Being trans is not imposing personal values on society, there are simply reordering and correcting a mistake made by society in the first place. Namely, the sex and gender assigned to a child at birth. No person should ever struggle under the burden of projected identities, be it race, religion, sex, culture, or gender identity, and as such the right to simply be yourself is the paramount trans right. All other rights, such as the right to use the bathroom, right to place sport, right to simply exist as yourself, flow from this. Indeed, without the right to be yourself all other rights are moot.
Yet, there are many who argue that no person has the right to force others to agree with a person’s conception of self. They state that trans folk are deluded, mentally ill, and pale imitations of their affirmed gender; the simple counter to this is that society has constructed gender in ways that mean anyone pushing back against those norms gets tarred with those three brushes. Women who reject patriarchy, gay men who are public about their desires, and butch lesbians who express their identities. All are attacked for rejecting “normal”, whatever that might be.
www.independent.co.uk
