@98: Excellent points in an excellent post, EmmaLiz.

curious –we are in an anonymous online forum dealing with ever changing topics. While in such environment one may choose their own interests and timing to voice their opinion and engage with others regardless of past interactions.

While EL has a point re the bathroom gender situation I wonder what the statistics re cis women attacked in public restrooms by trans women.
The only bathroom related incidents I hear of deal with transwomen attacked outside women’s restrooms by men, or masculine-deemed cis women yelled at by other women.

I started going out enfemme upon joining a group of what was known back then as crossdressers. Using the restroom that matches your appearance was already the law some 15 or more years prior here in the state of Washington. The need to be respectful and assuring safety and privacy was discussed an, encouraged and strictly followed ever since.
I’m not saying this applies to everyone, just want to assure cis women that many of us are extremely grateful, aware of the bathroom issues that may arise, and are only there to mind our own business.

SA- thanks for the article about trans men. While they may have an appearance advantage over trans women, they also face their own challenges in many different ways.

@100/EmmaLiz: I don't think there has been anything dishonest in my comment. You suggest that cis-gendered men react differently to transmen than to cis-gendered women to transwoman because of issues of physical violence and athletic competition. Whether or not physical violence and athletic competition are the primary reasons that cis-gendered women do react toward transwomen, I don't think these reasons are meaningful to men, let alone that they are obviously the reasons that explain the behavior of cis-gendered men toward transmen, and I am not clear what in your experience leads you think the factors you cited were correct and obviously so.

Mizz Liz - I certainly agree about needing to think bigger (or, given that Stockfish and Leela are about to commence the latest in their series of skirmishes for chess supremacy, as many moves ahead as possible). I think I just see some circularity that you don't.

By all means build your crystal palace; I'll even send you a chandelier. It would be exciting to see how gender can be expanded. I'd be grateful if you didn't have to take a wrecking ball to my brick house, as being assimilated by the wolf isn't what I'd call liberating. It will take a good deal of time and expence to rebuild, although my brothers who chose straw or twigs may well agree with you.

@83 BiDanFan
"you do seem to take the rare "I think you're wrong" comments too personally"

I agree. (I've said something like this here a few times myself.)

And given that most of my posts involved correcting others, it's embarrassing to take correction poorly. However,

Much of the time I'm corrected I end up, through discussion, admitting I was wrong. I respect this, and think I'm kind when others do the same.

A few things about this time were uncommon. First, I was hearing I was wrong about what I was /feeling/; whereas actually what I discovered because EmmaLiz was gracious enough to discuss it with me, was that I was wrong about a variety of other things instead: the way I interpreted, and the way words I used to express, those feelings. That's pretty common; feelings aren't essentially logical, and for me (and many) it's difficult to intellectually connect with where the feelings come from and how to name the feelings.

So I presented myself wrong, and I fully deserved the rudeness and disrespect I got for that. And I would no longer be pissed, if the result of my process of figuring out what my feelings meant and where they were focused had been in any way acknowledged or respected.

In other words, while I accept rudeness and disrespect I deserve, and admit I do the same to others when they deserve, I believe that the right to do treat people that way comes with responsibility; for example, when the target of one's rudeness and disrespect figures out, say, what the feelings really were about and how to describe them correctly, to acknowledge that.

/Break/
I'm very much reading with interest the valuable posts in this thread, even if I'm out of sorts enough to not want to join in. For example the immense challenges EmmaLiz brought up @98 (which I mentioned earlier in the context of where I figured out I was really coming from).

Like a few other commenters I've noticed mention, I started reading Dan's column when it started because I was hoping to learn. Over time as I've learned stuff, the opportunities have become less frequent, so I value the smart and interesting comments in this thread. And I figure that had the interaction that has me pissed off not simply ended with me being pissed off, I would have learned something there too.

@95 NoCuteName: as far as I can tell, hardly anyone feels “female enough”/“male enough”/whatever the social expectations for their gender tells them they are supposed to be.

Minor pedant moment: dysphoria =/= dysmorphia (I’ll spare the exact distinctions unless people really want them)

@96 vennominon, in that case I’d prefer “M?”. Do you have a preferred honourific you want people to use for yourself?

If abolishing gender means abolishing social use of gender distinctions, that seems unlikely to happen, and denying those who do identify with any given social gender the right to do so sounds wrong to me, in any case.

