#phobia indoctrination

“if someone says they are a woman, she is a woman”

“does it matter?”

“these concerns are largely brought up by anti trans ppl and should be ignored”

“even if they are doing inappropriate things women can do that too so its sexist to say trans women aren’t women!”

“we’ve/ive already been over this countless times”

(i made these up based on real interactions ive seen and had but it is not hard to find examples in tra spaces).

very dismissing & dancing around giving actual explanations. very rarely would someone have a genuine discussion with me. i asked these questions to find answers to better support the tra movement as i (at the time) supported these people. my curiosity was often seen as a threat.

and i get it, i never want to make someone do the labor of educating me. but these instagram or tiktok pages were specifically dedicated to teaching their audience about the trans community with infographics and posts about trans identifying individuals, etc. this was, in my thinking, the best place to go and ask questions.

even if they did not feel like explaining answers, they could try to redirect me to sources which could help answer them.

like with all moral panics and sense of threat based in prejudice, its just a general vague sense of Oh No! Not This! Bad!!!!!!! there's not a concrete chain of events backed by evidence or research to explain why me avoiding dangerous toxic things cannot be allowed for any reason or else it will result in....................... my whole butt falling out or sprouting extremely inconvenient and heavy antlers somehow? me acknowledging that life sucks and the world is fucked Cannot be allowed because.... ......... it will make the frogs turn gay? this is why i half joke about the "becoming a school shooter or a serial killer" thing because on on hand, thats fucking bloody ridiculous, but on the other, it is literally one of the sources of hatred and fear of mentally ill people being allowed to even exist, because.... well we can only end up becoming one of those things. the hatred and fear is baseless and directionless, except to direct it straight at us just for being here amongst the rest of society, but is just not founded in notable patterns of behavior leading to terrible consequences, its just a overal panic about what Might happen if we allow mentally ill people any physical or psychological freedom whatsoever.

so you get psychiatry and psychology being like "anti stigma time: mentally ill people are just normal with a disease that isnt their fault and are more likely to be abused than to abuse (insert study)" and then in the same exact breath be like "make sure your mentally ill loved ones arent eating all the babies in your neighborhood! you can do this by violating their every human right ever dreamed of, or else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or else!!!!!! if you arent surveilling your mentally ill loved ones, how can you be sure they arent the spawn of satan sent here to destroy the world?"

and so, i was taught to be terrified of myself too. just... in general, i have to Watch Out! because who knows what i might be doing. if im not careful ill end up becoming even more miserable or the antichrist.

and just like with religious followers, TRAs spew out these overused, dismissive, sanctimonious statements to avoid having to actually explain their beliefs. otherwise they may begin to question them.

i think a lot of them don’t want to question their beliefs. they feel so strongly for what they believe and are so invested in that belief that the idea of questioning it or hearing a different perspective is immoral.