Sadly all your comments are relevant to nice women as well. Without the support of sizable numbers of women this crazy ideology would not have gained traction
Yes. But. Not all nice men. This poem is from an ancient long-ago time when some men were nice and some were not and gender fluid was something you put in your Suburu or found next to the liquid smoke in the condiment aisle of Waitrose.
I especially love the way they will claim not to have had time to look closely at the issue, but even when you make it clear that you *have* made the time to look closely at it, they still don't want to hear what you've learnt, or take it seriously
Thank you Thank you Thank you for putting into words so clearly what every woman experiences every single day of her life - would you please consider writing this to the letter page of every newspaper - men still read papers for the sport section but women read the letters and need to know they are not alone
I agree with 100% of your “Obviously,…” statements. But, it’s not just nice men who don’t want to engage, it’s also nice women. The silence of women, especially feminists, at the trans-males in female sports was deafening. Riley Gaines is one of my heroes.
I think a big part of it is that trans activists have jumped upon the winning wave of progress that has been liberating sex and sexuality for many deacdes (e.g. sex before marriage, contraception & abortion, gay & lesbian liberation etc). They have a right to ride that wave only in so far as it leads them be allowed to dress how they want, live how they want; not, as you rightly point out, to ride into others and shove them off their boards. Kinksters, abusers and narcissists have gaslit the 'nice men' (and women) and perhaps even themselves.
The thing about you labelling all trans women as “kinksters, abusers and narcissists” is that you’re using exactly the same language, word-for-word, as bigots used to use about gay people.
I volunteer in a prison. I have met men, sex offenders, who would do anything to get in a women's prison. Self ID? They would try it in heartbeat, and do unspeakable things to women.
I'm not sure that if I had not met these people and understood their inherently manipulative, narcissistic behaviour, that I would believe they exist.
I think that might be part of the reason nice men stop short in the way you describe - because they wouldn't behave like that, ever, because they aren't monsters, they don't truly believe the monsters exist.
The monsters certainly do exist. Very rare, thank God, and a lot of them are locked up. But I suspect a much higher proportion of women than men know this. Hence the reluctance.
LOL "Who is the PM?" I am American. When I was a new nurse in West Philadelphia during George HW Bush's Administration, I had a man answer "who is the President?" with,
"You can't make me say it!" Alert, Awake, Oriented x 4!
Thank you. Brilliantly said. I think some of these nice men (and i’ve seen it with women too) are deliberately choosing not to look further for fear that they will see the inevitable truth and logic of what you are saying. They know once they do they will have to take a side and they also know that will make them unpopular and some people will no longer consider them ‘nice’. Instead they wait it out, never really committing, rather like a goal hanger - they’ll see where opinion finally settles then act as if that was obviously the right way to see things all along. On this topic, which is not difficult to understand, I don’t believe these people are nice, I think they are self-serving and cowardly.
Hi there. Shameless victim of the gender identity cult here.
You are missing at least two key pieces of information. Since you express bafflement, I am assuming for the sake of argument that you're willing to be educated. I may be wrong; you may be looking for validation as a rest stop on the way to bigotry. Either way.
Key info no. 1: yes, you cannot change sex. But that's not what gender reassignment is intended to do. The term "sex change" is a relic of an era before we had the nuanced understanding that gave us the phrase "gender reassignment".
I have two X chromosomes and will until the day I die. Uterus too; the whole nine yards. However, because I cannot function if the world around me assumes I am therefore a woman, I have altered my appearance as best I can to get me over the line into passing as male.
I will never be completely comfortable in my own body. Why? Precisely because it cannot be transformed into a male one.
This is one of the uncomfortable truths of transness that we trans people don't talk about. Liiving with these truths is so f***ing depressing that we refuse to acknowledge them most of the time out of sheer self-preservation.
"Gender reassignment" is the process of altering your appearance to approximate that of the other kind of body. It's intended to make daily life bearable. There is no assumption that it is a magical panacea for gender dysphoria (that's the medical term for feeling like you've got the wrong body for your gender). Its effects when successful, however, feel pretty damn magical from the inside. Ask me how I know.
So key info no. 1 is that you've been taught to use an outdated and frankly pretty stupid set of concepts to "understand" transgender people and identities. There are a lot of people out there with a vested interest in making sure those are the only tools you have.
