I feel like I don’t have a great read on where the actual level of introspective clarity is for trans people. All my trans friends are introspective, I don’t really know if I’m really capable of being friends with someone who isn’t. I can’t imagine not being curious about why I’m like this. So I was really surprised to read in Fiora’s post “none of my friends have ever really put forth a parsimonious theory of what their actual motivations may have been”.
Most of my impressions of not-my-friend trans people comes from social media and support groups I went to early in transition and just observing these community dynamics. I think people have the potential to be a lot more introspective, but they are held back by trauma and the stress of political doomerism. Which like, is genuinely stressful. Maybe we’re gonna lose healthcare. People will post about this while also not doing anything behavioral in the real world to prepare for it. Basically I think the transes need to get off social media.
The other toxic dynamic—and I am not the first one to describe this—is that community spaces for babytrans (online and support groups) tend to be filled with two kinds of trans: (1) babytrans (2) trans who is no longer baby but also never really graduated from that stage, again, usually because of trauma or addiction. So often there aren’t a lot of healthy role models or elders around for the young ones who need that.
hey thanks for the comment :)
I feel like I don’t have a great read on where the actual level of introspective clarity is for trans people. All my trans friends are introspective, I don’t really know if I’m really capable of being friends with someone who isn’t. I can’t imagine not being curious about why I’m like this. So I was really surprised to read in Fiora’s post “none of my friends have ever really put forth a parsimonious theory of what their actual motivations may have been”.
Most of my impressions of not-my-friend trans people comes from social media and support groups I went to early in transition and just observing these community dynamics. I think people have the potential to be a lot more introspective, but they are held back by trauma and the stress of political doomerism. Which like, is genuinely stressful. Maybe we’re gonna lose healthcare. People will post about this while also not doing anything behavioral in the real world to prepare for it. Basically I think the transes need to get off social media.
The other toxic dynamic—and I am not the first one to describe this—is that community spaces for babytrans (online and support groups) tend to be filled with two kinds of trans: (1) babytrans (2) trans who is no longer baby but also never really graduated from that stage, again, usually because of trauma or addiction. So often there aren’t a lot of healthy role models or elders around for the young ones who need that.