junie's dog house!

im fucking sick of infighting and pointless gatekeeping

written 2025/02/11 17:45 PST

why do queer people and trans people and systems and every other oppressed group always have to be fighting over petty bullshit and spewing opinions that only give our oppressors more power?

around the time i came out as transgender (april to may 2019), it was very common among my fellow trans folk (granted we were all children at the time) to insinuate that it was a requirement to experience gender dysphoria to self-identify as "transgender." i do experience gender dysphoria, and i went along with that narrative, because it was the only frame of reference i had for being transgender. but, it also got to a point where one of my transmasculine friends was gossiping about me to another (cis) friend because i wasn't "putting enough effort" into my transition. i think i had just gotten my hair cut in winter of 2019, but im not certain, and also i had been out for maybe two weeks. that friend wasn't giving me enough time to figure out exactly how i wanted to express myself as far as gender goes, which really sucked to me.

then june came around, and my redditor ass started getting to hear the stories of trans people outside of who i knew at school. i don't remember any in particular, but it did cause me to shake off those truscum concepts because i began to realize that they just hurt the trans community in the long run.

i would like to think that those friends have abandoned the truscum mindset as adults, but unfortunately there are adults out there with that same revolting truscum mindset. in summer 2021 or so (after it clicked that we're a system), we had a very rough experience with one of the moderators of a discord server of trans people within the osu! community, who bullied us in front of everyone for being plural and self-identifying as nonbinary (mind you she was in her late 20s at the time and we were still a child). it's especially unfortunate that some trans people's self hatred goes so far that they're willing to bully a child who is also transgender because they see that child as too "quirky" or "cringe" (me and one of my partner system's headmates had a really good conversation about "cringe culture" and how "cringe" was kinda phased out in favor of using "quirky." maybe thats a conversation for another blog post).

we're a traumagenic system, and we knew a few others in senior year of high school. being pushed further into the conformist mindset (not just being a conformist, but oppressing those who are non-conformant) and meeting one in particular who really hated "endogenic" (non-traumagenic) systems caused us to more or less conform to that same mindset out of fear of being vilified by a fellow traumagenic system because we were publicly vilified by an older trans woman for self identifying as nonbinary and plural.

but like, why? a common argument i hear is that "[identity] is invalidating to [other identity]," whether that be because it's considered "too quirky" or some other stuff, but like, how? personally, i think whats really invalidating to being a trans person with gender dysphoria or a traumagenic system is not trans people who don't experience gender dysphoria or systems who aren't traumagenic, but the transphobic pluralphobic ableist cisgender singlet society that oppresses us. that doesn't give us a chance to exist. that constantly prays on the downfall of more vulnerable groups of people because they have a sick and twisted fantasy of a world where the white cishet christian man is the supreme and everyone else is a slave to them.

to this day, i've learned that gender euphoria is the big important part of being transgender (and that everyone experiences gender euphoria in different ways, cis or trans), but i've never fully understood endogenic systems or why anyone would want to be a system (assuming they even necessarily "chose" their systemhood, im sure there are non-traumagenic systems who didn't choose to be such). but is it my place to judge that? does it actually hurt me any more than the vile nature of neurotypical cisgender singlet society? i really don't think it does, and i think more trans people and plural people (and other minorities that experience infighting) should realize that. and honestly, i feel a little ashamed that i don't understand the endogenic perspective better because i still don't like the idea of comparing the experiences of traumagenic and endogenic systems. but i don't think that makes them any less valid of systems, since they're simply another plural person in the end. it's clear to me that their existence isn't in bad faith, so i don't have a problem with their existence.

i suppose in short, what i'm saying is that however people label themself isn't an issue with me as long as they aren't causing harm to anyone else. and cringe culture is dead, and there's no such thing as "quirky." also, im sorry on behalf of the system if we ever hurt any trans people or systems with our shitty mindsets in the past. ~~~~