Per Jonathan Chait’s NY Intelligencer column, trans people who ask questions are risking the 2024 election. When will we be allowed to speak? Can we speak up after the election? No, as then we’ll be told to start worrying about the next election.

Transphobes don’t want to be any more, nor any less, specific. They don’t want more specificity about ‘man’ & ‘woman.’ ‘Cis’ is a slur, they say. They don’t want less specificity either. ‘Person’ is erasure, they say.

I’ll answer your hate mail in another lifetime. Asking fake questions about etymologies and intra-community debates they don’t care about. They’ll follow up with fake theories about floating out-of-body.

The existence of trans people is a danger only to fragile egos. A trans person is ‘dangerous’ only to people who believe that a trans person existing and having dignity threatens their own existence and dignity.

Listen to Jon Stewart do it. Stewart’s comedic approach regarding Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, was straightforward. He learned to see through organized transphobia. Reporters can learn to do this too. Ask real questions.