sorry if this is a little incoherent, this is kind of a stream-of-consciousness dump of a lot of shit I haven't been able to openly talk about anywhere else.
being extremely online, I remember the early days when shit like genderqueer, demisexual etc were all part of the Tumblr peanut gallery and mainly featured on blogs with people making rant posts detailing how others are v inconsiderate that their vampire headmate is triggered by discussion about pooping because xe is undead and envious of the living's ability to shit. and I thought all it was ever going to be. I didn't ever really have any personal interaction with any members of the nu trans community because good lord why would you let any of those drama hounds into your friend group. I had brief encounters with a few of them on MMOs but they almost immediately got themselves driven out of any community I was in just by sheer virtue of being insufferable.
then one of my high school friends went trans. and this guy was like, he had been through some shit. his family were all super strict evangelicals and when he originally came out as gay they told him to get the fuck out and never come back. he moved in with some guy he met in WoW who ended up abusing him, and so on and so on, he went through the damn ringer. but also, this guy was a nuclear level perv. even back in HS, as he revealed to me later, he was playing on an ERP server whoring himself out as a dickgirl e-slut (and made good money doing it, lol), and that always kind of struck me as a weird thing to do if you're just conventionally gay. when he came out as trans, everything suddenly clicked into place for me - he's a classic case of AGP. and yet that's something he's never really denied. he actually does cam work as a dickgirl now (and apparently makes good money doing it, lol). he was one of my best friends in HS and I've always had a soft spot for this guy, and I never want to disrespect him. he's pretty on the level about his situation and doesn't try to make it more than it is. and I respect the brutality he's gone through to be who he is - just another weirdo on the internet like the rest of us.
but then, one of my other high school friends went trans. and this guy, he's been straight and married for over 10 years. he and his wife were talking about having kids. he's the straightest and most manly-nerdy guy I know. and when he came out to me, and me alone initially, because he trusted me deeply with his secret, I thought, what's the real harm ultimately? my argument was, if we had the technology to switch people instantly, perfectly, and reversibly between biologically male and female bodies, wouldn't this all be moot? who wouldn't try on a pussy for a day just to see what it's like? and yet, when I asked him how he came to this decision, he pointed me to one of those fuckin egg subreddits. the kind that's all AGP shit couched like "if you've ever seen a female version of yourself and you thought it was hot you're subconsciously trans". and the more I looked at the memes, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like this dude had been led down a bad road by a bunch of internet freakshows. cause he's another one that grew up super evangelical. I always got a vibe from him that was like, not so much mega repressed as a little autistic and clueless? like there are possibilities in life he wasn't aware of and hadn't prepared himself for. kind of naïve. that sort of thing. and again, though I've only had a distant connection with this guy since we graduated, he's always been one of my most treasured friends. and watching him uproot his entire life, his marriage, his friend circle, calling every relationship he has into jeopardy because of some bullshit he saw on the internet? it really rubs me the wrong way. his parents probably disowned him. his wife might divorce him, and goodbye any chance at having a kid, since he's doing the full-bore hormone treatment and everything. not to mention, this is something I would never say to his face, but there's absolutely no way he'll ever pass for a woman. he's a super tall bony dude with a big ass jaw, the best he can ever hope for is looking like a man in a dress. and this is what he's dooming himself to, because he's searching for something, and what he found was some idiots on the internet trying to convince him he's actually been a woman on the inside all this time. and right out of the gate, as soon as the concept of "trans" is invoked, the cultural expectation is such that trying to discuss this concept with him in any way instantly makes me an irredeemable piece of shit.
normally I'd disagree with the idea of posting on the internet as "dangerous" or something that needs to be curtailed. to me that seems backwards - people are gonna believe what they're gonna believe and post accordingly. there's no critical mass of posting that will shift any aspect of culture one way or another, i.e. posting about Hitler doesn't make Nazis out of people who weren't already going to go down that route. the poster makes the posting, not the other way around. but there's something about this line of bullshit we're all expected to agree on - that MTFs are real women, and that all trans people are legitimate, and if you assert that somebody is being pulled down the trans route because they're having a crisis of identity and it's been hammered into their brain that being uncomfortable with who you are could mean you need to turn your dick inside out to be happy, that means you're actually a transphobic piece of shit who's Erasing Their Lived Experience or whatever - that feels like another one of those ways to railroad people into certain convenient modes of thought by dangling an in-group in front of them. and the more I see shit like those idiot twitter slapfights over whether it's transphobic for lesbians to refuse to date MTFs because girl penis isn't the same thing as guy penis, or pictures of what is clearly a man in a bikini smothered in comments like ♥♡ WOW U R SO BEAUTIFUL!!! ♡♥, or people ferociously asserting that misgendering fucking Chris-chan is a despicable act that hurts the entire trans community, the more I sour on nu trans culture as a whole, and the more I wish all of that discussion had just stayed on fucking Tumblr next to the adult-aged autists ferociously shipping characters in children's cartoons, or discussing the made-up people in their head who each have a unique litany of self-diagnosed psychological problems.