I want you to do something for me.

Imagine you were born with only one arm.

Doesn’t matter which one, left or right; for simplicity’s sake, imagine you have your dominant arm, whichever hand you write with. That one is still there, exactly as it is right now, and has always been there. But the other one — in my case, my left arm — was never there. You didn’t lose it in an accident, or to cancer or anything like that; you were just born without it. No stump, just a perfectly smooth shoulder.

Imagine that for a second.

Now, if you were born that way, with only one arm, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Really: there are some things that would be difficult to do, because they require two hands working simultaneously; it would be a bit harder to drive, for instance (though you certainly could do it), and there are a lot of musical instruments you just couldn’t play, like guitar and piano (But if Rick Allen of Def Leppard is any example, you can play drums with one arm all the way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame); and sports would be challenging, especially baseball and basketball and hockey. You could play football, if that were your preference, though not all the positions; and soccer, of course, it wouldn’t even be a disadvantage, really. Other than that? You couldn’t play pattycake, and jumprope would be tough (unless you jumped double-dutch), but you could play tag, or hide-and-seek; and you could play with dolls and Legos. Some video games would be impossible or close to it: but you could play Wii, and handle most driving games; and of course with any strategy or puzzle based games, your one-armedness would mean nothing at all. Most parts of life, in fact, having one arm would mean nothing at all: you could still read and write and do math and science, you could use a computer or a smartphone, you could ride a bike, you could dance in the rain. You could date and fall in love (There might be some people who would reject you for only having one arm, but come on, how ridiculous and messed up is that?), you could marry and have children. You could be a lawyer, a doctor, a car salesperson, a carpenter, a sculptor, a farmer, an engineer, a rocket scientist, a dogwalker. You could live a full and healthy and rich life.

It would be difficult to find clothes that fit you well. People would probably stare. Little kids would make jokes, and tease you. For a lot of people, it would be the first thing they would ask you: it would be a thing that defined your identity, even though to you, it would mean next to nothing. You never had the arm. You don’t miss it. You may sometimes wish you had two arms so you could throw a flowerpot on a pottery wheel, or shoot a longbow; but it would be more comfortable for you to sleep on that side, because you’d never have to figure out where the hell to put your arm so your hand didn’t fall asleep. Mostly, it just wouldn’t matter.

Can you picture that? Try going through your day, in your mind, with only one arm. Some things might be a little tougher — mostly it would just take more time — but really, not that big a deal.

Okay: now imagine, having lived your life with only one arm, you came home today, took a lil nap because it’s Monday and we all deserve a lil nap on Monday; and when you woke up — you had two arms.

Picture that. Not how wonderful it would be to suddenly be able to juggle three chainsaws: but how incredibly brain-meltingly shocking and horrifying it would be to suddenly have a whole other limb where one hadn’t been before. Step out of this whole thought experiment for a second and imagine how it would feel to wake up from your lil nap to find you have three arms, one new one growing out of the middle of your chest. Would you think “Hell yeah, now I can juggle FOUR chainsaws!” or would you think “AAAAAAAAHHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING GROWING OUT OF MY CHEST JESUS CHRIST GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!!!!”

I know what I would think. And so I know, for the person who had one arm their whole life, suddenly getting that second arm would be absolutely appalling. Your body would suddenly be different. Your balance would be off. All of your clothes, bought and maybe adjusted or even tailored to fit your one-armed self, would suddenly be different. Everyone who ever knew you would talk about nothing else, pretty much forever, especially if you didn’t have an easy explanation for what happened. If you have any fundamentalist Christian friends, they might decide it was a miracle, a gift of God, and they might try to make an example out of you; conversely, they might think it was the work of the Devil, and shun you, or try to exorcise the demon in your new arm.

Your whole idea of yourself would change. You wouldn’t recognize your body in the mirror. Imagine how weird it would be to keep seeing a hand, fingers moving and gesturing, in the wrong place, attached to the wrong side of your body. Everything you had ever thought, ever said, ever come to a difficult recognition of, about what it is like to be a one-armed person in a generally two-armed world — all of that would go out the window. You’d have to be — normal. But at the same time, not at all yourself. Everybody would think you were normal now, and they would probably congratulate you, and be super happy for you: but the whole time, you would, most likely, feel wrong. Just wrong. Not yourself. Not at home and not comfortable in your own body. You wouldn’t know how to sleep, because you’d have spent your whole life sleeping on the side where there was no arm, and being perfectly, totally comfortable that way: now there’s a fucking arm there, and the whole thing is different. Is wrong.

