When i first read that passage, i seriously wondered if somebody had reformatted a Halimede tweet. I don’t want to dunk on Serrano too much here, i’ve taken a lot of good input out of her works, but this is one of her takes that has aged poorly. Like, seriously, i am so fed up with that view of being trans. The one that always, always without fail, centers suffering and pain and misery, that can only frame our joy and our thriving in contrast to the damage that has been inflicted on us, the one that can never let the past rest.
I am not like this. And it’s beginning to become a problem.
You see, i like being in community with other trans people. I’m at home there, i’ve made friends there, found lovers there. It’s where i belong. As long as i stay within my own bubble. As soon as i step out of it, i immediately get bombarded with unsolicited trauma dumps, dysphoriaposts out of a 4chan hellhole and a trainload full of internalized transphobia. Everything is a trigger for me. I cannot safely navigate most trans spaces anymore because the people there just drag me down. I logged in yesterday after a long hiatus and looked into the trans megathread and the first thing i had to do was block a user for her unspoilered loathing of the trans existence. I don’t know how to handle this anymore. I used to be the kind of woman who writes big effortposts about self acceptance and how to figure yourself out and how to begin navigating systems of medical gatekeeping, but the further i go along in my own transition, the further i am removed from making these early experiences myself, the less i have it in me to unpack all that needs to be unpacked when baby trans yell their pain into the void.
And that’s eating at me. It makes me feel guilt, it makes me feel like a failure to my community. My second puberty feels as if i get to sit at the table with the pretty, cool and popular girls, giving fashion advice to the prom queen while i’m leaving the most vulnerable trans people out in the rain, the ones that would need my experience and my encouragement the most. But when i try to be there for them, i harm myself. I can’t say it otherwise, it is burning me out to expose myself to that kind of pain. It feels as if i’m walking backwards into a darkness i have escaped from. How do i deal with this? Do i retreat to my wonderland of privileged, happy women and girlthings or is there a way to move beyond the triggers and face the misery of others without becoming miserable myself? Because that’s what i would need if i wanted to keep helping my siblings.
You either do not know which people i’m talking about (in which case, consider yourself lucky), or you are deliberately downplaying transmedicalism, internalized transphobia, internalized cissexism and internalized misogyny. When people experiencing transness under the same material conditions as me spew out constant, unspoilered, deeply transphobic self-loathing diatribes, that isn’t a reasonable safety concern of somebody living in a structurally transphobic society, it’s toxic, reactionary bs that is harming my community. And i’m gonna call that out as what it is.
I’m not accusing you of doing that kind of thing, but unfortunately, it is extremely common for the type of trans person who does that to use your exact line of defense and justify their pure, destructive loathing of themselves (and, by extension, of all other trans people) with some vague “undeniable downsides of being trans”. And frankly, i’m not feeling them. Yes, our society has deep-seated, structural problems with transphobia, but they are not a part of my day to day life. They come up in situations where i still have to deal with the healthcare system or with some tiny, but disproportionately influential sects of extremely online weirdos, but not when i’m just going about my day. They are not anywhere near something that prevents me from “having a single happy day in my life”.
That might be different where you are, i get that a lot of places are far worse for trans people than urban areas in Germany, but this isn’t exactly a trans paradise, either. And like i said, i see the kind of behavior i’m complaining about here in local communities as well, from people who clearly pass better than i, a 45 year old woman who’s been out for two years and on HRT for a little over a year and a half, do. I’m not saying i don’t have some degree of privilege, for example i really lucked out on how little testosterone did to me as an egg, i have good support networks both within and outside of the community, i get at least some of my transition covered by my healthcare provider (like almost everybody around these parts does), i experience very few intersections with other forms of marginalization and i understand i have some degree of passing privilege that makes life much easier. But none of that is uniquely special. A lot of trans folks have it easier than me and i can safely say that the people who complain the loudest usually aren’t the ones that are clockable from a mile away, on the contrary they are often exceptionally well-passing and conventionally attractive. But they are also the ones with the most deeply ingrained ideas about what a woman is supposed to look like, the ones with the most conservative politics, the ones with the most time spent on 4chan. Reliably so. The people i am complaining about seem to universally experience an extra layer of suffering that is rooted in nothing but pure ideology. Why wouldn’t i call that out? I think it’s fairly reasonable to object to their mindset when it stems from such awful politics and demonstrably aggravates the harm experienced not only by these trans people, but also those exposed to their vitriol. And vitriol it is. When you have sustained that kind of ideological damage, you drop takes that eat at people, ideas that get their hooks into folks and cause festering injuries. That’s the point were CWs don’t help much, either, that’s when we’re talking about remedies like deleted posts and ultimately banning people for transmedicalism. Sometimes there really is no other way if you want to keep a community safe.
I’m not saying any of this applies to you, i’m not saying you can’t have good reasons for feeling the way you do, but your situation is no excuse for the inexcusable.