thank you for that post, it was sweet, but you want to know what the biggest struggle imo is?
It gets so damn tiring. exhausting and pointless really. having to introduce yourself as This™ or That™ gets really tiring really quickly. knowing that there will always be people that wont ever accept it, that will harass you on the streets that will argue with you on whether or not you even "exist". yea, even the feistiest of us get tired.
dont take it personally, sh-ing has little to do with an outsider and all to do with ourselves
It is hard, almost impossible, to walk around being a marginalized person in this world. It is absolutely exhausting and there is nothing wrong with feeling exhausted by it. I have lots of privilege in lots of ways, but one where I don't is race. I don't talk about that in fandom space often because analyzing racism is my work, and I don't like to feel like fandom is also my work, but I'm a mixed person who is read as Black, and I live in the south, and darn it, there are still plenty of people here who would rather I didn't exist and might be willing to act on that; implicitly or explicitly. And I am grown as all get out and this ish still makes me scared and exhausted. And that's even in spite of the fact that society writ large has more or less decided that not accepting people based on race is a problem, which is not the case for Kid. Or for you.
So yeah. There are people who think you shouldn't exist and don't exist. That's real and I'm not here to say it's not. And I'm not so conceited as to think I can singlehandedly stop a person's internal struggle. Especially not with one tumblr post.
But what I can do is to relentlessly do what I can to make the meatspace look more like this space. Just like people put their lives on the line to make space for people who look like me to vote, and get jobs, and hell just not have to drink from a different water fountain, it's now my time to aggressively make space for you. What I'm hoping you and anyone else take away from this answer and my first post, is simply that. Yes, it is utterly, bone tiring to know that there are people who think you don't exist and to have to confront them every day and to have to do educational and emotional labor for them. It's exhausting and while it might feel pointless, it's not because you're not pointless.
You exist. And so do lots of people who care fiercely that you do. We're your mom's best friends, and your aunts, and your professors, and just that one person who saw the clothing you agonized over this morning and the haircut you ran through ten possible scenarios before getting and gave you a big weird smile at the grocery store. We'll try to do a better job of making ourselves visible doing this work and to do more of it so you have to do less of it, because you're right. You shouldn't have to get this tired in order just to be.