Respectfully Disagree.

We can be friends with differing perspectives, beliefs, and opinions.  We interpret and assign meaning to things based on our experiences, environment, upbringing, and various other factors. If you respect me and I respect you, we can be friends. If you learn from me and I learn from you, we can be friends.

I have friends who believe "men should be men" and "women should be women." I understand what they're saying and accept that they believe that because that's what they grew up with. I grew up with it too, but I don't agree with it. Some of these friends used to tell me I should do certain things to look less like a guy (e.g. grow out my hair, wear make-up, stop walking like a guy). It used to hurt me because it made me feel like less of a person since I wasn't "normal" and I wasn't making the effort to change. I have since grown up and learned more about the world and the people around me. I have learned to talk about these different opinions with the very friends who disagree with me. We have had heated arguments. Hopefully, we have taken worthwhile lessons from these arguments. And we're still friends. Most of them don't try to tell me how to dress or act anymore; I hope it's because they realized I am who I am and I try to be a good person regardless of the way I present myself.

And you know what? I wasn't any better than those friends when I was younger. I used to believe the same thing. "Men should be men, and women should be women." I didn't actively push this belief on others, but I still believed it. I used to think trans people were disgusting and weird, even when I first started college. I first met trans people in college, and I just kept my distance. And I wouldn't try so hard to interact with them. I observed them from afar and thought, "How could you feel that way? That's not normal." But then I wondered why I even felt this way. No trans person has ever done anything that negatively affected me. The few interactions I had had with trans folks at the time just showed me that they were as welcoming as any other person I had ever met in my life. So I got to know a few and learned about the community. I still don't know that much about the community, but I know enough about life and people in general to say that trans people are people who can be just as wonderful or just as terrible as any other person in this world. Their genders make no difference; their genders cannot help me predict their mentality, behavior, or anything like that any more so than can the genders of cisgender folks.

All these lessons were learned through amicable interactions and friendships between people who disagreed or did not see eye-to-eye. It could be difficult, but it's possible. We have to be open to it. Open to learning, to growing, to expanding beyond our own limitations.