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Nerds, Catgirls, and Other Trans Potentialities - now revised!

before things entirely explode, i am going to paste in an exchange off-site between garg and i that she's given me her blessing to share, regarding her comments on the essay and its timbre

[3:56 PM] me: if there's one criticism I level at you garg it's that you condescend to recognize the idea and identity of Trans Catgirls as valid, clearly talking as if they are a far off thing rather than someone you're talking to and enumerating the failures of
[3:56 PM] me: like I don't disagree with your thesis or descriptions at any level
[3:56 PM] me: but I don't imagine it an inviting read if you are one such person or flirt with that mode of femininity
[3:56 PM] me: even if the ending is a call for tolerance
[3:57 PM] garg: it's part of the reason why i am not, ultiamtely, fully happy with how this turned out
[3:57 PM] garg: because i have a- vexed relationship to what you describe
[3:57 PM] me: Yes, I understand intimately
[3:57 PM] garg: being at the same time really in the same boat, and also spent a lot of my mental energy disassociation yourself from it
[3:57 PM] me: though we already discussed that part
[3:58 PM] garg: which, honestly, i should make explicit in the text
[3:58 PM] me: why not make that clear
[3:58 PM] garg: i actually wanted to sit down and write a v2 of this essay today, but got distracted by other stuff
[3:58 PM] garg: i will actually do that tomorrow and put it in
[3:58 PM] me: legit
 
Shadell said:
To bring the tangent closer to home, it strikes me that, much like the "non-classical" or "late onset" trans woman, the catgirl is prototyped, at least as far as I've seen, as a transbian. There is, a torridness to this stereotype, a perceived inability to accommodate to IRL conventions and norms that, I think, calls back in some ways to much of the distinction and bigotry Blanchard draws on in creating autogynephilia. I do think there's a very particular way we can easily see presenting as a catgirl online as a very parallel practice of embodiment (the avatar is, of course, a digital body, and one largely built in the language of stereotype and trope at that).

In this sense, I wonder if framing catgirldom as a moderately non-normative trans adolescence is merely recreating the very same cultural conflicts and excuses we've seen in there, and if Serano's narrativising here is, itself, somewhat worrisome in painting these practices as adolescent?

I'm not sure if that's as clear a comment as intended, but this is really a very interesting essay and I may need some more time to reread and digest.
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I think this is a pretty strong point - there seems like a pretty frequent trend to sort of disclaim a part of the community in order to gain respectability. Not just on mainstream spaces!

I could totally talk about how 4chans /lgbt/ board had a lot of trans girls distancing themselves in a way that's pretty parallel to that, and I totally expect that you see similar patterns in other queer spaces even if I'm not personally as familiar with that side of the community. It is sort of a natural way to hold yourself higher, by comparing yourself to someone 'lower'.

But it's also a pattern that deserves challenging. It's almost crab bucket like, sometimes, and even when it's not quite that unhealthy, I think... respectability is ultimately a kind of mirage? Chasing this idea that we can be more normal, fit in better, appeal to the mainstream public, this is always a weird moving target. Any kind of performance that is for the sake of a critical audience runs the risk of hurting yourself, in my opinion, whether that's trying to avoid getting cancelled on twitter or talking about how you're definitely not like those AGPs in the hopes you'll be seen as a real woman or consciously being more mature and put together so that people like you. You never quite actually get to a safe place with it, you have to do a lot of running in place to avoid the 'other' you're running from?
 
The one thing we'd ask people to keep in mind about this essay is that it only speaks to some types of trans female/feminine experiences.
Because there are a lot of those.
So trying to speak to all of them at once is - well, not pointless, but you'd make very different points if you did. Not everything has to be about everyone!

<Tobi>

Personally, the experiences herein don't match well with our own experiences - despite having been very geeky, having been into MLP, and one of us literary being a fox (which isn't "being a catgirl" but that speaks to experiences being divergent).

Because the point at which we decided to transition was one at which one of us (me) was actually quite content with how I performed my socially expected masculinity.
The part about assembling identity from what is at our disposal does match our experience quite well - we did do that during our transition, building upon already-existent plural identities more via the narrative of trans identity, resulting in another one of us (Fina). Though of course that does diverge from the typical trans experience, and what @Gargulec likely referred to here.

MLP was for us merely what other people at the time - primarily cis women - liked to watch and talk about, so for us it does not connect to "having been into it as an egg".

