So, if you spend as much time browsing through internet jokes and memes as I do, you've probably stumbled across an image similar to this at least once.

And if you're a lot like me, you probably cringed just as much as I did when you were done fawning over the adorable puppy pictured. Turning gender identity into a joke is harmful, but not because it's offensive. Yes, you read that right. This isn't about these jokes and memes being offensive.

The reason they're harmful is because they are continuing the stereotype that gender identity is a choice and that it's pretending to be something that one is not. It also fuels the very scientifically inaccurate claim that there are only two genders. Another meme that you may have seen circulating was from a garlic bread page on Facebook. I really wish what I said wasn't true because not only is the meme terribly wrong, the sentence that I just had to type was cringe-worthy all by itself.

So, you're probably still hung up and aghast that my personal issue isn't that they're offensive, am I right? Well, personally, it's very hard to offend me. So, what my issue is with these jokes and memes is that they're taking very real problems in real people's lives and turning them into a punchline. I am far from a dog pretending to be a cat. I am a man trying to survive in an uphill battle against the world that everyone else has created and keeps alive with harmful jokes and banter like this. These jokes spawn conversations which, for lack of a better term, become a circle jerk of uneducated individuals confirming to one another that transgender folks are invalid and are undeserving of basic human rights. These conversations then develop into real attacks on transgender people and another of us falls victim to a senseless murder. Someone like me, thankfully untouched so far by anti-trans violence, hears of the murder and becomes afraid for their safety. Again, it is a vicious cycle and one of the many things fueling it are these jokes.

So what can we do to stop the cycle and spread love instead of hate? First of all, the Internet as a whole is an unstoppable machine. There is not much we can do within it to prevent these memes and posts except to not spread them further. In the real world, we can be kind and gentle educators and spread kindness instead of harmful jokes. If you catch your friends giggling over a picture of Caitlyn Jenner's "cat" like I did, don't stand there silent (like I did). Speak up! Say something! Kindly tell them why you think it's wrong. If they ignore you, you did your best. If not, know that you helped to prevent another one of our kind from dying.

Yes, I believe that stopping a harmful joke can prevent the death of another trans person.

And you can help us too.