Yesterday John Scalzi did a post explaining his attitude to trans people. It is, as I have come to expect from John, very positive and trans-friendly. I’ve already thanked him there and on Twitter, but I wanted to do so here as well.

What surprised me, however, is how interesting the comment thread has become. Normally I don’t read comments on trans-themed posts elsewhere, especially in high traffic sites, as they tend to be full of hate speech and trolling. But I figured that John might need support, if only against well-meaning-but-clueless cis women accusing him of supporting trans people in the wrong way. So I read the comments, and found them mostly very supportive. Quite a few people took the opportunity to air their unease with their own instinctual reaction to trans people, and that’s very useful from the point of view of understanding why transphobia exists, and what can be done about it.

So thank you again, John, it has been a very interesting and useful exercise.