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@Greyparrot
Gay marriage is fine and moderate. (truthfully every society historically turned a blind eye to varying degrees among the elites and such)
It's interesting the way people (conservatives especially) try to rewrite history as if they were more inclusive and tolerant of the Others to alleviate themselves of their deplorable rhetoric + behavior. It was only within the last 20 years that Justice Scalia, considered "one of the greatest conservative intellects of our time" compared homosexuality to beastiality and murder while arguing that the state should be able to criminalize gay sex. It was only within the last ten years that a Democrat presidential candidate would openly endorse gay marriage. And when that happened, it was considered brave and courageous (politically unsavory) because only 50% of the country supported gay marriage while 83% of people live in liberal cities -- meaning even a lot of people in liberal cities were opposed to gay marriage which I can attest to for certain.
The fact is: it's only because of social progressives and activists that society was forced to accept gay marriage and that corporations and the media started to highlight inclusivity, diversity, Pride month, etc. That's how gay marriage became normalized; that's how the needle was moved. That's why you think gay marriage is "moderate" today when it was considered radical a decade ago. Make no mistake that social conservatives have donated time and money to fight against this progress tooth and nail every single step of the way and continue to do so. This suggests to me that the backlash against trans people will be revealed as equally asinine and immoral one day as society learns more, is exposed to more and becomes more tolerant which is usually the case. It's always been the social progressives pushing to secure civil rights. I'm more than comfortable being on their side of the culture war. The question is why aren't you?
Redefining a woman to anything with 2 legs and a dress is not.
Oh stop. Nobody would consider you a woman just for putting on a dress . But if you told us that you innately felt a physiological or even just social compulsion to present yourself to the world as female, I would call you by your preferred name and use she/her pronouns in reference to you because doing so would be no skin off my back.
Indeed there are some aspects of the gender discussion I still don't understand, but I simply don't feel the need to go out of my way to antagonize people who already seem to be going through enough. I don't get the compulsion to mock people you think are suffering from gender dysphoria. I don't understand the arguments against their transition surgeries when we don't care about all the other kinds of plastic surgeries that people get with their associated risks. It seems pretty obvious that being anti trans is more about attacking people than being concerned for their well-being. I mean I could potentially see a societal concern with kids taking hormone blockers, but we allow parents to chop off their baby's foreskin which a lot of men resent when they get older so who knows.
Also consider the fact that most social conservatives are religious. These people believe that a 1/3 man 1/3 god 1/3 spirit was BORN OF A VIRGIN, died and came back to life, then rose off into the sky like a helium balloon... and these are the same people screeching about how being trans defies the laws of biology lol. They should probably pipe the fuck down considering their most sacred beliefs are all premised on things that defy the laws of chemistry, physics , biology and humanity as we know it. Plus they reference God as He/Him and father despite the fact that God presumably has no penis and no XY chromosome... go figure.
My point being that we can tolerate or even respect people whose beliefs we find absurd, and not go out of our way to make their lives harder or more miserable unnecessarily. The gendered bathroom laws are dumb. Not allowing people to change their sex on their birth certificate is dumb. Not calling people by their preferred pronouns is dumb. Going out of your way to ridicule people for being "weird" is dumb. I believe that one day society will be more open minded and knowledgeable on things that seem foreign today regarding gender, but in the meantime I just don't find it that hard to leave people alone and be a decent person if you don't understand or accept how they identify.