I’m not very good with words, but I want to say that this is one of the most important, if not the most important thing I have read about being a trans woman. You have screamed everything I’ve wanted to for so long, but haven’t had the voice to. I can live a little easier now, knowing that I am not alone in knowing that this is the way things are, even if I do not know or am not equipped (and I know, in my heart of hearts, that none of us are equipped) to fix it. Thank you, and I am sorry.
"Something went out of them when they sealed the door, and I do not want that, I would rather keep getting hurt than become a person who can no longer be hurt, because the capacity to be hurt is the same capacity as the capacity to love, they are one muscle, and if I cut out the one I lose the other, and a life without the other is not a life I am interested in surviving for"
In my experience, it really is all just a lie. The instant support, the companionship the reliance and acceptance that should come with speaking the words, “I am trans”. It was a promise I was made by those people you mentioned with those beautiful pages with the thought out fonts and carefully curated posts. I have tried time and time again to find my way into what I was told would come easy, this Fertile Crescent of t4t and tenderness and have found nothing but rejection time and time again. I truly have never been as alone as I have been since I transitioned. I have asked for help from people who I was certain would give it when I have been in desperate need of it, and have simply been ignored or blown off time and time again. If I sat and waited for my “community” to help me I would be dead or homeless if it was not for one family member I have, a cis family member. She was born when trans people were only able to come out at night for fear of what may happen to them. A person who had never met a trans person before me. Someone who knew me before I transitioned. She was the first person I told when I decided to transition, and accepted me as I was without a second thought. She’s not even direct family, she came in late with the arrival of my step father. I have been shown time and time again that I cannot depend on my own community. I don’t know why I’m not accepted. I try very hard to be kind and consistent and show up for people. Despite that, I always end up discarded and forgotten at best, and scorned at worst. The cruel part of me tells me it’s my weight. It also may be my voice or my demeanor or the way I dress. I’ve wondered if it has to do with how well I pass. If that is the case, I don’t know what else I can do. I pass better than I ever have now. At my work I have a few people a day who see me as simply a girl, and everyone else seems to recognize me as trans at minimum, which is all i really want. The concept of “passing” completely doesn’t interest me. It hurts worse now than 2 years ago when I first started transitioning because I have finally crafted a blueprint for what I want out of my transition. As a result I am working harder than I ever have, and still I find nothing but rejection. I was told once maybe 2 or 3 months after I started on estrogen, by someone who is also trans and apart of a community I was told would accept me, a person who I very much loved, that my weight was why they couldn’t love me, despite attempting to. The trans feminine spaces I’ve been in have been have been the polar opposite experience of what I was told queerness was. I don’t ever feel loved for me around other trans women, and am instead made to feel that I am not meeting some sort of standard. They look at me and it feels like the only thing they see are their own insecurities. I feel so discouraged and exhausted. The idea of going out to a bar or picnic or whatever event again for a t4t meetup to only end up crying until I fall asleep once I get home because my attempts at connection failed again terrifies me. It terrifies me because I’ve been rejected by so many people for so long, and I can really only take so much more. I still go though. I still try. I try for the reason you mentioned, for the message at 4 am or the person who shows up when you text them. I hope I can find those people. I hold tightly to the belief that I can, but at the same time I often feel like a kid sticking a fork in an electrical socket repeatedly. I really didn’t expect it to be so hard. The connection I seek isn’t a lie, I know it’s not, statistically it can’t be. The lie is in how we’re told how easy it is to find. The reality is that it is deeply guarded. I don’t say this because I want pity. It is what is. I really do mean that. I’ve learned to survive on my own just fine. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt though, and it hurts a lot. It’s really hard not to feel bitter. I can’t imagine how much harder it’d be to not feel bitter when you are accepted then rejected. Your insistence on loving, despite everything, really is inspirational. I hope you know that. It’s something I need to be reminded of.
Thank you so much for this. I am the father of a trans woman and have observed her community and actually have not seen the kind of behaviour that you describe so I’ll say this - there is hope! They have even taken in a broken 67 year old cis man gladly and willingly when he needed it. And I am grateful. Your writing is strong. These two sentences - “You cannot be betrayed by strangers. Betrayal requires belonging.” As simple and obvious as they appear made me stop. If I ever get back in my feet I will become a paid subscriber.
