I Honestly Don't Get Transgender

So true! Moreover, it should really be mentioned that, when one talks about giving or not giving support for a social group, or about whether or not they should be considered diseased merely for who they are, or receive the medical and social care they would like to receive, as opposed to that one thinks is right, one necessarily is talking about passing laws. Whether they are conscious of it when doing so, or whether they like it or not is beside the point. Transgender people, for their part, are always conscious of it, since they don't really have a choice, as they are the ones being affected by these laws. The fact that cis people are mostly unaffected is what makes it possible for them to happily ignore the legal weight of their speech.



Now you sound like a priest. Why should they accept their bodies? And why does your rule (since that's what it is) of self-acceptance applies to their bodies, but not to their minds and their identities? Trangender people strive to accept who they are, and it's not easy, because, more often than not, who they are is not compatible with the bodies they were born with. Why should they value their bodies over all of the psychological factors that make them who they are? And why do you ignore all of the scientific evidence that even implies, strengthening their self-perception, that their brains really are more like those of most opposed chromosomal sex cis people? Should we just leave them to suffer for being who they are despite their bodies and social discrimination? Or should we force them into accepting their bodies in detriment of their whole psychology, thus forcing them to change who they are? Or, like we already do (or, in more conservative countries, strive to do), we should let them know their options and what medicine, psychology and social planning can do for them in order to help them live their lives as the people they are according to their identity?

Also, if you support homosexual people just because they happen to behave in accordance to your personal rule of thumb of how they should behave, then you are supporting them for the wrong reasons. Which is better than not supporting them, mind you, but still, it does not change the fact that the reason is wrong. Both transgender and homosexual people need to be supported because they want to be who they are, without damaging anyone else, in the way that most closely conforms to their identities. And who are you to say that maintaining the purity of their bodies matter more to who they are than their whole psychology and whole identity? If you are just going to say they are damaging themselves (which is the argument of anti-TG and even anti-LGBT churches), but will not present any evidence that they actually feel worse after undergoing surgery (and not all transgender people even undergo sex reassignment or feel the need to), controlling for other factors (like discrimination and violence), then the only difference between you and these churches is that they are organizations and hold more power, while you are a mere individual. The justification speech is all the same, however, and contributes to impair TG people’s ongoing fight for civil and medical rights.