You're welcome, glad it stuck. Some of the stuff you've said stuck with me over the years (positively).

but the people trying the hardest to champion usually end up being the ones being corrected the most because they're willing to put in the work.

The important part about being one of these people is to be okay with being corrected. Every community I've encountered, or personally been a part of, has been very giving to people who fuck up, so long as you correct yourself and keep moving. "Sorry, my bad," goes a long way.

I did a bit of deep dive to see where this discussion built from, and I have to say I'm very disappointed that TNG posted an article by a person whose notoriety mostly comes from preferring that people like me don't exist. I think it behooves us to consider who writes articles, and what their motives might be, before we post them.

I would assert that this article is a much better read on the situation.

It's important to remember that trans people are, as has historically been the case (see Weimar Berlin, 1920s America, 1950s America), the canary in the coal mine of conservative attempts to pull the Overton window back in their direction. As a minority, we are easy to vilify, especially those of us who are gender non-conforming. We are not a part of regular experience, and so we are easily turned into a bogeyman. That's what the "Gender Critical" movement does, and it has reared its ugly head quite publicly in the UK.

The knock-on result of these current efforts (If they come for the trans people, and you do nothing because you are not a trans person) is that anyone who does not fit a conservative ideal of "man" and "woman" becomes subject to ridicule and lost opportunity. Already cis women are getting harassed by men for "going into the wrong bathroom". Fuck, my old masters teacher, a midwestern mom, has had this experience. the only "gender nonconforming" feature she has is a caesar haircut.

An incredible amount of the people who signed that letter are bad news. There have been some great rereads of Rowling's books with her current views in mind, and well, they get ugly. A race of human-like creatures who love to be servants and don't know what they would do if they were freed. a race of long-nosed caricatures who have few rights but control all the money. A woman who shapeshift but has "mannish hands" (a classic transphobic trope). Atwood has actively been part of attempts to silence women who accused a UBC professor of sexual assault.

These people are not good company. They have a right to say what they believe, but they don't have a right to freedom from criticism, or freedom from the consequences of saying those things, nor do they have a right to a public forum to say them. Free speech absolutism is the privileged opinion of people for which there are no actual consequences when they have an academic argument around "do Black people deserve to be beaten by police", and "Do trans people deserve rights". It is the privilege of those who believe they are unaffected.

Until, well, they are affected.