Key info no. 2 is what gender reassignment does to a human body.
We have this idea that bodies are immutable. You grow into what you grow into and that's it. Forever.
Which doesn't explain what gyms and diets are selling. Or what malnutrition or starvation do to a body. Or what aging does to a body.
Why would an 85 year old former Olympic athlete inevitably lose if pitted against even a moderately fit weekend runner in his thirties?
Because as that Olympian's body aged, among other things his testosterone level dropped. He no longer produces the same amount of muscle mass. However he trained, he'd never be what he was in his heyday - even assuming the training didn't kill him because all his other systems are worn out too. His body is not immutable.
Next question. Why are people who lose their reproductive organs to cancer given HRT? So they can live normal lives. Because their bodies are not immutable. Because without HRT the loss of their hormone producing tissues means they'll be vulnerable to dozens of complications - brittle bones are just the tip of the iceberg.
It is normal for human bodies to be powered and shaped by hormones.
The bigots who are trying to deny you adequate concepts to understand transgender people don't want you getting your hands on that and its one most important corollary: a transgender athlete whose testicles have been surgically removed and replaced with oestrogen based HRT is not indistinguishable from a man.
She - because you may not like that word but I damn well refuse to verbally abuse my sisters to make you comfortable - is equivalent to any other woman of the same height, arm length, lung capacity etc. She does not have male muscle mass any more. Yes, if we're talking basketball then height is an advantage, but that's not the only sport women can compete in in the Olympics. And I challenge you to obtain body measurements of current Olympians of any discipline and compare them against the average population. I doubt they're in any way average. I think Olympic-level success comes from hard work *and* unusually high physical ability.
I could explain how my own process of gender reassignment caused a nurse"s jaw to drop when she found I'd grown an inch taller in my mid thirties. That should be physically impossible. Your growth plates fuse sometime in your twenties. But it happened. Why? Testosterone makes your cartilage thicker; my spine got longer when all the cartilage in all the joints got very slightly bigger. My body is shaped and powered by hormones.
I am far too jaded and tired to go into further detail here but you have just helped me realise what my own substack is for. I also recommend searching for a post titled (if memory serves) "I met a transgender woman in a toilet and it bothered me", written by a woman living in Spain. It's a rather more nuanced take on the whole ragebait toilet question, and it also sheds light on the thinking you've been chicaned into.
As it is not possible to change sex, do you think it is a human right to pretend to be the other sex (in your case, a man)? I don't as I see it as an act of deception, like the scammers who phone me several times a month claiming to be an agent of Amazon, HMRC, Barclaycard or the fraud department of my bank.
The term "sex change" has been obsolete for decades. We say "gender reassignment" because that's actually possible and changing chromosomes isn't.
However, your account name tells me that you are one of the people who is interested in spreading disinformation about this point in the interest of making trans people look like insane freaks who should be feared and hated. So I'm not going to bother arguing with wilful ignorance. You can take the facts or leave them.
What is the sex marker on your ID Documents? If it is M for Male then you are a deceiver: deceiving both yourself and others. Not a good look.
The ‘trans’ lobbies, their allies and activists constantly use the specious argument: “They are not changing sex, they are just changing gender” when they know full well that a girl transitioning to being a boy is changing her sex, not gender, otherwise she would remain a girl (a juvenile female human).
Try reading our 41 leading international universities initiative where we asked VCs to confirm or refute with scientific evidence the binary and immutable nature of human sex.
There is no such being as a ‘trans’ person, only someone pretending to be the other sex. You may call yourself a ‘trans’ man, but you are a woman: FACT.
Awww, you think I'm a lovely pretty lady. How sweet of you.
Bit irritating that I continue to exist no matter how hard you try to make me disappear by insisting I'm not real, though, isn't it? Try saying "I don't believe in gender fairies". According to JM Barrie that ought to work.
The rest of your comment... hmm. Blah blah blah you're deceiving the world you're a woman trans people don't exist, then you go on to say "A girl transitioning to being a boy is changing her sex, not gender".
So you simultaneously believe that changing sex is impossible so trans people are liars, *and* that changing sex is exactly what trans people are doing? Except that trans people don't exist so they can't be changing sex OR gender, except they do exist and they are?
