Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:04 PM UTC
Ok. We gotta have a conversation about "fetish" and the trans community.
Being trans is NOT a fetish. However, there's a reason why the word gets weaponized.
It causes trans people to self-question and say "what if this is all just a fetish" as a reason to not transition.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:04 PM UTC
If we don't start having honest conversations about our histories and how we process pre-transition shame and guilt, then there will continue to be huge swaths of trans people that feel like transition is "not legitimate" for them because "they just have a disgusting fetish."
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:05 PM UTC
Fetishes are spaces where very few people, if anyone, ever enter.
They are one of the few "safe spaces" any of us have to express things that are otherwise super guilt-ridden, shameful, etc.
A LOT of trans people handle repression of their identities this way.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:06 PM UTC
When I was seeing my therapist, I told her how when I was 12, I KNEW I was trans and went by Erin online everywhere. But as I got older, the spaces in which I felt free to be my gender shrank more and more, until the "fetish" box was the only place it existed.
Shamefully.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:09 PM UTC
This process is known as "extinction." The spaces in which our traits, even whole identities, shrink as we discover more and more places in which those traits or identities cannot be expressed.
Fuck, for some of us that "fetish" box is what kept us from going extinct entirely.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:09 PM UTC
That's because the "fetish" zone is one of the few places very few people enter, and therefore is one of last places where an identity can live without facing extinction.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:11 PM UTC
This is where Blanchard erred the most.
Being trans does not arise from having some sort of "AGP fetish."
More likely, the fetish space arises from having nowhere else to put our identities without being grilled for it.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 4, 2021 · 9:12 PM UTC
Y'all. If we keep shaming trans people for EVER acting on their own gender in a sexual manner, we're doing the bigots work for them.
You don't have to be agents of Blanchard himself.
Being trans isn't a fetish. Society forces some of us to treat it as one to live.