Since prehistoric times, people have been modifying their bodies. Ancient cultures flattened infants’ skulls and developed tattooing; Chinese women were long forced to have their feet pressed to make them tiny; Renaissance sailors were famous for replacing severed limbs with hooks for hands and peg legs. But the twentieth century has been the golden age of body modification: organ transplants, surgery to correct cleft palates, hip replacements, dental implants, hair transplants, laser surgery to improve vision, and of course plastic surgery to entirely change one’s appearance … the list goes on and on. In sum, there is probably not a single adult in America who has not undergone some sort of minor or major body modification.

And so, today, more and more people are employing drugs and surgery to change their sex, so a man can choose to become a woman and a woman can choose to become a man. This is, purely and simply, just another form of body modification.

So why on Earth are some people so outraged about transgender people? Why are they uniquely subjected to discrimination, brutal treatment, and abusive laws?

It must first be noted that there are numerous people today who accept and are supportive of transgender people. As my friend Mark R. Kelly commented, one group that welcomes them is the science fiction community, and I can find no better illustration of that in this quotation from Frederik Pohl’s classic tale of the far future, “Day Million” (1966):

If we find a child with an aptitude for music we give him a scholarship to Julliard. If they found a child whose aptitudes were for being a woman, they made him one. As sex had long ago been dissociated from reproduction this was relatively easy to do and caused no trouble and no, or at least very little, comment.

            How much is “very little”? Oh, about a much as would be caused by our own tampering with Divine Will by filling a tooth. Less than would be caused by wearing a hearing aid.

So, why is there so much hostility toward people who choose to change their gender? There are four reasons, only one of which survives even basic scrutiny.

There is first the biblical argument: God intended certain people to be men, and certain people to be women, and any change in one’s gender is in violation of God’s will. But this argument falls apart by citing the logical consequences of this position: hey, since God intended my child to have a cleft palate, he shouldn’t undergo surgery to remove it; since God intended me to have rotten teeth, I shouldn’t get dentures or implants; and since God intended me to have lousy vision, I shouldn’t have laser surgery to improve my vision. By this logic of this argument, virtually everyone in America is shamelessly disregarding the infinite wisdom of God.

Moving on the more practical issues, the only concern that seems reasonable to me is transgender women competing in high school and college sports. For it is biologically true that men generally are stronger than women, and despite drugs and surgery, a transgender woman retains an essentially male body and hence might have an unfair advantage over women who were born female. This is a genuine issue that arguably should be addressed, because these competitions are very important to athletes and coaches. But I also think that the people complaining about this have no real interest in women’s sports. So, the next time a Republican legislator bloviates about his concern for protecting the integrity of women’s sports, I hope somebody asks him, “So which school won last year’s state competition in women’s track?” He won’t know; he doesn’t give a damn about women’s sports; he’s just searching for a wedge issue to appeal to voters.

The other concern – about transgender women using women’s bathrooms – is bluntly absurd. For one thing, I don’t know of a single case of a transgender woman assaulting another woman in a women’s bathroom; there is absolutely no reason for any woman to be worried because the stall next to her is occupied by a transgender woman. And anyone who imagines that a young man would change his gender solely for the opportunity to look at naked women in the women’s locker room simply doesn’t understand young men. Second, unisex bathrooms have become relatively common in colleges dormitories, where young men and women freely intermingle and do their business without any incidents. And I have actually experienced a unisex bathroom, located on the main floor of the Cal State Fullerton library. Here is its setup: you first enter a large area with sinks and mirrors for people of both sexes to wash their hands; then, behind that, there is a second area with stalls that are entirely enclosed from top to bottom, with no possibility of anyone peeking over or into them. Again, everyone has accepted this, so I don’t understand why some women are so upset about having transgender women in their bathrooms. (Indeed, I think that unisex bathrooms like one I entered are the ultimate solution to this and other problems, like the obvious inequity of men’s and women’s bathrooms of equal size.)

But the real reason for opposition to transgender people is simple: it is part of the fascist playbook.

First, you identify some minority group that you think you can safely attack without arousing much opposition as a way to build support for your cause. You vilify them and blame them for problems they aren’t responsible for. You pass laws and implement policies to brutally oppress them. And then, with armed enforcers and other mechanisms in place to oppress one group, you can deploy them against other groups that you don’t like.

Donald Trump and like-minded Republicans have long wanted some minority group to hate. For a long while, undocumented immigrants have been the main target of choice, but the argument that they were all gang members, murderers, and rapists rapidly fell apart as reports came in of ICE agents arresting grandmothers, nuns, and five-year-old children. They have tried Muslims, but the overwhelming majority of Americans have now realized that almost all of them are upstanding citizens, not terrorists. And there have been recent complaints about Indian Americans, whose sin seems to be that they are succeeding in fair competitions due to their merits. Transgender people are just another target. Republicans know that they cannot campaign on how well the economy is doing, because it isn’t, or how well the government is functioning, when its incompetence and corruption are evident, or how wonderful Trump’s foreign policy has been, because it’s been a disaster; so, they have a brilliant idea: “I know! I’ll promise to enact a law requiring a mandatory death sentence for any transgender woman who enters a women’s bathroom. That’ll distract the voters and ignite the base.”

And since there are no factual reasons to oppose transgender people, they tell fairy tales – like Trump’s repeated claim that schools are seizing children and changing their gender without their parents’ knowledge, or the whole notion that gender-affirming surgery is “mutilation.” Sure it is – again, just like surgery to correct poor vision or a hip replacement.

Amidst all of this postering, all of this repression, there remain reasons for optimism; for I do not believe that the American people are addicted to hate like our current leaders, and I do not believe that they will indefinitely support politicians whose platforms are based on hate. Sure, someone might be a bit discomfited when the man across the street becomes a woman, but they don’t want her to be denied the opportunity to get a job and support herself, and they don’t want her to be beaten up by thugs. The fact that the rhetoric and actions of the current administration would encourage people to do exactly that is repugnant, and it will eventually be recognized and rejected as repugnant. For in the end, as history shows, fascists never succeed, and love triumphs over hate.