In the year 2024, you’re probably familiar with some of the controversy around transgender policies. They take many forms: from bathroom laws, to athletic disputes, to acts of protest and violence. Opinions on the subject vary wildly. As hotly contested as these issues are, I’m a bit reluctant to admit that there are parts to almost all sides that make sense to me.
In the vast spectrum of human divergence, from conjoined twins to veritable giants to people born with elephantiasis, I’ve yet to find anyone who denies that these strange medical phenomena exist. There are people born with diseases that infect one in only a billion; there are people plagued by tree-like fungi that turn their bodies into what appears like tree bark. Some disorders have never been encountered before. But when asked to consider the very common experience of a female being born into a male’s body, or vice versa, so much of society struggles.
Just so long as the abnormality has a physical manifestation, there’s little use in denying it. But in the same way that depression and anxiety can lie hidden in the face of slings, casts and bandaids, gender dysphoria is rarely readily apparent. If the discomfort in our skin were as plain to the world as the color of our eyes, a denial movement would have likely never arisen to begin with. Even while the medical establishment is almost completely in consensus that the sensations of the trans and non-binary are real, the public disconnect here still persists.
Although the American psychological association does term gender dysphoria a disorder, the way we feel inside isn’t something we wear upon our faces. And as a result, the acceptance of these internal “disorders” can sometimes hinge upon political and religious bias. Because the church and state have spent millennia invading our bedrooms, it’s perhaps no surprise that these sexual matters are still so polarizing today. There can be an inherent discomfort around the subject.
The other internal maladies that plague humanity are rarely denied. Most people can appreciate that depression and anxiety exist, even if there are few industries that have learned to address them very meaningfully. The idea that we can have bizarre compulsive urges in our head isn’t actually one that’s controversial, either. They’re accepted as medical fact. But the idea we can house the personality of a different gender — that enters into territory many of us are still uncomfortable with.
As someone who can sometimes be resistant to change, I understand part of their perspective. I see that legislative change is rarely brought about without calls for action. But, even while I fully believe that gender exists on a spectrum, I don’t feel as though the movement spreading that fact it is fully without fault. Sometimes it can seem that steeped into the movement for trans acceptance is this notion that it’s the only issue that demands our attention — that the injustices here trump all others. Sometimes it can seem like a crusade for all of our exclusionary time and attention.
The world around me is ailing; the ecosphere is collapsing, democracy is threatened, climate change is causing vast suffering and migrations. There are a thousand issues that demand our time, and we have a limited bandwidth. But in the face of all of that, it’s frustrating that I can unwittingly offend someone by not stating “he/him” in my social media profile. Crusaders for other causes are unlikely to call me out just because my profile doesn’t say “save the rainforest,” or “I stand with Ukraine.”
Sometimes it can seem as though there’s an unearned level of bitterness embedded within this particular equality struggle. It demands attention and leaves little room for disagreement when it gains the floor. I think this is especially well exemplified in the controversy surrounding Dave Chapelle. In his long running comedic career that involved poking fun at nearly every demographic, Chapelle was rarely the victim of major backlash. But each of the jokes pointed toward the trans community were greeted with unprecedented levels of outrage, transphobia labels and calls for his cancellation.
The trans community sometimes struggles to accept the idea that it’s possible for others to take issue or disagree with their approach without actually fearing or hating them. It’s even possible to recognize their struggle and that their feelings are real while still taking issue with their offhand demands for cancellation.
To hear Chapelle speak on the issue is to listen to one of the million nuanced perspectives on one of the more complicated equality struggles of our time. While he doesn’t shy away from comedy as he addresses the subject, as with any of the other thousand subjects he’s addressed in his enduring stand-up career, it’s nothing cruel.
J.K. Rowling, too, has expressed opinions on the trans issue that many have found objectionable. While I saw sense in a few of her more innocuous statements on the subject, I can see why people took issue with a few of her more inflammatory perspectives. But none of what she said seemed rooted in hate. It appeared to me as though a lot of her stance on the issue was centered largely around a good-faithed fight for women’s well-being, and her sincerely held belief regarding what defines “biological women.” I didn’t fully agree with her but nor did I find all of her thoughts or concerns unfounded.
After each time she’s addressed the subject, though, she’s been met with cries from megaphones that her career be cancelled and her legacy erased. With the release of the latest video game based within the universe she created, a slew of trans social media users took to the internet to “ruin” the game for anyone looking to enjoy it. They posted tweets and screen captures that spoiled the ending of the game. There was a level of bitterness in the move that reeked immaturely of the non-acceptance they spend so much time crusading against.
