Persephone Rose
7 min readJul 2, 2020

What is “trans” anyway? A guide for NORMAL PEOPLE.

The so-called banner of the transgender people

With so much “science” seemingly supporting both sides, how are we NORMAL PEOPLE supposed to make heads or tails of this whole debate? It’s exhausting and confusing!

Some of us have even been called “transphobic”! How the heck can we have an “irrational fear” of something that just doesn’t make sense to us?!

Most of us grew up in a world that only has two sexes: male and female. And it’s really easy to tell them apart! Males have penises and females have vaginas. Their bodies have obvious and different functions. Now, we’re suddenly being told that not only can “males really be females” and vice versa, but that there is a whole “spectrum” of genders/sexes in between? And if we call a man who dresses like a woman, a man, we’re suddenly some kind of bigot? Come on, where’s the common sense? Why should it be put on us, NORMAL PEOPLE, to have to go so far out of our way to play along with these people’s “pronouns” when there’s clearly something wrong with them.

It’s time to clear all this gender woo-woo up once and for all, in a way everyone can understand.

There is something wrong with transgender people.

Transgender people say all kinds of things like “I was born in the wrong body” or “I’m genderfluid/non-binary/neither male nor female.” Huh?? Can’t they just look in their pants and figure all this out real quick? Where the hell did they go to school? Many of them actually seem to be quite intelligent, so why is it so hard for them to just accept that they are what they are?

Transgender people actually know that there’s something wrong with them. Many will openly admit that there is a disconnect between their brain and their body. So, which is correct? Brain or body?

It’s not difficult for us NORMAL PEOPLE to figure ourselves out when something is troubling us. We just go to our teachers, doctors, counselors/psychiatrists, religious advisors, and Facebook quizzes where everything is laid out for us as plainly as we can see that the Earth is flat. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that transgender people do all these things too and still think the way they do!

But what is specifically wrong with transgender people? Well, put simply, their brains have decided that there is more to their “sense of self” than what society has decided for them based on their genitals.

How entitled does someone have to be to think there’s anything more important than how we have sex and who we have sex with?

I mean, I guess we’re all capable of doing other things than what is dictated by basic biology. But honestly, who has time for anything that isn’t eating/drinking, sleeping, watching TV, and getting laid?

Gender is all in the head.

It seems safe to conclude that gender is a concept that exists in people’s brains. Yet, everywhere we turn, our society is clearly divided into two distinct categories: men and women. We separate our bathrooms like this, our children’s toys and education like this, our clothes like this, our sports like this, and even our hobbies like this. It’s just the way it’s always been and it was never a problem before. So why do we have to change it now?

As NORMAL PEOPLE, we are always getting caught in the crossfire of these “fringe” political movements. Can’t we just leave well enough alone and not be constantly bombarded with obscure mantras like “Black Lives Matter” or “My Body My Rights”? We NORMAL PEOPLE don’t go around killing blacks or telling people what to do with their bodies. So why does it feel like we’re always taking the brunt of these people’s anger? When are we supposed to catch OUR break? Haven’t WE been through ENOUGH CHANGE already?

It wasn’t long ago that women were burning their bras in public and demanding the “right to vote”. Just before that, colored people were making a stink about having to go to different schools or sit in their own section of the bus, some even refused to use their own water fountains! What about all those “scientists” that tried using fancy numbers and drawings to try to convince us NORMAL PEOPLE that the planet is actually round?

Okay, so maybe some of those concepts turned out to have something to them in the long run. I mean, the shape of the planet being a “sphere” kind of does make sense when we look at the pictures astronauts have taken. I can sort of see how race-segregated facilities might have not been terribly efficient, in hindsight. And I guess there are enough women who take on active roles in society that there’s some logic to them having a say in the way our world is run.

Biological sex cannot be ignored!

The biggest problem when it comes to transgender people is their apparent willful ignorance of how sex works. As NORMAL PEOPLE, we learned in our sex-segregated “family life” classes that men insert their penises into the vaginas of women to make babies, and these are their only functions. Yes, we’ve all seen “chicks with dicks”, “MILFs”, and “the 69” in pornographic films, but as educated NORMAL PEOPLE, we know that all of that is actor portrayal of pure fantasy. It is simply unfathomable that our well-funded public education system could have provided us with subpar information. Right?

Maybe if I think about it long enough, I can come up with one or two examples of things I learned after I graduated from high school. How to use TikTok and Instagram, for instance, spring to mind, as these were newer inventions that I didn’t have access to in my school days.

Speaking of biology and my school days, I remember some edgy outsiders trying to get this very dangerous idea of “evolution” added to the curriculum. The “theory” of evolution was a radical concept tossed around by an old geezer called Darwin, who claimed that “changes” could happen in a species over generations. Well, we NORMAL PEOPLE have been around for quite a few generations now; I don’t know about you, but I certainly haven’t noticed any of these “changes”.

Okay, well maybe, if I really tried, I could see some resemblance between wolves and dogs, or chimpanzees and humans. But it still all seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? I mean, there is just no possible way that even with our very thorough understanding of the universe, that any new “information” could ever really change the way we see the world. It still looks flat, and I can even prove that in about 5 seconds with a level from the dollar store. We must NEVER underestimate the power of the obvious.

Transgender people completely undermine our current way of life.

There is a very real danger that if transgender people were to work, play, and pee, alongside NORMAL PEOPLE that some of their rhetoric might begin to rub off on us. We could begin to question the very fabric of our own existence. Transgender people put us at risk of a total upheaval of the status quo. Non-binary people might completely end the battle of the sexes, which would completely destroy the expansive and underused comedy goldmine that gave us the likes of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “White Chicks”. If “transgender” becomes part of the new normal, who will even be left to make fun of anymore? Us?

I haven’t even gotten to the very real threat transgender people pose to the economy. If we have to start accepting non-menstrauting “women” without uteri into the workforce, companies might have to start paying ALL women the same wages they currently pay men. We NORMAL PEOPLE all know that the gender pay gap is the only reason there’s any value to hiring women at all. Right?

We could be looking at total economic ruin, a force with a disruptive potential 60–4400% worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.

My name is Persephone Rose, I am a NORMAL PERSON and I also happen to be a transgender womxn. I like Star Trek, taking walks outside, and learning new things. The universe is infinitely more complicated than any of us will ever truly understand. In fact, there really isn’t any such thing as “abnormal people”, since incredible diversity can be found in every group, if you look closely.

It’s comfortable to stick with what’s familiar, and all too often we find ourselves hiding away in crowds that share our thoughts and opinions, pointing our fingers at others as if they’re a dangerous enemy hell-bent on challenging our perceptions of reality.

There was a time when TVs were small and the picture was black and white. But we knew there were more colors than just those two, even if we couldn’t see them. When we watch 3D movies today, we still know that there is much more color, depth, and dimension than just what we can see. The same is true of gender. That’s all we mean when we talk about the “gender spectrum”. The really amazing thing is, you can learn to see all those wonderful new genders if you open your mind to them.

It’s okay to feel uneasy about things we don’t fully understand, but remember: just because the world looks flat, doesn’t mean the world is flat (or that it’s even perfectly round, for that matter).

It costs nothing to respect someone’s pronoun choices and privacy. It’s even free to reach out to the trans community, read some books, or search the internet to learn more about us, if you are curious. You never know what you can discover about yourself when you take some time to learn about other people.

Persephone Rose
Persephone Rose

Written by Persephone Rose

Persephone Rose is a writer, actor, and the creator of Emperor Pigs; an audio drama series about demons that work at a pizza and marijuana shop.