(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Marjane Satrapi, cartoonist and film director, best known for Persepolis

Sitting down at the table, I remembered the scars on my arm. The universal signifier of "This Kid Needs Help." Maybe his kindness was only out of pity. He saw those and assumed there was some great misery and wanted to offer me some relief. It's generally good to be kind to people who are hurting. But I wasn't hurting that bad.

The thing is, there is some great misery. People generally aren't doing that great. There is a great misery within me and within him and within everyone, and some people notice the pain, some people express it, others don't. But we all suffer from something.

It doesn't matter if someone seems to deserve some relief. Everyone needs it. Everyone is suffering constantly. Some more than others, but still. This Kid Needs Help applies to everyone.

Thirty minutes later, I went to get a second pastry, intending to pay and leave a tip this time. It was the same cashier. As he reached to grab it for me, I saw scars on his arm.

If you're the type of person who automatically assumes men are bad people, then I have news for you. That assumption isn't going to wait until I tell you I'm trans. You're going to—whether subconsciously or consciously—assume I am just a man, and even after I tell you I am a trans woman your perception of me will still be permanently altered.

Discriminatatory beliefs aren't going to wait for me to tell you my pronouns.

I grew up in Florida, where at the age of twelve I was a victim of terror campaigns telling adults that I was going to sexually assault their children in the bathrooms, specifically because of the reason that 'men are all evil.'

I went through way too much at the hands of those people to see practically every ""leftist"" online continuing to push that ideology. Unlearn it. Please. It directly affects us trans women, too.

I still, to this day, have internalized this ideology, and I cannot look at myself in the fucking mirror because I think to myself people see me as a threat, no one feels safe around me. As a direct result of 'all men are evil.'