In my case, my goal isn't to change anyone's mind. It's to preserve sanity -- I can't in good faith "pretend" to get along and have normal conversations when people are actively engaging in behavior that directly harms myself and others.
Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple levels of indirection.
Being told that you have to follow the same rules as everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to be used solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so bad.
For example, what exactly is "gender-affirming care"? Because I suspect that includes giving life-altering drugs to young children.
"“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
It literally does not. You can vote for Trump without ever having thought of trans people a day in your life, much less thought of "abusing" them.
Additionally and AFAIK, Trump himself has never expressed a desire to abuse trans people, according to a normal and accepted definition of "abuse".
You're pretty much the exact kind of person that the article talks about.