I think that there are basically three camps of people on the transgender issue. There are people who reflexively reject transgenderism or support of it as per se nonsense and everything they say must be viewed through that filter. There are people who think that transgenderism is an unalloyed positive and tend to think that any rejection of that position is the manifestation of ignorance, bigotry, or both. And then there are people in the middle - people who are confused by the issue but don't want to hurt people so are trying to listen. My anecdotal observation is that there are more people in the first two camps, and they tend to be the most vocal and the least likely to be persuaded. Therefore I do not think it will be an honest conversation, because the agendas of the speakers result in people in adverse camps shouting dogma at one another. So I do expect a dishonest discussion. Lots of people have earnest conversations with each other about hard issues without an agenda (though maybe rarely in online forums).
And while I certainly am self-important and above it all, both in terms of this conversation and in life generally speaking, I was just acknowledging up front that I knew we would likely have a shouting match and not a conversation.