The death of "Long held conviction"

Subject: The death of "Long held conviction" 

It's all perfectly reasonable. Listening to transgender people discuss their reality. Who couldn't be sympathetic towards their predicament now rapidly being made "normal" by those fringes of our society who care about these sort of issues.

For people of my generation it's one more instance where the foundations on which we built our concept of right and wrong, normal and abnormal is again challenged and we are asked to realign our understanding in a fragmented gender relevant world.

The issue of equal pay and promotional equality is a mere  shadow on the complex stage of rights. The rights of a woman to be a man, or a man to be a woman would have seemed bizarre when I was growing up in the 40s and 50s. Society concerned itself on being where it could, uniform and together. The strength of the working class was its commonality, its ability to recognise, as in a mirror image the people around you. Racial contrasting had not yet begun since the first substantial wave of immigration from the West Indies and Pakistan had not started. The mills still largely employed white women to do the work and it was only a realisation that people from the subcontinent could be much more easily exploited by the mill owners, not only in terms of wages but in the hours worked and the conditions the workers were having to work under as we struggled to compete with Taiwanese cloth made in postwar investment rich Taiwan.

Gradually the complexion of places like Bradford changed as large families combined under one roof in a way which was an anathema to the English. A them and us phobia, largely peaceful, began to define, particularly northern towns as the local indigenous people struggled to understand what was going on. Today in places like East Ham a complete transformation has taken place and people's, largely from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh provide the culture with Middle Eastern and East European societies increasing every day staking their own claim. The pockets of Cockney lineage are still found gathering in the cafes discussing their benefit cheques but the cafe is owned by a Polish woman who employs her own ethnicity for trust and the common bond which a shared national experience brings. Whilst the English are busy reinventing themselves to suit circumstances outside their control, now, the new locals, remain fiercely independent of their rights of ethnic descendency drawing their own ethnic boundaries 
The English ever pliant have made as good a fist of this as they can with relatively little overt racism. That's not to say they are happy with their newly defined role of being, in many cities, the minority but largely it's soto voice with the majority of the noise coming from the intellectual wing, berating any descent of the new order and hurling their own abuse in the form of labeling. Racist, Misogynist,Homophobic, are but a few which when used to describe someone or some group close down any discussion.

Gender, trans or cross is another topic which we, confused, and trying our best to keep up are hopelessly out of our depth as the firebrands of "change" make their way into the deepest recesses of our long held convictions. 

Perhaps we are wrong and there is no surety or descriptive norm under which we can form opinions. Perhaps life is such a transitory game that it is foolish to hold opinion at all.