Trigger warning: transphobia, depressing
Fediverse is changing with the huge influx of new users. One of the things discussed is affordances for supporting various minorities, including the one I am part of as a white trans woman.
This growing and stretching is likely to benefit many people. I expect both cultural changes (e.g. content warnings) and technical ones (e.g. quote toots). A single account's "reach" will only get bigger.
These changes will make Fedi better for most, but much worse for me. I won't argue to stop them, though. I've been here before with other mediums, we all know where this is going.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
Let's talk about being "the one" for a moment. In the real world. In meatspace.
Being trans means being the only person like yourself in the room. Every room. For your entire life.
There is no church, anywhere, mostly filled with other trans people. There are no traditional trans foods, no distinctive trans music, no trans homeland, no trans lineages to take pride in.
There is no "talk" about what being hated on sight can mean, how to do what you can to adapt, and the assurance that your family and church and neighborhood are all there for you and will have your back. Our version of the "talk" is coming out to our family, and many of us lose our family, church, and community very soon after.
I was born from cis parents. If I were to beget children, the overwhelming odds are that they would be cis. No family, no village, no self-sustaining community can ever exist with a majority trans population.
We are not taught to be trans. We cannot be taught to be trans, or taught not to be trans. We are born this way, due to biochemistry which is another way to say the laws of physics, in statistically meaningful but practically insignificant numbers. We will never be the swing voting bloc that affects the outcome.
We have no real history. Cis people destroy it every few generations. Some stories and names come through, evidence that we have always been part of humanity, scattered amongst other majority and minority identities. If "Trans History Month" existed, it would be equal parts legal discrimination, sexual assault, and medical malpractice.
Lonely doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of being trans in a cis world.
One by one, over years and decades, we discover ourselves, and look for others like us. We find some people online. It's exciting, at first: a deep well of information, and a sort of ad-hoc community. You start to notice names and patterns and the whole "how to transition" comes into focus and you get the hope that one day you might feel as comfortable in your skin as any cis person, including other minority cis people.
But the world finds us too. We get good at blocking those who hate us. But sheesh, it's so many. So many. Over time, online stops being about finding others like us, getting and giving help, trying to be part of a larger positive "thing". Instead it becomes...blending in with the cis, not talking as much. We even have a word for this: stealth. Actually, two words: stealth, and woodworking.
Putting new masks back on.
Because we know everything about being the only person like ourselves in the room.
Every room, even the online ones.
"We've survived by hiding from them, by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys."