You remind me of a too-long interaction I had on Twitter a few weeks ago with a professional transphobe. I generally avoid that kind of thing not seeing any potential benefit, but the situation was weird. I had written an article in support of a school librarian who wanted to read a Mother's Day book to children about families with single or same-sex parents.
Nothing in my article directly addressed transgender issues, though I used the terms LGBTQ and queer several times, and that was apparently enough for the professional transphobe to don an outfit of outrage when they saw my promotion tweet.
They replied, bizarrely, that I am a monster who encourages the genital mutilation of children.
That was so out of left field that I replied, along the lines of —
This is a story about supporting children on Mother's Day when those children don't have mothers. I'm not sure where you're reading trans issues into it, but since you mention it, the whole "genital mutilation" thing is a straw man. Trans kids in the U.S. don't get genital surgery. Doctors won't do such surgeries on minors and insurance companies won't pay for it. Nobody is advocating otherwise This is a non issue.
Their increasingly heated replies turned into a perfect example of stubborn and likely intentional ignorance – culminating with their tweeting a link to an NYT article they said proves their point that trans kids in the US frequently undergo genital surgery.
Except the article actually says the opposite. The professional transphobe misunderstood the article, confusing "gender-affirming medical care" for "genital surgery," and evidently missed the very end of the article and a clarification that no genital surgeries had been performed and that such procedures are rare to nonexistent in the U.S. for trans minors.
So I replied, thinking I could do some good. I explained terms. I clarified. I quoted the article they tweeted.
Did no good. The professional transphobe merely moved the goal posts, while continuing to deride me as a monster who wants kids' "sex organs" mutilated — and taking my reply as a reason to engage in a general anti-trans diatribe, no holds barred, every anti-trans talking point ever invented on the table.
They obviously didn't care that the point they made to start the conversation was factually wrong, as demonstrated by their own supporting article.
Facts don't interest them. Their visceral hatred of transgender people is all they seem to care about, despite whatever the facts are, which they are willing and even anxious to distort if that helps their argument.
You can't "win" an argument with a person like that. So, I limited my replies to the bare facts then disengaged.
The only hope I get out of circumstances like that is the transphobes often come out looking crazed and irrational. This one certainly did, as a few people noted who happened onto the exchange.
It's not necessary to move out of kitten mode when the transphobe stays in attacking wolf mode the entire time. Quiet, rational responses are quite enough to demonstrate their thoughtlessness and bad-faith motives.
Some professional transphobes, the "I'm only asking questions" kind, are smarter than that and often troll for hostile responses they can use to say trans people and trans supporters are violent and dangerous.
All the more reason to engage minimally at most.
