I'm going to reply to this as well because I don't think it's off-topic. I was asked to say a bit about my experience after I came out, and as I said, I've had a lot of contact with "our opponents" (to put it mildly). I'm not terribly pleased to see this thread going in this direction. Of all the things I said in my OP, this is just one point I was making. But if someone wants to take up that particular point, OK, I'll address it.
In my OP I mentioned my stay in the hospital, on the women's ward. Now I did tell this story on the forum I hang out on, and I got some extremely negative reactions from 3 or 4 people who were "outsiders", not usual members of that forum. Now their position was simply that transgender women have no business being on a women's ward in a hospital. We have no right to expect to be treated as women.
I could point out the truth of the matter: during my stay I didn't cause anybody any problems. No doctor or nurse or anybody came to me to suggest that my presence there was a problem. No other patient complained about me being there. In fact, I'm pretty sure the other patients didn't even know that I'm trans. But the fact is I didn't cause any problem by being there.
But in the eyes of our opponents, that doesn't matter. They don't care if we're not actually causing a problem. They simply don't want us there. Where they're coming from is their dislike of transgender people: they don't want us out living our lives. They want us to go quietly back into the closet and stay there.
I haven't had much feedback really from other Irish transgender people. I don't know if on the whole their lives are as happy as mine. But as I've pointed out, my day-to-day experience is one of just going about my business, living my life. And nothing in this town has changed since I came out. The people of this town go about their lives as they always have. Nobody's had to make any changes to their lives for my sake. If somebody wants to claim that the lives of cisgender women and girls are suffering because I'm now out, living my life and exercising my legal rights, they need to prove it. They need to produce women and girls who can show specifically the harm I'm doing to their lives.
This is what we transpeople who are out are proving, wherever we live: transgender people can live their lives without hurting anybody else, without infringing on other people's rights. To our opponents this doesn't matter. In their view we're a problem, even if we're not a problem. But as I myself have often pointed out, this is precisely why we transpeople are gaining ground in so many places these days: we're out living our lives and people are copping on that we're not actually a problem to them. We're not actually something they need to worry about. Most people are decent enough. They do have a sense of fair play, and they are willing to live and let live. When they see that somebody isn't actually causing them any problems, then they don't worry about them. They go on with their lives and leave those other people alone.
This has in fact been my experience in recent years: I've seen the "extremes of acceptance and hatred". But I have become quite hopeful and optimistic. I believe in the long run we're going to win out. We are finding more and more acceptance in a lot of places these days, and I believe that eventually our detractors will find themselves so outnumbered that they won't be able to carry on the fight against our rights and freedom.Originally Posted by LeeAnnRose
