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March of 1930 saw the announcement that astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto. Despite controversy at the time of discovery concerning the object’s apparently quite small size, for the next three generations, school children learned the names of the nine planets. In the 1990s, discovery of larger bodies in the Kuiper Belt added to doubts concerning the proper classification of Pluto, followed by the discovery of Eris, an even larger body in the outer reaches of our planetary system. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) released three criteria for a body to be considered a planet: 1) It orbits the sun, 2) It possesses enough gravitational pull to be roughly spherical in shape, and 3) it must have cleared out its orbit of other large bodies. Following these new parameters, Pluto was moved from the classification of planet to dwarf planet, igniting public outrage that burns to this day.

While there is debate among the astronomers and other scientists over detailed points such as what exactly qualifies as having ‘cleared out’ its orbital volume, the most intense defenders of Pluto as a planet are laypeople without scientific expertise or training. I find this a curious phenomenon. Pluto’s status has zero impact on their lives, their day-to-day activities, or even outside of the fierce controversy, their conversations. With the body’s status so irrelevant to their lives, why do people demand its status so vigorously?

Because it’s what they learned as children. The ‘facts’ we learn when we are young are the most difficult to discard when new data or ideas come along to displace them. It doesn’t matter that classifying Pluto as a planet would mean adding a lot more planets to the roster. They do not want to do that; they want the nine planets that they learned in grade school. That’s it, that’s the entire argument and goal, to have what they were taught decades ago to be the same today as it was then.

For some, certainly not all, the debate surrounding transgender people operates on the exact same mechanism as the insistence that Pluto is a planet. They were taught that the world and people worked a certain way, a very simple model of humanity, and they find it impossible to discard the model impressed upon them in childhood. It doesn’t matter that the truth of the spectrum of human sexuality and identification is self-evident; they want the simple, but false, binary definition they understood when they were six. (For those who wish to deny the spectrum and insist on a binary understanding, that would mean you could not define the character of John Rambo as more masculine than the character of Peewee Herman. That judgment only exists if there is a spectrum of masculinity—in a binary system they would be equally masculine.)

This explains only some people’s transphobia and insistence on strictly binary understandings of gender. There are those who harbor more hateful and bigoted views. Their issue is simply being unable to unlearn what they have learned. Their views are more aligned with evil than ignorance.

I wish there were a simple and direct way to enlighten people to acceptance of others in all their dazzling diversity that life presents. We live only once. For a very brief time, we walk this Earth seeking love and happiness. To inflict pain and suffering upon others because they don’t live as you think they should is a terrible crime, robbing them of precious time that can never be recovered.