It’s so funny reading sources for my dissertation on the experiences of trans and autistic people bc the whole time I’m just shaking my head like “can you believe this shit?” Like, it’s so hard trying to bring my capable self to theorize and understand what my scared (sacred? I saw someone using these IFS terms but now I’m realizing I probably didn’t read the word right lol) self has known their whole life; the world will hate you if you act weird.
and by “so funny” I mean eye-opening and agonizingly painful, and probably somewhere around the “size” of non-death grief (as in, the feeling is very Big and takes up a lot of Space).
but yeah. It turns out that if you listen to people, accommodate what they are asking for, and support them, their lives will improve!! We’ve known this the whole time! It’s not hard! This is knowledge I have learned from multiple sets of first principles, and the only thing that surprises me is that it seems so foreign and novel to people. “What do you mean I have to be nice?” is not something anyone would ever say, but some people DO feel emboldened to say, for example, “yeah I’m not really on board with trauma informed care.” Cool, too bad. You still have a professional obligation to not suck shit though, so like, you’re actually going to need to get over that, or “on board,” ok?
“why are there so many trans and autistic people” is an alluring question with a boring answer; idk and most don’t really care lol. The answer doesn’t “tell” us anything new about the world or our experiences, but it does show us how things about our world are connected. Including how once you start unraveling one illogical system, their rest are sure to follow.
“Do autistic trans people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect?” is the research question I want to ask. The answer is too short to graduate with (“yes.”) and too sarcastic to sincerely engage with for more than 20 minutes without making me too mad.
I wish I could write about something that I don’t care so much about, but there’s no way I’m getting it done if I don’t care enough.
a positive of this experience is that it has been extremely validating to a lot of specific suffering I’ve been thru in multiple different aspects of my life. I’ve enjoyed reading “this is the book I would have wanted or needed earlier in life,” in like every book I’ve opened about the subject. It is so good to know that we care for each other, even across time, because we can’t trust others to show up for us. This is not to devalue trust or access, but rather, to emphasize the importance of “I needed to know this before I learned it,” and how Strong that feeling resonates with me. “This is something I wish I knew,” speaks to the avoidant part of me that wants to be healed. And I can tell because I’m not running away from it. It’s chilling having to confront truths I’ve known my whole life but never formally thought, expressed, or verbalized to anyone. It’s like being witnessed by a ghost, or a deity, but also my Selves. They are observing me bear witness to myself and to them, and we are all in awe of how crazy this shit is.
