It has an opportunity cost. It's not burdensome to be challenged, per se, it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone. No, they are not coming into bathrooms en masse to molest you. Yes, they deserve to just get on with their lives. No, we shouldn't mock them for who they are" etc. etc.

It takes someone 3-5 seconds to "just asking questions" and it takes me much more than that to respond. There's an obvious imbalance there that leads to:

a) It's a lot more exhausting to respond than to ask

b) It's vulnerable to malicious askers abusing my good faith answering time

So while, with close friends, I'm happy to answer questions. Or with well meaning allies who genuinely want to learn and just don't understand. But like, random folks? On an internet forum? Nah. They can ask and I can say, "Sorry, let's just not engage."

Challenge response has a higher cost than challenging.

For example, would you debate with every flat earther you see? It's simply not worth the time spent. Maybe they fall into the idiot category though.

I think this is however kind of lopsided. For example, trans people are a hotly debated subject but are only 1% of the population or whatever. An individual trans person might have to engage in this debate daily, but a non-trans person might only engage online voluntarily because they have never met a trans person IRL and the concept of one is a fun thought experiment. In that sense being able to say "discussing this topic further won't change my mind" may be an important part of simply letting politicized minorities go about living life.

We only have a finite amount of time on this planet.

> unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.

My recent experience is that even intelligent and thoughtful people start sounding like idiots when they decide to talk politics, and the conversations quickly turn into a huge bore. All I can do is roll my eyes.