I had the most surreal, gaslighty conversation with a smart, nice young man, who was very insistent not just that I was wrong, but that I shouldn't be talking or thinking about the issue at all. I was told that the quality-of-life improvements available from making better decisions by means of understanding the underlying psychological phenomenon were small compared to the harm of suggesting that late-transitioning trans women aren't real women, that the right time to consider the question was in 25 to 30 years when the culture war over trans rights was won and out of the Overton Window, that _knowing the truth_ wouldn't help me and wouldn't help anyone else.
It didn't feel like I was talking to a reasonable, sane person who happened to have different beliefs from me about the etiology of male-to-female transgenderedness.
I had the most surreal, gaslighty conversation with a smart, nice young man, who was very insistent not just that I was wrong, but that I shouldn't be talking or thinking about the issue at all. I was told that the quality-of-life improvements available from making better decisions by means of understanding the underlying psychological phenomenon were small compared to the harm of suggesting that late-transitioning trans women aren't real women, that the right time to consider the question was in 25 to 30 years when the culture war over trans rights was won and out of the Overton Window, that _knowing the truth_ wouldn't help me and wouldn't help anyone else.
It didn't feel like I was talking to a reasonable, sane person who happened to have different beliefs from me about the etiology of male-to-female transgenderedness.