any tips for dealing with the exhaustion? the cynicism?
it's just this endless battle against misinformed and malicious beliefs. it never lets up, there's no "at least we can have [x]" bc *everything* we do is considered suspicious by tme peoples. hell, even a lot of tma people are happily using each other as stepping stones if it means being 1cm higher in the hierarchy. sorry, im tired.
the best ways I've found are:
- find transfems who you can trust. it's true that many of us are aspiring bus-throwers. a lot of us aren't. it's orders of magnitude harder to find trustable TMEs, but it can help to have some tether to the non-transfeminized world. good barometer for trustworthiness is whether someone can take you self-advocating or offering fair criticism. if they feel they're above you, then that truth is likely to come out in these moments
- find some ways, big or small, to advance transfeminism in your life and combat transmisogyny. you don't need to spend all your time doing this, but a little bit of a sense that you're making a dent to help you and your sisters, even a miniscule, barely perceptible one, can ward off the hopelessness. sometimes if I let my space get too messy, a sense of uselessness creeps in, but if I just do one tiny thing to tidy up, it does a lot to reaffirm my sense of agency
- projects and hobbies! this is the inverse of above. you gotta spend some time looking away, too, and immersing yourself in the joy of other aspects of life. game design is my biggest and longest passion, and I spend a lot of time devoted to it when I'm not more laser-focused on my transfeminism, as I have been lately. (not every hobby needs an end product tho! passive enjoyment can be healing too)
- if you can, WALKS. if you can't, some other way to give your brain time to chew over things while you do a menial physical task that doesn't pull your focus at all. I find that one of the single greatest predictors of my mental health at any given time in my life is whether I'm in the habit of taking daily walks where I listen to music and let my mind freely wander, get inspired, think about the future, chew over problems, reflect on where I'm at in life, etc. it sounds kind of nonsense, and for that reason I regularly forget it too, at my own peril! some of the more common pieces of good advice out there can be hard to believe until you give them an honest test and see the results
snowghoul
titsay
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
