What I just posted to trace boards...
Everything in the media & on social media is filled to the brim with toxic positivity. You cannot simply desire to be another, you cannot utilize your bodily autonomy, you must remain stagnant, just "accept" what you are. If you do not subscribe to this line of thinking or act outside of this status quo, you are bombarded with hatred and comments about how you should "embrace" how you were born and just "accept" your socially imposed state.
To me, this is society coaxing trans people into submission and denial.
"Just accept your birth sex! Why transition? You're beautiful how you are! Just learn to love yourself!" is a sentiment a lot of transgender & transexual people have heard and spoken against, it's not the lack of self-acceptance that is the issue, and until people realize that your utilization of bodily autonomy will be chastized.
I feel this is a core of the reason I was in denial about being transrace for so long. I truly thought that if I just embraced my culture right, making sure to follow all the contradictory guidelines society puts on mixed people to talk about their experiences, that I'd be happy. That I'd just learn to accept myself like that.
But the inner turmoil was always there. As I got increasingly criticized for not displaying my nonwhiteness enough while also apparently speaking over others because I am not "nonwhite enough", I started mulling over race & ethnicity and my complex feelings with my own and realized I truly do not enjoy being mixed. Being mixed causes me dysphoria, I don't like partaking in my nonwhite culture or ancestry, not because it's bad, but because it's not for me.
In my heart and my soul I know I am fully white and monoracial and monoethnic, but society does not allow this. Society deems this as a transgression that should not be allowed. ""Woke"" people would enforce toxic positivity on me and insist this is self-hatred, but truly allowing myself to realize how I feel isn't a problem with me that needs to be fixed, but instead identity incongruence, had felt liberating and I can't express enough how excited I am to accept my true self..
The moment I stopped allowing people socially impose a race onto me under the guise of "helping", was the moment I was free.
NOTE: I know this issue is hyper specific to poctw things, but overall, I think twist it a bit and it can be applied to the trace community in general.