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.
It is a privilege to avoid pain, even if you worked for it, and a further privilege to ignore it in others.
cw: post about trauma
spoiler
I want to push back against this a little. People respond to trauma in a lot of ways, and working through your traumas is a natural result of having them. I wouldn't call it a 'privilege' to be 'healed' from trauma, ultimately it still feels like there is still a guillotine above your neck, you've just learned how to not be as worried about it. I've discussed this issue at length, but an important aspect of having trauma is learning how to discuss it. Its important to give people proper disclaimers about when you are discussing trauma so that their own trauma does not resurface. This is a common enough thing in therapy circles, people give disclaimers and some often have to leave a room when something too close to home comes up. Theres also the idea of 'mental hardening', sometimes you get some good sleep and have a great day and are able to handle more difficult discussions. Sometimes you have an awful day, and well, when you're doing awful, whats the issue with talking about awful things? After all, things can't get worse.
https://hexbear.net/comment/4987617
Talk about this a little more here as well.
You're putting words in their mouthes a bit IMO. No one called anyone an idiot. There is definitely a way new transitioners act vs. people that have been transitioned for a long time, you even exemplify this by saying some issues no longer resonate with you. The point is to be inclusive of both without othering either.
When we discuss 4channers, we're discussing a sort of self hating archetype that's on /tttt/. It's one thing to have issues with trauma, it's another to have such a degree of internalized transphobia that you voice transphobia at other trans people.
Cw: gender dysphoria:
spoiler
For example, some trans people might say "I'm a disgusting person, I will never pass being this tall". This of course digs at anyone who is trans and is that height and feels that they pass.
This sort of trauma posting is not acceptable, in my opinion. But it is common in many new transitioner spaces.
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.
Sorry if this is ignorant, but I suspect that a lot of marginalised groups are gonna feel like this. I suspect that there's a lot of back and forth between self care and doing what you can for the community. It's not your fault that the world traumatised trans people, and it's probably not your responsibility to fix other trans people. Do what you can when you can.
You might feel an urge to care for younger people at you get older and get more experience navigating bullshit. In the meantime, there's no need to break your mental health right this second. You have many decades on this earth in which you can offer support to young struggling people, there's no rush.
idk, on one hand i've only been out for two years and still have plenty of time to grow into a community elder, otoh my passport says i'm 45 years old. It says a lot of demonstrably wrong shit, but i think that number might actually be correct. Which brings up the question if this is about me failing as a maternal figure.
There's actually this saying that trans girls looking for support should look for a sister, not a mother. Because somebody who is too far ahead of them will struggle to relate to their problems. Maybe that's just true. Maybe we should model our support networks on how we develop and not on cishetnormative family units.
there is definitely some groups i have observed of trans femmes online who fetishise their (obviously valid) suffering and trauma to an extreme point where getting better isn't really seen as a goal anymore. i think at that point there is a problem.
Yeah it's inherent to dysphoria-centric views of transness. When you define yourself through that, happyness becomes invalidating and threatening.
gasp she’s back! Your effortposting helped me a lot as I started my transition about a year ago. A lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the better.
I’m sure that you know this, but we can only do so much as individuals in our community. We have to pick our battles, and I find that our positivity regarding the trans experience is really powerful stuff already.
I have not transitioned all that long in the scheme of things, but long enough that I begin to see what your talking about here, and I think this is an issue a lot of older trans people face. I mean older in time since their transition. Transitioning is hard, exhausting, infuriating, as well as so many incredible things. Undoubtedly, the best decision that I have ever made. It’s also not something we choose lightly, for many of us, myself included, it’s something we choose out of desperation or a place trauma. As those wounds heal, a lot of don’t want to be reminded of how it felt when they were healing.It is a lot of emotionable labor and responsibility to take on.
I really empathise with having more energy to comfort/ encourage/ build community at an earlier point of my transition, and I honestly really enjoyed wallowing in the sadness and self loathing at points, hell I used to enjoy arguing with terfs. I was insufferable.
Its worth keeping in mind that for it to have aged badly for you, things have gotten a little easier for people. Serano would have been in her late thirties when she wrote this, and only 5 years since she'd started transitioning. I'm in a similar situation and if I sat down and wrote anything for you, I tell you what, it'd be a sappy semi-poetic disaster, full sad girl hours.
People clipping this part for #\content today is pretty ick though, the worlds different, I know trans people who have lived as trans basically their whole life, Im happy for them, they almost seem well adjusted, but I cant relate. I actually almost have a nice time hanging out with younger trans people cause they help me feel almost well adjusted too.
You can remind people spoiling/content warning sad posts is in the code of conduct. Or report this shit so mods see it. Obviously you gotta do what you gotta do, but blocking people doesnt let them know, I'm thinking that user you mentioned wont even see this post (almost funny).
Yeah, my own experience has been pretty much the same. After about a year on HRT I hit a point where I realized I'd actually hit the point where I was ok and it all stopped being this big scary painful thing that was all ahead and I was left with just normalcy while at the same time getting burned out by the constant trauma and drama of support-focused trans spaces, and nearly a decade on from there I've just progressively retreated further into more stable groups where everyone is mostly fine and away from the sort of chaotic drama of some trans spaces.
And I feel guilty about that too, even though I know that I couldn't be of much help anymore because my perspective now is so profoundly alien to what a new transitioner faces and feels, and all the memories of those early years of fear and dysphoria and pain have faded away to the point that I can't even draw on that experience for perspective anymore. Maybe that's the sort of thing that just has to be left to people who are neck deep in it for one reason or another, either the more put-together people who are still early on and going through it themselves, or the long-term activists and professionals who stick around and remain experts instead of letting the knowledge fade with time.
