Empathy is not easy! I used to think that it is, but I was wrong. I believed that it was as simple as following the old adage of imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes. However, it is clear that in many situations, this is not nearly powerful enough a tool. The problem is that, I am not like the other person. I expect that in many ways anyone who is reading this is unlike most other people (or at least I suspect that you’re unlike me).

I guess maybe an example would help to illustrate the point. I do not believe in gender, I don’t have any feeling that I have an intrinsic gender. I’ve heard people claim that I do have a gender and it is just that I am very comfortable in my own skin (i.e., that I do have a gender and a body to match). I think this sort of comment is as patronising as me telling a transgender person that gender doesn’t exist (which I don’t make a habit of). The advantage of not having this feeling of gender as a concept is that I don’t feel that anyone needs to conform to what are obviously socially constructed gender stereotypes (e.g., if your sex is male and you want to wear a dress, that’s entirely fine and normal in my view).

In my opinion, it is the people who really believe in gender and who also believe that gender must match biological sex (whatever that is, it doesn’t take long listen to biologists to know it’s more complicated than XX, XY) who are causing difficulties in this area.

The problem for me is understanding other people’s opinions. I don’t really understand what is meant when people say I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body. It is really hard for me to empathise with such a position. I don’t have this feeling of being a man so don’t have a position to start from (in fact, I think it would be incredibly interesting and educational to be put in a woman’s body if it were feasible). However, I do except that people have these feelings and beliefs.

It’s not as simple as me putting myself in someone else’s shoes. Instead, I need to find parallels with other areas of my life/experiences. In the above case, I find that a useful comparison is that I am very straight, and believe that this is an intrinsic part of myself as most people do with gender. Interestingly, I find this makes it easy to empathise with gay people: if I had the same intrinsic feelings about men that I do about women I wouldn’t have the option of being straight. Bisexual, pansexual and asexual people are much harder for me to understand!

Empathy is hard and takes work. However, if you put the effort in there is normally a way of seeing where other people are coming from. You won’t however get there if you simply take moral guidance from your parents or a book, or from someone who is telling you what a book says. It is necessary for people to put the effort in themselves.