unfortunately i have to see discourse on my dash every day that makes me think some of y'all are really only posturing about the whole being a gender weirdo freak thing
"can you treat a trans woman as an equal if she has visible facial hair, or a trans man who has visible breasts?" is a good starting point but let me ask you some more questions.
could you have a normal conversation with a 50 year old transsexual who still considers himself a mother to his son? can you be in community with retransitioners and genderqueer people with non-normative transition trajectories? can you have a nice chat with someone who was afab and calls themself transfemme, or with someone who was amab and calls themself transmasc?
and even more! do you welcome the guy in a dress who calls himself a transvestite and has been doing drag every saturday for the past 10 years to your pride parade? are you willing to hear out the young woman who had bottom surgery at 18 and now kinda wishes she didn't? do you actually respect the people who decide not to go on hrt or to get surgery due to their family's medical history?
they may be hypothetical to you, but those are the people i have met and hang out with every day.
and you might answer yes to all of these, obviously, but could you actually say that when actually meeting them? because i've seen for myself that, no, the hypothetical and reality don't always align.
idk what traumatized or mentally ill person needs to hear this but dreams (especially the really disturbing ones you dont want to talk about to anybody) arent some deep peek into your psyche or a sign of your True Desires or whatever theyre quite literally your brain making fruit salad with whatever it can find on the shelf. just putting all that shit in a blender and hitting obliterate. its fine, youre fine, youre not a weirdo for it