i mean, in the same way that people can censor those war crimes, people can add trigger warnings to their essays. the solution to not being able to handle graphic descriptions of war crimes isnt to competely ignore even the vaguest discussion of the war, it's for the people writing about it to say at the beginning of their piece "by the way, i'm going to be talking about warcrimes." it takes, truly, under a minute to do. the same is true of the response to the essay. the solution isnt to say tough shit that you were hurt, dont read any essays about transness, the solution is for care to be put in about what's written and giving proper trigger warnings.
You could also consider that a war with known war crimes might produce more of them and accept that maybe reading about the war is going to run the risk of being exposed to graphic descriptions of war crimes and include that in the consideration for how you approach reading about the war. Sometimes people can have a responsibility to take care of themselves, without that being an obligation placed on other people.
Nobody's Ludvidigoing people to chairs and forcing them read garg's essay. People can perfectly well choose to not read it, if they don't want to run the risk of being exposed to things that might hurt them.
i mean, in the same way that people can censor those war crimes, people can add trigger warnings to their essays. the solution to not being able to handle graphic descriptions of war crimes isnt to competely ignore even the vaguest discussion of the war, it's for the people writing about it to say at the beginning of their piece "by the way, i'm going to be talking about warcrimes." it takes, truly, under a minute to do. the same is true of the response to the essay. the solution isnt to say tough shit that you were hurt, dont read any essays about transness, the solution is for care to be put in about what's written and giving proper trigger warnings.
What sort of trigger warning would you suggest? "This is an essay about nerd culture, catgirls, and transness, two emotional and raw topics, plus an identity, something inherently emotional for some"? I honestly can't think of a way to trigger warning this that the title doesn't really get across. It's a raw, emotional topic. That hurts to read about. If you're sensitive to that, and know you're sensitive to that...yeah, it sucks that you were hurt, maybe don't read essays about trans identity unless you're in a strong headspace for it? I have to pay attention to what some things are about, because-
You could also consider that a war with known war crimes might produce more of them and accept that maybe reading about the war is going to run the risk of being exposed to graphic descriptions of war crimes and include that in the consideration for how you approach reading about the war. Sometimes people can have a responsibility to take care of themselves, without that being an obligation placed on other people.
Nobody's Ludvidigoing people to chairs and forcing them read garg's essay. People can perfectly well choose to not read it, if they don't want to run the risk of being exposed to things that might hurt them.
I was just trying to phrase this, you did it way better. It's this. People have a responsibility to take care of themselves. This essay doesn't pretend to not being about a really raw emotional topic. A trigger warning would just restate the title, and yeah, maybe that's worth doing, "Seriously, this is an emotional topic, don't read it if you're depressed or sensitive", but honestly that just feels condescending to me? It's an obviously emotional topic.
I've just stopped following the Ukraine thread, for instance, because it turned out the level of what actually triggered me went past just the uncensored pictures, and the general discussion didn't automatically need to be TW'd. I ended up reporting like five posts that turned out to not be what I thought they were before I realized "Oh I really need to stop reading this thread, I'm just in a bad place for this". You're really good at phrasing this stuff.
Though also I'm autistic and perpetually exhausted so it might just be that I'm bad at phrasing concisely.
I was just trying to phrase this, you did it way better. It's this. People have a responsibility to take care of themselves. This essay doesn't pretend to not being about a really raw emotional topic. A trigger warning would just restate the title, and yeah, maybe that's worth doing, "Seriously, this is an emotional topic, don't read it if you're depressed or sensitive", but honestly that just feels condescending to me? It's an obviously emotional topic.
i dont really think that just seeing the title "nerds catgirls and other trans potentialities" necessarily gives away what might be hurtful in the actual essay. restating the title in the content warning wouldnt actually be an effective content warning because it would just say cw: trans catgirls. i think it *would* be worth saying in the content warning perhaps more like 'cw: self-deprecation veering towards invalidation of trans identities and discussion on the validity of catgirls as an identity.' something like that, although i dont think that's perfect as a content warning. that just isnt captured by the title of the essay, and i think its somewhat dishonest to say that everyone who was hurt by the essay should have read the title and immediately known that they would be hurt by it. its also worth noting that transness is a lot more broad than the war in ukraine. you can't just expect any given trans person to ignore *all* discussion of transness, or any posts with the word catgirl and trans in it, because maybe this time it will hurt them. there's a certain point at which responsibility needs to be taken by the writer, rather than the onus being put on the reader. apologies if this is poorly written, im emotional about the whole thing for obvious reasons.
But like... I don't get it? I don't understand the thesis statement of the essay?
Like, the argument is, as far as I can determine, that some extremely online trans women come from other extremely online communities, and probably still have hangovers from them, and arguably those aren't even 'hangovers' and the presentation of these girls as being either not 'really' women or being a sort of evolutionary stage towards 'actual' trans femininity is unfair to them?
Is that right? Because I sometimes think its right and I sometimes think I conjured it out of whole cloth and its not related to the essay at all?
And then, like... What does that have to do with the bit at the start about how boys dress up as girls when there aren't any girls? Even assuming the kinda sorta jab at SV is, like, some deeper point (which I also don't understand? Its raised to be dismissed because... uhm?) I don't see how these different things tie together? The whole history bit seems like it doesn't connect to the rest?
Like even the people who don't like the essay seem to understand it more than I do?
I just want to take a moment here to at the very least comment on something (and as I get through more of this somethings plural) that resonate rather deeply with me - I don't really have that strong of an opinion on the depths of Geek culture (despite spending most of my teens deeply immersed in it and it's conflicts) however I think some of the tongue and cheek references towards the 2012 Bronies is while definitely hyperbolic, not as far off my personal experience as I'd care to admit (I know and grew up around plenty who took lesser forms of option B).
I spent (wasted) a lot of my late teens fighting culture war battles rather than try to grapple with my sense of self and have walked pretty close to an edge that looking back I'm very glad I didn't drop off of given the choice.
I'm going somewhere with this I swear.
I am nominally (and we'll get to this) a cis male, however I happen to be that odd one that for some reason seems to have immersed himself in communities that have much higher than average populations of people who are very explicitly not anything like me. Some of my very best friends I am happy to know before and after they chose to live a life that was very different from when I met them, and in many ways I wonder sometimes at how I live my life and how I have made my choices.
