#I'm very tired so if I typod something or worded something poorly I'm sorry

[northwest-cryptid]

Alright time for me to return to my roots of being "the science person of tumblr" and point out just how funny and accurate this actually is.

Okay so, for starters I stopped when I came across this meme and really gave it more thought than necessary because of the fact that, the idea here; the joke being stated is essentially that a transphobe will see glass and call it sand because glass comes from sand and transphobes don't recognize or respect change in someone's gender.

This kinda rubbed me the wrong way because while I totally understand and agree with what's being said here, you gotta understand as well than not every trans person wants to become glass in order to well, be glass; some of them will always stay as sand but identify as glass. To shed the metaphors for a second, there's no need for a "man" to go through some kind of physical transformation if she identifies as a woman, if she is a transwoman she's a woman; hard stop. I don't need someone to go through surgery or HRT if they don't desire to, that's up to them I'll respect their identity either way because there's no reason not to. Their physical being doesn't determine their gender I mean... wasn't that kind of the point of what we've been saying for a long time? "What's in your pants" doesn't matter.

Now for full clarity, I don't believe that's what the original poster/creator of this meme was trying to say. The core of this is that transphobes can look at someone who is clearly a woman and say "you were once a man and will always be a man" because they're shitty transphobes who are gonna be assholes like that, you know?

However I don't know if the OP intended to use such a great example, because when I thought about what I was talking about previously; it dawned on me.

Sand IS transparent, intrinsically so according to a quick google search. In fact, more than that; when sand (such as common yellow sand which is actually majority quartz) is heated, it melts and changes it's molecular STRUCTURE, but the actual molecules do not change.

The main change we see when we heat quartz into glass is that the molecular structure changes, in other words the quartz/sand was glass the whole time, it literally does just LOOK different now.

Quartz/sand has a very rigid structure which is why it forms a solid crystal we see as sand; while when heated it becomes something more like a liquid, just a sort of solid liquid. It's typically the impurities in the sand (so not the quartz itself, which is transparent and literally the same as glass as far as I'm aware) that scatter the light causing the coloration we see.

To put it simply, not all of sand is quartz; just the majority of it, while all of glass is quartz, of course there may be other methods I'm not aware of but as far as heating quartz into glass goes the statement stands. However the aspect of sand we "turn into glass" is literally just quartz, nothing changes outside of it's appearance.

In other words, if you're trans and you want to align physically more with your gender that's totally fine and I support you 100%; but for those who wish not to go through any physical alterations I want you to also realize you're no less your gender. If someone thinks you look more like quartz than glass it's only because they're not smart (or respectful) enough to understand that you've been glass the whole time you just prefer to keep your rigid structure, but then I don't expect transphobes to understand geology... or metaphors for that matter.