Black & white thinking, all or nothing, is a tendency for almost everyone on Earth (I’d love to meet someone who is able to avoid it!) and it’s responsible for a lot of the behavior we see. TIMs & TIFs really...need to be center stage when it comes to ‘social justice,’ or discussion of current events. They’re always reminding the public of how marginalized trans people are, & how many trans women have been killed; as long as the public sees them as the most vulnerable, any scandal or scrutiny will be water off a duck’s back. The repetition of these same statements is to keep people convinced just enough that they truly are in danger & need help, & that’s why they got your favorite professor pulled from a conference on etymology...because they’re suffering. Side-note—this is really cynical of me, but: isn’t everyone suffering? Isn’t everyone in pain? /Nietzsche. Doesn’t everyone kinda sorta wish they had more hope for the future than they have right now? I used to think suffering was glamorized as an ideal state for social purposes; it seems sexual, financial, political gain are also part of the glamorization for TIMs. It’s not the “suffering” that is glamorous but what it gives them. Their dedication to being the sole, suffering minority could support a hypothetical desire for financial, political, & social gain—no one to share with.

Still...how? They’re nobody’s. Who are they to cast these sad spells? How did they come in & take something so important & precious?—because they’re men? because they already had wealth & power? because maybe some very powerful yet disturbed men want the world to be this way, & they are the ones who pull the strings in the background? TRAs have taken a lot of language & pissed on it, language that is important, that needs to mean what it means, so that we can say things when we open our mouths to speak! Of course they’ve taken language. They take words that carry weight & they use their power to change them; I can feel our fight against them with the word “woman” sometimes, like two fists connected only by the knucklebone & first three fingers. They’ve warped what it means to have PTSD & trauma...this is a red hot resentment for me. I hate how they’ve cheapened & trivialized prostitution & womanhood & the experience of being female. They never use gender & sex correctly, nor any relevant terms; the invention of new identities per every thought or feeling to emerge in someone’s head, as well as the expectation that everyone everywhere know of these abstract concepts & honor them. They’ve utilized language to a mind-numbing degree as a form of control. I don’t understand how other people who haven’t spent that much time with TRAs don’t see this. At best I feel crazy, at worst I feel like I’m on the Truman Show & even the TRAs who are “in denial” are actually aware and know that this is all a lie but they can’t renege on their deal for some reason. I digress.

TRAs see themselves as victims & anyone else who is not them is a possible aggressor; they can’t detect or tolerate nuance because if they were made aware of nuance, they would have to confront uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, & the brain works overtime to avoid pain. To avoid pain they have to lie. Lying is easy and feels good. In the beginning they spread their lie everywhere yet due to the niche nature of their ideology (cult)—mental illness—the curious ones weren’t doing their digging, & the public was only marginally enamored with the idea of TIMs as marginalized. While the public looked to the right, TRAs pocketed whatever common sense they had left, which wasn’t a whole lot. I remember thinking “how did a nation fall in love with this story so fast?” I couldn’t understand how TRAs were able to get everyone on board: politicians, press, academics, experts, scientists, lesbians, yes, I still feel hurt & betrayed by women I’ve known & loved & kissed & fucked & told my secrets to, who I feel so distant from now, women who had a belly big with fire & knew how to use it—to protect women, to fight for women, to liberate women. Now for men. And like I can guess why they do it—to avoid pain: if they confronted the truth & owned up to it, what else would they have to answer to? What would they have to take accountability for? Who would demand accountability from them except for us?—It’s difficult to say how social media & the press would adapt, only that they will adapt to whatever sells.

For some TRAs I’m sure avoidance of accountability is as good a reason as any to continue to propagate the idea that sex isn’t real (& if it were real (which it isn’t) it wouldn’t matter), women are the archetypal villain of this year’s Disney movie, & trans women LITERALLY are women, hunty. (/s) For everyone else though I truly believe a decent portion of the group knows they have a castle made of sand. They know TIMs aren’t dying at epidemic rates compared to the rest of the world but who cares? The reason why the death of these TIM prostitutes is so urgent is because it’s a validation tool, for the self & the other. The more it circulates that it’s dangerous to be trans, the more a trans individual can justify their victimhood, to themselves & possibly to other people who they are likely mistreating in some way. Every story—every lie, even though it’s a lie—being regurgitated en masse by media without any fact-checking is so fucking typical, yet it doesn’t lessen my fear. And now that grain by grain, lie by lie, they have this castle, I can see that just like a narcissist, the stories & the lies are not their focus in manipulating their victim. It’s community, us vs. them, you’re in or you’re out. Through camaraderie they established trust with other vulnerable, marginalized groups; this got them a lot of support. Aka $$$. TIMs know they’re not oppressed as men & that they’re opting into oppression by pretending to be women. Opting into this oppression, claiming it, & doing so with the empathy/support of other marginalized groups, lent TRAs credibility. That was smart of them to do. I don’t know if some of these men knew at the beginning that it wasn’t trans rights they were seeking, but a paycheck to fund, & laws to excuse, their obsessive-compulsive fetish & addiction. I’m sure some had that in mind.

What I find the most alarming is how TRAs were able to capitalize on the empathy &/or compassion others had for them. They used the nature of the community they had built, its function to connect, as a tool to create shame in others. We’ve seen this in history so many times. They didn’t invent it. But over the course of a few years, through a lot of banning, doxxing, harassing, firing, tweets, messages, late night phone calls, & nonstop texts, TRAs had built a community that had such stringent consequences for loyalty that it could hardly be considered an ideology or a human rights group. To use someone’s compassion for you as a tool to manipulate, use, & then discard when expectations are not met, is disgusting. All of this to fucking say: There’s no fucking way these men give a shit about other men dying on the street. They only care about themselves. They must. The only way any of this makes sense to me is if the majority of TRAs (so, TIMs. the men.) exhibit moderate to severe narcissistic tendencies or have APD/NPD. Some researchers believe narcissists can feel love, but choose to withhold it; others believe they feel nothing. From my experience I believe in the latter. