My paycheck was abysmal this month and after I pay rent I'll be left with nothing. I need to pay £120 asap (£50 of that being due on the 31st) and then ive got MORE bills i need to pay, coming up to needing around £300 >_<

I'm a Polish trans guy living in the UK and my parents recently cut me off financially because they chose AI over me. Long story.

P-PAL + KO-FI

but, if this is you, please hear me: this feeling is internalized transphobia. it's understandable, but you need to work through it. you are trans.

there are not "levels" to being trans.

there are material circumstances that can impact how transphobia impacts you. the more things you choose to do with your life that are prohibited according to assignment, the more you will experience transphobia, because transphobia is assignment enforcement. so yes, trans people who encounter these structural modes of enforcement are experiencing transphobia that those who are not encountering these structures are not.

(for example, I have not changed my name or gender marker legally. this means I have not experienced the specific mechanism of assignment enforcement that exists to restrict legal sexgender re-categorization. I have changed my sexed traits medically (hormones and surgery) so I have experienced the specific mechanism of assignment enforcement that exists to restrict bodily autonomy over sexed characteristics. these are structures, right?)

but we are all trans. avoiding these structures to avoid dealing with the transphobia inherent to navigating them is also experiencing the impact of this enforcement. whether you decide to go up against any specific enforcement structures or not, you are still trans. you are still experiencing living in a world that enforces assignment and punishes people for disobedience to it. you are still being impacted by this restriction on your autonomy, whether you openly fight any particular aspect of this restriction or not.

at a time when people are constantly promoting the idea that

nonbinary people "don't transition,"

nonbinary can mean being "detrans" or cisgender,

nonbinary people are "neither trans or cis" or "less trans" than other trans people,

nonbinary people are always assigned female at birth and transfems can't be nonbinary

we need to all understand this is an effort to insist that:

nonbinary people are somehow inherently, categorically different from other trans people,

that we do not have shared material interests or life experiences navigating the same structures of assignment enforcement, and

that TME nonbinary people should not work together with transfeminized people--nonbinary or not--for shared liberation.

this is some divide-and-conquer shit. we cannot allow this idea to flourish. it is dangerous.

Katara from ATLA