The salience of this question has to do with how densely trans history is populated by ghosts. By that, I don't only mean the usual kinds of hauntings, though there are plenty of them too. I am thinking more of the fact that to immerse oneself in trans history is to come across a great number of things, lives, and stories that could have been, but didn't necessarily happen – and which yet stay with us all the same. If that sounds too poetic to you, let me give you a concrete example. It's the one I started with, George Dornin. His memoir records a brief moment of cross-dressing pleasure which, of course, was not atypical for his time. What justifies it is that it was a matter of necessity, of a want of women, of special circumstances; that is what made it permissible for him to wear the dress, to receive the attention of fellow men, and to later recall this event as a silly anecdote from the rough times in the frontier. But this memoir also records an absence – the absence of Georgia Dornin, who put on the dress and felt more at home in it than she could have expected; of Georgia Dornin who didn't go on to become a Republican legislator but rather went to join San Francisco's budding demi-monde, who went on to live a rich and beautiful trans life among others like her.
But such a Georgia would be far less likely to leave with us a memoir like that; we would sooner learn about her from the police chronicle and the records of the court charging her with the 'public indecency' that is crossdressing (which became a crime in San Francisco soon after the boomtown period was over). More likely, however, we would not have learned about her at all; helped by her whiteness, she would stand a good chance of living her life as a woman, and leaving no testimony to the contrary. Absent, of course, an archeologist digging up a woman's grave to report that there are "man's" bones inside.
Still, this is just speculation. We don't have Georgia; we have George.
Or do we? We have no guarantee – other than the stifling cisgenderism ruling over our understanding of history – that George Dornin didn't spend the rest of his life thinking back to that night, to that time wearing the dress and awkwardly moving through the first steps of the dance, of that aborted transition. Of course, he couldn't have gone further along its track: he had a life to live, and a life he was loath to abandon. What makes a society transphobic is not only individual acts of violence targeted against trans people, but also the way that the very foundations of that society are built so as to prevent trans lives from being lived. George had to know – even if he was not necessarily conscious of it – that there were consequences to staying in the dress; it's not difficult to imagine the rational, sad choice of putting it down, and living the rest of his heartbroken over what he was not allowed to become.
Or maybe that is just what Georgia wanted us to think, and the memoir is just one part of the larger ruse of a canny trans woman looking to avoid suspicion as she lived a double life of a Republican politician and a famed stage queen? It's hard to imagine, but it is not impossible: it is a part of the larger trans potential of history.
Then again, even if someday someone will unearth a photo album from a San Francisco cabaret, c. 1870, where Dornin performs as the queen of the night, it won't resolve the question one way or another. Maybe he wasn't trans; maybe he didn't think of himself as a woman; maybe he just liked the dress that much.
The point is this: he could have been a she, even if he wasn't. And I am personally haunted by Georgia Dornin, and the materials she'd have woven her trans femininity from.
I don't think I've ever really spoken to...well, anyone about this not out of shame or anything but more just because I keep a very private inner life (and again I'm at a moment of re-evaluation so why not throw it out there).
The story of George (or Georgia) Dorin - the potentiality of it deeply deeply resonates with me. While fandom was my initial foray into spaces where I was exposed to people who did not live my deeply white deeply rural lifestyle that I grew up in, in University my sibling (who is Non-Binary) and their girlfriend at the time (a makeup artist) invited me out for a few nights to Drag events specfically as a model (I don't claim to be much of a performer). I was allowed a glimpse into a different way of living my life, of expressing myself to the world. It felt very authentic to me, and I've spent about the last 5 odd years since this experience grappling with what those few short experiences meant to me.
I find this kind of comical considering the framing of some dude on the frontier but it has dredged up questions about myself that sometimes will lay buried for months at a time, only to be inturrupted by a weeks of nearly disassociating.
I have, for a variety of reasons chosen to continue as how I was born, and I'm confident now by the fact that I have spent this long thinking about could haves or should haves that I must answer at some point (I'm fairly certain I know the answer) if I am living in bad faith with myself. I must answer If I ever will chose to take up the materials and craft myself a form that is different from the one I has already been built or myself.
I am unsure if I wish to take that step now, or ever for myself, I will always wish those that have the best. I'm not unhappy as I am, and I live a life that I think is meaningful and I appreciate the doors that have been opened for me, even as I wonder at the ones that have remained closed.
I wonder if I will become one of these ghosts, but I am fairly certain I do not wish to haunt.
I am however happy that this essay gave me a way to describe how I feel.
But like... I don't get it? I don't understand the thesis statement of the essay?
Like, the argument is, as far as I can determine, that some extremely online trans women come from other extremely online communities, and probably still have hangovers from them, and arguably those aren't even 'hangovers' and the presentation of these girls as being either not 'really' women or being a sort of evolutionary stage towards 'actual' trans femininity is unfair to them?
Is that right? Because I sometimes think its right and I sometimes think I conjured it out of whole cloth and its not related to the essay at all?
And then, like... What does that have to do with the bit at the start about how boys dress up as girls when there aren't any girls? Even assuming the kinda sorta jab at SV is, like, some deeper point (which I also don't understand? Its raised to be dismissed because... uhm?) I don't see how these different things tie together? The whole history bit seems like it doesn't connect to the rest?
Like even the people who don't like the essay seem to understand it more than I do?
The bit at the start was a hook to get people starting to read the essay while the history bit was, to my understanding, a demonstration about how what it means to be trans depends on the context the person is living in. After all, you can't expect an emperor, king or queen back however long ago to think about transness in the same way we do today. Similarly, someone who arrives at transness via nerd stuff will think about it differently than those that arrive at it at via more... let's say traditional methods? In this case that means catgirls.
But like... I don't get it? I don't understand the thesis statement of the essay?
Like, the argument is, as far as I can determine, that some extremely online trans women come from other extremely online communities, and probably still have hangovers from them, and arguably those aren't even 'hangovers' and the presentation of these girls as being either not 'really' women or being a sort of evolutionary stage towards 'actual' trans femininity is unfair to them?
Is that right? Because I sometimes think its right and I sometimes think I conjured it out of whole cloth and its not related to the essay at all?
And then, like... What does that have to do with the bit at the start about how boys dress up as girls when there aren't any girls? Even assuming the kinda sorta jab at SV is, like, some deeper point (which I also don't understand? Its raised to be dismissed because... uhm?) I don't see how these different things tie together? The whole history bit seems like it doesn't connect to the rest?
Like even the people who don't like the essay seem to understand it more than I do?
you have that basically right! the history bit is a bit more indirect.
generally I think I would summarize the thrust of the essay something like this, trying to keep my use of jargon or theory words to a minimum. it's definitely more of an explore essay than a persuade essay, so this leaves a lot of the exploring by the wayside to focus on the stuff it's trying to actively argue.
1. Queer and trans people often use strategies of disavowal (claiming they're the More Reasonable and Respectable of their people, not like those unsympathetic outliers) and of mythologizing the path of transition (dividing their past into periods defined by their movement towards their present). While one is mostly an outsider-facing strategy and one is mostly a friends-and-self-facing thing, both crop up in theory and they ultimately do the same thing: divide trans experiences into the immature (shallow, silly, not yet complete, not worthy of study) and the mature (sophisticated, acceptable, final).
This is the rhetorical heart of both egg narratives and pipeline memes on the one hand and the construction of stories of conditional trans acceptance on the other. Describing the shitty parts of this made some people very uncomfortable.
2. Rejecting this means valuing all forms of queer self-expression, not just the most normatively prestigious ones. This is the connection between George Dornin, sissy boys, trans catgirls, and the "exasperated, mature trans woman." You don't only afford value or respectability to one end of the "pipeline," because the pipeline isn't a straight line, and every "step" on it is something that can be desirable (and desired!) for its own sake. If we only value George Dornin for maybe being Georgia Dornin, we are focusing on a ghost over a person.
3.
But if you want a central point in the text, it's this part:
I am going to make a wager that we are yet to reckon with trans catgirls – and I do use this term expansively. After all, structurally, trans catgirls, doggirls, robot girls, demon girls, and latex drones belong roughly to the same category, even if their internal divisions become flattened and erased in the eyes of exasperated, mature trans women that try to disidentify from them.
Yet to reckon: yet to provide an account of trans potentials that are latent within the dregs of nerd culture. Yet to create a good language for describing the trans culture that emerges from them, without cringing at them, and without whitewashing them. Yet to find a way to talk about geek misogyny that also becomes a feedstock for the love of women.
What we do have instead are practices of persistent evasion and insistent disavowal. In the broader trans discourse – the one that is public-faced, present within "high-brow" press, popular media, or academic trans theory – trans catgirls do not substantially exist. At best, they are jokes; at worst they are the problem. Seldom, if ever, they are a life that can be led.
Gargulec says that this should be explored more, and without falling into the traps of disrespect and disavowal she identifies. She particularly argues it is worthy of exploration in forms and spaces of discourse that are (illusorily) far from science fiction internet forums and more invested in these practices of evasion and categorization.
This was the source of another bit of disconnect, because a lot of people don't really...care, about those places? Trans life involves telling prestigious knowledge workers and authorities to go fuck, sometimes a lot, so it's easy to reject their importance. But ultimately social theory is a lot like fashion, and those places influence everyone, even when you don't think they do. Like the famous Miranda Priestly cerulean monologue.
And so Gargulec says that this subject deserves to be chronicled in depth and with care.
But a joke, all too often, is also kind of a disavowal. The gesture of laughing your latex catgirl off as an evidence of "being an egg", or of being mortified at the prospect of being clocked as a trans "sex kitten" point us at a certain problem. Today, we have so many histories of transness, that lead through the familiar fields of gay love, clubbing, and secret life of crossdressing. In literature and in theory, and in all the essays scattered across the n+1s of the world, we are increasingly coming to terms with what's transfemme about taking it up the ass, doing ketamine off your best friend's breasts, or having a predilection for sissy hypno. But we still lack, and painfully so, a robust account of the trajectories of trans life that lead instead through cRPGs, comic books, My Little Pony, and bad cartoon porn. We are yet to map out the routes that trans lives take through the rejecta of geekdom.
This is a pattern that recurs throughout social history. When, among men, no women can be found, sometimes some boy has to put on a dress (more or less metaphorical) and be a substitute, often with the tacit, if not explicit, permission of his peers. Famous examples range from the use of crossdressed actors when women were not permitted on theater stages, through the justifications for the homosexual cultures in highly homosocial environments such as boarding schools, all the way to the popularity of drag shows put on by the US Navy servicemen during the Second World War.
Anyway, have you noticed that there are a lot of trans women on SV?
This point gets dropped in the essay, kind of? Whether out of fear of actually making an insulting point or because it was lost in cuts and edits, it doesn't really matter. I think it is an actually interesting potential point, though, so I want to get that thought here in the thread and see if it sparks anything.
Why do we see performed femininity in "male" spaces like this? I can think of a lot of examples too, honestly. Users on this forum are quite comfortable experimenting with the limited gender presentation allowed by avatars - I know a ton of users who have an anime girl prominently displayed there but are not women. That's a fairly mild level of gender play, though.
I could also talk about how in online nerdy spaces roleplaying a woman is more normalized in tabletop games or anime discussion groups or whatever, in a way that seems pretty conducive to feeling yourself out?
And of course there are still boys boarding schools or sex segregated classes, and I bet they probably still do theater performances like the historical examples mentioned. I don't know if any of this is consistent enough to really be a trend, but why not follow the thought a bit?
So I will posit - I wonder if in those spaces it is easier to experiment with gender because there is not the sense of comparison, or inadequacy, or jealousy, that you might see from performing femininity around cis women. (I wonder about the inverse too, but I don't really know any spaces that would be like that or any trans masculine experiences there? I am sure there must be discussions, somewhere in academia, about trans men in lesbian social circles or in feminist groups and how they might experience gender, though, so consider that an exercise for some other thinker.) Personally, I felt keenly insecure when talking to friends who were girls in high school, and the idea of trying on clothes or makeup where they could see was a lot worse than... doing it as a halloween joke, or thinking about cosplaying for a tabletop game at a friends house, or whatever. There is a certain comfort in having an audience who is not doing better than you at what you're trying? (I realize that phrasing is a little problematic, of course, but I am kinda digging back into my shameful exploratory years, here.)
And certainly, for me, going to spaces that were womens only was... pretty fraught? What if I was called out as an imposter, what if I stood out too obviously... I was only able to start doing that at all pretty far into my medical transition and after a long series of personal events that gave me more confidence. I still can't imagine going to a lesbian bar, or something. Conversely, spaces where I might be familiar with the people there, or have friends who were like those people from long ago, are going to have guys in them, possibly a lot of them. I think the only way I could avoid kinda gravitating to male slanted spaces would be putting in a ton of purposeful effort, or by going to basically specifically trans spaces a lot more. And that's now, when I'm a lot more confident!
