An often blinded cis and hetero majority, has not yet afforded social and political equality for trans people in good faith cooperation with them. Minorities are historically subjected to oppression by a bigoted majority.
Why don’t we yet have a widely and immensely popularized globally celebrated and recognized International Trans Day (also acknowledging that trans men legitimately celebrate international men’s day, and trans women legitimately celebrate international women’s day, in matching their gendered identity)? Binary folk forget, or deliberately obstruct, instigation of full social and political equality, to the detriment of the entire social and political landscape and order. An injustice for one is an injustice for all:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Martin Luther King)
Re trans identity, if they choose to occupy the gender identity position of ‘man’ or ‘woman’, this should absolutely trump assignment of ‘sex’ (a social construct) at birth. This assignment, which is a changeable social process, can be and must be able to be usurped in individual gender identity election by the individual himself/herself. Trans people know their bodies the most intimately themselves, and must not have an external identity paternally imposed upon them by others.
Trans people often face discrimination in the employment marketplace, and face exclusion in myriad social spaces including over-representation in incarceration and inhumane segregation, isolation and even solitary confinement in prisons (which is an internationally recognized form of torture for a period of 15 days or longer by the U.N.).
There is also a chronic social and political misrepresentation, and even demonization, of trans non-binary, which is based on faulty ‘fact’-finding and/or downright slander and scapegoating. My cis and hetero consciousness was broadened recently, which has made the realisation incumbent of me to more actively support the trans liberation movement, along with the LGBT+ movement.
I would recommend watching a film, on trans women, which made such an impact on my social consciousness, broadening it significantly, “Cruel and Unusual”:
The vast majority of trans women are not a threat to cis-gender women, in prisons for example. Perhaps they could have their own showering facilities, but isolation and solitary confinement is downright socially exclusionary and oppressive. The consumption of hormones is also a human right, and not to be seen as a mere inconvenience to the cis-gender majority. Trans people actively immensely enrich society through gender diversity. This is the correct social position to adopt and to aid in our gendered praxis.
Sober and particularly adult choice to embody, enact upon, adopt, act on and/or proclaim a transgender identity must be respected, and conceived of and practiced as an inalienable human right!
Henry Willoughby's Social Justice Blog 