1. Of course you exist, as a woman pretending to be a man.
2. As sex is binary and immutable there is no such thing as 'trans' only someone suffering from a delusion that they are the opposite sex, like a 22Kg 16 year old convinced she is fat and demanding lipsouction to reduce her weight further
3. Yes, saying that you are a man makes you a liar.
I will believe your nonsense when you've spent ten years passing as a man and then stopped again. I have. The world is a lot bigger than you want it to be.
And I doubt you actually ‘passed’ as a man. I have spoken to young women convinced they pass. I regularly see them at events. Very few do. Those who do will likely have done massive harm to their bodies.
This isn’t about my personal view. Look at the research FGS. Emma Hilton and Jon Pike among others. The research shouldn’t have needed doing cos anyone with half a brain can see that men retain their male advantage regardless of testosterone suppression, which STILL leaves those men with FAR higher levels of testosterone than women. On top of that, in many sports men didn’t even have to suppress their T.
Nice men’s instincts to kindness prioritises truth. I’m in the US and have yet to hear any man tut-tut away from prizing the truth and recognizing women’s (the real and only kind) interests and rights to their own privacy in bathrooms, locker rooms, their own sports teams and honors, their own doctors of whichever sex they prefer… all of it including their own prisons. I would say to those types of men to refer to, tell them they’d better start prioritizing those things else t your friendship hangs in the balance. Thanks for this very thoughtful piece.
Anyone who tells you that that giving rights to trans people takes rights away from women is telling you that they’re a transphobe. Human rights are not a packet of Oreos: you getting more human rights doesn’t mean me getting less. Human rights are about love. Does a mother only love one of her children?
I guess I’m one of these nice guys, because I think part of being nice is to acknowledge that gender dysphoria exists, and creates difficult moral questions.
Perhaps not so much "nice" as well-informed about the existence of gender dysphoria as something real? That exists in reaction to sex role stereotypes as a cultural phenomenon?
Whereas "niceness" (or not) would consist rather in your attitude to gender dysphoria and what should or should not be done about it, by whom and why.
This article makes me think of a couple of my friend’s wives. They’re obsessed with “being nice”. Basically they’re suckers for any sob story that any grifter has to sell them. I listened to an interview on a podcast some time back, and they were discussing the trans phenomenon. The interviewee (don’t remember who it was) said that the tiny number of trans people who want to invade women’s spaces aren’t really the problem, those types of predators have always been here. The problem is all of the people who have had their empathy weaponized against them and dragooned into supporting the freaks that hate the existing order. Their misguided support provides a critical mass of numbers to enable all of this nonsense.
Women are generally socialised to put others first: probably to condition women for responsibility for childcare. This has a secondary effect of making too many of us a soft target for sob stories, and ripe for exploitation by transactivists acting mainly on behalf of narcissistic trans-identified males (but also by any and all narcissists who are subtle enough to disguise it).
Their killer selling points are that the vulnerability and victimhood of trans-identified people are greater than that of any other victim group, backed up by fictitious claims of suicide if denied "gender affirming care" (harm) aka emotional blackmail.
So any counter-claims -- eg that women need female-only spaces for safety, privacy and dignity -- can easily be dismissed as "bigotry" and "transphobia" without getting any hearing.
And what self-identified "kind" person wants to be dismissed as a bigot and transphobe?
Fortunately some of us are hard-hearted enough to take an interest in facts too. We are called feminists.
The statistics on suicide in transgender people speak for themselves. Quote them for me and I might consider respecting your opinion; dismissing them without fact checking just makes you narrow minded.
Sadly all your comments are relevant to nice women as well. Without the support of sizable numbers of women this crazy ideology would not have gained traction
Hear, hear! 🤷♀️💖
Yes. But. Not all nice men. This poem is from an ancient long-ago time when some men were nice and some were not and gender fluid was something you put in your Suburu or found next to the liquid smoke in the condiment aisle of Waitrose.
Nice Men
by Dorothy Byrne (1989)
I know a nice man who is kind to his wife
and always lets her do what she wants.
I heard of another nice man who killed his
girlfriend. It was an accident. He pushed her
in a quarrel and she split open her skull on the
dining-room table. He was such a guilt-ridden
sight in court that the jury felt sorry for him.
My friend Aiden is nice. He thinks women are
really equal.
There are lots of nice men who help their wives
with the shopping and the housework.
And many men, when you are alone with
them, say, ‘I prefer women. They are so
understanding.’ This is another example of
men being nice.
