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this segment is made to equip those new to trans advocacy with the knowledge they need to move further, NOT for veteran advocates or those who have dedicated a good chunk of their time to the movement, as their advocacy would be a bigger undertaking and out of the scope for those who are new. My goal is to equip those who are outsiders with no lived experience with the base knowledge and resources so that they may further learn.

You do not need to buy a flag to support trans rights, you do not need to go to any trans rights rally, you do not need to call/email your local MP. These things are preferrable and are very, very, very , EXTREMELY important to the advocacy of trans rights , but you do not need to dedicate your entire time and life to trans rights to be a successful advocate, as long as you show advocacy in all the little ways you can, you’re making a step to a better world. If you never go out to a pride rally, but simply win an argument at the dinner table with your bigoted uncle because you knew the responses his argument, youre changing the world, because if everyone wins an argument at a dinner table then suddenly billions of bigots have either a) changed their mind or b) will shut up.

Always start your advocacy with the small things, you do not need to become the next human rights advocate on par with MLK or Nelson Mandela to make a change. Watch a Youtube video, listen to the stories of others, be aware of your prejudices and show your support when you can. Every little bit counts Equip yourself with knowledge first and never stop learning, on my links page I have links to multiple advocacy sites and informational pieces for further information, below I have listed out the most common arguments against transgender rights and refute them. If you want more in-depth analysis of trans issues and full proper understanding of these issues please follow my links to those who know more than me, I am here to equip you with the very very basics and I myself cannot speak for those who have more lived experience than I. I’m here so when you hear something from a friend that may be bigoted , you have a response.

PSA: the best response in any argument that involves trans rights or trans people should never at the start go straight into the talking points you know, your first response should ALWAYS be “why not let these people live ?? why not let these people represent how they want and live their life however they want??” this is because this puts the onus on the attacker to prove that transgender people are actively doing harm to the world, which simply being transgender does not do any harm to anyone.

1. Its not natural – This is a common argument, this goes against what nature/god has planned for the person, and because of that it is wrong. This argument is what’s known as an appeal to nature, it is based on the assumption that what is natural is good. But we fail to consider is that’s not the case, glasses aren’t natural yet they help billions of people see, if it was in gods/natures plan for you to not see anything 2 feet from your eyes then you should not be wearing man-made glasses. We live in a heavily “non-natural” world and everyone engages in “non-natural” practices. Transness has also been around in many native communities and tribes, such as the native American “two-spirit” people, those who were seen as having ther spirit of both a man and a woman, that argument falls apart even if you accept the fallacious appeal to nature, because it has indeed been natural, even in the animal kingdom, such as the example of a female lion exhibiting male lion characteristics and even growing his own mane

2. The suicide rates are high – “Suicide rates are high because they are trans, they are living a false life which causes depression and eventually suicide” this is based on the premise that the reason someone a trans person would kills themselves is simply because they are trans, but the fact of the matter is that being trans you will face more suicidality-increasing factors, such as verbal abuse, gender dysphoria leading to depression, employment discrimination and more. If we want to reduce the number of suicides we should not ban being transgender, but increase support, suicidal ideation reduces with more gender affirming care , not the reduction of it

3. A woman is a person with xx chromosomes and a man has xy chromosomes – This belief is simply not true, language is much more complex than “words we say exactly adhere to the true essence of an object”. We cannot perfectly describe every single atom in an object just through naming them, words are a complex network of similarities and dissimilarities on how things operate. We put things on tables, we sit on chairs – Tables are for placing things on top of and chairs are for sitting on top of, yet we can sit on a table and we can put things on a chair. Ludwig Wittgenstein states that “meaning only exists in the context of human activity” We give words meaning through how we interact with things and expect things to behave, we do not see past the curtain into the pure “realm of forms” and see the word there. The classification of “woman” or “man” is not exempt from the same rule. Woman or man is defined by a set of qualities, appearances and shared behaviours that are loosely related to the sex a person is born with. These qualities, appearances and behaviours change from person to person and are ultimately arbitrary. To sum up, gender is an arbitrary definition that we assign people of a specific sex at birth that then gives them an expected role and presentation that they are required to fulfil even before they have the cognition to fathom these roles, nevertheless decide if the roles fit with who they are Even if we follow along with the idea that gender is directly linked to your sex and completely describes who a person is, it would still fall apart because :

A) Intersex people exist, those born with both male and female genitalia, those who are suddenly the exception to the holistic rule that defines gender in the mind of a bigot are oft forgot. Intersex people often are let to choose their own gender, based on whatever they feel most comfortable identifying with. And if intersex people are the exception to the rule that should be respected in their representation does that not then mean that transgender and non-binary people are too one and the same ?

B) We assign gender to fictional characters, it may sound silly but seriously think about it. For example, Glados from portal has a typically feminine voice, feminine behaviours and a feminine representation. Yet glados is robot, a machine without chromosomes or genitalia yet we choose to gender her because of the way she represents. If people accept that we can gender fictional robots such as glados, then it follows that gender is then not defined by any sexual characteristics

4. Gender Dysphoria is a mental illness –

1. Gender dysphoria is not a mental illness , it is a condition described by the stress caused by a mismatch in someones gender identity and their assigned sex, the narrative that it’s a mental illness makes it sound like theres something wrong in the head of a trans person, a chemical imbalance or the misfiring of neurons , this is simply not the case and has always been defined as the stress caused by the mismatch

2. Always be aware that transphobes love to use descriptive arguments and never prescriptive arguments , descriptive arguments are arguments that describe how the world is , and prescriptive arguments describe how the world should be, this is because the when the way people define words change, this means that they way they makes sense of and give meaning to the world changes, and our intuitive response to our worlds meaning being wrong/in need of change is disgust and hate. If you catch a transphobe being hateful by making only descriptive arguments, then urge them to make a prescriptive argument, an argument on how the issue at hand should be dealt with often itll be and argument about conversion therapy or the outright ban on transgenderism, both of which are ineffective, conversion therapy doesn’t work as post-therapy there has been no evidence that lasting changes occur and it leads to an increase in suicidal ideation So then how do we treat gender dysphoria ? According to the nation health service it is helping those affected by socially and physically transitioning them , AKA accepting them.

Everyone’s reasoning behind their arguments should always stem down to “I want the most amount of people in this world to be happy and content with their lives”. And with that being the case there is no right argument that someone anti-trans could make that trumps acceptance This is not an exhaustive list of every argument but those first points that a bigot could make, these are the arguments that I wish I had at the dinner table when I was younger. My opinions are informed by the lived experience of others and are ever changing and evolving, if anything in this page is either missing, uninformed or needs further work, feel free to leave a comment in the comment box below and I will amend it