hello mx devon, can I ask you for autistic/trans/bodily autonomy informed take on how to respond to thin ideation/disordered eating/body dysmorphia in your trans autistic circles? I'm a transmasc person who's been hit HEAVY with body dysmorphia (like I've always seen myself in a mirror as a fat person, even as a teen who obviously now I can see was wearing tiny sizes) but not disordered eating and now my friends are mostly transfems and a bunch of them do talk a lot abt stuff like needing to lose weight/being "disgustingly fat"/complaining abt trans microcelebs who can afford glp-1. And like I totally understand that it's tied to popular trans view that you need to be skinny to pass, pressures on women to be attractive enough to count as "human", pressures to be certain BMI to get SRS etc. But still it breaks my heart when I open up to someone about how fucked up my brain is and that I don't want her to go the same route and see her posting abt calorie restriction few hours after. how do I, and more broadly we as trans (and ND community) tackle well, existing as a discriminated minority in the age where starvation chic is so back and it looks like the only way to grasp agency but it also means Infecting Yourself With Some Of The Worst Brainworms And Spreading The Triggers?
I think there are a couple of questions nested within one another here.
The first is how you can handle the cultural moment we are in, which is deeply triggering to anybody with an eating disorder, dysmorphia, or dysphoria related to their own body, and which has really bled into how a lot of people speak about themselves and their choices around health and eating.
This issue is the most practical one to address. I think you can and probably should separate your own body politics and ideals from what you expect of the people around you. You simply cannot get everyone else to be on the same page as you, and for many people, eventually moving into a more body liberatory or fat liberatory perspective is a long process of unlearning that involves many attempts & failures at modifying their own body to meet a thin cultural ideal. In the meantime, they might say and do a lot of self-hating stuff that is also really triggering and fatphobic, and it can be really emotionally hard to deal with, but ultimately telling the person that you completely disagree with every aspect of how they think and are living their lives is gonna be alienating and put them on the defensive.
It sounds like you already understand that you can't change your friend's opinions and habits if they aren't already looking to change, and that you have a lot of compassion for where they are. I think that's great. That will allow you to take some needed psychological distance when they are going on and on about how desperately they'd like to be thinner and going on crash dynamics or taking GLP1s. But you are also allowed to set some of your own boundaries.
You might want, for example, to tell your friends that you don't want to hear talk about weight loss when you are hanging out together. Don't shame them, just tell them that you personally find it upsetting and unhelpful to your own healing and that it doesn't line up with what you believe in. If you're hanging out in a crowd of these friends and they start getting into upsetting body talk, ask them to stop, and if they continue, see yourself out. It doesn't need to be combative, but it can still be firm.
If they get defensive and tell you that they need to be thinking this way because they are facing transmisogyny and passing under certain really narrow body standards is important to them, you can simply validate that they have a lot of reasons to be feeling the way that they do, that you would never dream of telling them what they need to do with their own body, but that talk of intentional weight loss and thin beauty ideals are just not good for you and not something you want to be a part of.
If you hear your friends being judgemental toward others' bodies, tell them that it's unhelpful and hurtful and that you don't think that it's right. This is the area where you can be a little bit more forceful. Don't scold, but do not tolerate cruelty. If you hear these friends expressing disgust about body fat or toward trans people who they feel have fat in any of the "wrong" places, be emphatic about finding those people good, attractive, worthy, deserving of respect, whatever feels true for you.
As long as you can emotionally regulate your own responses to this stuff when it happens, it should actually be pretty easy to keep their feelings and your own separate. You can also set boundaries by muting their social media accounts so you don't have to see stuff that rankles you.
Additionally, you will want to take care of your own wellbeing by consuming a lot of fat positive and liberationist writing, social media accounts, videos, etc, and making sure that you cultivate friendships with people who do not think this way. It will be a lot easier to tolerate the ignorance and internalized stuff of some of your friends if you have others you can vent to and lean on for support.
Your second question is really about how to politically resist these kinds of fatphobic social forces while still holding your friends and your community kindly. I think the way that you do that is by continuing to talk about how distressed you are by these things. Post about it, speak about it, attend fat liberatory events, glorify fatness, challenge people when you see them discriminating against plus-sized people, point it out when you notice that a space is exclusionary because it lacks large enough clothing sizes, or chairs without arm rests, or has tables that are bolted to the floor.
Keep being vulnerable about how terribly the culture's fatphobia hurt you, even if some of your friends do not fully get it yet, or do not seem to see how their own actions come across in light of that knowledge. You might be making more of an impact than you know. Change is slow, and people often find it very difficult to face that their actions are hurting others. It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on your own feelings and triggers, so you have the ability to be a positive, emotionally brave influence here. Just make sure you also have people to speak to who do respect where you have been, body-image-wise. You might want to seek out therapeutic support or support groups, find fat positive trans groups online, or just put out feelers among your larger social network to see if anybody is in eating disorder recovery or has moved through similar triggers and might be down to be a sounding board from time to time.
Share the science on body size not being easily changeable, learn about the dangerous effects of GLP1s for weight loss and talk about it, point out systematic fatphobia, share lots of photos of hot fat trans people, celebrate fatness on yourself and your friends who are more self-accepting, and when your friends are ignorant on the subject, try to be understanding about their own hang-ups and fears, but firm when they are being cruel to others. I know that we are in a very bleak-feeling cultural moment right now, but it will not help you to make every tiny interaction or upsetting moment into something larger and more symbolic than it is.
You cannot single-handedly reverse this cultural course, but you can be unmoving in your own beliefs and attract people who are similarly minded. You can also be a beacon of acceptance and body liberation to those around you. When your friends start unlearning some of their internalized transphobia and fatphobia they will know that they can turn to you, and if you are patient yet outspoken, they will feel good asking you for support when that time comes.
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