@98 EmmaLiz, I am not quite sure I am following this. Is your concern that it is now too easy for male-bodied people to get into “female spaces” by claiming to identify as belonging there?

If so, what is your preferred solution? You mention creating a third category, but then say that that would not work, partly for cultural reasons, partly because of people not identifying as belonging to a third/GNC group.

Where would binary trans people go? Would it depend on whether they were transitioning medically or not? Would you want the same solution for FTM and MTF people?

Is the concern about non-trans people claiming trans status to intrude?

So, can 1000 angels suck a single trans dick at once or not folks?

One fairly obvious reason for why people are more accepting of transmen: they're generally more successful at "passing" -- and I don't just mean "able to make people who don't know otherwise think they're cis-male", but also "able to make people who DO know their status instinctively parse them as male".

One of the common reasons people have difficulty with trans people -- why they find their presence stressful and uncomfortable -- is that there's a disconnect between how they perceive a person and the pronouns that person is asking them to use. In other words, even people with sincere goodwill towards trans folks (let alone people without it) may still instinctively parse a transwoman as "male" because of phenotypic characteristics beyond her control, and so using the correct pronouns requires a constant effort on their part.

In my experience this isn't much of an issue with transmen. I wonder whether part of it is that a lot of transmen resemble cis-gendered men at an earlier stage of their development -- in other words, they appear boyish to a casual observer -- so it's easier to assimilate their appearance to a broader archetype of maleness. (Cathy Rigby's 40-year career as Peter Pan comes to mind.) And facial hair both conceals and convinces: our instincts tell us "beard = male", and we're generally right, so anyone on HRT who can grow facial hair is basically guaranteed to pass if they want to.

YBT @ 110
It is also my own observation that transmen are generally more accepted than transwomen. Appearance isn’t the only reason though and may not fully apply at times.
Most violent attacks on any shade of trans folks are done by cis men. As gay men have witnessed over the years, some men may view a fellow man who “willingly gave up their male privilege”- dating other men, appearing as a woman- as someone who deserves to be ridiculed and even humiliated. The self-disgust one may feel if indeed attracted to them, the desperate need to prove that they are not. Unsurprisingly some of the murderers are closet cases or found themselves attracted to a transwoman.
Add to this the recent hysteria re bathroom use, when men may feel obligated to rescue their wives and daughters from the sleazy crowd that dresses up only to be able to spy on women using the toilet.

Culture plays a big role as well. A man appearing as a woman is often a comic act in so many geographies, and not necessarily badly intended. It seems to be universally funny. Something I still struggle with are those unintended instinctive smiles by best meaning folks and despite their best intentions.
Now add to this the fearsome trans-inclined serial murderers we used to see in movies like Hitchcock’s Psycho or DiPalma’s Dressed to Kill.

CMD just to be clear I said twice that I think the bathroom outrage is manufactured- it's a political/media narrative, mostly bigotry. Bathrooms are not closed spaces in the first place, they are not places of refuge for vulnerable populations, you are not kept in them, etc. It's much ado about nothing.

I'm not an expert in this of course just some reading last year when I became interested in it after the baseball bat thing, but best I've found the only study on levels of violence among transwomen have shown that they commit violent crimes at the same rate (not more) than cis men and at lower rates than cis women. Criticisms to the studies are their limited scope, the problems with stats around criminology in general (give institutional prejudices) and the same issues you have with any oppressed or marginalized group meaning they are more likely to be in positions of confrontation or self defense or in poverty etc in the first place, all things that correlate with violence. So best I can say, no one knows yet- people haven't designed a solid study yet.

But it's beside the point because I was talking about prisons, shelters and sports- and there's a bit more data on this and anyway what I'm talking about is what to do about a) predators self-identifying as women (which as much as people like to say is not a thing, it is of course, there are plenty of TERFy sites documenting all the cases as they happen which I would not like to link to as any thoughtful person already knows that sexual predators are opportunistic and any nonbigoted person would like to discuss what to do about it without the bigoted agenda on those sites) and b) how these problems have caused institutions to start to define gender, codifying it in a legal/medical way as we see already with sports, schools and prisons and c) what the implications of a codified defintion of a social construct means for the rest of us and what alternatives we can come up with that are more liberating which is not a conversation we can have right now because d) anyone attempting to have it is shouted down as a TERF and threatened with violence- and most of the time, best I can tell, they are in fact bigoted TERFs saying this stuff.