The rest of can't have an obligation to fill a role we can no longer fill. I was once on top of the most up-to-date transition resources and a font of information on all related topics for anyone who needed it, but I've since forgotten most of it and haven't kept up with anything newer; I once thought I could bear the weight of everyone else's trauma on my shoulders and be a beacon of optimism and conviction to support them, but I've long since burned out and hit the point where my mind shuts down and goes blank when confronted with someone who's suffering. I feel guilty about that, I'll probably always feel guilty about that, but what can I even do? Other people can do the job better and I know from experience that I just can't endure it myself, so I've just moved on. We have a right to get on with our lives.
I think if you want to ensure that baby queers have community with people who can support them as they figure themselves out, you need to look at how communities remain healthy in general. Situated Learning and communities of practice make for a good model imo, where the practice in this case is the practice of transitioning and of being trans. This is based mostly on Lave & Wenger 1991. You need old timers as a store of knowledge and you also need newcomers to offer fresh perspectives. It’s very dialectical that way. Trans support communities aren’t lacking in newcomers, but that doesn’t mean that any particular old timer needs to stick around. Old timers come and go. The continued existence and function of the community implies that there are enough old timers doing their work for the purposes of the group, at least on some level. If you’re observing dysfunction in the trans groups here, that’s one thing and worth calling out. But if your absence hasn’t disrupted the functioning of the community, I think you’re safe to step away as needed.
I think this problem is compounded by the fact that queer people in general haven’t had this modeled for us very well. Older queer people are just more rare thanks to the AIDS epidemic, suicide, murder, etc. I love the queer boomers I follow on TikTok. But their function is also very different from someone who’s in the trenches providing support to individual pre-transition trans people. I think it’s all valuable and that whatever you decide to do, you can find a balance that’s valuable. Because even if all you can do is distance yourself and self-care, that’s valuable too. Because you’re part of the community and your well being is just as important as mine.
I think there's already a lot of good advice here but like, as someone who is a huge fan of the Halimede account, I do want to talk about the passage you posted. The excerpt kinda sounds like a halimede tweet because the performance of the halimede account is inspired strongly by Serano and Whipping Girl. And I agree that it's a waay of overly centering suffering into the trans experience... when I look into another trans woman's eyes, I really don't tend to see that. I'd say more than sadness I see a spark of possibility, and a lot of joie de vivre, even if it's buried. I don't think I'm a fan of this passage either
Yeah, when i think of trans eyes, the first thing that comes to mind is
how much i envy my gal pal's eyebrowsthat joy of simply existing. I've been happy or ecstatic or cheerful in a lot of ways and i don't think i've ever felt anything purer than this feeling of "holy shit, i'm a girl, how amazing", and it's beautiful to recognize that in others.Recognizing each others' pain is also part of t4t dating, it can absolutely be the kind of relationship you build on mutually caring for each other, but a great deal of that is how much joy and comfort we can give each other with how little effort. How the smallest gestures put things right. If there's one thing i should name what i like about dating trans women, it's how comforted i feel in another transfem's arms.
shit is tiring and people can only bear so much on their own
effort posting is for when you have the capacity for that effort and you shouldn't feel guilty for the times that you don't, because the world's suffering isn't your burden to bear at all times
Yea I know who (plural) you are talking about, its very tiring to hear their constant dooming
Good to see you again!
I've definitely run into the same issues with people venting pain into the void and finding it difficult to be around at times. It's also really weird personally to be seen as like an elder by some people when I feel like I'm also still just starting myself.
I can empathize pretty strongly with wanting to distance yourself from those who wallow in or fetishize their own sadness. A few years back my friend group as a whole did a bit of restructuring because we were tired of so many things being centered on the struggles in life. It just gets exhausting, like being stuck under a cloud of negativity.
From the start of my self-discovery I've tried to keep the mindset of "following the joy". There's too many things in this life that are fucked, why does one of the most important and most personal things in my life have to be as well?
Ive been transitioned for about 15 years now and went through a period where I was just absent from trans communities. I came back later.
You're free to come and go as it suits you. Time spent away is valuable, even if and when you come back
This is one of those things that truly is difficult. I know I have struggles of my own in the community as well, and this is one that I do share with you. I am a generally happy woman. On occasion, I do have bouts of dysphoria, but they're not very often. Sometimes when I do step into the mega, it is like stepping into a minefield. There are things mentioned there that trigger the fuck out of me. Such as one thing that happened a couple weeks ago that my brain will just not fucking let go. So it can be rough. I make this risk because I have a strong, what I call, motherly instinct and I have a strong innate desire to help people, especially baby trans. The things mentioned in there can be especially bad and sometimes I do disappear. And you know what? That's healthy. It means that I'm managing my own mental health. You should do the same for yourself. When things are getting to be too much, it's perfectly fine to step away into whatever space is safe for you. I don't think anyone could possibly blame anyone for managing their own mental health. So, in my eyes, there really is no silver bullet for powering through the rough times. Not that I can see at least. Just be sure to take care of yourself at the end of the day. Seriously.
On that note, I apologize if I've affected you in the past. I know I've traumadumped once or twice in the mega. I know I personally do it to seek advice, cause I'm sure I'm not the only person out there that has experienced such things. It's something I need to be more cognizant of.
