In my time in Reddit r/asktransgender, much of my experiences there have been negative. People get very defensive when they find an opinion they really disagree with.
I understand why. Transgender topics are like the ultimate identity politics. When somebody willingly joins a political party and have that be part of their identity, it feels like it's totally their fault for choosing a team in the first place. For transgender people the topic deals with their sense of identity because it is literally about who they are. Some people come into subreddits suicidal, looking for help. There are people who troll these areas and pretend to want honest inquiry about transgender topics.
On the other hand, if a place is a designated 'safe space', it should be clear it is so. Safe space is basically an echochamber by definition. When an echochamber forms people become more sure and extreme in their views, causing them to view outside people who disagree as the outgroup. Sometimes people come in with self-doubt brought on by self-described radical feminists in Gender Critical, an antitrans feminists subreddit. The best defense against doubt stemming from their arguments is to present counterarguments which destroy theirs. Sometimes one just needs comforting, but sometimes people need to think about something the right way. Rational and logical arguments do help sometimes.
I believe trans women are male sex-wise and female socially. Sex is about chromosomes and gametes. An otherwise male person that is infertile is still a male. But here's the rub: It doesn't matter. Socially they are women. Treat people how they want to be treated. People should have free domain over their bodies. If they want to take hormones, so be it. Dress however you want for whatever reason, or go out naked. Sex is a classification people made up for scientific studies. Science does not dictate how we should treat other people, so sex doesn't matter. The people who keep yelling about how trans women are men often do it for anti-trans reasons, and this argument totally bypasses their main point. In this respect I find my point of view very positive. The people who keep repeating that trans women are men are half right because it is only true in sex. One has to wonder if they will start yelling at me if I called a tomato a vegetable when it's a fruit. You know what? I don't care that science calls tomato a fruit. I'm not in biology class. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wants to be a duck, I'll call it a duck. Misnomers exist all the time. As Bret Weinstein puts it, no matter the causes leading to people being transgender, in terms of dealing with transgender people the answer is simple. They are still humans. They are reporting an excruciating pain they have and we need to have compassion. However, we do not need to sign up to biological fiction while we're at it. (The infighting where the Authoritarian Left called for the resignation of Bret Weinstein when he refused to be absent from Evergreen University because he was white in the Day of Absence loosely parallels the infighting that brought me down on Reddit.)
Most people don't realize that the transgender plight deals with exterior influences (discrimination from others, violence, etc), but also interior influences (self doubt, self hatred). Doubting if one is transgender, if it's just a fetish, if they will ever pass, or if their feelings are even valid is normal. So in this respect I can see why my lines of inquiry cause many transgender to go on the defensive. Still, I believe my point of view is a net positive. Don't worry if your gender identity is valid. Be whoever you want to be.
After presenting this opinion on r/asktransgender I received a waterfall of angry trans people. It's much easier to be one of the people in the angry mob than to be the person on the receiving end of all that abuse. I knew every reply I gave would be read in the most cynical way, and any aggression on my part would be evidence that I am the monster people paint me to be. To the onlookers of course, the angry mob was exempt from the same scrutiny because they were just fighting against intolerance. That day I came home from over 12 hours at work with a Christmas party the next day, yet I was up at 5 in the morning typing away. It felt like betrayal. I go outside and there are people that hate me. I go to transgender subreddits and I get even more hate. I get more hate from other trans people than cis people. I would like to think the trans community is diverse in thought and not the snowflakes their detractors claim. Perhaps the problem is concentrated in only a few transgender communities. I don't know.
There are a few things going on here. One of it is how well people can subdivide over and over until they find small differences between each other, where they then form groups. In those cases, small differences are seen as being worlds apart. From the outside we are all trans people who are pro-trans. From the inside, apparently we are mortal enemies. Another is identity politics, where a cause becomes too personal and a disagreement on an idea is received as a personal attack on their being. Yet another is how people who are like-minded tend to form a group, and the echochamber which ensues renders the view of their members more extreme.
The moderators of that subreddit feel that having an opinion which can be seen as going against the core beliefs that one is the sex of the gender they identify is invalidating and transphobic. Therefore, such talk is a bannable offense. I didn't get banned, but the negative episode made me not want to contribute anymore. This too, contributes to the subreddit being an echochamber; people who don't toe the line get kicked out one way or the other.
