Sall Grover makes an important point in a short essay on the “middle ground” trans woman.

There is only one actual middle ground in this madness, and it’s this: in a free society, anyone can think whatever they want about themselves. But, and this is the really important part, they cannot make anyone else participate in their own thoughts about themselves. This means no legislation compelling anyone else to participate in gender ideology, no men in women’s spaces, nothing.

And why is that? Why can’t they make anyone else participate in their own thoughts about themselves? Well first of all because they have no right to make us think anything, but besides that?

Because they are biased in their own favor, and we’re not. We’re biased in our own favor, not in theirs. That’s how this works. We all favor ourselves. That’s how we’re built. That means, along with a lot of other things, that we’re not as interested in them as we are in ourselves, and that we’re much less likely to see them through a rosy glow than we are to see ourselves that way.

Normally everybody knows that. Part of growing up is learning to keep that in mind, and try to correct for it, but there are limits. We can’t correct for it so drastically that we see our own perceptions as wacko and trans women’s as obvious truth.

Guys. We don’t see you the way you see yourselves. We don’t. We can’t. You have no right to demand that we do and can. Our perceptions belong to us, not you.