OK, let's start from the beginning. I understood some of the criticism that some people had about having LauraK on the podcast. She makes content which has little interest to me, and her humour is slightly too crass for me. Great, I could solve that in two easy ways: not watching her streams/youtube channels and/or not watching this week's co-optional (I'm sure that there's going to be another one next week). Those aforementioned pieces are, in my opinion, fair pieces of criticism. That being said, I thought that LauraK was a fantastic guest this week. She was on point, direct, and more likely to drag the podcast back on the rails than any of the regulars. Again, that opinion is subject to criticism, and I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling that. It's alright to feel that a guest was a bad guest because of their daily content and/or participation on the podcast. That's what you should look at.

Now onto the more uncomfortable stuff.

I won't even get onto how transgender people should be treated. (here's a hint: as people). I'm not even going to talk about every day acceptance about the, I'm just going to attempt to appeal to basic human decency (well, that might be a mistake in this case).

I'm sure that this argument has holes in it, I'm sure someone will find them, but let's at least attempt to start at rock bottom. Think of yourself, and what you dislike about your body. I myself am overweight, and annoyed about my receding hairline. One thing, I can do something about, another thing where I'll be the first male in my family since the 1850's to become bald before I'm 60, and there's little I can do about it. That sucks, but oh well, shit happens, I'm pretty sure that I'll survive that.

Then let's go on to more intimate details. Many men dislike the size, shape or curvature of their penis, but that's secret to most people. I often hear about women who are uncomfortable about how their vagina looks, but that's a secret. Many women aren't happy about how their breasts look, whether it being size, shape or form. And even worse, that's semi-public. But some of those are fixable, or hideable.

Trans people are born with so many things about their body that they are uncomfortable with, that it seems unreal. We're not talking penis size or boob shape here, we're talking about the mere existence of them. And either everyone gets to know it, or they get to be uncomfortable about it. And often both. Or perhaps you manage to make a transition, and that becomes news, or you have to find an entirely new social circle. This isn't like a boob job, this is something that everyone will know about, especially the government. And that's even BEFORE we start to look into legal, ethical or medical opinions on this matter.

My simple point is, that trans people have it hard enough, and no matter how or why you feel about it, there's no reason in hell to pile on in any way.

I'm sorry if I offended any trans people with this post, but I at least tried to find a minimum entrance point to an understanding of their toils.