I don't give a shit about what I reblog, anymore.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-deprivation that so many of us learned to rely on.

yes some people definitely do genuinely have a simplified idea of what it's like growing up being gendered as female but like fucking christ you don't need to jump on the "male outsider who could never understand our pain" bullshit.

like it'd be easier if she was born a girl" because she's a girl and constantly made to not feel like a girl, it'd be easier for her because she wouldn't be feeling her current dysphoria like why the fuck are people so vicious about that?

idk you just see it sometimes like this idea that trans women more than any other group of people have massive internalised misogyny that means they can't possibly understand how restrictive gender is and they're like fetishising or whatever the experience that people find opressive. as if that's even slightly fair and also like fuck you it's not your relationship with gender now is it. "trans women are just reinforcing gender roles" is like genuinely one of the oldest transmisogynistic lines in the book. like it fucking always comes with that implication of "you're a man so you can't understand this" to incredibly vulnerable women

[ID: a reply from @bonecouch that reads, "in this way voyager reminds me more of tos than any other star trek spin off" /end ID]

Art thou nasty?