When i first read that passage, i seriously wondered if somebody had reformatted a Halimede tweet. I don't want to dunk on Serrano too much here, i've taken a lot of good input out of her works, but this is one of her takes that has aged poorly. Like, seriously, i am so fed up with that view of being trans. The one that always, always without fail, centers suffering and pain and misery, that can only frame our joy and our thriving in contrast to the damage that has been inflicted on us, the one that can never let the past rest.

I am not like this. And it's beginning to become a problem.

You see, i like being in community with other trans people. I'm at home there, i've made friends there, found lovers there. It's where i belong. As long as i stay within my own bubble. As soon as i step out of it, i immediately get bombarded with unsolicited trauma dumps, dysphoriaposts out of a 4chan hellhole and a trainload full of internalized transphobia. Everything is a trigger for me. I cannot safely navigate most trans spaces anymore because the people there just drag me down. I logged in yesterday after a long hiatus and looked into the trans megathread and the first thing i had to do was block a user for her unspoilered loathing of the trans existence. I don't know how to handle this anymore. I used to be the kind of woman who writes big effortposts about self acceptance and how to figure yourself out and how to begin navigating systems of medical gatekeeping, but the further i go along in my own transition, the further i am removed from making these early experiences myself, the less i have it in me to unpack all that needs to be unpacked when baby trans yell their pain into the void.

And that's eating at me. It makes me feel guilt, it makes me feel like a failure to my community. My second puberty feels as if i get to sit at the table with the pretty, cool and popular girls, giving fashion advice to the prom queen while i'm leaving the most vulnerable trans people out in the rain, the ones that would need my experience and my encouragement the most. But when i try to be there for them, i harm myself. I can't say it otherwise, it is burning me out to expose myself to that kind of pain. It feels as if i'm walking backwards into a darkness i have escaped from. How do i deal with this? Do i retreat to my wonderland of privileged, happy women and girlthings or is there a way to move beyond the triggers and face the misery of others without becoming miserable myself? Because that's what i would need if i wanted to keep helping my siblings.

It just makes more sense this way and if you're going "noooooooo words mean something you can't just grab all the gay" i'm like lol gayroller goes vrooooom

btw here's how gay i am now that i have ascended to my new and vastly more powerful form:

and yes the two trans bears with the hugging cats inbetween are now the official logo for t4t

It wasn't a hostile discussion or anything, i didn't even go full "the kulaks deserved it" (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full "the kulaks did not deserve it"). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said "the revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary" and that there's one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: "If the October Revolution hadn't succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussolini's March on Rome". Basically the whole "Jakarta Method" train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.

Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went "disengage" on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, that's apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no "sis, you're talking to me as a mod here", not even a notification that i got banned.

The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, she's now completely going off about "authoritarians". The nerve some people have.

Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.

The world chess federation FIDE recently made the incredibly transphobic and mysogynist ruling to exclude trans women from competing in women's tournaments, to strip trans men of pre-transition titles and to subject trans people to a two-year long surveilance process that could lead to forced outings. The German and French chess federation have now decided to ignore this ruling. Source in German (mostly with the info from the image): https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=46744

Sorry about the idealism tho, this test is actually hella dumb, but it's more fun than they usually are (at least if you're a permanently online trans person).

Anyway, if you want to do dumb political compass shit, but with trans memes, here's the test: https://notaquaheart.github.io/TransAxes/?

Caring for myself is not an act of self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare

• Audre Lorde