You’re right that transphobes are misinformed, but what I’m opposed to is not knowledge itself. Rather, it’s the conviction that objective answers exist and can be known. Transphobes believe they have the answers to the objective nature of gender. There are no such answers. Nobody can say for certain whether another’s gender is valid, because gender is just an idea. It is the transphobes’ realism that motivates them to uphold the gender binary.

Also, Pope Urban II called for the crusades to distract Europe from internal strife among the church. Nobody should have the power to tell an entire continent what Deus wills. They believed him because they thought religion has objective answers, and that those answers come from the Pope. Again, people’s conviction that anyone can be objectively correct is what caused the problem. If Christianity were antirealist, there could be no pope and no crusades.

Truly, the belief in an objective reality is history’s greatest problem.