Back in my exploratory youth I didn't really... feel like that was accessible to me at all? A retreat to the frontier is a lot different than a retreat to 4chan or to reddit or to sv, but I think there is just a bit of a throughline in that they can all be retreats away from something. Places where, if you begin to stand out, it might be in a good direction instead of a bad one?
Anyway this is a lot of rambling and I'm not sure about it, but it was something I was hoping to see more thoughts on and this is where I'm at thinking about it for a day or so.
I'm late I guess but parts of the discussion make me think that maybe someone should have answered my question of what the fuck an online trans catgirl is after all. Someone who sees the negative communist catgirl stereotype and thinks "yes, those people are awful for harassing e-celebs/having bad takes" and someone who sees that stereotype and thinks "but I am an online communist catgirl, I am being attacked by exaggerated/false stereotypes" don't exactly identify the same way even if they are both online communist catgirl nerds who don't harass e-celebs. Or, heck, maybe I am using identify wrong and we can say that they do. Or maybe it's all too messy and fluid. Whatever. Either way, they obviously view the already existing stereotype differently, which will lead to differing perceptions of the essay and indeed the author and whether they are speaking from the readers in-group or not.
on a fundamental level, i do not respect any argument that seeks to have this essay sanitized for no reason better than "it made me think about myself and i wasn't ready for it." that's exactly what writing should do.
I don't think anyone argued this, though. Unless you assume being hurt by the description of the stereotype or the hook is equal to being made to think about yourself, which I can't agree with. It can mean that, yes, but not always or by default, which means it shouldn't be assumed.
why assume that the people who liked the essay have never been through hard times? why assume that the people who like the essay are pseudointellectuals? why assume that gargulec is "sitting in an ivory tower of not giving a shit"?
You misread that post (assuming stuff like this wasn't also in a different post which I didn't read), it was saying the opposite and using it to claim it should have been obvious that this was going to hurt people, both for Garg and others.
In an effort to talk more about the essay itself, I thought...
This point gets dropped in the essay, kind of? Whether out of fear of actually making an insulting point or because it was lost in cuts and edits, it doesn't really matter. I think it is an actually interesting potential point, though, so I want to get that thought here in the thread and see if it sparks anything.
Why do we see performed femininity in "male" spaces like this? I can think of a lot of examples too, honestly. Users on this forum are quite comfortable experimenting with the limited gender presentation allowed by avatars - I know a ton of users who have an anime girl prominently displayed there but are not women. That's a fairly mild level of gender play, though.
I could also talk about how in online nerdy spaces roleplaying a woman is more normalized in tabletop games or anime discussion groups or whatever, in a way that seems pretty conducive to feeling yourself out?
And of course there are still boys boarding schools or sex segregated classes, and I bet they probably still do theater performances like the historical examples mentioned. I don't know if any of this is consistent enough to really be a trend, but why not follow the thought a bit?
So I will posit - I wonder if in those spaces it is easier to experiment with gender because there is not the sense of comparison, or inadequacy, or jealousy, that you might see from performing femininity around cis women. (I wonder about the inverse too, but I don't really know any spaces that would be like that or any trans masculine experiences there? I am sure there must be discussions, somewhere in academia, about trans men in lesbian social circles or in feminist groups and how they might experience gender, though, so consider that an exercise for some other thinker.) Personally, I felt keenly insecure when talking to friends who were girls in high school, and the idea of trying on clothes or makeup where they could see was a lot worse than... doing it as a halloween joke, or thinking about cosplaying for a tabletop game at a friends house, or whatever. There is a certain comfort in having an audience who is not doing better than you at what you're trying? (I realize that phrasing is a little problematic, of course, but I am kinda digging back into my shameful exploratory years, here.)
And certainly, for me, going to spaces that were womens only was... pretty fraught? What if I was called out as an imposter, what if I stood out too obviously... I was only able to start doing that at all pretty far into my medical transition and after a long series of personal events that gave me more confidence. I still can't imagine going to a lesbian bar, or something. Conversely, spaces where I might be familiar with the people there, or have friends who were like those people from long ago, are going to have guys in them, possibly a lot of them. I think the only way I could avoid kinda gravitating to male slanted spaces would be putting in a ton of purposeful effort, or by going to basically specifically trans spaces a lot more. And that's now, when I'm a lot more confident!
Back in my exploratory youth I didn't really... feel like that was accessible to me at all? A retreat to the frontier is a lot different than a retreat to 4chan or to reddit or to sv, but I think there is just a bit of a throughline in that they can all be retreats away from something. Places where, if you begin to stand out, it might be in a good direction instead of a bad one?
Anyway this is a lot of rambling and I'm not sure about it, but it was something I was hoping to see more thoughts on and this is where I'm at thinking about it for a day or so.
I think there's also something to be said about having the mental reassurance of a built in eject button. There is the ability to say that it's just a jape for the Fourth of July, that people have needs and since there's no women around so they have no choice or to say that, 'What? Me? Play a girl in a video game? Haha, nooooooo, no, no, no. I'm just a perv. Look at the rubber encased cat girl!' (As opposed to now where you're still playing a rubber encased cat girl, but daaaaaaaaaamn, don't you look good.) Ahem, in short, anything to be able to say that it's not real or that it doesn't matter.
These situations often end up as something of a liminal space. A new boomtown vs back out east, boarding school vs rest of life outside of school, video games vs real life. It's easier to make those mental justifications.
And... I don't think this is a bad thing. Having some mental cushioning to protect yourself is natural and it's something used by content creators the world over. I mean, take a look at Encanto. The movie's about generational trauma and rifts in a family, but the fantastical elements (the magic fading and cracks in the house) provide mental cushioning to make it easier to address.
That said, while I think that has an effect I don't think it's the only thing. I haven't considered the point you raised before either and it has some interesting implications.
Why do we see performed femininity in "male" spaces like this? I can think of a lot of examples too, honestly. Users on this forum are quite comfortable experimenting with the limited gender presentation allowed by avatars - I know a ton of users who have an anime girl prominently displayed there but are not women. That's a fairly mild level of gender play, though.
I could also talk about how in online nerdy spaces roleplaying a woman is more normalized in tabletop games or anime discussion groups or whatever, in a way that seems pretty conducive to feeling yourself out?
And of course there are still boys boarding schools or sex segregated classes, and I bet they probably still do theater performances like the historical examples mentioned. I don't know if any of this is consistent enough to really be a trend, but why not follow the thought a bit?