So here’s the question. If you felt that way, if you felt uncomfortable and strange and weird, all the time, would you grow to hate your new arm? You might. I might. I might not: I might adapt, might adjust; but I might not adapt, either. I might resent my new arm. I might miss being one-armed. And if there were people around me, if I had joined a group of one-armed people, say, and I had to see them sleeping comfortably with their single arms, I might really hate what had happened to me: and I might even grow to hate myself.

If that happened — and I know we’re getting pretty out there, but hold on, we’re close to the end — what if I came to a decision, and went to a doctor, and told that doctor to remove my left arm? To give me back my self-image the way I thought it should be, to make me into the person I knew I really was, no matter how I might look to others who thought I should be happy to have two arms like they do?

Would that be wrong of me to do? Would it be insane, to remove a healthy limb? Would it be butchery, for the doctor to agree?

What if I had really descended into depression and self-loathing? What if I were suicidal, because I had too many limbs, and I couldn’t stand it any more? Then would it be wrong of me to ask, and would it be wrong of the doctor to remove my unwanted body part?

I think it would not. I think it would be my choice, and I think there is nothing at all wrong with being one-armed. I think if someone chooses to be one-armed, then they have every right to make that decision, and to be that person if that’s what they want — particularly if being that person would help them to live a happy life, to have a good self-image and self-esteem, and to keep from harming themselves.

And that’s why I support trans rights.

Now: this may seem offensive. And if this were the actual analogy I were making, it would be; because there actually is a disadvantage in only having one arm, and there is literally no disadvantage, at all, in being transgender, other than how people treat transgender people. There is nothing “wrong” or “missing” in a transgender person, at all. But this is not the analogy I’m making: this is just the warm-up, just the practice round. (Okay, I’m kind of making this analogy: because there are a number of parallels. But it is an imperfect analogy. And it is not the main one I want to make.) Now it’s time to move to the actual topic of conversation here.

You see, there’s a trend I’ve seen in arguing with conservatives (And with assholes, let me point out, because I do my arguing these days on Twitter, which is now like the black hole of assholes [WON’T… MAKE… THAT… JOKE… WORSE… THAN… IT… ALREADY… IS!], pulling them all in until they have more mass than anything else in the solar system), and it has to do with the issue of transgender people getting gender-affirming health care, in two specific areas: one, young trans people getting puberty blockers and then hormone therapy during their adolescence, before they complete puberty; and two, trans people of any age getting surgery.

The trend is this: these folks, both the “compassionate” conservatives (And some of them probably are genuinely compassionate, but not a one of them tries to understand or empathize with what trans people experience, so their compassion is more performative than genuine) and the transphobic assholes, say that they don’t mind people being trans or living how they want: but they don’t agree with people changing their bodies to match their gender identity. They do what conservatives, and compassionate people, and assholes the world over have always done, which is claim to have the right to decide what other people should do, in this case because they are arguing only for young trans people: for children, they will tell you, children who are not mature enough to make decisions about themselves or their lives or their identities.

“What about a young person making decisions in collaboration with their parents, and with loving and competent medical care providers?” I ask these people, over and over again. I get either a simple refusal to accept anyone making a decision these people disagree with — or silence. It speaks volumes, either way. It shows that they are lying when they claim only to be watching out for children, only protecting those too young to protect themselves.

And at some point, I realized why.

