Vent 001
I’ve spent almost ten years stuck in life knowing that I wish I was born a girl or something. There are no nearby associations or organizations or support groups. There is nowhere to go for this except online. Neither online or real life are safe. Online is the closest I can get to being who I want to be, but I still don’t say it anywhere publicly. Because it’s also where I see everyone saying people like me should stop trying, or face consequences for trying, or for failing. I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about myself for almost ten years, both online and in real life. (I use trans, transsexual and transgender interchangeably in this because that’s how my broke brain has learned to use those terms) I took the old web 1.0 trans tests and quizzes online in the early 2010s. I was there before the attack helicopter jokes. I was there when cis became a gender term. I was there Social Justice Warrior back when was only used against transsexuals. I was there when people posted Admiral Ackbar saying “It’s a trap!“ when talking about transsexuals. I was there in the old days when people, including transsexuals, said that transsexuals who date each other are disgusting autogynophiliac fetishists. I was there when everyone accused trans men on tumblr in the ‘10s of faking it.
I was there when Enclycopedia Dramatica had lists of mental problems they thought all the transsexuals on their wiki had. I was there when Something Awful had their transsexuals contained in small forum threads, and the rest of the forums would look at them from the outside and talk about them like they were observing some disgusting animal in a cage or at a circus. Almost no one got punished for it. I was there when Dan Savage wrote an article calling a transsexual parent selfish for transitioning, and most of the transsexuals were too scared of the backlash to disagree. I was there when 4chan would go after every transsexual hoping they could get a new Chris Chan punching bag out of the whole thing. I was there when transgender exclusionary feminists would make blog posts with 500 links to news articles about transgender criminals. I was there when people asked transsexuals for proof that brains could be gendered at birth. I was there when those people changed their minds on a whim and decided they never liked the biological argument in the first place. I was there when transsexuals had to start learning more about gender than any of their detractors, just to keep up with the hydra of cis arguments. I was there when transsexuals had to start explaining why gender is a social construct. I was there when trans-exclusionary feminists pretended they were the ones arguing from the social construct angle the whole time. I was there when cis people said only the real crazy transsexuals would go through surgery. I was there when cis people said only the fake ones that are just in it to get their rocks off would refuse to get surgery. I was there when transsexuals themselves didn’t notice this catch22 and would argue with each other which one was true. I was there when transsexuals had to remember all the major events and drama like Ray Blanchard by heart in case a random cissexual came in to pretend they knew better. I was there before most of political weird twitter pretended they cared about transsexuals, before they cared about politics, when they would hound leftist transsexuals all day for the crime of being weird on the internet. I was there when everyone would wait with baited breath for a pedophile or rapist to turn out to be transsexual so they could raid trans communities online and call them all rapists. I was there when everyone said that transgender was just a bored rich white kid phenomenon. I was there when Mengele-lite obsessives would look at selfies of transsexuals and point out all the adam’s apples and large hands and bulges and veins and jawlines and skull sizes and foot sizes and brick-shaped torsos. I was there and I know exactly what has changed and what has remained the same. I wish I wasn’t there. I wish there had been anything in real life, or even online, to pull me away from these events. But there was nowhere else to go. I had to survive by drinking poisoned water. And I survived, but i think the poison did stuff to my brain. What guarantee can anyone give that none of this will ever happen again, or isn’t still happening, or that it will be fixed, or that the pain it caused people will be treated?
Hmm, these old venting thoughts are both "basic" but also fundamentally fairly true. I'd say prescient but most of them were about both the past and present of when they were written, so the fact that things are either the same or became worse in a specific way isn't special. I guess for similar people stumbling on this, it's worth saying that I'm still alive even if the situation hasn't really changed much. I vent elsewhere now anyway, and as all-encompassing as these thoughts still often are, I do have Other Thoughts and Other Moments in life, even if almost completely limited to the computer and/or online. But they include some nice people, and a few creative outlets. I can't guarantee it's enough even for me, but I can say no matter what happens I'll have been grateful for even the small things. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy those smalls things.