Fear and ignorance are behind hostility to trans people

What I actually see, and what I've seen for years, is that most of the hostility comes from a much simpler place: people were never taught what gender diversity means. Trans people weren't part of the public conversation the way gay and lesbian people became in the seventies and eighties. They stayed quieter, more hidden, and so most of us grew up with a gap where that understanding should have been. Into that gap came mockery, the caricature of a trans woman as a man in a dress, and because nobody pushed back hard enough, it was allowed to stick. Fear follows ignorance almost automatically. And when people are frightened of something they don't understand, they can be unkind without even knowing why. That's not a defence of the unkindness. It's an explanation of where it comes from, and why education is the thing that actually changes it.