Hi, Illuminess and Mina!
I'm not entirely certain about what you're saying. I'm not trying to start an argument. I just thought I'd fill you in on my experience.
I live in a very small town in (traditional, conservative, religious) Ireland. I live openly. It's no secret. In the nearly three years that I've been out, I've never once had any bit of hassle from anyone I knew personally before I came out. They've been universally accepting. The only harassment I've had has come from the usual suspects--certain young males that just about everyone would want to stay away from. This limits my freedom of movement a fair bit--like going out on the town during drinking hours--but I haven't had anywhere near the hassle that lots of transpeople get. I don't know what it is about this town, but there are lots of good people here.
Now this has led me to certain conclusions: one being that education of cispeople isn't perhaps necessary. In all the time I've been out only one person has asked me any questions at all about transgenderism. Nobody else ever raises the subject. They're simply not interested. I seriously doubt that a single person in this town could give you a good account of what transgenderism is. From observing me, they might say something like, "A transgender person is a man who prefers to live like a woman." In other words, they don't understand transgenderism, but neither do they harass it.
This leads me to think that the vital element here is whether someone is basically a decent person or not. If they are, then the chances are they'll react OK to someone coming out. They're the live-and-let-live type. They don't believe in harassing what isn't harassing them.
I've come across quite a few haters on forums, and it seems to me that haters don't discriminate. They hate a lot of things. That's simply the sort of people they are. There's one forum (not a trans forum) that I recently withdrew from because of the viciousness of the haters whenever anything connected with LGBT issues arose. And there's no doubt that the chief LGBT-haters are pretty vicious on lots of issues. I'd agree with Mina on this point: these are people you can't educate because they don't want to be educated. They simply want to hate. There's no lack of information on the net these days about transgenderism, but they don't look for it. If they look for anything at all, it'll be a religious hate site or something about Ray Blanchard. In other words, they look for what they want to find.
So as I said, it's my belief that what determines whether someone is going to be trans-friendly or not is what kind of person they are, not how much they know on the topic. I would say further that in my view--though some people might disagree with me here--there will never be very many cispeople who truly cop on to transgenderism. It's just too weird for them. It's too alien to their experience. This isn't a fatal handicap: it is possible to acknowledge that there are certain things you will never understand, but you still accept them because they don't actually harm you or anybody else in any way. You live and let live.
So how do we educate people? I think simply by being visible. We get out in the world and show them that we're not the demons they think we are. But at this point you can run into a real Catch-22: you can only gain acceptance by being visible, but by being visible you might run into some vicious opposition. You can't get out because it's too dangerous, but you can't begin to gain acceptance until you're out. So how to resolve this dilemma for those people who are truly at risk by getting out?
I also think that it's possible to lose friends by working too hard. If you're not interested in baseball, you'll quickly get tired of someone who lives and dies for baseball. And if someone is truly not interested in talking about trans issues, there's no point in pushing them--especially if they are reasonably trans-friendly, in which case you might well be alienating an erstwhile ally.
To be honest, my feeling is that as far as education goes, things are about right these days. I.e., we are getting some favourable coverage in the media (alongside all the negative stuff), and I think bit by bit we are getting through to people. People who are in any way a potential ally are hearing stuff, enough to get them thinking, and they are coming over to our side. Consider the situation here in Ireland: three months ago a nationwide referendum on same-sex marriage passed by a margin of 62% to 38%, and just recently our parliament gave final passage to one of the most liberal gender recognition laws in the world. The relevant minister just announced today that the law will come into force next week. Next week I'll be able to gain legal recognition of my true gender. Can you believe it? This is very real progress.
I think it's a process of osmosis. Bit by bit we get there. It's frustratingly slow, but I'm not convinced an all-out blitz is going to work. History is slow, infuriatingly slow, and it is a desperate situation to be in when you badly need change and you're not getting it as fast as you want.
But people, I don't know how old the rest of you are. I'm beginning to decline into decrepitude myself, but I've been seeing videos on the net lately that I simply cannot believe. I'm left stunned. I can hardly relate to what I'm seeing: videos of little transkids whose parents love them and are allowing them to be what they are--and these kids are actually happy. And as I said I have a hard time relating to that. "Happy", "transkid"--they almost seem like a contradiction in terms. Back in my day there was no way a transkid was going to be happy. It simply wasn't a possibility in this universe.
It is today. We are making progress. I'm not nixing the idea of an educational organization. Far from it. This post is just a jumble of random thoughts, but I did want to emphasize that we are making true progress these days. We have to stick with it and not despair. Whatever suggestion anyone can make is worth considering. There's more than one way to skin a transphobic cat.