@Delurker yes to all of that and I don't know either.

Also regarding to what I just posted- I don't know if it was clear so I'm going to add something. Let's pretend there is some study out there that says that actual transwomen (not just predators self IDing as women) are in fact more statistically likely to sexually or physically assault cis women than are other cis women, I still don't think this is an argument for exclusion so I don't want my words to be misconstrued that way. Loads of bigots over time have used such claims to justify segregation on different grounds (this way be fascists) and that's not what I'm saying - even if there are studies which show that. I'm making an argument for addressing the larger problem more creatively and radically (for example, massive prison and housing and economic reform rather than just segregated third trans facilities etc) and also I'm opposing the trend towards defining gender by any means as that traps all of us, one way or the other.

How to do that? I have no fucking idea but I think getting smart not bigoted people to more freely talk about it, and as for angels dancing on pins or crystal palaces, I can't think of any liberating social changes that did not start out that way. Besides these conversations and ultimately the choices of what to do about them are going to challenge us regardless of whether or not we'd rather it didn't happen.

@Sublime and upon rereading, @BDF as well-

My apologies, my words were chosen poorly and I see I stated that you guys were making disingenous or dishonest arguments and that's not what I intended. I was trying to say that one cannot have an honest or genuine discussion of the question of why there would be more push back against inclusion from cis women than from cis men without an honest or genuine consideration of the fact that men are disproportionately far more likely to commit sexual and physical assault than are women. I did not mean to say that either of you were being dishonest, though I see that is what I said despite intentions so all apologies. Also Sublime I do get your point about subjective experience being different, and I did value that perspective especially the story provided so double apologies for sounding like I was disregarding it.

outta town dudes see ya later

@111 CMDwannabe
"men may feel obligated to rescue their wives and daughters from the sleazy crowd that dresses up only to be able to spy on women using the toilet."

Has this actually become a trend? Last I heard it had never actually happened except in the imaginations of rabid rightwingers inciting mindless fear in the bathroom wars.

@111: Sure, I certainly wouldn't say that appearance is the "only" reason transmen seem to have better luck.

When it comes to transwomen, I don't know if I really buy the whole "giving up their privilege" thing, though; that doesn't ring true to me. I think it's got more to do with a general human tendency to despise difference, especially difference that reads to them as unattractive or absurd.

Among cultures with antipathy or worse toward trans people, a surprising number (though certainly not all of them) are actually 100% OK with transwomen as long as they "pass" and are post-op. Conversely, even in cultures where trans people are accepted (to varying degrees), I think a lot of people nonetheless view most transwomen as absurd and delusional -- not necessarily for identifying as women, but for expecting (demanding?) that the world see them that way despite a strongly male phenotype. And those people resent being asked to, essentially, pretend to believe something they don't actually believe.

Curious @ 115
I was being sarcastic in this particular section though agree that it may not come across that way.

YBM @ 116
I forgot to mention that often cis women are having an easier time accepting trans women, in a way acknowledging comradery of some sort.

That the current resentment to trans folks is a mostly a counter move for “expecting (demanding?) that the world see them that way” is simply not true. “Demands”- like being able to present yourself the way you so choose- are relatively new, yet hostility towards trans was always there regardless.

EmmaLiz @98, thank you. Safety is a concern. I'm willing to bet that these women who think of trans women as men who are harboring secret desires to rape them have never met a real life trans woman. To me it seems ridiculous to think that if a man wants to rape women, he'll go shopping for dresses in his size, learn how to do makeup, risk being seen by his friends, all to sneak into a populated bathroom or dressing room where any attack would soon be interrupted, when there would be far easier ways of finding victims, but so long as self-ID opens the door to this as a theoretical possibility we do need to find some way of addressing this concern. But as long as TERFs close women space to trans women, they'll never get the chance to get to know trans women as people, which compounds the problem.

Curious @105, but you didn't get "rudeness and disrespect" for saying you felt sad about something you had misinterpreted. I don't have time to re-read everything, so I'm happy to stand corrected if you can point me to a comment that was rude or disrespectful as opposed to simply opining that you weren't seeing things from the correct perspective. Bear in mind that your perspective came across as insulting to people who are far below you on the privilege scale. I didn't see any reaction that was disproportionate, other than your own getting defensive about the objections. (And of course, once someone has reacted badly to an "I think you're wrong," any reactions to -that- are far more likely to be in kind, and a several-posts-subsequent apology won't change the initial reaction.)

