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- Jun 1, 2021
This is a bit late, but this comic and its subsequent re-interpretation as a harbinger of transness feels very important. I think this is such a huge part of the trans phenomenon which isn't captured by the HSTS/AGP binary. Call me a bleeding-heart but I honestly have immense pity for trans people because for every pervert, I believe there's several times more people who are just deeply, deeply sad and grasping at anything to help escape that. I don't buy into the prevalence and relevance of directly sexual grooming as much as others on here. Instead, I see scared, lonely young people being 'groomed' into flattening themselves out until there's no room for their problems. It's a tragedy.This brought to mind something I saw on Xitter.
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What I wonder though is, what does it mean to feel "like a person". How can the (in this case, obviously autistic) individual know that they feel something that others do not, or conversely that they lack something that other have? It seems more like the problem is the feeling of disconnection itself is the delusion, it's a maladaptive though process that should be directly interrogated, rather than treated as the the sign to search for a reason why it's occurring.
In fact, given AGP, it seems more like trans ideation helps suppress this though pattern via endorphin release. They mistake the relief and positive feelings they experience from the paraphilia as healing the disconnect, but obviously it doesn't, and functions more like an addiction.
It is hard to find yourself as a person. It shouldn't be easy. We are incredibly complex social beings and finding our identities and roles in connection to other people is both difficult and beautiful. The internet and our constant observation by others doesn't make this easier. I think that many trans people come to their conclusions because it allows them to smooth out all of the wrinkles in developing an identity. Instead of grappling with what it means to be yourself, you can just simplify the problem by inhabiting the shoes of someone else. In doing this, many trans people replace the standard of knowing one's self with the standard of knowing someone else. It is very easy to get a functionally full picture of another person, because you only interact with them in limited ways as an external being. It is much, much harder to get a full picture of yourself because you're in your own head. You expect to have full knowledge of yourself because who else would? It's hard to come to terms with the fact that you are not completely known to yourself. One way of resolving that is to replace the need to understand one's incomplete self with a complete but simpler alternative self. I may not know who I am, but if I was 'girl' I have the whole picture.
In a way, it's a bit like religion is for some people. There's so much unknown in the universe and that's frightening. One way to cope is to replace uncertainty with false certainty. Not to be all Reddit atheist, but if you fill in every gap in your understanding with, "i dunno, god's got that figured out," it's just dodging the question. I think that is what being trans is like for a large number of people — replacing true uncertainty with false certainty.