Evan Urquhart

My day job is moderating online comments, so it's no accident that I know tricks to online communication others don't. This is my bread and butter.

The most important thing to keep in mind is: A committed transphobe's mind is not open to changing, certainly not in one conversation. But, you CAN change the mind of people watching your exchange with a transphobe who start out more sympathetic to their side than yours.

Sometimes you can talk directly to a mildly transphobic person about their questions and concerns, but often they're staying quiet, watching and forming judgements based on what they see. My primary goal is to appeal to this secondary audience at all times.

What might a mildly transphobic but open minded person see? They'll see a top level post, some replies, and maybe one or at most two replies to those replies. They're not going to read an argument ten or twenty replies deep.

Based on that, I try to avoid more than 2 or 3 replies. My primary audience has gotten bored. If I haven't moved their opinion yet, more replies won't help.

What else do we know about mild transphobes with open minds. We know they're turned off by name-calling and personal attacks. So, don't use those. They like respectability politics, so if you feel comfortable deploying that sort of rhetoric it may help. What else?

Mildly transphobic but open minded people tend to think that transphobia is common sense and supported by basic science, and that trans people are wildly emotional, likely mentally ill, and don't have any answers to questions transphobes pose.

A trans person answering simply, politely, with confidence and clear evidence has an outsized positive impact compared to how easy it is to do.