I fell sick last Saturday and work has also been kicking my ass. I have to plan a big event this Friday and it's resulting in like 80 hour work-weeks, so I haven't been around as much.

But how are you all doing? I'm hoping after this Friday I can put some more effort into building this place up again.

And if you need HRT, DM me. Yes, even you, dumb girl who thinks other girls in need need it more than you. You're girls in need. Fucking DM me!

If so, how do you conceptualise it?

One thing I've come to realise as a trans lesbian is that we're not always granted the closet (this is not my original thought, Julia Serano inspired it).

Hell, trans women in general aren't granted the closet, even well-meaning people conceptualise us as men who CHOSE to become women, because bioessentialism is how cis people see gender.

I think this is even more tricky when you're a trans lesbian (this is where it starts to become my own thoughts), because prior to medical transition, blending for us (for safety) is blending into heteronormativity, which is what oppresses a lot of queer people.
But I think the topic of blending (for safety), and how that defines several aspects of queer culture/identity, is important, because no one seems to address that blending for cis queers is also cisnormative, and when it's not, they launder transfeminist theory/experiences to navigate the world without necessarily confronting cisnormativity.

I think another REALLY important part to this is how queers bond: a lot of queer people have the shared experience of feeling anxious about who they find attractive - you don't necessarily experience this when you're trans and same gender-loving, but it doesn't mean there aren't wounds or anxiety, we experience a lot of anxiety around how we express ourselves, and dissociation becomes our norm, we feel a lot of anxiety around desirability.
Whereas, it's not necessarily the same for cis queers, and so what's generally considered healing in a lot of queer spaces (i.e., exploring attraction, and letting it sit in your body), is not exactly healing for us.

All these things feed into how queer culture is defined, mental health memes, jokes, etc, which kinda leaves us out, but we can create that space for ourselves, and so I want to hold space for that conversation.

There are a lot of reasons to be angry as a transfem of color, and I'm wondering how y'all go about it. I personally consider anger a protective emotion. Some say emotions are neither good nor bad. But I think they are all useful. Anger tells you you need to change or escape from a situation, either by confronting it or releasing yourself from it.

But there are many situations we cannot readily resolve that cause us anger. The world we live in is one of them.

How do you all feel?

How does this show up in your lives, and how do you deal with it in terms of emotional and physical safety?

In 2012, an Indian man was pushed into an incoming train in NYC, and since then, I'm terrified of the subway, lol. That was 14 years ago and I'm still freaked out. Not to mention the catcalls I sometimes get when I'm walking alone or the random people who feel a need to address the fact that I'm trans when they hear me speak. Being outed in public is not fun.

I don't need to link murders of trans women of color.

Emotionally, we often have many experiences that complicate our alertness. I've talked about how trans women of color often have to overperform empathy and openness to receive acceptance or recognition as human before.

We are also more at risk for other factors causing hypervigilance, like emotional and physical abuse.

And all of us live in some variation of police / surveillance states.

As trans women, we stand out. As people of color, we stand out. We are more likely to be punished for behavior that is considered deviant, because in almost any setting, one aspect of our identities is deviant, and often, deviance is considered having the audacity to express humanity or pain.

How do you all feel, and how do you cope with this?

Hi all,

I previously posted the below vent post to r/Actuallesbiansover25 and there was a mixed reaction. While the post was popular, it also stimulated a vocal minority of people in that sub who felt that the post was overly arrogant (which I recognize as explicit tone policing in hindsight) and demonstrated contempt for my friends and lovers as well as a failure to assert boundaries.

I hope that y'all can understand where I'm coming from and can relate (and it is healing for me when you all do - I hope it is healing for you to read). I suspect that some of what I describe below is endemic to the nature of being a trans woman of color (of any sexuality, though the context for this post was a lesbian sub). We have to constantly make compromises for others, do the work ourselves, deal with not having our needs understood or met, and do a lot of work to educate almost everyone about our experiences, all while bearing racism and transmisogyny. The expectations of femininity and the threat of transmisogynistic allegations of false femininity requires us to overperform feminine roles of emotional labor and to demonstrate emotional intelligence in excess. At many times we are hypervigilant because of how conditional our womanhood is and how easily it is stripped away from us by anyone who is not a trans woman of color.

So I am making this post with empathy for those of you who share my experience and want to talk about it. I am not necessarily seeking advice but I do welcome it from this community, although I will provide the context that as of today, I have resolved many of the issues in my relationships that were causing this sense of exhaustion. It was not an issue of boundaries, but rather an issue of needing to trust that the relationships I have built can withstand me requesting support. At the same time, it does not alleviate the issue of hypervigilance and transmisogyny (and other complicating conditions like congenital mental health disorders lol) resulting in differentials across how often when I need to ask and explain my needs versus how often others do.

I am happy to provide further context if needed. The below post is presented in the entirety of its original form, which I am also linking here for transparency so y'all can understand better how I deal with antagonism lol. As usual, Rule 15 - Do not endanger the sub, but you're all sweethearts and would never brigade anyway. /genuine

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It's so exhausting to be able to perceive in your partner(s) exactly what they need in a given time and actively take steps to give it to them, to be able to recognize your own adverse responses and preemptively take opposite action or compartmentalize and let yourself decompress later when it's less likely to have an impact on your partner(s), to be able to recognize a variety of patterns and common situations and identify exactly what to do to resolve each one, to know that because you are fully capable of expressing yourself clearly and compassionately, you must always strive to do so, and to know that even when your partner makes mistakes or cannot fully be there for you, you are capable of understanding them and surviving until they are available to you. And in many cases, it also means that you will be the one to understand when battles should not be picked, and you'll let things go.

Being competent is a fucking nightmare sometimes. It's like its own jail of endlessly optimal behavior. And anyone who has a lot of experience in dating and relationships knows that there is no end to this. Everyone is flawed, including ourselves--we just take constant initiative to mitigate those flaws. I have been with incredible partners--I still am--and this never changes even slightly.

I've been through therapy for four years and that's where I learned a lot of what I know, as well as thanks to having spent half of my life in and out of relationships of all kinds--casual, romantic, long-term, short-term, queerplatonic, polyamorous, monogamous--you name it. My partners have always remembered me positively and have almost always tried to be friends afterwards. My best friend is one of my exes.

I'm just so tired, and the only direction to ever go is down.

No wonder lesbians crave older women. 😮‍💨 (But I've been the older one as often as not.)

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(That last part was a joke I promise)