As for "literary being a fox" - much could be written about the difference between self-conceptualising as a catgirl as an impossible fantasy of womanhood (as @Gargulec posits), or self-conceptualising as a furry (which can of course include being a cat). Or indeed to what extent a difference may exist. We may do so later, we'll see.
 
CeBrudras said:
The arrow of causality doesnt have to point in that direction. For me it seems just as reasonable that eggs tend to fall into the role of an outsider due to the mental burdens of dysphoria and then choose weird hobbies that fit that. Being trans already impacts you way before you start to explore or even gain awareness of transgender stuff, after all.

The explanation that vibes the most with me actually is that 'Choosing nerdy hobbies' and 'Realizing that you are trans' just have a common, to use a term that seems kinda inappropriate outside of epidemiology, risk factor. It's actually something I have been thinking about while wondering about the (anecdotally) big overlap between neurodiverse and LGBT people. My contextualization is that there is some inherent-ish property of people that determines how well they recognize/accept/yield to societal pressures. A AMAB person who is """good""" at that ends up as someone who loves beer and cars and would need some life-changing event to make them even consider that they could be queer, while someone on the other side of that spectrum ends up on on SV and has their brittle eggshell cracked by, like, a piece fanfiction or a stubbed toe.
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Plausibly, if your brain works a little differently from most people's brains, that's likely to result in you having an atypical relationship with a lot of things: atypical hobbies and interests, atypical politics, atypical relationship patterns, atypical sexuality, atypical gender.

Somewhat relatedly:

Gargulec said:
The stereotypical nerds who populate them today are, however, worse. They are geek culture as its most noxious: the basement dweller of today doesn't just collect action figures and compulsively onanize himself to anime girls. He is also probably some kind of a GamerGate misogynist, if not an incel terrorist in the budding stages. Any kind of social inclusion of the sort that geek culture benefited from has its left-behinds, those who have to be disavowed in order to earn acceptance for the rest. I want to be clear here: I say that not because I particularly empathize with virulently anti-feminist men who think that the wonderful people are ruining culture and who want a governemnt-issued Asian girlfriend; I say that because I empathize with feeling like a failure of a man.
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I suspect the actual primary reason "uncool" nerds are disliked is that they're weird (to put it another way, they do not fit well into normative social roles, including gendered ones), and the shift toward stereotyping them as misogynists is in significant part a way people put a more liberalism-compatible wrapping on that sentiment: "I don't feel contempt and sadism toward them because they're weird and cringe and unmanly, I feel contempt and sadism toward them because they're sexists." It's part of the same pattern as neoconservatives and nativists becoming much more concerned about sexism and bigotry when it's Muslims being sexist and bigoted.

This is also my issue with the "geek culture has won" idea: I think what's won is the geek culture equivalent of the "it's OK as long as you're not some flaming weirdo about it" version of LGBT rights; nerdy kids who were bullied in school were probably not fundamentally bullied for liking comic books and Star Wars, some of their bullies likely had Star Wars lunch boxes too.

I think gay and trans people and the "uncool" kind of nerds have a lot of potential for solidarity, above and beyond the fact that the two groups have significant overlap (in the same way LGBT and neurodivergent people have a lot of potential for solidarity); they all suffer stigma, exclusion, and abuse because they do some kind of atypical behavior.
 
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I'm mostly confused by how Abigail thornes twitter post is somehow making fun of her past self for making a trans-catgirl avatar, and that being a sign she's somehow less nerdy now? At least that's I was getting from the essay at least, if I've not horrible misunderstood it.

I'm mostly saying this because I first learnt of her from Kill James Bond, and wasn't aware she was any less nerdy than any of the other hosts on that show, who have even recently made references to Gundam, which isn't exactly not nerdy.
 
Memphet'ran said:
I suspect the actual primary reason "uncool" nerds are disliked is that they're weird (to put it another way, they do not fit well into normative social roles, including gendered ones), and the shift toward stereotyping them as misogynists is in significant part a way people put a more liberalism-compatible wrapping on that sentiment: "I don't feel contempt and sadism toward them because they're weird and cringe and unmanly, I feel contempt and sadism toward them because they're sexists."
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This theory made sense to me at first, but on second thought, I feel it's lacking in predictive power. For example, the furry fandom is full of queer and neurodivergent people, and is often treated with scorn and contempt, yet I seldom see it characterised as a den of misogynists. At the other end of the spectrum, video games are among the most common and accepted elements of nerd culture, but gamers are widely stereotyped as male chauvinists.
 
