Hi Tracy,

Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful letter. I agree for the most part with everything you say.

My answer to your basic question of why it is a BFD is that we are dealing with our childhood trauma acutely associated with being forced to be a gender first and person second.

I am making progress on my healing, converging on my person being more vivid to me than my gender, after 10 years being consumed by trying to elucidate my feelings and goals/. wants and needs, risks and consequences.

Despite the fact that the most fundamental personal qualities like kindness or trustworthiness or courage are not gendered, and are the thing that matters most about us to each other, a lot of people have a lot more invested in sorting by gender and reinforcing gender norms than you do!

That said, I hope with you that more and more people realize the wasteful distortion of society that arises by prioritizing gender norms and their founding mythology over maximizing individual contribution.

IMHO the irony of all the transphobia is that everyone knows that gender is performative, trained behavior, and it takes a lot of insistence to keep it going until people adapt and forget they ever enjoyed the experiences now assigned to the other gender. It is really an argument masking the simple desire to maintain the power relations between the sexes and the distribution of privileges.

So much to say about why it is a BFD for both the oppressors and the trans people. But you are an ally and I hope you will continue helping everyone reconsider their struggle.

Miri