Occasional @108, thank you for joining and for your contributions. I didn't read Nocute's post as saying that -she- is concerned about men infiltrating women's spaces by posing as trans women, rather an answer to my question about why -some women- are so threatened by trans women while cis men don't seem to be.

EmmaLiz @114, thanks again for your as-always thoughtful contributions and enjoy your holiday (if it is that!). CMD @111 et al, thank you for your words of wisdom and experience as well. I think one issue that interferes with both trans women and trans men passing is height -- a tall trans woman sticks out, as does a short trans man. But a tall person is more physically imposing than a short one. A 5'5" cis woman won't notice a passing trans woman, but will notice a non-passing one because she towers over her, making her feel uneasy (her own history may come into play here as well). A 5'2" trans man does not frighten a six-foot cis man at all.

Curious @115, no, it isn't a trend, which is why we non-TERFs reject that argument as ridiculous. Which they find condescending, and therefore no progress is made.

@118, sorry, I got Nocute and EmmaLiz mixed up again, both of them have made such excellent contributions to this discussion.

But the abolition of gender, should it occur, will not be universally liberating. Now, there's certainly a discussion to be had around the concept that the gay identity is a small price to pay for the liberation of women and OS men. Naturally, I'd rather some other way be found, but I imagine most people would agree with the idea, and the discussion would be on uncontested terms. And it is certainly not that any of us are unused to challenges.

Mizz Liz, enjoy your travels; may you meet Debby Harry somewhere. Ms Cute and Ms Fan, if you two will be taking up the argument, do you really expect me cheerfully to knock down my brick house, of my own volition proclaim that it was wrong to build it and then go freely to live with the wolf? I don't think either of you two actively want to sacrifice me if it can be helped; perhaps there is some better path.

And I still see it as circular. Doing away with gay will only revive the need to re-establish the identity - rather like Laura Murdoch Stockbridge Radcliffe Collins (the phoenix of Dark Shadows, who set the table for the introduction of Barnabas the vampire). We will be reborn, one way or another; I just hope it doesn't have to mean starting over from nothing, as that will be a great waste.

EmmaLiz at 113, 114: I would not deny that there could be real safety concerns for some cases, but your worries here seem to be driven by hypothetical worst case scenarios and at-most-tentative-data you yourself do not seem to have a great deal of confidence in. But you are going away, in any case, so this is probably for another time. Safe journeys.

Vennominon @120, could you say a bit more about what aspects of gender it is you feel would need to be left in place for you to feel safe, and why?

@118 BiDanFan
Referring back to my @65:

I did begin by noting that the comment that offended me was being typed while I was typing another; so the simultaneity (instead of interactivity) of the communications inflamed things. Then in @65 I quoted:

"What I find troubling is your need to express your “endorsement”"

As I wrote @65, I don't know what that meant (I hadn't said 'endorse' about anything), but it sounds like my support was being maligned. (Which as I said later and you said back to me here, my privilege invited. But it's not inconsistent for me to both feel insulted and understand why; as I often point out feelings don't live in logic.)

Next, as for both CMD's and your parallels, while as I've said I understand that I deserved to be asked them because I hadn't figured out where I was coming from, but as I wrote @105 when I did figure it out then I thought good behavior would be to acknowledge it. Now, thinking about it again however, I understand why y'all shouldn't feel forced to waste time following my process.

Then in @65 I quoted

""I don’t know nor care about your own preferences.""

In the heat of that discussion I felt it was gratuitous to feel the need to state a lack of "care about" my circumstances. Though thinking about it again, perhaps that was just a brusque phrasing to let me know I needn't get into them since they would be irrelevant to the discussion.

I don't recall having interacted substantively with CMD before, or noticing such communication process before. All I'm really taking from it now after the initial understandable and deserved friction, is that CMD didn't (as I addressed @105) go so far as to do me the courtesy of acknowledging it when I figured out what I initially failed to express I was feeling. (But again, that that's asking CMD to waste time I shouldn't have felt I deserved.)