Plumbing works. Every layer of the social pecking order experiences this. And that's usually where people will stop. "Well, we all experience some form of this," "I'm always treated as the token trans person at my work," "We're all in the same boat."
What they don't see is that each layer compounds the experience of the order above them. And that's before we even touch the concept of intersectionality. And that's before the impotent rage you described is turned on the others besides them.
The concept of flocks of birds killing a member that stands out and goes against the flow is often used to describe the experience of bigotry experienced by the lgbtq community. But plumbing works, and fascism is the shit flowing down it. So conformity above all else is the name of the game. So, you stand out in a way that doesn't represent the flock, that doesn't match the sensibilities or opinions or language, and you must die. Because difference means weakness and weakness means death to the flock.
I think this is why many older trans people leave the "community". Not because we're better than that. Not because we're "more mature". Only that we've grown tired of the "discourse" and can only take so much distain from "our people". So we isolate with the few we've finally found that are "safe". (I wrote this before getting to your whole paragraph that says the same thing. And I agree wholeheartedly.)
So many of us longed for belonging. We found it. Celebrated it. Then we're forced out because we didn't conform. Forced out of the world we are intrinsically a part of. Back into the dark ocean of loneliness. Our lungs burning to be filled with belonging once more.
If you finally reach what is hiding that outline, in that distance, at the end of the, painful, grueling walk. Let me know. And if I reach it before you, I'll toss you a line.
I’m so glad I saw your essay on Substack. I appreciate all the insight you give and thank you for sharing it with us with such beautifully vivid and honest words. My heart aches for you and your sisters. I envision a world where we can claim our selves freely and love our fellow humans without judgement. I wish you peace and success.
i've noticed this exact thing too. my uncomfortability with sharing my life to transmed, in my trans community, got worse enough to when i decided to call it out. we went to the same psychiatrist and there she almost ruined my chances to accessing my sex affirming care with her transmedicalist views. i didn't blame her, she probably didn't knew what she was doing and i wasn't wrong because she really didn't knew. but the treacherous thing was she didn't care to know about the harm she has done. me calling it out to others did not raise concerns about why she does that, instead i was questioned for why im hurting her feelings by calling her a transmedicalist. it didn't matter that i was afraid that she might ruin my letter of recommendation for my bottom surgery. i simply got kicked out. i don't have a family, it was my only friend group. the only people i trusted to be close to. they've watched me through my struggles with the medical system, my financial struggles, my domestic abuse, my homelessness. yet the moment i felt uncomfortable from the behaviour of an extremely privileged white trans woman, i got kicked out. i have no words.
I was eviscerated from my ~leftist~ queer community in college after being publicly accused of abuse by an ex-partner after i privately asked them to apologize for a single moment of violating my boundaries. Learning that this phenomenon is described as DARVO within the literature (deny, attack, reverse victim & offender) was very helpful for me. That experience is what first sparked my intense interest in transformative justice.
Trying to organize in the trans “community” in the area I now live has been extremely exhausting for many reasons. I have always struggled with trans spaces that assume our transness is enough to make us get along.
Although i do not share all the experiences you’ve written about here, many of them resonate with me. Especially the comments abt internal critique never finding a ‘right’ time. I’ve been feeling very bleak and isolated lately, but reading this article feels like that saying “two ships passing in the night”. Thank you for sharing vulnerability bc this reminded me i am not alone in this messy swirl of feelings . 💚
I love you for writing this, because this attitude of attacking one another for bullshit is also extremely prevalent among trans men, and I have been a victim of it countless times. Because God forbid we FTMs decide to actually fucking transition instead of brainrotting ourselves with TERF rhetoric, as well! Then we're not LustyGorgeousBodaciousTittiesQueenSlayCuntyPussyWhore+ members anymore, according to the wider community, we're just... men who happen to be trans? That isn't Pussy Cunty!! Why are uhhmmmm. women--- I mean AFABS!!! being masculine at all???? Why don't they just be comfortable with the bodies that they have! Why, god forbid, are we taking... TESTOSTERONE>????/ to feel BETTER IN OUR OWN SKIN?????? Gosh, these male transsexual people must be SO misogynistic for not wanting to repress their gender identity!!!! (but when a trans woman boymodes for her own safety she's EVIL according to these people.)
