I’m not advocating for work policies, don’t get me wrong. (I’m nearly as “allergic” to the hardcore left rhetoric as I am to much of Trump’s vibes). Communism is predicated on theft, but so is fiat-based capitalism.

Issues like transgender rights are deeply nuanced, and ultimately every individual’s circumstance is going to be unique, so I’m not writing this to argue for a specific policy approach.

I’m looking at it from a much more “grassroots” and “peer to peer” level. I haven’t experienced the things a trans person has, so I’m aware that my perspective is necessarily limited.

But when someone tells me they are suffering deeply, or feel like something is very wrong, my inclination is to listen, and to try to understand. I try to imagine if they were my brother, a friend, or (someday) my child. How would I approach their vulnerability, their trust in me, in a way that I would look back on and know I acted from love.

Policies aside, to me it’s easy to believe someone who says they were born in a female body but felt like a boy/man their entire life. I’ve never lived that - how could I presume to know otherwise? My best move is to be compassionate towards that person, and start from there.

There’s hateful, divisive rhetoric throughout our society. But I find it exists far more on digital platforms than in the real world. Because most people are genuinely good.

The left-side cancel culture and the right-side culture war (to overgeneralize a lot) has put these conversations into a hypersensitive, existential overdrive: “if you don’t agree with X then you’re a terrible person and don’t deserve to exist, because you must believe Y” is promoted everywhere. Because it gets reactions and clicks, and because clicks generate ad revenue. Follow the money right?

To me, the reality is more nuanced, but also simpler:

- Love your neighbor.

- When someone tells you who they are, believe them (which is perfectly compatible with “don’t trust, verify” by the way).

If something makes me react strongly, with discomfort, or the type of outrage that comes from “that voice I heard somewhere but it didn’t originate within me”, it’s usually because I’ve internalized a viewpoint from the cultural influences around me, and it’s time to get curious about why I trust that perspective and whether I genuinely believe in it, or I just heard it enough to assume it’s true.

Again, this goes far beyond right/left disagreements. This is a facet of my lifelong work, spiritually and psychologically. The reason I responded at first was precisely because your posts have motivated me to do a fair amount of that work.