They object to surgery, most specifically and frequently, because, they say, nobody should “cut off healthy body parts.” That’s crazy, they say. And for them, maybe it would be — though I would disagree with calling it “crazy,” because our bodies do not define us, we define our bodies: starting with tattoos and piercings and circumcision (Not that I’m getting into THAT conversation, because while I will fight all day with transphobes, intactivists scare the bejeebers out of me) and all kinds of voluntary surgery like cosmetic surgery and permanent birth control like vasectomies and tubal ligations; so honestly, if somebody decided their life would be better with only one foot, then I say mazel tov: go for it. Save all that money on shoes; now every sale is BOGO (though you’d need a friend who only had the other foot, in the same size. [Business idea: ShoeMates, for people who only need one shoe, to share with another person who only needs the other shoe. Call the Tinder people. Whole new meaning for swiping “left” or “right.”]). Make all kinds of jokes about “The shoe’s on the other foot now!” or waiting forever for the other shoe to drop. Joke — or lament — about how you will never again have to do the Hokey Pokey. But okay, let’s say that to someone who likes having two feet, removing a healthy foot would be crazy. Or to stop stigmatizing mental health, let’s just say it would be something they would never, ever do. To them, it would make no sense, and they’d never, ever do it. Just like most of us would never voluntarily choose to remove an arm, particularly not one that we’ve had our whole lives, particularly not a healthy one.

But what they are not considering is how one’s body feels if one is trans.

DISCLAIMER: I am not trans. I have never been trans, and I do not for one second think that I can speak for trans people or try to explain how they feel or how they experience the world or their bodies. I, unlike the conservatives and assholes I’ve been arguing with, would much rather leave ALL people, trans, cis, and everyone else, to make up their own damn minds about who they are and how they feel, and what their bodies should look like, with absolutely no unsolicited input from me at all, ever. But what I want to do, what I think I can do, is try to get some of the people who actually can be compassionate to understand what is wrong with this argument that I’ve been facing. This argument that it is wrong for someone to remove a “healthy” body part just because of how it makes them feel, particularly when they are young (though again, conservatives are not actually protecting young people, as can clearly be shown BECAUSE TRANS PEOPLE ARE AT PARTICULAR RISK OF SUICIDE AND SELF-HARM AND GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE IS PROVEN TO HELP WITH BOTH ISSUES AND IS THEREFORE THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT CHILDREN BUT I GUESS I FUCKING DIGRESS), and therefore, gender-affirming health care should be banned for those under 18 (or under 21, when the mask starts to slip and they reveal that it isn’t about children, it’s about control), particularly hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgery.

“Butchery.” They keep fucking calling it “butchery.” They insist on it. As if we weren’t talking about medical procedures carried out by fully trained and licensed physicians in a modern hospital with all the proper precautions and care and science around it.

It’s because they’re not trying to understand how the trans person feels, what made them decide to pursue hormone therapy or puberty blockers or surgery.

The people arguing against GAHC (Gender Affirming Health Care, and yes I hate the acronym, but it’s a pain to type out over and over and I don’t want to change the name from what it actually is because words matter and my opponents intentionally use the wrong terms) are thinking about what it would be like if they went to the doctor and removed their body parts. Their healthy body parts. Their wanted body parts.

That’s not it.

Here’s the real thought experiment. Ready?

So instead of picturing yourself with one arm, and then suddenly waking up with two, picture yourself as you are now: and then you take your lil Monday nap — and you wake up with the wrong genitalia.

If you are a woman, imagine waking up with no breasts. Not that they have been removed, which would be traumatic enough: they’re just not there. Flat chest, completely. And imagine in between your legs, you suddenly have a penis and testicles. If you are a man, imagine waking up without your penis and testicles. And you have breasts. And — forgive me for this, but it helps make the point — they’re big. That penis and testicles, those breasts, they’re HUGE. Just slapping around, there. Every time you move — and when you move, it’s awkward, because you never had them before so you do it wrong, and it hurts more than a little — they shift, they flop, they smack into something else, into your legs or arms, into your belly, into everything. They are there, and they are unavoidable.

And they are WRONG.

Joking aside: can you picture that? Can you imagine how awful it would be to wake up with the wrong body parts in the wrong places?

Now imagine you go running out and go to your loved ones, and say “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO ME!?!?”

And imagine if they acted like it was normal. And like you were strange for thinking those body parts were wrong. Maybe they would even be offended.

If I woke up with different body parts, with large lumps where before there had been no large lumps, I would immediately think it was cancer. Or like some kind of horrible infestation or infection, like the aliens had laid eggs in me. It would terrify me. It would be awful.

But to everybody else who wasn’t me, those lumps would be — healthy. Normal. Not only normal, but positive, important, defining.

