TL;DR: good relationship and generally agreeable but concerned over boyfriend’s views towards trans people and an unwillingness to listen. Looong post asking for advice sorry in advance

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My Nigel and I have been together just over three years. And I very much am happy with our relationship, who he is, and our plans for the future.

I genuinely love his personality and spending time with him- he’s one of the smartest people I know and I love being able to read studies that I find interesting and send them to him to hear his thoughts and discuss things I find interesting with him or hear about things he likes.

And from a feminist perspective he is really good and treats me well- when we first got together I was only for the first time really looking deeper into feminism. I found out about the trafficking in the porn industry, I went to him with everything I found and showed him why I was uncomfortable and he was horrified too and stopped watching porn. He’s even said before he’s grateful he met me in that because he’s tried to quit before and this was the only time he was able to actually make it stick. I’ve even overheard him talking about quitting porn to his friends why it’s really good to and was pleasantly surprised by that. We lived together for a year (covid, online classes we go to different universities so that was always a temporary thing) and we contributed equally in terms of household labour, and he would even cook and bring meals to my work and eat with me in the car while I was on my break if he wasn’t working that day. When we get in fights he will apologize when he’s in the wrong; and honestly out of the two of us I do think at times he’s more emotionally mature then me because I know I can tend to be really stubborn.

We’ve talked about children and I’ve talked about being scared of being stuck with the childcare like my sisters on top of eventually being a doctor, and he agreed that he would be fine with being the one to stay home with the kids when they’re younger because we both think having a parent at home when children are young is very beneficial to him; but I’m also scared of childbirth and he’s said that he can live without children if it’s not a fear I can overcome. He’s agreed to hyphenate our names; and recently when I floated the idea of both of us just keeping our respective names and using the hyphen for any kids he was equally as open to that and never once objected or expressed disappointment at me not wanting to take his name.

I could continue to go on with examples about him, but all of it is to say that I do feel like I have a truly equal relationship. I do think I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the fate most women in heterosexual relationships have and am with a man who views&treats me as his equal in all ways.

But we keep getting in arguments about trans stuff. It’s not him at all; he knows my views and doesn’t agree but he can let it go- I’m the one who keeps bringing it up.

I’ve told him every single argument I have against it; the last time I brought it up I even made a Google doc in advance with sources ready (TLDR version coming):

-All official trans pages say that transition and hormones aren’t necessary, they’re equally valid and it doesn’t make them any less of a woman. They are just as much of a woman as anyone else. So if this is true, then what is the point? Why do they need to transition? If you are still 100% a woman with a dick then what exactly are you ‘missing’? What is the point of everything? I then show him examples from trans community themselves about “validation” and “euphoria”, that they’re clearly talking about being aroused. How it’s just reinforcing gender norms and THAT is the key point of Transexuality, to enforce gender norms.

He didn’t answer

• the studies on trans athletes. he said the trans athlete thing is not valid and not real, I show him the studies that prove that there is still a genetic advantage. No response.

-I showed him how quickly trans people have been able to gain their rights comparatively, how if they’re truly an oppressed minority why are laws and textbooks and articles all being made to coddle them, in their language and to erase women at the same time? Women have never been treated so well so fast. Black people have never been treated so well so fast. Those that are truly oppressed are not being treated the way trans people are

• on that note, the erasure of women in both medical and academic areas. The way gender is being made neutral in a way that is dangerous to women (example: in medical papers

-the entire disgusting concept that is the cotton ceiling

-all the men going into women’s prisons

-the general way TIMs LARP and fetishize their idea of a perfect woman

• I even started crying at one point talking about how much women have suffered during history, all of our oppression. How we had to fight to even have women’s sports, the struggle and pains of our foremothers to carve out spaces for us, only for men to mutilate their bodies and take back those spaces.

I told him even if it was proven that there was 0 difference of strength in terms of sports, it still wouldn’t matter to me. Women were not allowed to participate in the original olympics, or universities, or basically anything. It was a struggle and a fight to get those spaces, and those spaces are for US. If one TIM is on a women’s sports team that’s one spot that has been stolen from a women whose foremothers struggled so she could thrive. Their sacrifices were meant for us, so we could have a better life. So that we could experience every joy and every opportunity in life that were afforded to men. Not for men to pump themselves with hormones, invert their dick 20 times and take out spaces to leave us out once again.

And he still doesn’t agree. Every time he says that he doesn’t feel like he has the right to control what people do like that. How he’s bi and he was in the closet for so long, he doesn’t want to make other people feel ashamed and all this other bullshit.

And it drives me so crazy and it makes me so angry that he is so unwilling to listen because he is a smart person and he DOES listen to me. The porn stuff, he listened, agreed, and changed. Any time he’s ever disagreed with me when I was right, I will show him the information and he will listen, agree and change.

And he has no rebuttals. It’s not even like he’s full on bought into the ideology and is debating back with me. At most he’ll make a half hearted Google and pull something stupid off the first page that I can debunk. I always prove him wrong. And every time he says that it’s because I’m better educated on this topic then him, as if there is an argument floating out there to debunk me he just doesn’t have it. And I’ve told him to go find it and to come back to me, that I am down to wait a week and let him do his own reading and come back to me and we can discuss. Hell, I encourage him to go in trans subreddits. On trans websites. That was half of what made me peak was their own double thinking and contradictions that exist on their own spaces. And he just never does. Just continues to think that somehow being against trans is “mean” and “shaming people trying to be authentic”, never mind the damage and harm it has to real women.

Part of me feels like if this is how he is about trans stuff, after I have been so vulnerable about this and come with facts to back me up, then how deep do these mentalities run? How can I trust that there isn’t misogyny or something else lurking below the surface, that he’ll just completely dismiss me again the way he does with this?

And then the other half of me thinks that that’s insane, that we’ve been together for years and I know this man. He’s shown himself in many ways to be good to me, and I don’t know anyone in real life against transsexuality who isn’t just conservative and against it for the wrong reasons. And that maybe he’s somehow conflating that in his head with me, and his own internalized biphobia from coming from trad catholic circles. And ik his sisters friend group is all _non-binary types, and he used to make fun of them but he’s been hanging out with them a lot more recently so maybe it’s a reluctance to acknowledge the harm because of them, that he doesn’t want to recognize what they are doing as harmful? That it’s very likely I would have that suspicion with any man just by virtue of them being a man. That not every couple is going to agree 100% on issues and outside of this we agree on nearly everything so it’s silly to throw away a generally successful relationship over over one differing opinion.

I used to occasionally send him posts from r/gendercritical -not with trans but general sexism - and he would be appalled with me. He has always shown himself to be able to recognize sexism and the fucked up way women are treated in every single thing EXCEPT this and that’s part of what makes it all the more befuddling to me that he can admit that he cannot counter my arguments, and still refuse to be swayed.

I know I’ve seen lesbians on here complaining about dating women because so many gay people now have bought into all that bullshit as well, so I know I’m not the only one on here with this issue.

I just really need some perspective on this