This line of thought reminded of VR Chat and the video essay by Strazfilms Identity, Gender and VRChat (Why is everyone in VR an anime girl?). I feel like VRChat and programs like it are the modern day frontier when it comes to gender exploration. I think it's pretty great that people who wouldn't feel safe doing so irl get a chance to be perceived as cute or have strangers interact with them in their preferred "body" by default. I'd recommend the video if you have an hour to spare.
So I will posit - I wonder if in those spaces it is easier to experiment with gender because there is not the sense of comparison, or inadequacy, or jealousy, that you might see from performing femininity around cis women. (I wonder about the inverse too, but I don't really know any spaces that would be like that or any trans masculine experiences there? I am sure there must be discussions, somewhere in academia, about trans men in lesbian social circles or in feminist groups and how they might experience gender, though, so consider that an exercise for some other thinker.) Personally, I felt keenly insecure when talking to friends who were girls in high school, and the idea of trying on clothes or makeup where they could see was a lot worse than... doing it as a halloween joke, or thinking about cosplaying for a tabletop game at a friends house, or whatever. There is a certain comfort in having an audience who is not doing better than you at what you're trying? (I realize that phrasing is a little problematic, of course, but I am kinda digging back into my shameful exploratory years, here.)
I both agree with you that this essay, even with the revision, still feels like I've failed to tie the threads properly together. And I do feel for a lot of what you are saying in this part, and more broadly, and I think it touches on precisely that which is missing from the text. It is, after all, an important aspect of the potentiality I am writing about, the joke, so to speak: that the spaces which really aren't at all that feminized, or women-friendly in general, can paradoxically serve as very attractive sites for the germination of trans-femme practices and identities.
It's also why I am kind of mad at a friend of mine, who in discussing the essay in private has provided me with a question that feels so much like something I should have had put in the text myself, and which I now can only at best borrow: "In a space where most men are attracted to women, and most women are attracted to women, maybe some men whose gender identity is less settled and firm than their desire to be desired may consider becoming women?"
This, of course, goes against the understandings of transness which disavow any kind of a link to histories of masculinity, and which rely on a very stable, self-sufficient notions of identity. But I don't put too much stock in either. I have written about this at length, in another post. What it does, however, play well with is the kind of approach to transness which permits the want to enter the picture, that brilliant word game of another author I respect where want of womanhood and wanting to be a woman are at the foundation of some people's desire to pursue a trans life. And that is where my thinking is, presently.
Obviously, I am not trying to provide an universal theory, and I don't think that such a theory is possible. I am exploring what is one of the many present potentialities, the one that feels closest to me (for one reason or another). Though I would like to point out that the desire to be desired exceeds sexuality and shouldn't be just reduced to the mechanics of arousal.
It resonated with me a lot; especially given the many hot takes people have assigned to me given my unabashed pansexuality. I am, of course, referring to my attraction solely to the personality or values of a individual (who may or may not be human). I dunno, the rest of the essay was largely hard to get a coherent point from, but that one line hit me pretty hard. Especially given the things people have accused me of being when I state my truth. I've been called a deviant more times than I can count. I've been called worse often enough to where I don't share my views on such anymore. But… meh. It's not as if anyone can be perfect; and I understand that gut reaction people have. As much as I loathe it.
I could go on a rant about how sometimes, a blue curtain is just a blue curtain. Just like how sometimes that intelligent and sapient being is just that; an intelligent and sapient being, not a reflection of the author's deviancy.
But I digress, since this isn't the thread for that, I think.
Instead, let me offer this as a rebuttal to the rebuttal a while back… I can't really see what you saw. I went through that phase of aching to get normal; to be accepted by everyone. I masked; I became that normal person as best I could, and all it did is make me miserable. I'm me. Miho Chan, the unabashed writer of SIs, a moderator on SV, and Autism is as much part of me as any of that. But… Too often I see neurodivervency viewed by society and those with it both as a burden. Something to hate. Perhaps I'm strange for loving the way I view things; the insanity that follows me as people try to comprehend what I mean when I bluntly stated my views on certain things. Its a quiet, sad amusement; I meant nothing more than I said. I don't like lying to friends or partners or family, and anyone who makes it into that increasingly small list has my loyalty for life.
I've meandered away from my original point, I think. What use is normality? Transgender, by nature, isn't "normal" according to society. But perhaps instead of talking about normalizing something, anything… maybe we should be talking about how to normalize the celebration of our differences. How to become more than the us of yesterday; bickering among our various tribes and cliques. To become more than humanity was before. I'm an idealist to the very core, I suppose, broken and battered as I am.
We've all suffered. Let us not weight our suffering on scales; let us simply understand one and other.
why assume that the people who liked the essay have never been through hard times? why assume that the people who like the essay are pseudointellectuals? why assume that gargulec is "sitting in an ivory tower of not giving a shit"?
It's also why I am kind of mad at a friend of mine, who in discussing the essay in private has provided me with a question that feels so much like something I should have had put in the text myself, and which I now can only at best borrow: "In a space where most men are attracted to women, and most women are attracted to women, maybe some men whose gender identity is less settled and firm than their desire to be desired may consider becoming women?"
This, of course, goes against the understandings of transness which disavow any kind of a link to histories of masculinity, and which rely on a very stable, self-sufficient notions of identity. But I don't put too much stock in either. I have written about this at length, in another post. What it does, however, play well with is the kind of approach to transness which permits the want to enter the picture, that brilliant word game of another author I respect where want of womanhood and wanting to be a woman are at the foundation of some people's desire to pursue a trans life. And that is where my thinking is, presently.
Well, that certainly couldn't be out of the question for a species already observed to engage in situational sexual behavior, yes.
My qualm with this framing of a transness would be less that it dissolves a "stable, self-sufficient notion of identity", and more that it doesn't go far enough in the process of taking transness apart. If it doesn't assume too much to describe these people as men, then if nothing else, the framework of desire is still going to be begging the question and going around in circles long after it's outlived its usefulness.
Our philosophies and ontologies are contextual and purposive, not objective; dissolving the self and defining a trans life by reference to craving and desire is to believe in dukkha without the associated prospect of escape through enlightenment.
Literally just 'terminally online trans author throws self-denigrating jokes about validness, ymmv'. Like fuck if I was going to write an essay on autism and rip into my own issues and foibles, that's the sort of thing I'd put up, because I understand that a lot of autistic people are dealing with self-hatred, doubt and trauma and may not be as copacetic as me about this aspect of their existence. It's nothing less than due diligence to consider that your position in a cohort full of self-hate and dysphoria and imposter syndrome is not the be-all-end-all, and I see a lot of people reacting to the pain of those who got hurt by outright stating that their pain is invalid and they are wrong to feel that way. Hell, not even just wrong, but deficient. They need to 'self-reflect', to grow a thicker skin, to grow up. Interesting how that echoes the original essay's analysis of how 'mainstream trans women' look at trans catgirls, isn't it?
Literally just 'terminally online trans author throws self-denigrating jokes about validness, ymmv'. Like fuck if I was going to write an essay on autism and rip into my own issues and foibles, that's the sort of thing I'd put up, because I understand that a lot of autistic people are dealing with self-hatred, doubt and trauma and may not be as copacetic as me about this aspect of their existence. It's nothing less than due diligence to consider that your position in a cohort full of self-hate and dysphoria and imposter syndrome is not the be-all-end-all, and I see a lot of people reacting to the pain of those who got hurt by outright stating that their pain is invalid and they are wrong to feel that way. Hell, not even just wrong, but deficient. They need to 'self-reflect', to grow a thicker skin, to grow up. Interesting how that echoes the original essay's analysis of how 'mainstream trans women' look at trans catgirls, isn't it?
i would definitely say that the answer is to self-reflect and understand why this essay was hurtful to you if you were hurt by it, or if you're not capable of doing that for whatever reason, then to put the thoughts aside for later / a time where you are in a better place and to analyze them then. i don't think that you need to be made of stone or have thick skin to be an adult - there are lots of mature people who are sensitive over different things. being sensitive isn't a bad thing, but dealing with your sensitivity in inappropriate ways is. for example, i am sensitive to situations with lots of crowds and mixed noises, so for example something like a concert in a small venue is difficult for me. an appropriate reaction for me when i feel upset and overwhelmed is to disengage, take a deep breath / gather my thoughts, and then reengage when i feel comfortable. i think this situation is like if i got up onto the stage and forced the concert to stop while talking about how much the music hurt my ears. it's obviously not the same / a hyperbolic metaphor, but underlyingly the same principles apply. i think the wrong lesson to learn from this is thinking "people should be more empathetic towards my demands" instead of "maybe my demands are too much."
not all pain is valid - and by that i mean, not everything that makes you feel hurt is hurtful. it's not people's responsibility to consider every triggering thing that might occur, because triggers are as varied and complex as anything related to human emotion. i don't think this essay stepped out of any reasonable bounds for care and concern towards its audience, and asking for a trigger warning that effectively boils down to something as broad as "this is a trans person discussing trans people" is something that constitutes an unreasonable demand.
i don't think that feeling hurt by the essay is wrong, i think that taking that hurt and turning it into a weapon is wrong.
Our philosophies and ontologies are contextual and purposive, not objective; dissolving the self and defining a trans life by reference to craving and desire is to believe in dukkha without the associated prospect of escape through enlightenment.
Of all the things that have been said in this thread, I don't think anything has managed to connect - and not in a bad way - as much as this, so thank you, and I do mean it. I am also, of course, guilty as charged. And so, though I have consciously tried to minimise my presence in this thread, I have to respond, at length, in a rambling and referential fashion that is surely to be clocked as characteristically me.
You are right, even if I don't agree with what I assume to be the thrust of your argument. I do believe that want is a fundamental aspect of being trans (and of being cis, and of being gendered at all). But fond as I am of Andrea Long Chu's sharp wit and her insistence that we are all female and that we all hate it, I have found myself increasingly labelling her as a kind of a problematic fave of sorts, one whose writing is a good way to shake and shock yourself into thinking rather, but not where I want to settle at. This is why I cite her so much - she is amazingly quotable, providing snappy provocations that are easy to use as a launching point for further thinking. On Liking Women and Females have set so much of my thinking about transness in motion that I can't help but to feel indebted to her, even if I am also growing convinced that ultimately, Chu's thinking is limited, and the positions she take wilfully cruel at times, both literally, and more importantly in the sense proposed by Maggie Nelson in her dissection of avant-garde art ethos titled, tellingly, The Art of Cruelty.
Rather, however, I want now to think with people like Hannah Baer, whose Trans Girl Suicide Museum provides an account of gender as desire that is far more tender than Chu's, and far less interested in being a hammer to the popular and ingrained notions. Wheres Chu wields her takes like a hammer, gleefully smashing with it whatever it is that presently frustrates her (that mostly being queer theory and narratives of trans happiness and fulfilment), Baer is far more open about treating her writing as an exercise in working through through ugly, knotted feelings. It's what I also want to do.
To give an example of her writing, then, I'd like to cite a passage that has stuck with me:
Article:
I have been making a joke in my head lately that I am reclaiming "bimbo," that I am an unabashed advocate for ditziness. It's hard to explain, I am just trying to survive right now, but sometimes I worry I am just a rich girl thinking about how to dress myself, how to dress a new doll, and how could these be the stakes of my survival. I go visit Cyrus's mom and we talk about clothes for hours. She doesn't like shopping at small boutiques because they don't have consistent return policies. She prefers Bergdorf's or Barney's. She asks me what I think about Antifa. I am sitting in her kitchen in rural Connecticut, where everything is matte white or glossy white and glass windows open onto a manicured estate, replete with a gardener, trimming massive hedges. It's the end of the summer, 2017. I tell her that Antifa are portrayed negatively in the media but that I believe they're a really important component of resistance. Also that it's not one bloc with one set of beliefs, but that different people
believe different things, and that this diversity of perspectives and tactics is part of the strategy. I think I said "it's a tendency," which I do believe, but was also maybe not super meaningful to her. She tells me that the Antifa people she saw at the women's march were scary, that they were masked up and seemed like they wanted to get into trouble. I agreed that sometimes they were scary. I didn't tell her how I like a ski mask instead of a bandana because of how it tucks into my hoodie, or which fanny pack I use to store my black clothes when I need to change quickly after an action. I don't tell her about the charges the J20 protesters face, nor do I tell her that if some of my friends saw me sitting in her kitchen talking about shopping, they would feel betrayed. I wondered if she would feel betrayed thinking about me destroying property. I think about my mother feeling betrayed that I identify as a girl, my mother saying "I don't want another daughter."
(...)