Also, CSA survivors in the trans community are some of the most hated people here. I hate it. It's like you're branded with the mark of doom since childhood and are forced to either hide it or only be friends with other CSA survivors, lest you be "dragging everyone else down" with your presence, even when you're not talking about it. I thought that I could trust our community.
This is especially true when you are AFAB. When you are AFAB you must not ever be childish, ever, or you will be labeled as an e-whore or an ageplayer, and therefore an evil comgirl pedophile... even when you're a transsexual man! Every AFAB with any form of effects of societal sexism MUST be faking everything, right, because they MUST be just looking for male attention according to so called 'feminists'! It pisses me off so badly that people who call themselves revolutionary or feminist will say such awful things about women and AFABs, just because they're Doing Womanhood Wrong!
TL;DR: cancel culture is just repackaged misogyny/transmisandry nowadays
I'd never heard of you until I saw your (updated) earlier controversial post. I don't know your circumstances beyond what you wrote, but what you said in it rings true as a thing that can and almost certainly has happened to people. And as a thing that *matters*, and needs to be able to be talked about.
So much of the things you've said in this new post are true and have serious underappreciation in the vast majority of communities of any type I've come across.
Truth matters. Dissent matters. Subversion, even, matters. They're essential to healthy communities of any sort. They *have* to be acceptable.
Communicating instead of remaining silent - even when the speaker is wrong, maybe even *especially* when they're wrong, matters. The counter idea, that "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt" - is irredeemably flawed. False ideas or beliefs cannot be corrected if they are never expressed, but they can still cause harm without being expressed. People may say things about being open to and taking on criticism, but you at least are very clearly already there, and everyone always agrees with that part anyway.
Correcting people (whether they are wrong or you just wrongly think they are) harshly rather than with compassion and love guarantees that people will believe even more wrong or bad in the future. Because people are taught that they *cannot* safely receive feedback on their beliefs.
Also other less-meta things. That you cannot love without exposure to betrayal, and that betrayal has love as a necessary prerequisite. The inability or refusal to hate, and how much harder that can be to bear than just hating.
So regardless of the circumstances in your life that I can never know about, or ones that I may find out about later - I'm extremely glad that you published *both* of these posts. Nothing can be remedied through silence.
All my hopes and respect, from at least one sister who reads this as the love letter that it so very much is
The thought of love and hate being the same muscle is so strong. That tightness in your chest that you get whenever you see That person is the same tightness in your chest that you get when you see that Person.
I know what you mean. I had a trans girlie I’ve known for over a year just go silent and remove me from her socials. And she’s far from the first. I don’t get why being hurt makes us hurt each other instead of giving us impetus to strike up at the people hurting us. Perhaps it’s more of that Us vs Them mentality that seems to drive every counterrevolutionary force?
Heavy. If I was going to quote everything I wanted to, I'd fill this reply.
I've never heard of "horizontal hostility" before. A bit dry. Heard it called trashing or scapegoating. It's salience; things closer to us seem more important. And they're within punching range...just manufacture a moral casus belli and BAM! Punching up! (I will never trust anyone who uses this phrase...they just want someone to punch.) You can't affect what billionaires do, but you can chase a socially awkward person out of your Safe Space, and it's the small victories that keep you going, you know.
Reminds me of the concept of "Kilkenny Cats;" two cats with their tails tied together, thrown over a pole, left to fight each other until one can break free or kill the other. I increasingly do not understand this neurotic decadent pressure cooker of a WEIRD society we're in, but it just seems like there's less and less space.
I’m not very good with words, but I want to say that this is one of the most important, if not the most important thing I have read about being a trans woman. You have screamed everything I’ve wanted to for so long, but haven’t had the voice to. I can live a little easier now, knowing that I am not alone in knowing that this is the way things are, even if I do not know or am not equipped (and I know, in my heart of hearts, that none of us are equipped) to fix it. Thank you, and I am sorry.