The3rdCorinthian said:
I'm mostly confused by how Abigail thornes twitter post is somehow making fun of her past self for making a trans-catgirl avatar, and that being a sign she's somehow less nerdy now? At least that's I was getting from the essay at least, if I've not horrible misunderstood it.
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<Tobi>

"Nerdy" has always had the distinction between what you are interested in, and a mix of social ineptitude, social isolation, poor self-actualisation, and various other negtive qualities. Those forming a Venn-Diagram (two partially overlapping circles) where one can have just the one without the other, and of course you can keep the interests while losing the other too.
 
Gargulec said:
What I do mean, however, is that gender is not an individual thing, some transcendental quality we come to possess in isolation from the world around us. No, we assemble our genders from the materials at our disposal; we make do with the potentials made available to us.
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I'm not really much of an academic honestly, and I know I'm outside the target audience to a degree (cis gay man). But I did want to say that I found the essay as a whole genuinely really intriguing, and this passage in particular kind of-

Touching? It connected. It hit a nerve in a good way I think. The idea, the argument that essentially we have to assemble our identities out of the materials around us, in the circumstances we find ourselves in. That, out of necessity, people have to build what they are, what they know, out of what they have. The acknowledgement of how, especially for queer people, there is a strong element of making do. Even, especially, if its imperfect or flawed.

And I dunno, I just really appreciated that I think. The frankness of it.
 
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Silent Optics said:
I always assumed the deal with MLP:FiM was that a show about idealised friendship would appeal to people who felt deeply lonely. Although, I don't see the same notoriety for adult or teenage fans of other children's cartoons, in which friendship is a common theme - I can think of some negative stereotypes of Steven Universe fans, but that's almost the opposite end of the spectrum.

I do find it strange that the essay doesn't devote any concrete discussion to why catgirls (etc.) have the apparently widespread appeal that they do? Is the intended reader simply meant to know without further elaboration? Or is the reader meant to draw their own conclusions, as the end of the essay seems to imply? Some of the common wish fulfillment fantasies are not difficult to interpret -

"What if I could be part of a circle of good friends who are mostly girls, instead of socialising with men who I find unrelatable and threatening?"
"What if I felt cute and lovable (like a nice cat, perhaps) instead of unworthy and repulsive?"
etc.

Actually, you may as well ask the opposite question - why do so many cishet men like to watch a show about female friendship?
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I just wanted to say that I like this post very much. Thank you. 👍I was also wondering why there wasn't any elaboration on that, and as someone who has straddled the line between accepting status as an egg and resigning myself to life as an unattractive man forever, your comment definitely touched on some good points. The friendship and loneliness, the circle of friends (though I don't know if I needed it to be mostly girls), being cute and lovable, all great points.
 
SpiritFluid said:
It is literally their own words that the gag was that.
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Setting aside other criticisms raised - it is generally bad form, I think, to try to defend yourself from them in the comments of your own piece, something meant to stand on its own - I would like to note that there is a difference between "clickbait" as a purposefully vapid and misleading way of generating attention, and an essay hook. One is metric optimisation, the other is writing practice.

NonSequtur said:
It might be because for all that my background is philosophy it's largely not the sort of philosophy which connects to queer theory, cultural studies, anthropology or literary criticism, but is instead still reaching for general principles and rigorous foundations despite the, uh, numerous problems this approach has. The sort of philosophy where calling a paper a manifesto or provocation is grounds for suspicion, and where the stereotype of people who do the philosophy is generally very boring, very white and very masculine - and if you're contemptuous of it, nerdy, in need of touching grass and getting laid too. (Thanks Kant. :V)
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We don't negotiate with analytic philosophers.
 
My instinctual response to the question alluded to in this essay re: 'so why do weird incel subcultures seem to be so trans heavy anyway?' is:

1. I don't know that it's really very strange that terminally online groups produce terminally online transpeople.
2. I don't know that it's really very strange that transpeople are disproportionately 'forced' into being terminally online whether they understand their own transness yet or not.
3. I don't know that it's really very strange that transpeople who are terminally online express themselves through something other than the 'real' gender binary that attempts to propagate through the not-online society we inhabit.