Then there's the word, 'transphobic'. We can think of it as being averse to transgender people, out of fear or hate. The problem comes when people overuse the word. When told to be more tolerant of alternative views on transgender topics, I get told they are under no obligation to be tolerant of intolerant ideas. The problem is, what is transphobic and intolerant seems to be in the eye of the beholder, and here it means 'things I don't want to hear'. It's a phrase tossed out like a trump card, losing its relatively narrow meaning. Just redefine the meaning of transphobia and I'd end up exhibiting it. It's also just a bad word to use in a conversation. Do we argue to convince others, or to vent and insult the other person? Calling people transphobic shuts down conversation by adding fuel to a fire. When reasonable people with good intentions get blasted, the transgender community is killing off potential allies to their movement with their extremism.
Trying to counter particular arguments lobbed against me makes me look a bit petty, but one particular line was striking. A person suggested that if I was so sure about my ideas, why don't I go debate my ideas about sex and gender to a university instead? The irony is the people who are sure they are right are the people who insist trans women are biologically of female sex. I flipped flopped multiple times because I wasn't quite sure what the answer was. Clearly ideas of which sex they are matters, otherwise I wouldn't have had a giant angry crowd at me, so dismissing my ideas as irrelevant theory for the universities is even more confusing.
There were a few people who felt the attacks against me were unwarranted, two of which messaged me in private. The cost of defending me in public was too high. One person mentioned something which lines up with how I felt at that point: The backlash of having differences of opinion on key issues isn't worth it.
Reddit revolves around a voting system where one can upvote or downvote a post. Voting rules vary by subreddit, but in general I find downvoting because one disagrees with an opinion is a terrible thing to do. One man's bullshit is another man's gospel, and who makes us the ultimate arbiter of what is true? Instead, we should downvote posts because they close conversation or was made with malicious intent (or is otherwise lazy). Downvoting too much hides a post, essentially censoring it. A hilarious example of the hivemind of Reddit is the EA Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread about their Battlefront II game, where gamers were very angry at the business model of the game. Every answer EA gives gets downvoted into oblivion, making it very hard to read their responses. The irony is the entire point of that thread is to read answers to the question.
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I'm not virtue signaling that I am the paragon of calm and reasoned debate. I am still human. I listened to Ben Shapiro talk over and over again about how bullying transgender people somehow doesn't lead to increase in suicide, or how sex reassignment surgery is akin to sawing off one's arm because one identifies as being one-armed. I've flipped through the comments of that video to unanimous disgust against trans people. I get defensive and annoyed and I don't want to hear much more of it. But guess what? I didn't go on an angry tirade with pitchforks. This is the last problem with it all; when small differences lead transgender people attack each other, the objections of the trans community seem more petty and authoritarian. We get so busy with infighting we fail to adequately address the actual bigots. And boy, they are out there for sure. Well, it's not like those trans people would have the tools to change any bigot's mind even if they tried harder.
I don't like dogma. I didn't like it in religion and I don't like it in transgender communities. I try to believe things because they're true, not because they're comforting. I think more often than not we can find peace with reality. When a loved one dies we can learn how to grieve instead of pretending death doesn't exist. When people insist that their sex is the same as their gender, they should instead realize that it's okay to be of a male sex and not let it define them. When somebody mentioned how he/she felt sad for me because he/she felt I was conflicted because I could not bring myself to call myself as of female sex, it reminded me of the Christians who felt bad for me because I believed nothing comes after death. The truth can be unsettling at times. For transitioning late my pelvic bones will never widen, my breasts never develop perfectly. For the wrong coin flip which determined my gender to whatever social and medical reasons that made me transgender, I will have to deal with this for the rest of my life. There will forever be people who hate me not for things I do but who I am. The bigots, limitations in my development, and the reality of my sex are real. However, I can still live a happy and interesting life by trying to deal with the hand I was dealt.
I am of male sex but it matters not unless you're sleeping with me. I am of the female gender and I present as such. That's the part that matters. Are trans women women? Yes, because the sex part is irrelevant, making the social aspect the important part.
Over Christmas I managed to take my mind off this subject, providing some much needed relief. I see now that r/AskTransgender is not the place to be for me. Perhaps one day I will find a place where I belong.