In any case that's OK, as CMD said @102 "we are in an anonymous online forum". I value camaraderie, and I think I've seen CMD valuing camaraderie here with others, so I'm simply getting that it appears that there are limits to how much CMD values camaraderie with me. And that's Ok, it's just "an anonymous online forum", and one on which I'm not a very endearing figure.

@117 CMDwannabe
Oh thank goodness I was hoping I was just failing to read that with a tone of sarcasm. I don't follow the news as carefully as I used to, and I was afraid that reality had somehow conspired to make manifest the fevered imaginations of haters.

I never put anything past reality. As Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."

@111 CMDwannabe
"The self-disgust one may feel if indeed attracted to them, the desperate need to prove that they are not. Unsurprisingly some of the murderers are closet cases or found themselves attracted to a transwoman."

This seems to me the strongest analysis. The more loudly trans bigotry is expressed let alone violently acted out, the more likely that this is why the volume is turned up on their hate.

YBM-
Those who “support trans rights up to a point,” are not providing much support if any at all when their stand is summed up by, "I do not perceive you as the gender you claim to be, and resent being obliged to say/act as if I do."
You keep contradicting yourself and combined with your choice of words- “absurd and delusional” “expecting (demanding?)”- I wonder if you only use this forum to advance your hostile agenda.

@126, don't commit the error of attributing the views I'm describing, held by third parties, to me. We're talking about why people are hostile to trans folks, and why transwomen and transmen are treated differently. I'm giving you reasons I've heard more or less verbatim from people who might think of themselves as supportive but whose support is, frankly, lukewarm ("I'm comfortable with X, but not Y") or conditional ("I'm OK with them if they pass") or partial ("Trans guys are cool, but transwomen are way too much drama").

If you want to attribute everything to things like cishet anxiety about "giving up their male privilege”, that's your prerogative. But it's a bit like listening to some 1960s Maoist who insists that the answer to every problem is the emancipation of the proletariat. Circle-jerk conversations about how things aren't perfect because other people are irredeemably shitty don't get us anywhere.

I acknowledged appearance and presented additional reasons which you keep "not buying" while further twisting them. Who's taking it personally?

@128: My only real problem with your post #111 is that I don't think that "giving up their male privilege" is a useful descriptor. It couches things in a type of language I don't find helpful, and I don't think it accurately reflects what goes on in the minds of men who physically attack trans people. Nor does it explain something like the unique situation in Iran, which has been discussed on this site before.

I also think emphasizing the relatively narrow case of violence and murder committed by men, as you did in your post #111, doesn't do much about addressing trans-hostility from people who aren't violent, murderous, and/or male, which is where this discussion had been focused. That's what I mean about the circlejerk -- you're emphasizing a rhetorically "safe" target (violent men) rather than dealing with the problem that a whole lot of other people, including people who fit into any number of non-privileged categories, still aren't well-disposed towards trans people.

My only point is that hostility to trans people is complex, and I'm resistant to anyone who wants to ascribe it to any one thing. And that includes "transphobia" (a term I've never liked), because I think a significant part of that hostility isn't even trans-specific, but reflects a commonly-held antipathy toward certain kinds of physical difference -- and a corresponding willingness to be far more tolerant to trans people who "pass".

BTW some folks would be well-served by Googling stories about Jessica Yanif. Some people claim she's a right-wing troll acting in bad faith; others see her as an exception so rare that mentioning her existence is, in itself, proof of sinister, anti-trans motives. Regardless, she exists and has forced the Canadian courts to untangle some issues that intersect with these topics (e.g. "girldicks").

Correction: that's Yaniv, not Yanif.

@111 CMDwannabe
I'm just curious, what kind of psychological mechanism is behind bigots' hostility towards a fellow man who “willingly gave up their male privilege”?

It easy to see why a privileged group might have selfish motivations in defending against others seeking to /join/ the group. (In that for each who joins, it might threaten them that there's one less person they don't have more privilege than.)

But as for the inverse (and I'm just guessing here, I've never heard this explained): Is it something like that the very fact of someone giving it up models not valuing it? Which in turn highlights the illegitimacy of the privilege thus hopefully undermining it?

That makes sense to me, it's just not as elementary an effect. I can imagine bigots' subsoncsiousnesses are doing that.

YBM- thanks for clarifying. Your posts came across to me like they are also representing your ideas, and I’m relieved to know they are not.

