Reading this thread and other discussions on this site, I want to say that I feel welcome here. I can understand this experience may not be universal among cisgender people, and I respect those different experiences. But I expected a lot less welcoming in this space. After all, many people here have been hurt by people who share a trait in common with me. And, in some significant ways, I am a foreigner to most people here (including many other SOs who were introduced to this site's subjects in a different way).
If I am a visiting a foreign country, I have to learn to respect that country - even when they have problems with my home country. It isn't my responsibility to correct every misconception about my home country through debate. And I'll probably have a miserable time if I take every view of my home country personally.
Of course that doesn't mean that the foreign people might not have valid points. If I go to Europe and hear about "ugly Americans", they might have observed something real. And, perhaps, I'd do good to listen - maybe I should take care to recognize that there are lots of countries other than America, for instance, or that America isn't the best at everything.
So, when I'm here, I try to recognize that people here might see a side of cisgender people that I don't generally see myself - just as I don't see America the way Europeans might. While Europeans are not experts on Americans, and transgender people are not experts on cisgender people, that doesn't mean that Europeans and transgender people don't have a unique perspective with valid observations - sometimes observations I'd rather weren't true, but which would do me a lot of good to hear anyhow.
