[parafactual]

Deeply understanding viewpoints that pose a direct threat to you takes a lot of effort. It takes time and mental resources. I don't think it is fair to expect that of everyone; activists, sure, but most people just want to live and feel safe. That is hard as is, especially for trans people.

[cwkoss]

Yeah, I would estimate <1% of people try to deeply understand the nuances of any issue.

It would be great if we had a reliable way to identify that 1% and sort articles/comment/reach by this metric, but it's a hard problem.

For as many people that deeply understand a topic, there are many more that are parroting or making up rationalization for the beliefs they think they are expected to have. These sorts of arguments aren't really arguments, they are just a self-soothing method of tribal identification.

I think there is a pitfall with trying to "understand the other side" because there are an infinite number of possible opinions and not all have merit. It is useful to a point, but when taken to the extreme you just waste a bunch of time reading garbage.

[prof-dr-ir]

But this would only disagree with my comment if you further say that trans people should nevertheless be allowed to call something or someone trans-exclusionary without having understood their position. Is that your point?

If it is then I would still disagree: if it is too emotionally taxing to try to understand an opponent's position then I think that one can just refrain from calling them out in public.

In fact, how do you know a viewpoint really poses a threat in the first place? For example, which of your rights does it propose to infringe? If you can answer that then you probably already understand the viewpoint enough to counter it...