The bastards have bought all the cops & the courts

- A job

- Good relationship with father

- Neurotypical brain

- Ability to top

honestly one of the worst things is that I knew. a lot of people talk about not knowing they were trans until xyz event where they realized and went through whatever hardships and then transitioned. people talk about repression and discovery and all these things. and those are all powerful and important experiences I don't see myself as above them in any way. but I knew.

I was never an egg, I was never in denial. when I was 3 years old I dreamed I was a princess. I know this because my family retells it as a funny story. I tried to wear my sister's clothes regularly, I asked people why there wasn't a word for the reverse of a tomboy, I put on makeup, I used she/her pronouns online since I first learned to read and write.

I don't bring this up to do this "I've always been a woman deep down, so you should listen to me as super valid Mr psychologist gatekeeper". my point is that it didn't matter.

I knew, and it didn't matter. it wasn't an issue of having to figure out who I was and then realizing that. it's that who I am was intentionally killed and locked away at every turn. it's not that I didn't realize I was a girl, it's that I wasn't allowed to be one. I was hurt and punished and sent to conversion therapy repeatedly. I can't "go back in time and tell my younger self to save her years of struggle". it wouldn't matter. it wouldn't change anything at all. the issue wasn't a lack of information. it's a lack of power. kids and trans kids especially are subject to so much abuse and we have no power to do anything about it. it is such a great tragedy beyond words. knowing what you want to do and wear and say and be, that you want this name and these pronouns and that cute dress, and being powerless to do anything about it anyway. forced to wear clothes picked out for you by a guardian, only able to use pre-approved nicknames online. only allowed to engage in these specific hobbies and have these specific friends. all of whom treat you like garbage. but it doesn't matter. it doesn't even matter if you know it's unjust, there's no way to do anything about it. it is perhaps the most powerless position anyone can be in. there is no level of knowledge or personal strength that will get you out of it. you just have to shut off until enough time passes for the law to deem you as worthy of being a person.

Chimps are much admired for their tool use and for their problem-solving relationship with things as they find them...the orang is, let us say, not so replete with enterprise. Give an orangutan the hexagonal peg and the several shapes of hole, and then hide behind the two-way mirror and watch how he engages with the problem.

And watch and watch and watch--because he does not engage with the problem. He uses the peg to scratch his back, has a look-see at his right wrist, makes a half-hearted and soon abandoned attempt to use his fur as a macramé project, stares dreamily out the window if there is one and at nothing in particular if not, and the sun begins to set. (The sun will also set if you are observing a chimp, but the chimp is more amusing, so you are less likely to mark the moment in your notes. An orang observer has plenty of time to be a student of the vanities of sunset.)

You watch, and the orang dreams...when casually and as if thinking of something else, the orang slips the hexagonal peg into the hexagonal hole. And continues staring off dreamily."