I debunk transphobia so you don't have to...

So, what I have below is an exchange I had on another social media platform with a transphobe that I found intetesting as they managed in just a few short paragraphs to run through the full gamut of transphobic tropes, giving me an excellent opportunity to address them all in one comment. Since it was so exhaustive, I decided to make it a full post.

Basically, your biological sex is indeed determined by what's ‘between your legs’.

No, it's not, and that's one of the big problems with you transphobes: almost none of you understand the biological definition of sex. (You don't understand gender, either, but I'll get to that...) Many biologists talk about "3G sex", which is genes, gonads, and genitals. Typically, people of the female sex have the XX genotype, ovaries, and a vagina, while people of the male sex have the XY genotype, testes, and a penis. However, somewhere between 1% and 3% of the population has a mismatch between these characteristics for a variety of reasons. Generally, biology recognizes the ability to create gametes (eggs or sperm) as the most crucial of the three, but most transphobes are more obsessed with one of the other two. There are people with penises who have ovaries and people with vaginas who have testes, and of course, chromosome makeup can be all over the place with women who are XY, men who are XX, not to mention other chromosome combinations like XXY, XYY, XXX, XXXY, etc. I didn't even get to the SRY gene, which is far more important than chromosomes.

Your supposed ‘Gender’, which used to be used as a synonym for biological sex, is a compete fiction that is nothing but a Social Construct that has no basis in fact, anymore than it does in language.

No, "gender" was originally a linguistic term, and the English language doesn't have gender, unlike a number of other languages, like Spanish, which has two genders, German, which has three genders, and Kinyarwanda, which has sixteen genders. Of course, the concept of "gender" was later extended to the classification not just of nouns but of people, but once again, many cultures have more than two genders, including ancient Israelites, who had nine "genders" that they recognized. Many cultures in the world have three or four genders that are recognized, and while you can certainly call genders a "social construct" that doesn't make them any less real. I mean *money* is a social construct, so are you going to throw your paycheck in the trash? Probably not, I'm guessing.

It is a misguided attempt to align the spectrum of personality and behaviour with the biological sexes. As stated, it is both misguided, and irrelevant.

Well, you can tell that to all the people in the world who consider themselves to have gender and see how it goes. There are thousands of "women" right here in the United States who, unbeknownst to them, have the XY genotype, and are therefore by some estimations "male", so tell them they have to use the men's restroom and participate in men's sports and see how they take it.

No-one can possibly ‘feel’ like something else. They have no actual basis upon which to make such a determination. At best they can only claim to feel like what *they think* it's like to be the other; and that's fine.

Funny thing is, by that same logic, I as a cisgender person can't tell what it "feels like" to be my own gender, since I've never experienced anything else, and the same can be said of you. All that I know is that transgender people almost always feel a sense of relief at transitioning, whether that may be wearing different clothing, taking hormones that align with their gender, or having surgery. (The regret rate for gender-affirming surgery among transgender people is lower than 1%, which is almost unheard of for surgical procedures. Knee replacement has a regret rate somewhere around 25%, for instance.) I think the fact that these people feel happier living as the gender they believe they are is pretty good evidence that they actually know what they are.

They can dress and act and live like they think a member of the opposite sex dresses, acts, and lives; but they aren't that. They are just cos playing by wearing a woman or man suit.

Yes, another fan favorite of the transphobes, "cosplaying as a woman/man". Yet nobody can explain who is being harmed if that's really all that it is! Transgender women aren't attacking cisgender women in restrooms. Transgender women aren't dominating cisgender women in sports. (Also, so many transphobes ignore transgender men for some reason, some of whom are doing quite well in men's sports, and would cause a commotion if they were forced into a women's restroom, but whatever.) In short, these attacks on transgender people are completely baseless. I've been interacting with transphobes like you online for years now, patiently letting you make your case, and without fail, it never holds water. There's no real understanding of biology, sociology, medical technology, or psychology, all of which are fields of science that in consensus agree with transgender people and not the transphobes. You're against this harmless, powerless, small portion of society for reasons that make no logical sense and deny science at the same time.

One of *them*

I like to try and assume the best of people, even though I'm a bit of a cynic, so I'm prepared for disappointment. Sometimes it can nonetheless be a bit shocking to be let down.

There's an understanding that I have about Christianity, and--silly me!--it's based on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. There's this idea that is driven home repeatedly by Jesus and the various New Testament writers that foundationally, Christianity is supposed to be about love.

In the gospels, Jesus says that the whole of religion can be summed up by two rules, paraphrased by me as A: love God, and B: love people. The Apostle Paul has a whole chapter about love in the letter of 1 Corinthians. The Apostle John talks extensively about how God is love and how we should be loving because of this. So yeah, love, right?

Unfortunately, in America, there's this stereotype of Christians that are far from loving. They're harsh, judgmental, bullying, and downright bigoted. I say unfortunate because I have, for a large portion of the 30 years I have been a Christian, not seemed to have met these Christians. I thought they were actually rather rare, perhaps largely living in red states. On social media, I have often assured people that these stereotypical Christians were actually a quite vocal minority who seemed larger because of how loud and obnoxious they were.

And then this week I learned something. A lot of Christians voted for President Trump. Like, not just a sizeable chunk, but a majority of them. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%, actually. I had to ask myself, who are these people? They're certainly not Christian leftists like me. They're not not even conservative but reasonable people like my wife, who despite having a lot of conservative values has never voted for Trump. No, I had to face up to it: it's them. It's those kind of Christians.

They're not a minority at all. The ones who claim persecution when someone says, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas!" The ones who consider the unborn more worthy of life than born people. The ones who want to legislate LGBTQ people out of existence. The ones who support Israeli genocide. It's those kind of Christians, and they're actually everywhere.

Maybe I should have guessed. It's different when you're an apparently white cishet Christian yourself and you interact with these people. They can be quite charming when you're considered one of them. But how many times have I seen the mask slip, even here in very blue California? Let someone know that you support the rights of Palestinians? Let someone know you don't condemn LGBTQ people or abortion? Let someone know that you *gasp* might consider not voting Republican? The incredulity, the confusion, even the ugliness and the anger that comes out can be shocking. Often, there's even an accusation that, "You're not a real Christian!"

I was wrong about American Christians. This is who they are. With Trump in power and Republicans controlling all three branches of government, I fear they're just going to get worse, too, out of boldness.

I've said a few times, and I've heard it from others, that sometimes it's embarrassing to admit that you're a Christian in America. I feel it now more than ever. I am an American Christian, and I don't want to be. God help us.