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The trans debate suffers from the very common problem of "the most loud, obnoxious, and obvious members of a group come to represent the group in the broader population's minds".
Other examples of this phenomenon:
People thinking that vegans in general are obnoxious and morally self-righteous because those are the only vegans they notice. They might pass plenty of vegans in the street and just assume that those people are meat-eaters, since eating meat is the default. But obnoxious vegans draw attention to themselves, hence come to represent vegans in general in the public mind.
People thinking that individuals who are concerned about climate change are all annoying lefty activists who want to destroy capitalism.
People thinking that the majority of black Americans are inner city gangbangers.
Etc.
I think there are plenty of trans people who are chill, but on both the left and the right people are motivated to elevate the obnoxious, deranged activist subset of trans people. On the left, there is a purity spiral - "Do you even support trans people at all if you criticize these trans activists for being obnoxious and insane??? How dare you??? Are you even a leftist?". On the right, there is the obvious motive to focus on the most annoying trans activists and act as if those people represent trans people in general, since that helps the right overall get a culture war win.
Personally, I have never had any issue with trans people. I just find many of the more vocal trans activists to be repulsive. Not because they are trans, but because they are shrill and irrational fanatics.
On a side note, one thing I find interesting when other men say that they find male homosexuality disgusting is that I do not experience this, to the point that it's hard for me to even understand having such a reaction. The idea of having sex with a man repulses me somewhat, but there is no moral dimension to this feeling, for me it's just a subset of "the idea of having sex with someone I am not attracted to repulses me". When I see two men kissing it does not bother me in the least bit. I do wonder why some men grow up finding male homosexuality to be a fundamentally disgusting thing and others simply don't.
One thing I've learned over time is that it's true, "love is love". To me, a loving homosexual relationship is much more beautiful than a bitter, hate-filled heterosexual one.
One thing I want to mention about your quote:
I think this is the classic "Madonna-whore complex". Or, more broadly, this kind of attitude is a limiting and in my view incorrect view of love and sexuality that separates it into, on the one hand, "pure beautiful love" and, on the other hand, "dirty sex". This is a very damaging way to exist, psychologically. It's damaging not just to oneself, but also to one's sexual partners. I say this as someone who used to have this kind of psychology when younger, but have since largely overcome it. I'm someone who is into some pretty kinky, rough, BDSM sex and I can say from experience that nothing about that kind of sex is incompatible with love and tenderness. Fulfilling each others' sexual appetites, no matter how raunchy and wild those might be, is one of the most loving things that two people can do for each other.
I'd like to bring up the opposite problem, too;
Vegans claim to never meet pushy, irritating vegans, and like to assert that those people simply don't exist. But the reason they don't meet them is because the irritating vegans simply have no reason to be preachy and irritating to someone who is already a vegan, creating a massive blind spot where they refuse to believe that the type of vegan who annoys meat eaters at every opportunity is not just made up because those people, who might even be standing right next to them at the salad bar, just never display those behaviours towards them.
Wow, what a great point. And this applies to so many other groups, not just vegans. Thank you so much for this, I’m stealing this.
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Yet I'm sure you can name groups for which this doesn't happen much. This isn't something that automatically happens with every group; some groups have more extremists and less control over extremists, than other groups.
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