https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkYlIA7mgw

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I imagine that keeping an open mind, expressing ones self, being heard and listening to others are tools that will help us be free from the torment that sometimes come with gender.

I want to think that even rigidly cisgendered people have a place, if they can be kind and respectful and open minded. As the years and generations go on, I hope this can lead to society that is fitter, happier and more productive on a whole.

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My concerns here are that those of us expected to help make the transgendered person comfortable with their identity don’t have any way of knowing what the right treatment is. We refer to someone as “he”, to be chastised because that’s not how the referrant sees herself. But there’s no a priori means for us to know that, so we’re doomed to get ourselves into trouble and be labeled as insensitive.

The other concern is its effect on how we communicate about past experience. Consider Bradley/Chelsea Manning. At the time that events relating to this person were first unfolding, the male pronoun and the appellation “Bradley” were used universally. At some later time, we were told this was no longer correct, and we must switch to she/Chelsea. But we’ve still got all that history out there with the masculine references, and when we research, cite, and discuss that history, it’s at least confusing. And I’ve seen a big brouhaha erupt because of someone discussing the data leak event insensitively using the name “Bradley”. But unless you (a) know that the name/gender changed, and (b) do the mental gymnastics necessary to translate all the historical references, you’re again doomed to transgress.

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Personally, I’ve found that often attractions I don’t like, or which seem to have negative utility, are often a result of inaccurate aliefs or beliefs and go away when I examine them closely enough. To pick an example relevant to Veronica’s wider point, I’ve gone from grossed out at the thought of interacting with someone sexually to quite attracted to them, simply depending on what gender I alieved them to be. It wasn’t actually hard to change that alief (“well, what if they were a woman?”) once I actually knew what was the problem.

I don’t think I’ve ever done it, but I imagine the same thing could apply to friendship as well. The horns effect could be tainting your view of unattractive people; you might be basing your opinions of people on unflattering stereotypes; or you might be failing to apply the principle of charity to their political views and/or falling prey to the typical mind fallacy (“oh, they’re just selfish…”).

All these things are fixable! And you might find the real person is more appealing than your image of them. (Or not. Hey, you can’t win ’em all. But I think most people are quite sympathetic, in reality.)

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There was a certain degree of self-selection, granted — about one in ten floors were women-only, and I’d expect them to be populated disproportionately by people who can’t stand the idea of a penis having been in the shower they’re using. But that still proves something about the base rates we’re dealing with.

If it doesn’t cause problems for horny college students, it’s not going to cause problems for anyone else.

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