this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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You don't have to "be a fan" in order to support someone's right to exist.
I have a cousin who is transphobic in the sense that he is very uncomfortable around trans people. He cannot get past it and avoids interactions because he's so uncomfortable. He also defends trans rights at every turn, publicly and without hesitation. Trans rights are human rights. Full stop.
Yeah, the trans issue really isn't on my personal pressing issue radar, but I'll do what I can to shut any trans hate down when I witness it.
I feel a bit similar with nonbinariness. Not uncomfortable but maybe unconvinced. But fucking hell, it's not something worth hating anyone over. And like most things that I'm unconvinced by, it won't prevent me from treating anyone politely. You've got to be a certain kind of fucked to let it get to you to that level, or worse, to whip up that kind of sentiment in others
I appreciate what you're saying. It'd be great if more people were discerning with their placement of hate and understanding of how it propagates.
I do wonder if being 'convinced' is really all that important?
Personally, I think it's sort of beside the point (which I think is exactly what you're saying).
I guess what I'm wondering is: can we ever expect to be 'convinced' of every true experience? I think for me to be unabashedly 'convinced' of anything, I'd have to be able to identify with it personally. In a "I think therefore I am" sort of way. Your experience is the only one you know exists for sure yea?
Yet, I am consistently surprised as to the complexity of feelings when they become a reality for me. My takeaway is that I can't hope to have true understanding of how any other person feels.
I can imagine what it's like to lose a loved one, a pet, a job. I might judge someone based on their emotional response to an event. But, when it happens to me, I suddenly get it.
I get how much I could never 'get' before.
It is like adding a whole other dimension, a new axis, to my world. Think how a 3rd demensional object just just never be expressed in a 2d world. It's like adding a new cone to your eye, or waking up and having the nose of a dog. There is just unfathomable complexity in the world, and we each take in just an extremely small portion of it at a time. New experiences, for me anyway, can often feel so novel in a 'wow I was just so naive' sort of way.
I just can't trust my understanding of the complexity of human experience enough to think that I even have the capacity to imagine all of them.
How could someone who has never tried chocolate, really get what it tastes like? They just don't, and can't, not unless they actually experience it for themselves. And even then, no two experiences are quite the same; one person loves candy corn, the other hates it. Entirely different experience of taste, with the same stimuli.
All that is to say, I think that we are in agreement that whether or not we are "convinced" of any one reality, it's really not the point. We just have to be convinced that our reality isn't the only one.
We are all different! We will never get it all! But hopefully we can get that other people have different feelings than us, and that causing other people pain sucks!
So, be tolerant.
Well, I am more convinced about trans identity due to what I understand to be a strong medical consensus on gender dysphoria. As far as I understand there isn't a similar consensus on dysphoria or something akin to it for people who identify as non-binary. So, I could be convinced of that to the same standard - or a higher standard, of course, because as you point out, I can't be certain of anything. At one point I was in a similar position on trans people, but after a while learnt more.
I think even this doesn't quite capture it, for me! Because suppose I were convinced, actually, that non-binary people were just "making it up", whatever that meant. Well, so what? It doesn't affect much, really. It might lead me to hold some positions on practical things - maybe I would be pretty strongly opposed to medical or surgical intervention for nonbinary people, if that were what I thought. But it doesn't mean I hate them, or want them to suffer, or die, or feel ashamed for what they have, in my opinion in this scenario, "made up." You can think someone is wrong - even about their own mind and body - but disagree with them respectfully. Yes, it may make for uncomfortable conversations, or even strong disagreements over treatments, but that's still a far cry from hatred, for which there is no need and little excuse*
So even though I think it doesn't capture it, we end up agreeing in the conclusion, I think!
*Indoctrination is some partial excuse, but not total by any means.
Dysphoria isn't necessary for one's gender identity and expression to mismatch their sex, but it is a common experience. Gender expression itself is primarily a cultural social construct but that's a whole other subject.