Supermatch, firstly, I am not 'being nice' so as to be 'accepted' on here.
I got quite less friendly comment when I first posted a month or so back. And was called he and male a few times, but chose not to regard it as abuse but as another person's opinion of a stranger chatting on a forum.
We form our views of others by interaction and what they say or do within that interaction. We look for signs of understanding and that we are gaining things as we appreciate why we each feel and think as we do.
Human relationships are about empathy and trying to see why others feel as they do, even if that is different from how you personally do. #
In fact most powerfully because that is how we learn to be a better person by absorbing the thoughts, feelings and experiences of others and appreciating the triumph of human spirit over adversity.
You can very easily blow all that apart by not trying to listen to other views or just telling them your truth as the one truth, the only truth.
Except, of course, it isn't. Because it is at least arguable that our biology is as important a part of who or what we are than is our mind or perception.
Being transgender, or transsexual, is complicated. I do not know how or why I have always been like this as far back as I can remember. I do not know if there is a physical cause or a social cause or a psychological cause or a mixture of them all.
Nor I suspect does anybody else. And there might not even just be one cause. I am increasingly of that view given the wide array of what being 'trans' is like I keep being told by the activists that I am not taking into account by just referring to transsexuals.
Yes, for me it is something deep and physical. But for others it is a nuance or an expression or an identification or a lifestyle choice and so on.
I have come to accept and see that, but also that these differences matter - not in the sense of having the right to live as yourself unhindered and with protection against real transphobia such as violence or discrimination - but in the sense that in certain circumstances a sense of safety in spaces matter more than identification.
So they change the equation.
This confusion of parts that make us who we are means we cannot just dictate to others what to believe. We are probably about the most mixed up in a physical and a psychological sense that any group of humans can be. So there are going to be differences of opinion as to how to define us.
There ARE differences of opinion even between those of us who are one kind of trans person versus another, so it is not even arguable that the rest of humanity with no direct experience of this will have them even more.