The transcatgirl desire doesn't exist because transcatgirls are immature (or well it does but not in THAT way), it exists because transcatgirls are transitioning towards something slightly divergent from the mainstream, currently existing, social construct of femininity. Asking this question is like asking how various global 'third gender' identities can be mapped to the transwoman-transman binary that exists in the anglophonic west. On a surface level an attempt can be made but it runs into harsh problems for obvious reasons. The fact is that it doesn't map, because the transition is to something that exists outside of that western binary. What the transcatgirl is attempting to transition into is the socio-cultural construct of femininity in the way that they understand it, in their circle. The fictionalised account of womanhood that's being transitioned towards is still an account of womanhood, it's just not the western accepted one. It's the account of womanness that's perceived to be immature here first which is then projected onto the transwoman herself.

There's not a clean answer to all of that. It's just vague and murky vibes the whole way down because, ultimately, identity isn't and can't be a monolith. It's misogynistic in the first place to have your identity be such a heavily male-shaped construct (adopting the 'false' identity of porn in the real world) but it's also misogynistic to put essentialist limits on being a woman. It's not wrong to be a slut. There's an inherent problem here because people want to talk about the collective by extrapolating from individuals and that pretty much just can't ever work. The corpus of fictional catgirls might be misogynistic but the individual catgirl isn't because the individual is just a personal construct. Certainly, there is going to be an afab woman in the real world with significantly more internalised misogyny and who does significantly more measurable harm to her fellows.

Do you 'transition' as an enby? Are you 'trans' if you're genderfluid? The answers to questions like these are quite varied and personal to many people. One could attempt to exclude them from that label for various reasons but ultimately it comes down to the same sort of desire within the community to chase 'respectableness.' Genderfluidity and non-binary identities could be understood as more challenging to the status quo than 'just swapping' from one binary position to the other. Alternatively, I've sometimes seen the exact opposite position, that genderfluidity is 'more real' and more easily understood by the general population so really it's the 'full' transpeople who need to be jettisoned to achieve complete mainstream acceptance. I feel it's important to stop here and say that both of these positions are dumb and have failed to reckon with the original Cinderella's anti-foot-cutting-off message properly.
 
Delirium said:
It's misogynistic in the first place to have your identity be such a heavily male-shaped construct (adopting the 'false' identity of porn in the real world) but it's also misogynistic to put essentialist limits on being a woman.
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If we're going to talk about the implicitly socially conservative content of gender identities I have bad news about the content of normative cis manhood and normative cis womanhood.
 
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I wasn't sure whether to add this, but to start I do have criticism of the essay. I think it has way too much stuff unrelated to it's point and takes too long to get to it. Halfway for a premise and the true point only in the final section, with most of the rest being unrelated. Of course, that's often my opinion, and given that whenever my opinion is such everyone else says it's deep and touching I'm guessing I'm just fucked in the head somehow.

Anyway with that out of the way, on to stuff related to the actual content.

I wrote multiple paragraphs of fail ass bullshit but deleted all of it to post this instead: What the fuck is an online trans catgirl. And why does the person who posted a pretty positive catgirl tweet, who according to other posts is totally a terminally online trans nerd and who I am thus willing to bet still makes catgirls (or lunars or tieflings or w/e I haven't really played ttrpgs) in ttrpgs, not count. That is a serious question. I can think of answers, but I'm not here to make shit up on my own, I already do that all the time.
 
mothematics said:
i think anyone who has a problem with it should speak for themselves and engage in public discussion rather than be spoken for, because this is a forum and it wouldn't be posted here if dissent wasn't an expected part of the reaction
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I mean, I disagree with the essay on several points but I do not think the way this discussion will go (And, to be frank, has already gone) is going to afford much respect to its subject and I do not want to be a part of that.
 
Chlof said:
I mean, I disagree with the essay on several points but I do not think the way this discussion will go (And, to be frank, has already gone) is going to afford much respect to its subject and I do not want to be a part of that.
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fair nuff, tho I promise garg doesn't bite (much. angry gecko that she is I fed her some flies so she should be nice for now lmao)
 
mothematics said:
i think anyone who has a problem with it should speak for themselves and engage in public discussion rather than be spoken for, because this is a forum and it wouldn't be posted here if dissent wasn't an expected part of the reaction
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the trans woman I'm speaking for has elected not to do so, as for some reason she has come to the conclusion that getting into an argument in the comments of an essay that sent her into inconsolable sobbing fits by making her out to be "a joke, a laughingstock, a worthless piece of trash" (her words) probably wouldn't be an enjoyable experience. can't imagine why.