"Something went out of them when they sealed the door, and I do not want that, I would rather keep getting hurt than become a person who can no longer be hurt, because the capacity to be hurt is the same capacity as the capacity to love, they are one muscle, and if I cut out the one I lose the other, and a life without the other is not a life I am interested in surviving for"
This one hit home. Thank you Tara
In my experience, it really is all just a lie. The instant support, the companionship the reliance and acceptance that should come with speaking the words, “I am trans”. It was a promise I was made by those people you mentioned with those beautiful pages with the thought out fonts and carefully curated posts. I have tried time and time again to find my way into what I was told would come easy, this Fertile Crescent of t4t and tenderness and have found nothing but rejection time and time again. I truly have never been as alone as I have been since I transitioned. I have asked for help from people who I was certain would give it when I have been in desperate need of it, and have simply been ignored or blown off time and time again. If I sat and waited for my “community” to help me I would be dead or homeless if it was not for one family member I have, a cis family member. She was born when trans people were only able to come out at night for fear of what may happen to them. A person who had never met a trans person before me. Someone who knew me before I transitioned. She was the first person I told when I decided to transition, and accepted me as I was without a second thought. She’s not even direct family, she came in late with the arrival of my step father. I have been shown time and time again that I cannot depend on my own community. I don’t know why I’m not accepted. I try very hard to be kind and consistent and show up for people. Despite that, I always end up discarded and forgotten at best, and scorned at worst. The cruel part of me tells me it’s my weight. It also may be my voice or my demeanor or the way I dress. I’ve wondered if it has to do with how well I pass. If that is the case, I don’t know what else I can do. I pass better than I ever have now. At my work I have a few people a day who see me as simply a girl, and everyone else seems to recognize me as trans at minimum, which is all i really want. The concept of “passing” completely doesn’t interest me. It hurts worse now than 2 years ago when I first started transitioning because I have finally crafted a blueprint for what I want out of my transition. As a result I am working harder than I ever have, and still I find nothing but rejection. I was told once maybe 2 or 3 months after I started on estrogen, by someone who is also trans and apart of a community I was told would accept me, a person who I very much loved, that my weight was why they couldn’t love me, despite attempting to. The trans feminine spaces I’ve been in have been have been the polar opposite experience of what I was told queerness was. I don’t ever feel loved for me around other trans women, and am instead made to feel that I am not meeting some sort of standard. They look at me and it feels like the only thing they see are their own insecurities. I feel so discouraged and exhausted. The idea of going out to a bar or picnic or whatever event again for a t4t meetup to only end up crying until I fall asleep once I get home because my attempts at connection failed again terrifies me. It terrifies me because I’ve been rejected by so many people for so long, and I can really only take so much more. I still go though. I still try. I try for the reason you mentioned, for the message at 4 am or the person who shows up when you text them. I hope I can find those people. I hold tightly to the belief that I can, but at the same time I often feel like a kid sticking a fork in an electrical socket repeatedly. I really didn’t expect it to be so hard. The connection I seek isn’t a lie, I know it’s not, statistically it can’t be. The lie is in how we’re told how easy it is to find. The reality is that it is deeply guarded. I don’t say this because I want pity. It is what is. I really do mean that. I’ve learned to survive on my own just fine. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt though, and it hurts a lot. It’s really hard not to feel bitter. I can’t imagine how much harder it’d be to not feel bitter when you are accepted then rejected. Your insistence on loving, despite everything, really is inspirational. I hope you know that. It’s something I need to be reminded of.
I don't know you, nor you I.
I cannot know your pain, but I do share some of it.
This essay made me feel colder and warmer at the same time. We are some kind of sister, though. And that's nice to believe.
Thank you so much for this. I am the father of a trans woman and have observed her community and actually have not seen the kind of behaviour that you describe so I’ll say this - there is hope! They have even taken in a broken 67 year old cis man gladly and willingly when he needed it. And I am grateful. Your writing is strong. These two sentences - “You cannot be betrayed by strangers. Betrayal requires belonging.” As simple and obvious as they appear made me stop. If I ever get back in my feet I will become a paid subscriber.
