So much of the criticism I've gotten for the orangecel desaturatoid comic on twitter boils down to "you simply do not understand that my way of coping with dysphoria by going to the dysphoria worsening website and stewing in misery is necessary, because your dysphoria is simply lesser. Stop invalidating my dysphoria, which is more real than yours, and demands that I do this."

This illustrates a fundamental part of how these communities operate: Anyone who criticizes the way they operate must simply be the Other that they build up in their minds. It's all reflexive ways to dismiss outsiders. Chad/passoids/normies simply do not understand. Nobody in the out-group has any familiarity with how it feels, nobody has ever gotten out, nobody is telling you that this is bad for you from experience.

It's absolutely baffling watching these barely even adults say that I, someone who transitioned in my mid-20s, can't possibly understand what dysphoria is like. I was so uncomfortable being perceived at all as a teenager that I simply did not go outside. I lived in MMOs. Until I learned that voice training was possible I was so hopeless about even trying transition that I didn't dare to consider the option.

I do think, though, that we've kind of let the specific narrative surrounding the issue get away from us in the usual fashion, the problem people picture when they hear "Minotaur" isn't anywhere close the to the problem as it exists on the ground. I mean people's minds immediately jump to the 1949 Boylston massacre, but let's be real, even though that was really politically useful for finally getting the exit fares on the T removed, that was still a black-swan event, right? Basically every mayor since, like, Hynes has lived in mortal terror of having to manage a repeat of something like that during the mass media era, let alone the smartphone era. So we've got these Theseus kill-teams with their titanium-composite ropes and souped-up cattle prods and bolt guns, we have these constant "track replacement" stoppages on the orange line, and it's fine. It's fine! There hasn't been a serious Minotaur thing within walking distance of a T stop since, like, 2006, which again you can mostly chalk up to the chaos surrounding the dig.