Gargulec said:
Setting aside other criticisms raised - it is generally bad form, I think, to try to defend yourself from them in the comments of your own piece, something meant to stand on its own - I would like to note that there is a difference between "clickbait" as a purposefully vapid and misleading way of generating attention, and an essay hook. One is metric optimisation, the other is writing practice.
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Hiya! I understand if you don't wanna engage, but how on earth is that any different? If you say something provocative that you don't actually think just to draw people in to reading, and barely address it in the actual essay, how is that not a vapid and misleading way of generating attention? And if it's something that could be pretty easily taken as implying some really unfortunate stuff, isn't it a little scummy regardless?
 
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I liked the essay a lot, and found the stylistic choices and content crisp and rewarding.

When I got to the part where you called out the hook, I was surprised - it wasn't a question or tension that had been in my head at all, and I'm not sure on re-reading the beginning that it was posed that clearly at all. I think the structure overall is kind of meandering and the clarity (especially for people's reactions partway through!) would benefit from a more explicit through-line. Right now it effectively starts four times (with the catgirl tweet, with the story about crossdressing that ends with the 'hook', with the discussion of geek culture, and with the mention of Mia Mulder's video essay) without the connections really being made until during and after the fourth.
 
I feel like, as someone who probably counts as terminally online, someone who really only touches grass as part of avoiding people on sidewalks, that there is nothing more terminally online than feeling the need to distance yourself from a stereotype of how people behave on twitter or other socmed. I'm not actually specifically leveling this against the OP in the particular, but it's fucking weird to me that an environment is creating that need. Gals talking about programmer uniforms on tumblr or twitter just feel, if not always anodyne, like small potatoes I wouldn't have anything to do with unless I do. The people attacking my rights are certainly not primarily or secondarily drawing on trans catgirls to do so. Yep, some of them probably do have some harmful views on gender, but who doesn't. They're not an issue, and because the shape of my terminal online-ness still avoids most social media, they're not even a blight that informs what I engage with for fun like Gamers. It seems amazingly online to feel like trans catgirls are your problem.

I'd also object to a lot of what seems to be placed on them, but being blunt, it doesn't feel worth doing for a variety of reasons.

As far as nerds and transness goes... maybe there is some draw from folks who think they're weird. Maybe it does, especially if for some reason you grew up with reasons to think you were only mildly unusual. I am amazingly skeptical of any take that says nerd-dom, geek-dom, or whatever else, has a powerful, inherent draw to any oppressed people. And I am equally skeptical that it largely has any succour to offer at large. Perhaps it helps... for white transgirls. Absent a reason to think any of the premises are true beyond 'hm, this sure is a twitter stereotype', I think it's ... well, bold, at best. But it's certainly not true of nerd-dom and oppression largely.
 
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hugh_donnetono said:
the trans woman I'm speaking for has elected not to do so, as for some reason she has come to the conclusion that getting into an argument in the comments of an essay that sent her into inconsolable sobbing fits by making her out to be "a joke, a laughingstock, a worthless piece of trash" (her words) probably wouldn't be an enjoyable experience. can't imagine why.
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I'm sorry your friend was upset but you understand why my response to some guy coming in to speak for The Trans Feeemales to other actual Trans Feeeemales is gonna make me go "I would like to hear from the person in question", right

like I don't think this sort of telephone championing from a random guy is really helpful or going accomplish much at all, nor is being snitty to the person who actually directly said she thought the essay was fundamentally belittling in a way just upthread lmao. Chill, please.
 
SpiritFluid said:
Yeah, it says that. Gargulec wrote that these identities are valid, for certain.

They also use the opening "putting on a dress" as a gag and rfeer back to it midway through the article as one for clickbait, only writing in the tail end "if we look into the background, then we could see it's bad", as if somehow the obviousness of that situation is somehow more subuded than the hypothetical secret transgender euphoria of a then-1800s Republican mentioning these things in memoirs, goes on lengthy and unrelated tangents of other historical identities that Might Not Even Be Always Appropriate To Label As Being Trans (tangents that I will concede were well written but ultimately little to nothing with an online geek culture lensing), and also has a lengthy diatribe against a hypothetical Trans-Atlantic Transbian in a Polycule "who's never gotten laid and has problematic ideas about sex", and the most flattering thing they can say about the identity is "Well, yeah, this thing is sexist, but its okay IN HINDSIGHT", which is probably the single most backhanded slap against the face 'compliment' could be delivered to someone trying to make light of their own context.

