junepersecond

[junepersecond]

Thoughts on the Alt-Right Pipeline as a Trans Woman

tw: use of the term “nazi”

There’s this stereotype or inside joke that a lot of transfems had a “Nazi phase.” This is of course a gross mischaracterization, but it touches on a phenomenon of pre-transition fems being on the alt-right pipeline as “boys.”

For me personally, I was on that pipeline. I consumed “anti-feminist” content, and I watched people like Sargon of Akkad with his “feminist owned” videos.

This content provided reasoning (and an enemy) for why I felt so terrible as a “boy,” as well as anger at the idea I was privileged or better off for it. I was profoundly miserable, and all of the privileges that are afforded to men in society were either fully or partially denied to me as a non-traditional “boy” (read as subtly queer and feminine), or when administered to me felt more like burdens and pain than any privilege.

This content also manifested a sort of pseudo-internalized misogyny. I felt an inexplicable anger at women, specifically queer women, for daring to say that I had it better when they were everything I wanted to be (of course I was not conscious of this reasoning and therefore only felt the anger).

Wrapped in this was also the desperate attempt to hold on to professed “masculine qualities” such as emotional suppression and reason. These enabled me to deaden the misery that I felt while keeping this feeling of superiority over women that embraced femininity (which was, to me, a failure to avoid, similar I believe to the existence of pick-me girls who put down other women for men’s approval).

The confluence of my budding sexuality and the pain and fear that caused (both from internal and external sources) during this time created a desperate attempt to hold on to that emotional suppression, which further reinforced these negative constructs.

I eventually forced my way out of this pipeline as my sexuality made these ideas incongruous in my mind, but I retained aspects of that mindset and for many years until I discovered the root cause and transitioned.

The phrase is not really a good way to describe this phenomenon, but I believe it’s meant to bring ironic levity to a period of intense pain. But of course, people disavow treating any transfem with the benefit of the doubt, especially when this phenomenon can be used to further reinforce the perception of the “original sin” of masculinity that taints her forever

The “Nazi phase” can be better put as, “A period of adolescence in which a young transfem is suddenly beset by masculinity and is drawn to a pyrrhic solution in a false war against a false enemy.” But that’s kind of a mouthful.

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[junepersecond]

Thoughts on Trans Womanhood

When I first started transitioning, I simply wanted to move away from “man.” I was too miserable to even consider a community or home that I might reach. So I was nonbinary. But it didn’t mean anything; I had nothing and no one because everything about me was still defined around manhood, even if just a refusal of it. There was no community waiting for me either. My “original sin” kept me othered and un-personed, knowing that many who purported my “validity” would hate and fear the sight of me on the street or the sound of my voice in their ears.

There was a small concert in a small record store somewhere in Baltimore where a small group of trans women met to perform their music. I was there too. I stood in that small record store and felt “normal.” I felt like personhood had been granted back to me. I felt comfortable for the first time in my entire life. I felt as though I had finally stopped suffocating and taken a gasping breath to save my life.

How could I not be ravenous?

I found community in trans womanhood that had always been denied to me. My original sin had been washed away. I was reborn into something new that didn’t exist only as an opposition but a yearning.

Am I a trans woman?

I don’t know.

But does it really make a difference?

I’m happier than I’ve ever been.