Some men, when you make a mistake at work,
just laugh. They don’t go on about it or shout.
That’s nice.
At times, the most surprising men will say at
parties. ‘There’s a lot to this Women’s Lib.’
Here again is a case of men behaving in a nice
way.
Another nice thing is that some men are
sympathetic when their wives feel unhappy.
I’ve often heard men say, ‘Don’t worry about
everything so much, dear.’
You hear stories of men who are far more than
nice – putting women in lifeboats first, etc.
I think that is all I can say on the subject of
nice men. Thank you.
I especially love the way they will claim not to have had time to look closely at the issue, but even when you make it clear that you *have* made the time to look closely at it, they still don't want to hear what you've learnt, or take it seriously
Thank you Thank you Thank you for putting into words so clearly what every woman experiences every single day of her life - would you please consider writing this to the letter page of every newspaper - men still read papers for the sport section but women read the letters and need to know they are not alone
I agree with 100% of your “Obviously,…” statements. But, it’s not just nice men who don’t want to engage, it’s also nice women. The silence of women, especially feminists, at the trans-males in female sports was deafening. Riley Gaines is one of my heroes.
All the experts on men and sex are women. Who don’t get men at all.
I think a big part of it is that trans activists have jumped upon the winning wave of progress that has been liberating sex and sexuality for many deacdes (e.g. sex before marriage, contraception & abortion, gay & lesbian liberation etc). They have a right to ride that wave only in so far as it leads them be allowed to dress how they want, live how they want; not, as you rightly point out, to ride into others and shove them off their boards. Kinksters, abusers and narcissists have gaslit the 'nice men' (and women) and perhaps even themselves.
The thing about you labelling all trans women as “kinksters, abusers and narcissists” is that you’re using exactly the same language, word-for-word, as bigots used to use about gay people.
"Nice" here being a euphemism for "coward".
The gender zealots are a bunch of bullies, and in general bullying works. That’s it.
I volunteer in a prison. I have met men, sex offenders, who would do anything to get in a women's prison. Self ID? They would try it in heartbeat, and do unspeakable things to women.
I'm not sure that if I had not met these people and understood their inherently manipulative, narcissistic behaviour, that I would believe they exist.
I think that might be part of the reason nice men stop short in the way you describe - because they wouldn't behave like that, ever, because they aren't monsters, they don't truly believe the monsters exist.
The monsters certainly do exist. Very rare, thank God, and a lot of them are locked up. But I suspect a much higher proportion of women than men know this. Hence the reluctance.
That's my late night take on it anyway.
LOL "Who is the PM?" I am American. When I was a new nurse in West Philadelphia during George HW Bush's Administration, I had a man answer "who is the President?" with,
"You can't make me say it!" Alert, Awake, Oriented x 4!
Thank you. Brilliantly said. I think some of these nice men (and i’ve seen it with women too) are deliberately choosing not to look further for fear that they will see the inevitable truth and logic of what you are saying. They know once they do they will have to take a side and they also know that will make them unpopular and some people will no longer consider them ‘nice’. Instead they wait it out, never really committing, rather like a goal hanger - they’ll see where opinion finally settles then act as if that was obviously the right way to see things all along. On this topic, which is not difficult to understand, I don’t believe these people are nice, I think they are self-serving and cowardly.
Hi there. Shameless victim of the gender identity cult here.
You are missing at least two key pieces of information. Since you express bafflement, I am assuming for the sake of argument that you're willing to be educated. I may be wrong; you may be looking for validation as a rest stop on the way to bigotry. Either way.
Key info no. 1: yes, you cannot change sex. But that's not what gender reassignment is intended to do. The term "sex change" is a relic of an era before we had the nuanced understanding that gave us the phrase "gender reassignment".
I have two X chromosomes and will until the day I die. Uterus too; the whole nine yards. However, because I cannot function if the world around me assumes I am therefore a woman, I have altered my appearance as best I can to get me over the line into passing as male.
I will never be completely comfortable in my own body. Why? Precisely because it cannot be transformed into a male one.
This is one of the uncomfortable truths of transness that we trans people don't talk about. Liiving with these truths is so f***ing depressing that we refuse to acknowledge them most of the time out of sheer self-preservation.
