Why do I need to be aware of every mental illness that exists?

There are way more important things for society to deal with. This issue is a complete distraction for all but those who it affects directly.

I don't support making major changes to society in order to benefit an infinitesimal minority of mentally ill people.

You don't need to be familiar with or pay attention to this stuff, but you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic.

If you don't want to pay attention to what's going on with transgender people, then go on and live your life — that is 100% your prerogative. If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself — you don't have to think about the validity of their statement or the implications or what they've gone through in their life.

But if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully, I don't think the transgender people are the ones being unreasonable in that situation.

> ...you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic.

Sure I can. My stance can be "I don't want to know very much about this topic and if you keep trying to bring it up ahead of much more important topics, then I will have to ignore you more loudly."

> If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself...

That alone is certainly is not a burden on myself. The burden begins when the issue of societies behavior towards transgender people continually eclipses more important issues. I feel sorry for people whose issues get used to polarize people for political theater.

> ...if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully,...

I don't know who is "loudly" doing anything or where this argument is coming from. Did I say something loudly? Is that the same thing as just saying the words "I don't care about this topic and please stop telling me about it...?"

All I said is - why should I care? If you say "because they're people", then I would say "we have more important types of people to worry about". For instance, who is doing anything about the sociopaths and psychopaths that seem to gravitate towards positions of power? Where's all the attention for that?

I agree that there are more important issues in the world, but it doesn't make this unworthy of attention. You don't have to care about it, but if you're going into threads about transgender people trying to convince other people it doesn't matter, that's way past not caring and into the territory of "actively opposing."

Personally, I have many causes I support. This doesn't have to be one of yours, but all I'm saying is, just because you want to spend your time on more important things doesn't mean you should spend your time telling people how unimportant transgender issues are.

I think redirecting peoples attention is probably necessary. Perhaps pointing out how unimportant transgender issues are to me is not the best way to do that. But really, I'm just commenting about my thoughts on this (frankly, off-topic for this site) article because HN is my backyard. I'm not heading off to LGBTQ+ forums to harass people or searching for Transgender articles elsewhere on the net, so I don't feel that I'm actively opposing your issue.

You and I are actually on the same side. We both wish people didn't care very much if anyone switched genders. Beyond that, I think we all want to live in peace. In my opinion though, our common enemy are the very rude, petty and unintelligent people on both sides who turn social issues into a circus and present extreme narratives that make people fight and go to more extremes. That makes things hard for everybody on both sides, right? This article does not do that, but the reason it was posted (i.e. I feel a constant battle going on over the perception of the Transgender issue) does annoy me a tad bit and I talk a lot.

I once read that travelling helps people to be more accepting of foreign cultures. Too bad the Internet couldn't have done that instead.