I have discussed appearance in the past and voiced my agreement that yes, transmen often have it easier in this regard. I still think appearance is only part of it and I do find similarities in hostility to gay men, many of them “pass” as ordinary men, and transwomen.
Our society values “strength” whatever that means. There’s a reason strong woman are often described as “wearing the pants” and “she has balls.” For some, trans men may “arise” to such level.
On the other hand gay teens and “feminine” (whatever that means) boys are teased for “being like a girl” because for “a man” to be “a girl” is still a downgrade, an easy target for ridiculing and beyond, and usually by fellow men who believe they deserve it.

M?? Delurker - (Please forgive my earlier typo; I use M? when I don't know how to address someone and the double question mark for commenters such as M?? Harriet; I hope you don't mind the second)

It may be little more than just the retention of such an identity, however expanded the definition of the M gender may become. Is there any accurate definition of gay (specifically referring to the G, not the word as a general term) possible to make without the concept of male? I haven't found one.

My example comes from bookstores. I remember when a national chain first gave same-sexers our own shelf. It was Waldenbooks (at least in my area). This soon spread and expanded to other chains. At its peak, Borders had about three cases total of L and G fiction (averaging about a 2:3 ratio) and large non-fiction sections, definitely including bisexual and perhaps trans as well.

Jump ahead to about the time Borders closed and then Barnes & Noble (which in my area is the only chain remaining) decided that we'd become so accepted that we didn't need our own section anymore. Our books were assimilated into the general population. The intentions were presumably good. But it meant that one had practically no chance of walking into the store cold and being able to find a new same-sexer novel.

Vennominon, I’m fine with either M? or M??

I’m a bit late to this reply as I had thought the thread was done with, but (still a bit muddled and somewhat simplified):

I suppose I am a little baffled at the idea that if we allow for genders (biology-based or otherwise) to be blurry at the edges, the whole categorization by gender will collapse in the next instance. A lot of categories seem to hold up perfectly well with fuzzy borders.

And in the context of gender and sexuality, the idea that if we allow any exceptions, the whole thing collapses is one I’m mainly used to seeing from people arguing for compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory cisgendering. Their sense of panic always confuses me on this point, since it seems to me cis and het have numbers on their side without such enforcement: most people just do tend to be straight(ish) and cis(ish), and will not change from that just because other options might exist.

As someone who leans enby, I’m also constantly aware of how marginal we are, even within trans settings, so the idea that we are about to undermine the whole gender system simply by existing is also baffling to me: we do not have the numbers or the traction for anything of the kind. (That also goes for people who might count as gender-abolitionists on other grounds, many of whom are hostile to trans and enby people, like some groups of radical feminists)

As far as the bookshop framing goes, I very much get the appeal of having somewhere that is “meant for” people like oneself, but I do also worry that being marked in this way can make one more exposed (aha, you go to that section of the store, you are one of Those People), which can still be genuinely unsafe. And I’m also worried about what welcome I can expect from others in the LGBT+ group, once I get there, especially when some of them seem to view my subset as a threat, e.g. because they think my rights and theirs cannot coexist.

M?? Delurker - To be clear, my concern is with the gender abolitionists, who, much in the way that Christians insist that religious freedom means their getting to impose their standards on the world, are not arguing for the establishment of gender-fluid or non-binary spaces (both of which I'm quite content to support) but to take away everybody else's gender, which differs vastly from expansion or blurring the edges.

I could wish you hadn't considered that to be one group (my theory being that we might make good neighbours but are horrible housemates), but do think rights can coexist even if spaces cannot automatically be double-centric.

Vennominon, I’m sorry too if we’ve just been talking past each other, or into someone else’s divide-and-rule agenda. The closest I personally think I come to gender abolitionism is a tendency to get wistful about the idea of gendering not being compulsory (while still allowing it for those who want it).

And I’m still fairly sure radical gender abolition is a small enough minority cause that it’s not worth any major worry.

As far as neighbours versus housemates goes, given that trans and gender non-conforming people can be gay, bi, pan and straight too, I’m not sure how neatly the housing borders will align, but my basic approach would always be to look for alignment over hostility where possible.

M?? Delurker - I certainly think we can co-exist peacefully enough. It will be interesting to see what develops. My guess is that non-binary, agender or other-gendered people will fit better in the end with the Wainthropps, but that's just a guess for now.