There are three groups of people in the world:
| "Too hot" | People who automatically support me. My transgender friends. |
| "Too cold" | People who automatically criticize me. Usually due to transphobia. |
| "Just right" | People who support me when I need it, and criticize me when I need it. |
My transgender friends will make sure I'm happy. And that's awesome. But what I really need, even more than happiness, is to be called out when I do something wrong.
Unfortunately, I can't trust the "too cold" group, because it's very difficult to figure out when they're criticizing me because of transphobia (most of the time) versus when they're criticizing me because I'm actually doing something wrong.
But I can't trust the "too hot" group either, because they're likely to keep supporting me even when I'm doing something wrong.
The only way to get constructive criticism is from my cisgender allies. They're as rare as a drink of water in a desert, and every bit as valuable.