"Gender reassignment" is the process of altering your appearance to approximate that of the other kind of body. It's intended to make daily life bearable. There is no assumption that it is a magical panacea for gender dysphoria (that's the medical term for feeling like you've got the wrong body for your gender). Its effects when successful, however, feel pretty damn magical from the inside. Ask me how I know.
So key info no. 1 is that you've been taught to use an outdated and frankly pretty stupid set of concepts to "understand" transgender people and identities. There are a lot of people out there with a vested interest in making sure those are the only tools you have.
Key info no. 2 is what gender reassignment does to a human body.
We have this idea that bodies are immutable. You grow into what you grow into and that's it. Forever.
Which doesn't explain what gyms and diets are selling. Or what malnutrition or starvation do to a body. Or what aging does to a body.
Why would an 85 year old former Olympic athlete inevitably lose if pitted against even a moderately fit weekend runner in his thirties?
Because as that Olympian's body aged, among other things his testosterone level dropped. He no longer produces the same amount of muscle mass. However he trained, he'd never be what he was in his heyday - even assuming the training didn't kill him because all his other systems are worn out too. His body is not immutable.
Next question. Why are people who lose their reproductive organs to cancer given HRT? So they can live normal lives. Because their bodies are not immutable. Because without HRT the loss of their hormone producing tissues means they'll be vulnerable to dozens of complications - brittle bones are just the tip of the iceberg.
It is normal for human bodies to be powered and shaped by hormones.
The bigots who are trying to deny you adequate concepts to understand transgender people don't want you getting your hands on that and its one most important corollary: a transgender athlete whose testicles have been surgically removed and replaced with oestrogen based HRT is not indistinguishable from a man.
She - because you may not like that word but I damn well refuse to verbally abuse my sisters to make you comfortable - is equivalent to any other woman of the same height, arm length, lung capacity etc. She does not have male muscle mass any more. Yes, if we're talking basketball then height is an advantage, but that's not the only sport women can compete in in the Olympics. And I challenge you to obtain body measurements of current Olympians of any discipline and compare them against the average population. I doubt they're in any way average. I think Olympic-level success comes from hard work *and* unusually high physical ability.
I could explain how my own process of gender reassignment caused a nurse"s jaw to drop when she found I'd grown an inch taller in my mid thirties. That should be physically impossible. Your growth plates fuse sometime in your twenties. But it happened. Why? Testosterone makes your cartilage thicker; my spine got longer when all the cartilage in all the joints got very slightly bigger. My body is shaped and powered by hormones.
I am far too jaded and tired to go into further detail here but you have just helped me realise what my own substack is for. I also recommend searching for a post titled (if memory serves) "I met a transgender woman in a toilet and it bothered me", written by a woman living in Spain. It's a rather more nuanced take on the whole ragebait toilet question, and it also sheds light on the thinking you've been chicaned into.
As it is not possible to change sex, do you think it is a human right to pretend to be the other sex (in your case, a man)? I don't as I see it as an act of deception, like the scammers who phone me several times a month claiming to be an agent of Amazon, HMRC, Barclaycard or the fraud department of my bank.
The term "sex change" has been obsolete for decades. We say "gender reassignment" because that's actually possible and changing chromosomes isn't.
However, your account name tells me that you are one of the people who is interested in spreading disinformation about this point in the interest of making trans people look like insane freaks who should be feared and hated. So I'm not going to bother arguing with wilful ignorance. You can take the facts or leave them.
What is the sex marker on your ID Documents? If it is M for Male then you are a deceiver: deceiving both yourself and others. Not a good look.
The ‘trans’ lobbies, their allies and activists constantly use the specious argument: “They are not changing sex, they are just changing gender” when they know full well that a girl transitioning to being a boy is changing her sex, not gender, otherwise she would remain a girl (a juvenile female human).
Try reading our 41 leading international universities initiative where we asked VCs to confirm or refute with scientific evidence the binary and immutable nature of human sex.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mneill/p/is-sex-binary-and-immutable-closure
There is no such being as a ‘trans’ person, only someone pretending to be the other sex. You may call yourself a ‘trans’ man, but you are a woman: FACT.
Awww, you think I'm a lovely pretty lady. How sweet of you.
Bit irritating that I continue to exist no matter how hard you try to make me disappear by insisting I'm not real, though, isn't it? Try saying "I don't believe in gender fairies". According to JM Barrie that ought to work.
