Being Trans Online

Yeah I know, this page feels kinda messy since I haven't really cleaned it up and elaborated on things a bit more like I have with the other pages that stem from my Fediverse posts. I'll get to it eventually, I promise!

I've found most mainstream trans internet communities strangely alienating despite how much I ostensibly have in common with them, and how they led me to the resources that then led me to register that "transgender woman" is the most apt currently-existing description of whatever I am.

I'm not sure to what extent my dysphoria plays a role in this, my current theory is that I'm just coming from an unusual background and that makes fitting in harder, as with the rest of my life.

I've always kinda harbored a deep dislike (or resentment?) of the "quirky memey online queer uwu anime digicore asfldjdkl" "aesthetic" that's the dominant mode of expression for other trans girls around my age, although I'm still willing to take limited amounts of it just to interact with 'em. :)

It feels stuffy, like some posh centuries old academic institution, and I don't know what my mind means by that.

It also feels kinda "insincere" (honestly not sure if this is the best descriptor, or even the word I'm looking for) 75 percent of the time.

Maybe the biggest factor in this is when it's the full meal, almost a dissociation tactic; rather than a lovely sprinkling of humanity's lighthearted side to balance out its darkness and form a whole, enough to help power a community through the violent hurricane that is being trans in this era.

Or maybe I've just been exposed to soooo much of it that my eyes now glaze over when someone's online presence looks like nothing but it.

Let's see if I can nail down that dissociation aspect of this in a more specific way:

I think lots of openly trans people, especially zoomer trans girls, use their socials as a way to dissociate from the pressures inherent to presenting as themselves in the flesh, resulting in online spaces cloaked in an ambient detached haze of ironic memes and puppygirls and shit.

Whereas I, walkin' past my town's forest-choked gun club lookin' like a Disney Princess-haired parody of American masculinity in my camo baseball cap, currently live constantly flipping between my static mind, pretending to be a cisgender twink of god, and my boiling heart, hoping that holding out for a future where I'm independent and can transition will ease me out of this.

As a result, the words that leave me here end up being overwhelmingly sincere cause how I have to be offline makes me sick whenever I'm alone enough to pause it. I dissociate cause I'm dysphoric, and until I transition the internet is where I'm free to be real and vulnerable as opposed to being detached and fake by default.

Yet I now wonder if this difference plays a role in my strange feelings of alienation from these people who helped me figure my shit out, who I have more shared experiences with than the rest of this damn planet.

Because of this very tendency for the out trans women to bloom into mirrored reflections of their own boymoder eras, becoming brutally honest to their surroundings and using their digital personas to dissociate from the tension that creates, rather than the other way around.