violence.