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Notes -
The sexual assault of an underage girl isn't easy for me to ignore.
You offer a hypothetical counter explanation but I don't think it's good enough when the original poster was bringing in real data. Furthermore, you're up against the fact that domestic partner violence in non-trans relationships is the most common road to murder aside from heterosexual young males who kill each other for money and prestige. It's one of those crazy truths of the world; the person most likely to kill you is probably the last person you kissed (or had sex with). So, you'd have to somehow show that Trans romantic partner violence is somehow a total departure from the history of non-trans romantic partner violence.
There are like three layers of baked in assumptions here. First, the term "transphobia" is especially loaded because earnest and good faith trans skepticism is often lumped into it. Second, the "If" at the beginning isn't really an honest hypothesis style "if", it's a covert assumption of your assertion (i.e. that "transphobia" will become more widespread and accepted). Finally the "it seems obvious" line completes the "mean words turn into lethal actions" fallacious argument. Here's an example you can use: how many Americans, in 1950, had a sincerely held belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? How many hold that same view now? How many are avowed atheists or similar? Has this widespread and accepted belief obviously led to more violence and discrimination against Christians? Now, to be fair and to possibly undermine my own point, there's good evidence that semi-legal and social discrimination against Christians probably has gone up. Still, however, people aren't getting beaten in mobs (in the USA) for wearing a cross around their neck.
I think this is common to several mental health ... situations ... where a person's fundamental concept of their own identity doesn't match reality. I'll hang my hat on this analogy; if I go to the doctor and say I'm always sad, even after something good happens to me, he or she will likely say "hey, your subjective experience doesn't quite mesh with reality. We should take a look at that." This is a generalized structure of how a lot of people begin to deal with depression. When a trans person says "my subjective experience / identity doesn't quite mesh with my anatomy" why should the start of that not be something similar to the depression example? Why is the default, as far as I'm aware, to simply assume the subjective trans feeling is the correct starting point and to move towards 'transitioning' to some extent?
While I don't think trans "isn't a thing" as the kids say, I think it's even more of a hyper-minority than it always is. For one, I'd wager something like 50% of MtF's are just gay men who couldn't figure themselves out. Another sizable portion are autistic people who think that Trans-ing will help them "feel normal" when, very sadly, that may simply not be in the cards for them.
If we could have good faith discussions about these ideas, I think that the Trans "issue", such as it is, would absolutely quickly disappear from the culture war. But, instead, you have organizations like WPATH that seem to be actively trying to suppress the truth and instead advance an agenda, as well as various publishers and media outlets that seem to have a strong interest in other people's kids.
Like @Amadan's post below says, most face-to-face encounters with non-activist Trans people aren't fundamentally difficult or fraught to extreme levels. On the surface. But once there's a crossing of that line into the issue territory, they force the various declarations of purity and allegiance. That's not something a person who "just wants to live their life" does. That is the behavior of a person who believes their view of your life is unimpeachable.
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