Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

There is this concept of the oppressor and the oppressed. In a patriarchy men as a whole oppress women. Individual men should not be judged by this but women will tend to stick together to avoid the high probability that men will mistreat them.

In a white supremacist society white people as a whole oppress people of color. Again people of color will want to stick together to find a break from the constant mistreatment by the white oppressor.

But there is a difference between white people wanting to stick together and people of color wanting to stick together in a white supremacist society. In this case the white people stick together to maintain their oppression and exclusion, and the people of color stick together to find freedom and respite from their mistreatment.

One of these is good and okay, and one of these is meant to perpetuate oppression. The oppressed wanting space from the oppressor is okay. The oppressor wanting to exclude the oppressed is not okay.

Because of this you cannot simply reverse the roles and say “see replace cis people with women/blacks and it sounds terrible”. Because what you have done is replace the dominant class with the oppressed class. You’ve changed the whole meaning of the thing.

In a cis heteronormative society the status quo is maintained by cis people constantly reinforcing gender and sexual norms. There is a long list of behaviors we are all taught as children that reinforce this, and we repeat those behaviors as adults to keep the system going. We do this unconsciously.

Trans people find that exhausting to be around. We have been around that our entire lives and many people we know have died trying to fight it. Finally we found the courage to push back and be ourselves.

We find it much less exhausting to be around people who have at least accepted our ways. And we find it positively rewarding to be around people that understand all the difficulties we are going through.

These are all things that cis people aren’t really going to understand.

Look - Imagine you’re a struggling writer. Your partner is a successful engineer. They don’t really understand what it’s like to be a struggling writer so when you talk to them about it their advice isn’t very good. You don’t feel any sense of relief from talking to them. Finally you end up at a bar and you bump in to another struggling writer who has recently regained some direction. You swap stories and feel positively encouraged!

If they told you about a writers group that would help, wouldn’t you want to join it? That’s not excluding others, that’s finding community! Everyone needs that.

This as incredibly uncharitable take on the parent post.

A charitable take on the parent post would be to assume that the parent poster does not wants to not be surrounded by a mono-culture of non-trans people. Because that's what people mean 99% of the time when they say things like that.

    the educated left [...] what they're initiating with this trend of rewriting classic literature.

I'd counter by pointing out the vast bulk of "the educated left" are either indifferent or opposed to silent rewrites and I'd also point out that the rewriting of classics goes back a lot further in history than any recent events and that conservatives and religuous folk are just as guilty as any "educated left".

As I said, your comment painted a broad ideological brush that appears to be mostly incorrect.

I can understand what the other person is getting at. I literally just said I would like the book and my friends are actually like that, and you have to say I’m deluded? You’re not having this conversation in good faith. We are in fact having a conversation but you’ve imagined it’s something else and you’ve admitted from the outset you’re not taking me seriously.

When the person says “being this way” that’s what they’re talking about. You’re not treating me with basic respect. And to be honest I suspect the reason is that I’ve said I’m trans. Otherwise I can’t imagine why you decided I should be immediately dismissed.

EDIT: You know a major point you’ve tried to make is that I should be ashamed for wanting to hang out with trans people. But at the same time you’ve admitted that you’re not willing to treat me with basic respect. All you’ve done is concisely demonstrate why someone like me would want to hang out with people that get me. I don’t want to have to live my life constantly explaining myself to people who refuse to respect me on the basis for who I am. You’re exactly the kind of person I don’t want to associate with.

Look at black representation - there was a time where they would either be black stereotypes or just be normal characters with black actors but no reference to it in the story. (Eg the token black having a suburban house, with no black friends, surrounded by other white people). Probably, the actor was black but everybody involved in writing and producing the film was white. Or not interested in listening to their black colleagues, or thinking that the film is made "for white people" therefore doesn't need to include any black representation besides having a black actor.

Nowadays we have things like Modern Family, Black-ish, which actually incorporate diversity into the characters without being offensive. Obviously the shows still get criticised, but part of the reason they do better is that there is more diversity in the industry and network's views on what the public want have moved forwards.

Maybe, the same shift will happen for LGBTQ+ characters.