I had something I couldn’t really find a good perspective on on my own. Specifically, it was “trans women in top-tier athletics,” and how to reconcile that with “trans women are women”, which is a belief that, because I didn’t grow up with it, takes more conscious effort to make my internal mental default.

I wrote a question on FB, because I know there are people who are much, much more dialed in to trans issues than I am for a wide variety of reasons, and I wanted to ask them because I trust that kind of experience way more than reading some random thing online.

But while writing it, I realized that if I ask someone here, and they respond here, I know my friends will be decent folks, but I have no guarantee that some friend-of-a-friend doesn’t jump in and decide they want to argue some pedantic bullshit.

So I just fucking googled it. And read enough that I get the issue now, and I get why the things that prevented me from being able to keep a consistent mental framework of “trans women are women (and also trans men are men)” were bullshit. It wasn’t hard, I understood it, and it *didn’t* take a person’s personal perspective to help me get there.

Because no one owes me an explanation of the world to make me understand their perspective. And that’s what I believe, generally, but sometimes overlook. I know my friends wouldn’t begrudge me a dumb question, but it’s my job to do better – not theirs.