I admit I struggle with this. My son is trans and we've always supported him. The one part that's hard is when I'm talking to friends about things when he was little. It just feels so strange to say "One time he was playing with his Barbies, and..." or whatever. And, when I'm talking about something and picturing him as I say it, it's so easy to use the wrong pronoun, even when the story has no gender norms in it.

Thanks good answer. I'll do this from now on.

can call him either name or whichever pronouns because I knew him before. Haven’t slipped yet! I thought I’d find it more difficult to even think of him as a boy. But it’s really not. I find gender to be mostly a social construct anyway, and I default to compassion.

I grew up Christian and right wing, and did a lot of soul searching. Having realised gender is entirely a social construct, I realised I don't have a problem with transgender people. Why does anyone care if a people outside a category takes arbitrary traits from the other category, or even the whole category?

The Christian viewpoint only makes sense if you believe that gender is a social construct that comes from God, not something invented. Well, it's invented. Just like every concept, including our language. Including God.

And I absolutely agree with you about defaulting to compassion. Let people do what they want! Life is already hard enough.