Tumblr is and always will be the hellsite, but lately the absolute worst discourse takes I've seen have come from Instagram and Twitter.
Mostly this has been a problem within the LGBTQIA+ communities, but it has steadily spread into other communities as well. I really hate how common this has become in the neurodivergent community.
The worst thing about "The Discourse" is how we've normalized treating the personal identities of individual people as a subject up for public debate.
It's like we're no longer the authority on our own selves and our own experiences. Coming out as an LGBTQIA+ person is met first as a challenge from within the community now, just as it always has been from those outside of the community.
I've shared exactly zero pictures of my transition online since starting HRT. I've been very selective about what experiences with hormone therapy--and it's effects on my gender and sexual orientation--that I've chosen to write about.
I'm torn, because I really miss keeping an actual personal blog. I'm also really excited about my transition and I wish that I could share that excitement! I really wish that I were doing more to document my changes from HRT and writing more about these new experiences I'm having at this point in my life. I miss having a spot to post about my day to day thoughts and feelings.
But I don't want to open myself up again to commentary and criticism from those who feel that they are a greater authority on my own transness and queerness than I myself am. I don't want this community to pick apart my lived experiences, searching for some imagined evidence to prove that I've committed a non-existent offense. I'm not interested in the legitimacy of my gender and dysphoria being up for debate.
I'm not interested in being held to the bullshit standards of other people's respectability politics. I'm also not interested in having the language that I use to name myself and my experiences debated or criticized by people who can never live my life for even one day.
My identity and my place in this community aren't negotiable, my pain isn't up for debate, my joy doesn't exist to be stolen.
Something about the internet brings out the worst in people and the LGBT community is not exempt from that.
Too many people in our communities feel like they have to right to decide how other people should identify and feel about their own identities. Too many people feel like they get to decide who belongs in our communities and who doesn't.
I blame the ace discourse for this, especially. When we normalized gatekeeping and identity policing, we fucked up enormously.
We need to make our way back to embracing the reality that each individual is the expert on their own lives, experiences, genders, sexualities. We need to trust that those who choose to be a part of our communities are here because they need to be. We need to realize that there are as many ways of living and being as there are people. And we need to accept that for many people gender identity, romantic attraction, sexual identity are complicated, confusing, fluid, messy, changing, deeply personal, complex, and not easily confined to existing labels.
Until we get to the point of respecting the experiences, autonomy, and agency of every person, all of our pretty words about our communities being safe spaces are just pointless talk.
Liberation won't come through treating each other the same way that cishetronormative already society treats us.