I'm saying all this as someone who also who has identified as a transwoman (genderfluid feels a more apt term for me nowadays; gender is certainly something uncertain and mandated by context, in a queer eying of it).

I can very well say that if one wants to say something positive about people who feels confused about their identities, then that statement (essay, essay makes a statement, whatever) shouldn't come to a glowing resolution of how great and valid their identities are they can barely keep a straight face without punching at someone.

And I have digested this over a lot, had to delete a much more acidic rant on this essay to rpely to this, and I can without much accord, my feelings are certainly complicated and leaning far, far into the negative, because a final point is supported only so much by its text, and one that starts out with a clickbait "But we wouldn't know anything about having to put on a dress when there's a lot of guys, right?" can only stand so tall, and makes this pointAnd falls into them by actively refusing to communicate anything positive except for saying at the end "Well maybe we should try".

I don't imagine and I don't hope thats what Gargulec intended, anything but, but frankly the lensing of this essay has not lended itself to me, or many others, to its final point, and has instead been just a deeply uncomfortable read, with some nice contextual observations and understandings to Completely Different People From Literal Centuries Ago Outside The Context Of This Framing and Now.
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I feel a lot from post.
mothematics said:
i think anyone who has a problem with it should speak for themselves and engage in public discussion rather than be spoken for, because this is a forum and it wouldn't be posted here if dissent wasn't an expected part of the reaction
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Hello. I didn't want to speak up and was happy other people were saying this instead of me. This post didn't really make me want to engage either. You "being snitty" to them in response to their opinion does not make me want to actually post mine more, it makes me want to not participate in the thread.
mothematics said:
before things entirely explode, i am going to paste in an exchange off-site between garg and i that she's given me her blessing to share, regarding her comments on the essay and its timbre

[3:56 PM] me: if there's one criticism I level at you garg it's that you condescend to recognize the idea and identity of Trans Catgirls as valid, clearly talking as if they are a far off thing rather than someone you're talking to and enumerating the failures of
[3:56 PM] me: like I don't disagree with your thesis or descriptions at any level
[3:56 PM] me: but I don't imagine it an inviting read if you are one such person or flirt with that mode of femininity
[3:56 PM] me: even if the ending is a call for tolerance
[3:57 PM] garg: it's part of the reason why i am not, ultiamtely, fully happy with how this turned out
[3:57 PM] garg: because i have a- vexed relationship to what you describe
[3:57 PM] me: Yes, I understand intimately
[3:57 PM] garg: being at the same time really in the same boat, and also spent a lot of my mental energy disassociation yourself from it
[3:57 PM] me: though we already discussed that part
[3:58 PM] garg: which, honestly, i should make explicit in the text
[3:58 PM] me: why not make that clear
[3:58 PM] garg: i actually wanted to sit down and write a v2 of this essay today, but got distracted by other stuff
[3:58 PM] garg: i will actually do that tomorrow and put it in
[3:58 PM] me: legit
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Like, the "someone has to wear the dress" opening is intentionally shocking and then going "haha you felt pain so I guess I did things right" right after is frankly kinda shitty imo. I get it's a joke. Kinda a hopefully relatable thing to be sick and tired of that as an excuse. The essay as a whole, despite ostensibly being about how we shouldn't treat subsets of trans women as any less valid, goes out of its way to repeatedly make shots (again, I don't care if the trans-atlantic comment was a joke) that Garg definitely knows will make people feel the opposite of good. I don't want to charcterize Garg as a bad person, clewrly they're aware of the issues, but as a whole it still feels infantilizing and kinda mean spirited to me. It's frustrating because there's good insights and valuable self critique here to be consumed, it's just been sprinkled with a fine layer of fiberglass for a lot of people, including some of those it's meant for. I really do not want to have a shitfight about this, so if someone's going to go off on me for this post, please don't.
 
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I think a really important thing to analyze in a second version of this essay is that some LGBTQ+ areas are just like... extremely fucking toxic. When I think of the 'pic crew twitter squad'. My first thoughts are absolutely not 'hmm yess lesser trans people' and are instead 'hmm yes the people who will tell me to kill myself and try to dox me'. I might massively be projecting here but I'm just rattling off my experiences tbh

Edit: Whatever might delete, I retyped this like ten times. fucking hell

It's like, I don't in anyway think of them as lesser and shit. I'm just terrified with interacting with that specific community. I've had horrific fucking experiences like that before and I don't want to get into it.
 
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