Cyrus's mom shoots me sitting on a stool in front of bright lights. She gives me femme cues, "point your toes towards one another," "bring your knees closer together," "chin down," "don't smile, but think about a smile." The pictures make me feel a wave of warmth, I look like a hot girl. "You're beautiful" she tells me, "your transition is important to me." It feels so loving I don't know how to explain it. It reminds me of a thing I tell myself when I am in my grad school class, the only trans person, feeling like a fucking alien, which is that it can feel like a miracle to be close to a trans person, that seeing a trans person living in their gender the way they want to can be like seeing a magical apparition, a gasping oxyenated tear in the asbestos-insulated lining of normal gender. "It's actually a very beautiful thing to even get to see a trans person let alone talk to them," I want to tell my grad school classmates staring at my big hands and my tiny tits, "like it is a real gift and people should treasure it, because honestly nine times out of ten i'm in my room blowing k alone, so you're basically beating the odds if you get to chill with me, especially since I'm not dead yet." Maybe this is [why they] hate us, want to hurt us, because we're so beautiful.
I quote to give a broader sample, to show the way Baer weaves between her insecurities, her desires, her troubled situatedness within the world. Like Chu, she is a well educated white woman in New York; like Chu, she clearly longs for a kind of a glam, normative femininity, or at least some trappings of it. Unlike Chu, she doesn't write with vitroil.
If I am spending so much time on trying to point to people who influence me it's because I also struggle to express the thing I want to express otherwise. Your claim made me think of Baer because Buddhist concepts feature heavily in her writings. She too, I think, holds out for some kind of an enlightenment that will lead to a freedom from want. Or at least that is how I choose to interpret this meme included in her text.
But, but, as much as I wish I could hope for the same, I don't. I don't think there is a way out. Maybe if I was more like Baer and could take ludicrous amounts of ketamine off my best friend's bosom, then I'd be able to, but I can't. At the end of the day I am badly emotionally constipated trans woman who struggles with basic emotional expressions and who needs to cite at least three specialist authors to even start talking about her feelings, likely in third person. As a result, the horizon of my thinking is painfully short - I can't imagine myself breaking out of the mess I'm in, so I am writing from the perspective where there is no such break to be found.
Whether this is a failure of my thinking or not, I am not so sure. There are arguments to be had in both sides - recently, I've been pleased to add Hil Malatino's excellent book on being trans feeling bad to the "I feel like I have a point" column in my head. But then again, as you say, my philosophy and ontology is contextual. I'm badly frustrated in my transition, and my trans life is more literary and academic than visceral and embodied. In my defence, this applies to my life in general, not just my transness. So I can't bring myself to believe, not at the present moment, that there is a way out of the mire of trans want and negativity. But it is also where I believe the beauty of it resides, not to be saved or purified, but appreciated for what it already is, it's sharp edges and painful absences included.
I am sorry - genuinely, and not just as a manner of speech - for dragging this response out so long. I wish I could say things like that more succinctly, I wish I could express myself without having to dissociate through the realm of academic writing and theory, I wish I was not afraid of vulnerability, and I wish I could be else than I am right now. But I also wish to speak as I am right now, so that, in one of those few hopes that I permit myself, perhaps find a voice to speak the hurt in all the wishes and - and I apologise again for quoting, and worse yet, quoting a long-dead poet - and make a vineyard of the curse, and sing of human unsuccess in a rapture of distress.
i would definitely say that the answer is to self-reflect and understand why this essay was hurtful to you if you were hurt by it, or if you're not capable of doing that for whatever reason, then to put the thoughts aside for later / a time where you are in a better place and to analyze them then. i don't think that you need to be made of stone or have thick skin to be an adult - there are lots of mature people who are sensitive over different things. being sensitive isn't a bad thing, but dealing with your sensitivity in inappropriate ways is. for example, i am sensitive to situations with lots of crowds and mixed noises, so for example something like a concert in a small venue is difficult for me. an appropriate reaction for me when i feel upset and overwhelmed is to disengage, take a deep breath / gather my thoughts, and then reengage when i feel comfortable. i think this situation is like if i got up onto the stage and forced the concert to stop while talking about how much the music hurt my ears. it's obviously not the same / a hyperbolic metaphor, but underlyingly the same principles apply. i think the wrong lesson to learn from this is thinking "people should be more empathetic towards my demands" instead of "maybe my demands are too much."
not all pain is valid - and by that i mean, not everything that makes you feel hurt is hurtful. it's not people's responsibility to consider every triggering thing that might occur, because triggers are as varied and complex as anything related to human emotion. i don't think this essay stepped out of any reasonable bounds for care and concern towards its audience, and asking for a trigger warning that effectively boils down to something as broad as "this is a trans person discussing trans people" is something that constitutes an unreasonable demand.
i don't think that feeling hurt by the essay is wrong, i think that taking that hurt and turning it into a weapon is wrong.
You consider sensitivity to overstimulation to share the same principles as sensitivity to emotional triggers? As someone who deals with both, they most certainly do not. They operate on entirely separate parts of the mind and have entirely different emotional effects, and entirely different coping responses. Even your analogy is flat-out inappropriate; a concert by definition involves crowds, loud noises and often lights. These are things you knew about going in. They are immutable facets that anyone who knows what a concert is will expect. The self-denigrating cutting jokes Gargulec used are not a fundamental facet of essays or even queer/trans essays. Your entire position seems to be 'why are you getting upset someone didn't put up a signpost warning of a minefield in a park, its like getting upset that they didn't put up a sign at the beach saying that water is wet', and I cannot comprehend how absolutely devoid of empathy, tact and understanding such a stance is.
EDIT: Also fuck me, turning it into a weapon? No one has done that. As someone who fucking did that in the past when I was a spiteful, raging monster who someone should have institutionalisedthe complaints of the people you are denigrating are not that. You seem to be trying to start fights and hurt people.
You consider sensitivity to overstimulation to share the same principles as sensitivity to emotional triggers? As someone who deals with both, they most certainly do not. They operate on entirely separate parts of the mind and have entirely different emotional effects, and entirely different coping responses. Even your analogy is flat-out inappropriate; a concert by definition involves crowds, loud noises and often lights. These are things you knew about going in. They are immutable facets that anyone who knows what a concert is will expect. The self-denigrating cutting jokes Gargulec used are not a fundamental facet of essays or even queer/trans essays. Your entire position seems to be 'why are you getting upset someone didn't put up a signpost warning of a minefield in a park, its like getting upset that they didn't put up a sign at the beach saying that water is wet', and I cannot comprehend how absolutely devoid of empathy, tact and understanding such a stance is.
no, i think my analogy is appropriate. i think that the degree to which self-denigration was used was entirely appropriate and to the extent that one might expect when reading just about any personal essay. i think that the content of the essay was congruent with the title and that there was no bait and switch to any kind of extent that would be like a "minefield in a park" to a reasonable reader. i don't agree with you and i don't think you are being reasonable. I'm saying this because i respect you and i believe people deserve to be told when they're wrong. this is me giving you my empathy and understanding - i have been in your position before, and i am saying that the position is not valid from my own experience. you are welcome to disagree with me, but you are not welcome to monopolize the conversation around your own hurt.
