Everyone should learn to exercise tolerance in the necessary debate over which words to use, and when
Perhaps this is only true of the middle-aged but the social hiatus caused by the pandemic, coupled with the acceleration of discord in a few key arenas, means that you can meet a friend with whom you’ve agreed all your life and find yourself on opposite sides of the “trans debate”. I put that in inverted commas because the phrase is both euphemistic and insulting, dressing up as an open question what is actually more existential.
One side of the debate doesn’t think trans people are real; they might feel what they feel, but the rest of us don’t have to join them in that reality. If someone tried to engage me in an animal rights debate in which I was first required to prove that animals existed, I’d ask them to come back later.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
