Being transgender is best understood as a mental disorder. The correct way to do pro-trans activism is to acknowledge this and focus on transition as a treatment, not an identity. Being trans isn't normal in the way that being gay is normal. It's the treatment for a diagnosable mental illness. Transgender people should strive for "weird but different" acceptance, like deformed or high functioning autistic people. Most transgender activism, across the political spectrum, focuses on trying to convince the public that disordered thinking isn't the root of being trans. Towards the political left, this has an inmates running the asylum dynamic, in which rationalizations developed to cope with gender dysphoria transform into political messaging. In communities like this, the result is to cope, to claim that the problem is hons. But to the public, the problem is that being transgender is crazy, not that all of the crazy people are ugly. Transphobia is not rooted in a disgust response to trans people. It's anxiety about treating people with disordered thinking like they're normal. We know how to reduce that anxiety. We've done it with other mental illnesses. But if you refuse to do it here, you will keep losing.

>>40291222 (OP)
>"im mentally ill pls be nice to me" in an age of hateful spite politics

>>40291276
Because "actually I'm not crazy and you have to believe it" has worked. Also it's true that they're mentally ill. You're also ignoring that destigmatizing mental illnesses has worked in the past few decades, especially for people who can be economically productive. People can accept freaks. They don't like being lied to about whether people are freaks. You want to be treated like you're normal, which you aren't, and you're willing to risk the success of the pro-trans movement to get that.

>>40291363
you fucking idiot, can you not read the winds? this is not a time of freak acceptance, that era is fucking gone.

>>40291363
>and you have to believe it
you just don't have to be an asshole, very hard for americans who want to shove their fairytales into everything.

I ain't reading all that but yes. Demedicalizing transsexualism was a massive mistake and well meaning liberals can't comprehend how much societal damage they've done