Plumbing works. Every layer of the social pecking order experiences this. And that's usually where people will stop. "Well, we all experience some form of this," "I'm always treated as the token trans person at my work," "We're all in the same boat."
What they don't see is that each layer compounds the experience of the order above them. And that's before we even touch the concept of intersectionality. And that's before the impotent rage you described is turned on the others besides them.
The concept of flocks of birds killing a member that stands out and goes against the flow is often used to describe the experience of bigotry experienced by the lgbtq community. But plumbing works, and fascism is the shit flowing down it. So conformity above all else is the name of the game. So, you stand out in a way that doesn't represent the flock, that doesn't match the sensibilities or opinions or language, and you must die. Because difference means weakness and weakness means death to the flock.
I think this is why many older trans people leave the "community". Not because we're better than that. Not because we're "more mature". Only that we've grown tired of the "discourse" and can only take so much distain from "our people". So we isolate with the few we've finally found that are "safe". (I wrote this before getting to your whole paragraph that says the same thing. And I agree wholeheartedly.)
So many of us longed for belonging. We found it. Celebrated it. Then we're forced out because we didn't conform. Forced out of the world we are intrinsically a part of. Back into the dark ocean of loneliness. Our lungs burning to be filled with belonging once more.
If you finally reach what is hiding that outline, in that distance, at the end of the, painful, grueling walk. Let me know. And if I reach it before you, I'll toss you a line.
I’m so glad I saw your essay on Substack. I appreciate all the insight you give and thank you for sharing it with us with such beautifully vivid and honest words. My heart aches for you and your sisters. I envision a world where we can claim our selves freely and love our fellow humans without judgement. I wish you peace and success.
i've noticed this exact thing too. my uncomfortability with sharing my life to transmed, in my trans community, got worse enough to when i decided to call it out. we went to the same psychiatrist and there she almost ruined my chances to accessing my sex affirming care with her transmedicalist views. i didn't blame her, she probably didn't knew what she was doing and i wasn't wrong because she really didn't knew. but the treacherous thing was she didn't care to know about the harm she has done. me calling it out to others did not raise concerns about why she does that, instead i was questioned for why im hurting her feelings by calling her a transmedicalist. it didn't matter that i was afraid that she might ruin my letter of recommendation for my bottom surgery. i simply got kicked out. i don't have a family, it was my only friend group. the only people i trusted to be close to. they've watched me through my struggles with the medical system, my financial struggles, my domestic abuse, my homelessness. yet the moment i felt uncomfortable from the behaviour of an extremely privileged white trans woman, i got kicked out. i have no words.
thank you so much for this article tara
I was eviscerated from my ~leftist~ queer community in college after being publicly accused of abuse by an ex-partner after i privately asked them to apologize for a single moment of violating my boundaries. Learning that this phenomenon is described as DARVO within the literature (deny, attack, reverse victim & offender) was very helpful for me. That experience is what first sparked my intense interest in transformative justice.
Trying to organize in the trans “community” in the area I now live has been extremely exhausting for many reasons. I have always struggled with trans spaces that assume our transness is enough to make us get along.
Although i do not share all the experiences you’ve written about here, many of them resonate with me. Especially the comments abt internal critique never finding a ‘right’ time. I’ve been feeling very bleak and isolated lately, but reading this article feels like that saying “two ships passing in the night”. Thank you for sharing vulnerability bc this reminded me i am not alone in this messy swirl of feelings . 💚
I love you for writing this, because this attitude of attacking one another for bullshit is also extremely prevalent among trans men, and I have been a victim of it countless times. Because God forbid we FTMs decide to actually fucking transition instead of brainrotting ourselves with TERF rhetoric, as well! Then we're not LustyGorgeousBodaciousTittiesQueenSlayCuntyPussyWhore+ members anymore, according to the wider community, we're just... men who happen to be trans? That isn't Pussy Cunty!! Why are uhhmmmm. women--- I mean AFABS!!! being masculine at all???? Why don't they just be comfortable with the bodies that they have! Why, god forbid, are we taking... TESTOSTERONE>????/ to feel BETTER IN OUR OWN SKIN?????? Gosh, these male transsexual people must be SO misogynistic for not wanting to repress their gender identity!!!! (but when a trans woman boymodes for her own safety she's EVIL according to these people.)
