you taste like new flesh.

A post ranting about "bearded girlboys" "taking over" went on a long tangent that clearly demonstrated they were talking about transmascs and assumed anyone who used this label or could be dumped into the label was transmasc nonbinary, as if the rest of us didn't exist or didn't operate under those same metrics.

There is definitely a substantial portion of nonbinary people assumed to have proximity to womanhood whether they do or not, but then those of us who are assumed to overlap with men are forgotten about entirely--while being treated like the trans men who are "too close" to maleness.

I'm not dating or married or related to anyone I live with, and our household of four adults can't get any kind of financial or food or housing aid because we count as three separate households despite our semi-blended finances and living together for a decade. There are laws that have been proposed (at least, I don't know if any passed) that limit housing to nuclear families.

either way, she always has at least three kids, sometimes more. you don't want to ask when she had them, but she had to have them young because her youngest had to have been born when she was at least seventeen based on how time works. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

she's smiling but there's something missing in her eyes - a spark that should be there. there's no passion, there's just the movements of the day. sometimes she'll give an interview where she says she barely feels like getting out of bed, and other times she says nothing. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

her world isn't real - it's neat kitchens and made from scratch cheese. she tells you how she doesn't need feminism because she likes this life, she likes wearing pretty dresses, don't you dare pity her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll up to an ex tradewife in her forties talking about how her husband divorced her and left her for a younger girl, leaving her destitute and penniless and twenty years out of the workforce. you scroll again to a pretty young girl saying she doesn't need a job, her husband will take care of her. you scroll again. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

another woman, this time in her early thirties, talking about how she just managed to leave her abusive husband and has nothing and he took the kids, warning and pleading young girls to not fall for tradwife lies. you scroll again to a young tradwife girl saying that would never happen to her, and you're just jealous of her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again. a teen girl tells you that she'll just track her period, she doesn't NEED a toxic chemical like birth control. you scroll again to an obgyn pleading with young girls to understand birth control is just hormonal, and that period tracking isn't effective. you just watch happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again, and it's jd vance saying how women belong in the homes and shouldn't be allowed to vote. that their husbands should decide how they should vote. you scroll again to a domestic abuse counselor telling women their vote is private and they can lie to their husbands. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

are you gonna be weird about feeding tubes? are you gonna ask invasive questions about catheters and ostomy bags? can you cope with seeing someone give themselves an injection? could you walk up to someone with a tracheostomy and talk to them? how about someone with a central line?

Sympathy: I feel for you

anyway I did cry while we drove home from the wedding just because no one was like... mad at me. at my friend's wedding. which is deranged, because why would anyone be mad at you for being at your friend's wedding when they invited you to attend their wedding. like lol what. anyway

I have had this exact same experience my entire life, right up to the same feeling of complete shock and... I don't know how to phrase it. Difficulty comprehending? When I find myself in the company of one of those rare people who don't treat me like a termite in an ant nest and instead just, like, gets to know me, and likes me.

It's impossible to get anyone who hasn't lived it to understand just how absolutely and completely BIZARRO WORLD it feels to make a joke... and have someone laugh. To have someone willingly pick the seat next to you. To be invited into a conversation. To be liked, at all- not even in an over the top "this is my best friend she's the coolest" way but just in a "I am happy to have this person around and I'm not going to willfully go out of my way to misinterpret everything she says and every subtle mannerism of hers in the worst possible way" sort of way.

Because when you've got this superpower, that's what it's like. From most people, most of the time. You walk into the room and you're already tagged as an enemy. Some people are nice on day one but by the end of day three they don't want to engage with you and start muttering behind your back. You get alienated from every group interaction, up to and including official business ones. It doesn't matter what you say or choose not to say, it's never right, and SOMEONE will be upset about it. If you keep to yourself you're haughty, if you make small talk you're nosy, and they NEVER like you, and you're NEVER right, and you grow up just KNOWING that it's you. You're the problem. A rare friend or parent might say there's nothing wrong with you but you know in your heart that the only consistent factor in your problems is YOU. Everything you say and everything you think is poison, you're just loathesome like that, nobody wants you around, no one has ever wanted you around...

... and then you meet the right person, and, like. The superpower just doesn't affect them. You say things, and they hear the actual thing you said. You can talk to them. You can answer questions or offer suggestions and they'll listen to you. You can make jokes or be sarcastic and they'll be amused. You can be REALLY daring and be a little rude and they'll just laugh or shrug it off or just tell you that was rude and everyone moves on without treating you like a monster for it. And it's just as easy as the interactions that everyone around you have always had, and you didn't have to change a damned thing about yourself to get there. Because it turns out the problem wasn't you in the first place.

i think the hardest part of when you interact with people who just respond to you like you're a person is that it makes it so immediately clear how like... it DOESN'T take some sort of superhuman effort to interpret you that way. the people who take you in good faith AREN'T working twenty million times as hard as everyone else somehow. they're just ... treating you like a person. everyone who made you feel like your expectation or desire to be treated like a regular person was somehow Asking Too Much of them was lying. it is not asking too much. the people who do it do it easily.

its really, really hard to maintain the kind of prosocial optimism about human society that I work really hard to maintain when I'm reminded that people are often making choices NOT because the alternative is just too hard. but because they simply don't think it's important to look beyond instant kneejerk emotional reactions to people. they simply don't think it's important to not Punish People who have done nothing actually wrong except sort of give them the creeps. they're lazy.