The trans experience is one that is in many ways beautiful and joyous but is sadly also fraught with trauma. Trans people experience a lot of pain that stays with them. Much of that pain has to do with people who refuse to accept who they truly are. Or people will “just want to have a discussion” where they try to see invalidate the persons identity.
When a cis person enters a discussion like this, to the cis person it’s just an intellectual discussion. But to the trans person it can be threatening and it can trigger memories of past trauma they’ve gone through.
So yes, trans people get upset when you bring things like this up because you’re bringing up a topic that may have been used as a “gotcha” to invalidate their identity, and it can be unclear if that’s what you’ll try to do. This makes the whole conversation upsetting to them.
Imagine if a man who didn’t believe in women’s rights wanted to discuss it with a woman who has been discriminated against. That would be a difficult conversation and it wouldn’t be surprising if she got upset and didn’t want to have a “rational debate” about her rights.
What you’re doing when you bring up difficult topics to a marginalized person is you’re forcing them to re live traumatic memories in order to educate you. I learned this from learning about the experiences of people of color. (If you’re white) DO NOT go ask a random black person to explain to you the everyday racism they feel, because inevitably it won’t make sense to you and when you challenge something they say it will become a lot of emotional labor for them to try to make it make sense. Sure some people are fine explaining this stuff but not everyone.
Instead what people of color say about this is: go do the learning on your own. Go find out what people in this marginalized group say about your issue without making one of them explain it. Their identity is not up for you to debate. But you can read articles written by people within the community or listen to YouTube interviews. You can find the answers without making a marginalized person re live their trauma to educate you.
This is all surrounding the topic of “emotional labor”. Debating someone’s trauma requires huge amounts of emotional labor for them to stay civil and most people don’t have the energy for that, so you should not ask that of them. There are other better ways to educate yourself.
EDIT: Folks, I’m trying to honestly tell you the experience I’ve had. I had to learn this stuff too. I know that this community hates being told they have to change their behavior, but I’m kindly and honestly explaining what I know and you’re downvoting me. Please stop.