So one thing I'll state here is that this blog can't be an academic summation of anything trans. Its not informative of us, what makes us tick, or anything about us. There are better blogs for that.
What this is - is writing therapy, primarily aimed at me, at working things out. And is potentially a resource to show others, should I not want to explain something, or to myself.
Ok so, that being said - one thing I want to talk about, but keep putting off, is how often trauma is weaponized against queer people. Everyone has heard of the conversion therapy camps - but that's not the only way to put someone through conversion therapy, and thats not the only way society weaponizes trauma against queer people.
When I was ~7, I was very obviously autistic. Now back then, most adults (even medical professionals) considered autistics to be essentially the bad media stereotype; and confused it with mental disability. I was obviously intelligent and articulate, but...I also stimmed. A *lot*. My mother didn't like it, so she took me to psychiatrists, neurologists, and so on and so forth. She was told I was autistic. Again, she didn't like it - so she kept taking me to more medical professionals, refining what she told them, until she had me diagnosed with ADHD.
That isn't how it's supposed to work, obviously - but this isn't an attempt to explain or defend her actions. No, it gets worse.
She ended up using behavioral modification techniques (essentially ABA) on me, at the recommendation of the facility she had treating me. Eventually, she sent me to an (I wish I was making this up) - ADHD conversion therapy summer camp. Run by the UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh. They discipline you for things like "rocking in place or repeatedly fidgeting with hands", among other things. It was aimed at ADHD people, mind you - but they had spotted, even unknowingly, what would come to be called high functioning autism in their ADHD patients.
Now keep in mind, I did not have ADHD. And my family was abusive in a *diversity of ways*. So they handed a technique rife for abuse to a person with a history of such behaviors and supported her in her efforts. And kept on supporting her.
Here's the thing. Obviously, they didn't cure anyone of ADHD, in their little experimental attempt to do so. But I did stop fidgeting, where anyone could see. To this day, 20+ years later, I feel *very* stressed if anyone sees me fidget stimming. And instead, I started to self-harm - I tore up my skin on my arms. This behavior was noticed, specifically - but since it wasn't disruptive (to the neurotypicals) - it was seen as preferable.
So this is all trauma that was weaponized against me, but its not really limited to that. Because the point of all of this sort of stuff is to make you *conform* to teach you to be afraid of your differences, to treat children and people as property that's an inconvenience if its not acting in accordance with your wishes. And that stays with you.
They don't just do this to queer and neurodivergent kids. Our entire society is this way - white, able-bodied christain neurotypical cishet men are seen as "normal" and everything else is stigmatized. (for a better discussion of this, seek out Black feminist commentary, I can't reproduce that here, they've done a better job than me.) And many of our systems of oppression are merely structures that seek to enforce this, as can be seen from our politics.
So one of the problems I hit was I hated myself for being different. As a neurodivergent, closeted trans girl, I was different in *so very many ways* - and I had social problems, both from all of the abuse, and from missing social development milestones due to the same abuse. And I hated myself even more. It twisted inward and inward, and the only recourse I felt I had was to bury it, deeper and deeper.
Is it any wonder I had suicide ideation for 26 years?
I saw myself as a cishet, which I was not, I had been *literally lied to* and told I had ADHD when I did not, and just...couldn't socialize. I was socialized alone, an eternal stranger in a strange land, not at home in my body, or with those around me.
This didn't magically go away when I learned I was trans. I had been trying to deny it for years, and even after I realized, I did everything I could to crawl back into the closet. I tried to convince myself I had dysphoria but wasn't trans. I tried to convince myself I was nonbinary - anything but what I was, a trans woman. Because not only did I have to hear our society laughing at us for my entire life, but I had it DRILLED INTO MY BRAIN - that to be different was the worst thing I could do.
Our society doesn't prize differences, or diversity. We have a puritanical culture. You can see that from how it treats Black people, Indigenous people, the disabled, and the queer community. Only the aforementioned able-bodied white cishets have their "diversity" celebrated.
Two things stand out about my personal experience. Early on, when I was wondering if I was trans, before too many repressed gender memories had kicked in - I asked my mother if I had any gender issues as a child. She became very, very angry and denied it. Told me to stop worrying so much. A month or two later, I asked her if there were any intersex or hormonal/developmental conditions she hadn't told me about. She became very angry again. Told me to not be a hypochondriac, not to invent problems where there were none.
Some time later, when I was talking with my unsupportive biological family about it (except for her, she wasn't told) - they were starting to give me the 'there were no signs!' speech. She walked in (and she's 95% deaf, mind you) - assumed we were arguing politics. She grinned this big, happy alcoholic grin and said, "I don't know about all these trans people all of a sudden. Look at junior. He always wanted to wear dresses and be a girl, and he didn't end up trans." It shut everyone up immediately. They all felt very, very awkward. I was very pleased - she had stopped the "but there were no signs!" thing in its tracks.
Anyways, the more I think about it, the more memories of gender incongruence come to the surface. But here's the thing - while I do remember being *terrified* of being punished, even at a young age, for doing anything "girly" - I don't remember ever wearing dresses. I don't remember ever telling her I wished I was a girl. I'm sure she's not lying (she was drunk) - but I have to wonder what traumatized me so bad I don't remember it. I remember some pretty horrific things. But not ever wearing a dress.
I remember wanting to. I remember being terrified. But I don't remember doing it.
Society would rather I be a cishet male. Failing that, it would rather I cease to exist. The trans genocide bills prove that - and the Republicans have said they want to eliminate us. Every day I refuse to conform, to be someone other than myself, is a day of resistance. My life is an act of resistance.
But I am not a cishet male. I'm a demisexual trans woman. And if they think my existence is a threat to their society, well good. Then my life shall be a struggle. Not because I ever wanted it - I just wanted to be left alone - but because they gave me no other choice. Femininity is just as strong as masculinity. If wearing lipstick and dresses make fascists terrified - then clearly, I'm stronger than those fascists.
So I've learned not to conform. I wish I had learned it decades ago, but I wasn't given that option. I was told to get with the program or die, by my family. I made another choice. I go on making that choice, and its the best thing to ever happen to me. But I have to make it again, every day.
Because that trauma doesn't go away, just because you realized you were trans. And because society won't stop trying to weaponize trauma against us.
Also, that bitch fucking knew the whole damn time.
I choose to be me.