One discouraging word and you’re a transphobe

This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted in recent years with reasonable, moderate people when expressing what should be reasonable, moderate views, during which my companions exhibit signs of drastic anxiety: fidgeting, darting pupils, twisting hands. The mumbling under the breath can border on unintelligible. If we’re in public, they will look wildly around to see who might be listening. Even in private, friends and colleagues emphasise that they’re speaking off the record. These must have been the kind of uneasy, secretive exchanges whispered between folks not wholly on board with National Socialism in 1930s Berlin.

But in 2018, what gets discussed in hushed tones? Transgenderism.

Something happened circa 2011 to 2012. It may not be a coincidence that this was also the point at which homosexuality became so broadly accepted in the West that the majority of people (even in the US) supported gay marriage.