Sometimes it’s worth remembering that politics isn’t typically good people versus evil people so much as it’s absurdly rich people pitting us against each other like it’s the Clone Wars so that we don’t remember to examine them too closely.
With that in mind, I want to explain transgender identity, in the hopes that good people who still don’t understand will get it and see why I’m so passionate about trans rights.
So as a kid, I used to think transgender people had some sort of psychosis that made them believe themselves to be the opposite sex. More extreme narratives claim that we’re just creepy men trying to get into women’s bathrooms. Both notions are wildly incorrect, and I will now explain a more accurate framing.
Consider a couple with children. You would say they’re the parents of those children. Now say the child is adopted. Are they still the parents of that child? On a biological level, no, you’re not typically the parent of your adoptive child. But as a society we find it prudent and respectful to say that you’re the parent of the adopted child in a *social* sense.
Gender works in the same way. In every visible way I am 100% biologically male. I do not contest this. But for reasons I will get to shortly, it is prudent and respectful to say that I’m a woman in a *social* sense. The social equivalent of biological sex is what we refer to as gender identity.
Now the question is, why is it preferable to consider me a woman over l rather than a man? Generally this boils down to the fact that transgender people typically deal with a psychological condition called gender dysphoria - essentially, their brains aren’t wired to have the body they have, which explains why transgender people have the high suicide rate that some people make fun of.
For this reason, adjusting the body to some degree, or even just appearance and clothes if they’re not able to access proper medical care yet, to better match the correct gender is a common thing for transgender people to do, and typically results in a distinctly improved quality of life. The medical field now considers this to be the most appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria, and while there are potential side effects to medical transition, in the grand scheme of things they’re really not that scary.
It’s not men being perverts - in this society, cisgender men don’t *need* to pretend to be a woman to be perverts, and there are transgender people who don’t even identify as a woman at all. Nor is it the psychosis I used to believe it was. It’s simply an adaptation of societal norms to better accommodate a genuine health concern. By denying transgender people proper bathroom access and medical care, politicians are contributing to poor psychiatric well-being and suicides among transgender people, with no real benefit to cisgender people. You may not know this, but they most likely do - they just want your vote and a scapegoat.