Think back to when you went through puberty. When your body started changing. Did you have someone — a loved one, or maybe, like me, one of those terrible cheesy sex ed movies from the 70s — tell you that you were perfectly normal? That your body was supposed to change, that it was supposed to look like that? That you were becoming a man, or a woman?

What if you were becoming the wrong one?

Can you imagine how that would feel?

If I had woken up as a young woman, with breasts, with feminine hips (And imagine if I burst into tears, and immediately thought that I was crying like a little girl), my mother would have been ecstatic. I said before, she always wanted a daughter: it would be affirming for her if I had been her little girl. She could have taught me everything she knows about being a woman, as she understands it — and my mom knows a lot. She cooks. She knits. She sews. She is a nurse. She worked for decades with post-partum mothers and children with complications, so she can handle ANYTHING to do with babies. And my mom is a very feminine woman, in the classic stereotypical sense: she sings, she dances, she wears bright colors and pretty dresses. She would have LOVED to take me under her wing and show me how to dress and how to act with my feminine body. How to sing with my high feminine voice. How to live with my menstruation, and what it all meant for my future as a mother.

But if I was me — and in my mind I have always been male — all of that would be horrifying. Particularly because I would know that refusing to be the girl my mom wanted me to be would break her heart. But I’ll tell you right now: even apart from the horror of finding my body was not the body I wanted or expected it to be, the very thought of pregnancy and childbirth is the most horrifying thing I can imagine. It has always given me the heebie-jeebies in a way and to an extent that I can’t explain. I’m terrified of all of it.

And if I were, in my mother’s eyes, a girl, and she started talking about how lucky I was that I would get to look pretty in dresses, and eventually get married to a man (Ew) and have babies?

Aw, HELL no.

This is not how it feels to be trans. Puberty does not happen overnight, and doesn’t change a familiar, known, comfortable body into an entirely different body. But puberty does feel sudden, because you don’t notice the changes until you do: and then suddenly it feels like everything has changed. And for someone who is trans, that change might feel — wrong. And every day it continues unchecked, it gets worse: it gets wronger. But if you go to someone for comfort, for understanding, they will most likely not sympathize with your feeling: they will most likely tell you that your feelings are wrong, that your understanding of yourself is wrong, that your body is right, and you should just try to accept it. They might even get offended: and insist that the body, and the identity that they associate with it, is a good thing, a thing you should be happy about and proud of.

Picture that: you, as a man, wake up with breasts, and your loved ones say “But you’re such a pretty girl!” You, as a woman, wake up with a penis and testicles, and your loved ones say, “Come on, stop crying, BE A MAN! Show some BALLS!” But you are not a man. You do not want balls.

That’s the point. Don’t imagine GAHC as removing your body parts, healthy, wanted body parts: imagine if you had body parts you DID NOT want. Body parts that DID NOT belong on your body. They might look healthy to everyone else, but to you, they are more like tumors. More like infections, or infestations. They are wrong. They do not belong there. And worst of all, those body parts redefine you, in everyone else’s eyes, as something you are not. As something you do not want to be.

Wouldn’t you want them removed?

Wouldn’t you want to have the right body, the body you know, the body that you belong in?

What wouldn’t you do to get that body back?

That’s how we should think of GAHC. It’s not changing someone from what they should be into what they should not be: it is AFFIRMING a person’s body, making it look like what that person knows it should look like, what it should feel like. Making it into the right body. And, not least important, changing the way everyone else responds to that person and their body, so that they can live the way they know they should live.

I know that I have done this badly. I apologize for that. I know I’ve said this in a terrible cringey way, and I’ve probably been insulting. I do not mean to be. I just want people who think that GAHC, particularly gender affirming surgery, is removing “healthy” body parts, to understand that it is not what conservatives and assholes say it is. It isn’t about taking your body, that you belong in, and making it different; it is about taking a body that is already wrong — and making it right.

That’s the point. I hope, if I have said everything here crudely and stupidly, that I have at least helped make it more clear that most cis people think of GAHC in entirely the wrong way: we think about it like ourselves. But we never think about it as it is for trans people.

We should stop that.

Hey, you know what we should do?

Listen to the people in question tell us, themselves, what they need, what they want, what is right for them. And then we should support them so they can have that, the same way of life that most of us enjoy without ever recognizing how easy it is for us to live as ourselves.

Imagine that.