The rest of your comment... hmm. Blah blah blah you're deceiving the world you're a woman trans people don't exist, then you go on to say "A girl transitioning to being a boy is changing her sex, not gender".
So you simultaneously believe that changing sex is impossible so trans people are liars, *and* that changing sex is exactly what trans people are doing? Except that trans people don't exist so they can't be changing sex OR gender, except they do exist and they are?
Please explain that.
1. Of course you exist, as a woman pretending to be a man.
2. As sex is binary and immutable there is no such thing as 'trans' only someone suffering from a delusion that they are the opposite sex, like a 22Kg 16 year old convinced she is fat and demanding lipsouction to reduce her weight further
3. Yes, saying that you are a man makes you a liar.
4. HTH.
5. Bye
If you seriously believe a man loses his physical advantage by removing his testicles and taking oestrogen then you are woefully misinformed.
I will believe your nonsense when you've spent ten years passing as a man and then stopped again. I have. The world is a lot bigger than you want it to be.
And I doubt you actually ‘passed’ as a man. I have spoken to young women convinced they pass. I regularly see them at events. Very few do. Those who do will likely have done massive harm to their bodies.
And as for passing - oh, you sweet summer child.
You are the one who introduced the concept of passing. IRL hardly any do.
This isn’t about my personal view. Look at the research FGS. Emma Hilton and Jon Pike among others. The research shouldn’t have needed doing cos anyone with half a brain can see that men retain their male advantage regardless of testosterone suppression, which STILL leaves those men with FAR higher levels of testosterone than women. On top of that, in many sports men didn’t even have to suppress their T.
If they've had their nuts cut off they do not have higher T. That is not rocket science.
Almost none do. That’s reality.
Nice men’s instincts to kindness prioritises truth. I’m in the US and have yet to hear any man tut-tut away from prizing the truth and recognizing women’s (the real and only kind) interests and rights to their own privacy in bathrooms, locker rooms, their own sports teams and honors, their own doctors of whichever sex they prefer… all of it including their own prisons. I would say to those types of men to refer to, tell them they’d better start prioritizing those things else t your friendship hangs in the balance. Thanks for this very thoughtful piece.
Anyone who tells you that that giving rights to trans people takes rights away from women is telling you that they’re a transphobe. Human rights are not a packet of Oreos: you getting more human rights doesn’t mean me getting less. Human rights are about love. Does a mother only love one of her children?
I guess I’m one of these nice guys, because I think part of being nice is to acknowledge that gender dysphoria exists, and creates difficult moral questions.
Perhaps not so much "nice" as well-informed about the existence of gender dysphoria as something real? That exists in reaction to sex role stereotypes as a cultural phenomenon?
Whereas "niceness" (or not) would consist rather in your attitude to gender dysphoria and what should or should not be done about it, by whom and why.
This article makes me think of a couple of my friend’s wives. They’re obsessed with “being nice”. Basically they’re suckers for any sob story that any grifter has to sell them. I listened to an interview on a podcast some time back, and they were discussing the trans phenomenon. The interviewee (don’t remember who it was) said that the tiny number of trans people who want to invade women’s spaces aren’t really the problem, those types of predators have always been here. The problem is all of the people who have had their empathy weaponized against them and dragooned into supporting the freaks that hate the existing order. Their misguided support provides a critical mass of numbers to enable all of this nonsense.
Women are generally socialised to put others first: probably to condition women for responsibility for childcare. This has a secondary effect of making too many of us a soft target for sob stories, and ripe for exploitation by transactivists acting mainly on behalf of narcissistic trans-identified males (but also by any and all narcissists who are subtle enough to disguise it).
Their killer selling points are that the vulnerability and victimhood of trans-identified people are greater than that of any other victim group, backed up by fictitious claims of suicide if denied "gender affirming care" (harm) aka emotional blackmail.
So any counter-claims -- eg that women need female-only spaces for safety, privacy and dignity -- can easily be dismissed as "bigotry" and "transphobia" without getting any hearing.
And what self-identified "kind" person wants to be dismissed as a bigot and transphobe?
Fortunately some of us are hard-hearted enough to take an interest in facts too. We are called feminists.
The statistics on suicide in transgender people speak for themselves. Quote them for me and I might consider respecting your opinion; dismissing them without fact checking just makes you narrow minded.