It’s not an unpopular opinion among the trans community that I shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy Harry Potter because J.K. Rowling offended them. But I can hardly recall a time in my life where a black person told me not to watch a movie because it was racist. My native American friends took no issue with me seeing Avatar. It doesn’t seem invalid to note that the trans community is sometimes as vocal as born-again Christians when they perceive insult or injustice.
As Chapelle pointed out in one of his specials, the descendants of America’s slaves have never been granted this same floor to express their feelings. He argued that so much of the inherent societal respect afforded toward the trans community is due to the fact that white guys are going through it, too. It was a point that, ever since, I’ve struggled to unsee.
While trans people aren’t a new phenomenon, and while different cultures have recognized these distinctions between gender for hundreds and hundreds of years, the fact remains that gender reassignment surgeries are procedures only made possible through prolific advancements in the field of medicine. That we can see men walking around today who appeared like women last year is something that’s hard for many of even the most well-intentioned to grasp. It’s often the case, too, that the people who can afford these surgeries are speaking from a place of societal privilege even before they ever go through with the operation.
In the same way that Americans complaining about Wi-fi is a “first world problem” in the grand scope of the issues that ail us, the trans equality movement can seem especially oblivious to the other issues our world faces — toward the other infringements of equality across the globe. One pervasive trend that I’ve noticed among the trans people in my friend group is a focus on gender identity that seems to trump all other features of their personality.
For a couple of these people, as wars have begun and natural disasters have struck and artificial intelligence has encroached, their social media feed has remained myopically centered around that one issue. Judging by their feed sometimes, it’s almost as though they value their trans identity above all else.
This is one of the only points on which even I can find myself a little alienated at times. While I’ll never understand the struggle of what it is to be born in the wrong skin, I know that there are a hundred features of who I am that fall before the fact that I’m male. When I introduce myself to someone else, my gender doesn’t factor into the discussion.
It’s true that I speak from a place of privilege, myself, when I say this. Because I can’t empathize with the struggle, maybe my perspective here isn’t all that valuable at all. But when I see people who appear to wear their trans identity as the majority of who they are, it can feel like the same curtailing of character as the sports fans who make tailgating their personality or the finance majors who become the stocks they trade.
And when it’s these representatives of their community who are facing off with the change-resistant Christian conservatives on the right, a clash of cultures can only be expected. That it sometimes arises to violence is something that wouldn’t have been difficult to foresee. While there’s little use or logic in denying that trans people exist, the trans efforts to silence even the most conscientious of objectors can rise to something almost militaristic in nature. It’s contradictory to their cause.
As with so many issues in today’s society, the controversy around gender rights is powerfully divisive. It’s on the growing list of dilemmas in which both sides of the aisle seem to push each other to further extremes. Trans people respond to their continued non-acceptance by fighting all the more flamboyantly. With the heightened occurrence of young people who identify as non-binary, and with some of the discrepancies between countries and regions on this matter, it appears that there are significant social and political elements at play in these decisions.
But it isn’t quite so simple. In the same way that our views on social issues broadly change as society evolves, our stance on gender is more progressive than those who came before us. We’re more accepting of gender fluidity. The staggering disparities between states, though, still seem to indicate that peer pressure can play an important role in gender identification.
Identifying as trans and non-binary has turned into a what seems almost like a political statement in some social circles. According to a New York Times article, the number of people who identify as trans has nearly doubled in recent years. And reactionary Republicans respond to this colossal influx of trans identifiers and drag queens and pronoun slots on job applications and see a world changing faster than they can keep up with.
At this rate, it doesn’t seem as though we’ll be seeing eye to eye on this issue any time soon. But that’s normal with our politics. In the same way that gender is a spectrum, our opinions on the issue shouldn’t be crammed into binaries.
It’s possible to recognize trans people exist and to call them by their preferred name while still acknowledging fault with the more self-destructive tactics of the movement. It’s possible to be a male in a female’s body and still accept that others might struggle to understand the phenomenon. But at this rate, it seems as though we’re just pushing each other further and further toward the polar extremes of radicalism and intolerance.
When you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants into a jar, nothing will happen. However, when you set it down on a table and begin to shake it violently, the ants turn murderous. Society functions similarly. When culture changes quickly, it can be easy to default toward hostility. When we consider broadly what it means to be on this world that never stops spinning and never stops shaking, it’s easier to empathize.