oh fuck yes it's a little bowl of seeds for me

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.

And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"

It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

Like, listen. We both get talked over by men, it sucks. But I also get talked over by women. I get talked over by everybody. And if I raise my voice to make myself heard, I will get kicked out of whatever workplace or social group because raising my voice one time will be characterised as "scary" and "aggressive". And if I complain about someone talking over me, I will not receive sympathy or commiseration, I will be told that I need to unlearn my male-patterned behaviour of "speaking with the expectation of being listened to", a behaviour I never had anyway because everyone has always talked over me ever since I started speaking.

The same logic applies to any expression of misogyny: I experience the "normal" form, plus a whole lot extra, plus the lack of access to solidarity and support for people who experience misogyny. If I had to put numbers on the contributions to my general misery from each form of oppression I face, *misogyny* would not reach even one tenth of the contribution made by *transmisogyny*, an all-pervading oppression that makes anything like a "normal" life almost impossible.

Today I bought a train ticket from a ticket machine, but when I tried to use it to get through the barrier it didn't work. My first thought was not "I should go and complain about this", it was "Welp, better buy another ticket and hope that one works," because any interaction with a service worker where they can see my face and hear my voice has a high chance of ending in harassment and a decent chance of ending in physical violence.