You consider sensitivity to overstimulation to share the same principles as sensitivity to emotional triggers? As someone who deals with both, they most certainly do not. They operate on entirely separate parts of the mind and have entirely different emotional effects, and entirely different coping responses. Even your analogy is flat-out inappropriate; a concert by definition involves crowds, loud noises and often lights. These are things you knew about going in. They are immutable facets that anyone who knows what a concert is will expect. The self-denigrating cutting jokes Gargulec used are not a fundamental facet of essays or even queer/trans essays. Your entire position seems to be 'why are you getting upset someone didn't put up a signpost warning of a minefield in a park, its like getting upset that they didn't put up a sign at the beach saying that water is wet', and I cannot comprehend how absolutely devoid of empathy, tact and understanding such a stance is.
Generally speaking, I would not consider self-depricating remarks to be something everyone must ask permission or give warning to do. People deal with things via self-deprication and black humor. An essay is absolutely the place to do that in. If you can't deal with a fairly major way humans cope and talk about raw personal stuff, then "don't read raw personal essays" is honestly kind of fair advice? I have horrific emotional triggers and can't cope with overstimulation, and the metaphor seemed valid to me.
Not agreeing with every detail of your conclusion isn't evidence of a lack of empathy and understanding. It's evidence that we don't agree on where to draw the exact lines and such ect.
This was a very interesting essay to read, especially after the Dreadnaught essay (which seemed to provoke similarly visceral responses, good & bad)!
I think currently, most people have some resistance to the idea of a person wanting to play around with gender, just because-- without justification or purpose beyond "I want to." The reason why trans catgirls are considered shameful/transgressive, the reaction to weirdness & non-normativity, the respectability politics & the motivations driving it... in an era of cringe culture, it's heartening to see an argument against that reflex and for an embrace of catgirls et al. Full, flourishing, approached on their own terms.
This part hit hardest, where it talked about how fraught femininity is. It really is suffocating & terrifying, to face the weight & entanglement of that history. However femininity is performed or conceptualized, there's always negativity attached to it. Inescapable. No unadultered path. Liable to drive one to despair.
Sexism, too, figures somewhere on it. The radical feminist idea that there is no non-violent way of perceiving a woman while under the conditions of patriarchy is not far off the cuff. The stuff of femininity and the stuff of misogyny are melded together so closely that to cleave the two apart is impossible: one is made of the other. The scandal of it – and I use this word not to invoke a moral judgment, but in the dry, academic sense going back to the Church Latin scandalum literally meaning a "stumbling block" – is that it is also a no small part of what makes femininity so enticing. For men, and for women, and for everyone else.
And yet, even so, the fact that femininity is yearned for, a revelation, a liberatory possibility, made & reclaimed in dream & flesh... Whether or not one lives in ceaseless divided revolt against their desire, their desire is their fate.
All that said, I feel like a content warning about self-deprecating descriptions or something would've been wise. It seems like the essay caught a lot off guard.
no, i think my analogy is appropriate. i think that the degree to which self-denigration was used was entirely appropriate and to the extent that one might expect when reading just about any personal essay. i think that the content of the essay was congruent with the title and that there was no bait and switch to any kind of extent that would be like a "minefield in a park" to a reasonable reader. i don't agree with you and i don't think you are being reasonable. I'm saying this because i respect you and i believe people deserve to be told when they're wrong. this is me giving you my empathy and understanding - i have been in your position before, and i am saying that the position is not valid from my own experience. you are welcome to disagree with me, but you are not welcome to monopolize the conversation around your own hurt.
There it is. 'Not valid from my own experience'. If you're the kind of person who decides that other people's pain doesn't matter or exist because you don't feel like that or 'you can cope with it, why can't they, they're not being reasonable', then we have nothing more to talk about. Your experience makes nothing invalid. It defines no one else, and if someone disagrees and says their experience is different, that doesn't define you either. There is a wide multiplicity of life and existence that is not you, is not defined by the same emotional reactions and has not taken the exact same life course. They are just as goddamn fucking valid. You remind me of the bullies who made my childhood hell. 'It's just a joke, why are you crying'. 'We were just fooling around, he's being unreasonable'. Callous, uncaring and blinkered by a postivist understanding of thought, feelings and consequence.
Generally speaking, I would not consider self-depricating remarks to be something everyone must ask permission to do. People deal with things via self-deprication and black humor. An essay is absolutely the place to do that in. If you can't deal with a fairly major way humans cope and talk about raw personal stuff, then "don't read raw personal essays" is honestly kind of fair advice? I have horrific emotional triggers and can't cope with overstimulation, and the metaphor seemed valid to me.
Not agreeing with every detail of your conclusion isn't evidence of a lack of empathy and understanding. It's evidence that we don't agree on where to draw the exact lines and such ect.
Except 'raw personal essay' was not what was advertised. The title does not suggest 'raw' and it does not suggest 'personal'. It is framed entirely academically, ie, impersonally, and there is no way to even know that it's going to involve self-deprecation until those jokes are right in front of your face. That is the problem. Any kind of content warning - the one I suggested, or just 'this gets raw and personal be warned' - would have solved this. These are not emotionally neutral subjects, and diving into them in such a manner without warning, in fact while titling the essay in such a way that implies you will not be doing that - is negligent and on the head of the writer. If you want to play in the sandbox of self-hatred, dysphoria, trauma and suffering that characterises the experience of struggling to be queer, transgender or gender-diverse in a hostile and brutal world - especially under neurodivergence - you need to accept that your words will have consequences and take precautions to protect your fellows, even if what you're writing isn't something that hurts you.
You're taking a scalpel to the very doubts, horrors and suffering of real people. You may have braced yourself for days writing something, but if you don't warn people they're going to get slapped in the face with it without preparation.
"In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the canceled? One calls up witnesses to prove her innocence. But It Hurt Me is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The canceled and the hurt. None other. Now we cannot hope the canceled will cancel herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims—and they do testify, the hurt certainly do testify. As for the canceled, none will deny that we are most eager for all their confessions. Therefore, what is left for a lawyer to bring out? I think I have made my point. Have I not?" (Danforth, Act 3, p. 93)
--The (Tenderqueer) Crucible