Also, CSA survivors in the trans community are some of the most hated people here. I hate it. It's like you're branded with the mark of doom since childhood and are forced to either hide it or only be friends with other CSA survivors, lest you be "dragging everyone else down" with your presence, even when you're not talking about it. I thought that I could trust our community.
This is especially true when you are AFAB. When you are AFAB you must not ever be childish, ever, or you will be labeled as an e-whore or an ageplayer, and therefore an evil comgirl pedophile... even when you're a transsexual man! Every AFAB with any form of effects of societal sexism MUST be faking everything, right, because they MUST be just looking for male attention according to so called 'feminists'! It pisses me off so badly that people who call themselves revolutionary or feminist will say such awful things about women and AFABs, just because they're Doing Womanhood Wrong!
TL;DR: cancel culture is just repackaged misogyny/transmisandry nowadays
I'd never heard of you until I saw your (updated) earlier controversial post. I don't know your circumstances beyond what you wrote, but what you said in it rings true as a thing that can and almost certainly has happened to people. And as a thing that *matters*, and needs to be able to be talked about.
So much of the things you've said in this new post are true and have serious underappreciation in the vast majority of communities of any type I've come across.
Truth matters. Dissent matters. Subversion, even, matters. They're essential to healthy communities of any sort. They *have* to be acceptable.
Communicating instead of remaining silent - even when the speaker is wrong, maybe even *especially* when they're wrong, matters. The counter idea, that "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt" - is irredeemably flawed. False ideas or beliefs cannot be corrected if they are never expressed, but they can still cause harm without being expressed. People may say things about being open to and taking on criticism, but you at least are very clearly already there, and everyone always agrees with that part anyway.
Correcting people (whether they are wrong or you just wrongly think they are) harshly rather than with compassion and love guarantees that people will believe even more wrong or bad in the future. Because people are taught that they *cannot* safely receive feedback on their beliefs.
Also other less-meta things. That you cannot love without exposure to betrayal, and that betrayal has love as a necessary prerequisite. The inability or refusal to hate, and how much harder that can be to bear than just hating.
So regardless of the circumstances in your life that I can never know about, or ones that I may find out about later - I'm extremely glad that you published *both* of these posts. Nothing can be remedied through silence.
All my hopes and respect, from at least one sister who reads this as the love letter that it so very much is
The thought of love and hate being the same muscle is so strong. That tightness in your chest that you get whenever you see That person is the same tightness in your chest that you get when you see that Person.
Do you think people who are more offline avoid some of the heartbreak? You’re so right about how the algorithm rewards toxic drama
I do not believe so no. It’s a cultural phenomenon more so than an online one.
I know what you mean. I had a trans girlie I’ve known for over a year just go silent and remove me from her socials. And she’s far from the first. I don’t get why being hurt makes us hurt each other instead of giving us impetus to strike up at the people hurting us. Perhaps it’s more of that Us vs Them mentality that seems to drive every counterrevolutionary force?
This means a lot to me and I relate immensely. Thank you
Heavy. If I was going to quote everything I wanted to, I'd fill this reply.
I've never heard of "horizontal hostility" before. A bit dry. Heard it called trashing or scapegoating. It's salience; things closer to us seem more important. And they're within punching range...just manufacture a moral casus belli and BAM! Punching up! (I will never trust anyone who uses this phrase...they just want someone to punch.) You can't affect what billionaires do, but you can chase a socially awkward person out of your Safe Space, and it's the small victories that keep you going, you know.
Reminds me of the concept of "Kilkenny Cats;" two cats with their tails tied together, thrown over a pole, left to fight each other until one can break free or kill the other. I increasingly do not understand this neurotic decadent pressure cooker of a WEIRD society we're in, but it just seems like there's less and less space.