Words with friends.

I don't want to get too far into the topic upon which my friend and I fought, but I'll say up front it concerns the current crisis that has the nation's dress up over its head: whether it is okay to allow men who think they are women use the women's room. 

No one seems to worry about how men feel when they must share a bathroom with women who think they are men, but let's put that aside. 

The politically correct vision, which my friend follows maybe 98% of the time in all arguments, says that gender is fluid and people should be free to identify as whatever sex they want. My argument, which I think has the benefit of having reality behind it, says that it is not fair to skeeve out the vast majority for the sake of a minuscule minority; but much more important, that the law of unintended consequences is not merely an economic phenomenon and that bad actors will almost certainly use the "gender fluidity" rule to gain access to areas from which they were wisely prohibited in the past, and bad actions will follow. There is a reason we have women's rooms, and it's not because we like to see women standing on line at intermission. 

If you're going to say that you do not care whether men use the ladies' room, I argued calmly, then there is no logical reason you shouldn't open all restrooms to everyone. I knew that was a good point because then she got mad and went to the anecdotes. 

Ultimately, neither of us were convinced by the other, but we are able to remain friends because we have other shared interests and we know that politics and all the garbage that comes with it are not the alpha and omega of existence. This is not, however, the case with other acquaintances, who quickly sever ties with me when I am obliged to point out that political correctness is the enemy of freedom. I'm never the one to cut them off in these little spats. Invariably, I am the one cast into the outer darkness.  

Which is why I normally don't get into these arguments at all. You can't fix willful blindness.

I am lucky to at least have one friend who sees beyond whatever the PC police are fixated on at the moment, and she is lucky to have one (and probably only one) friend willing to make the case for the other side. The Internet has allowed all voices to be heard, but it doesn't matter because we're all going deaf.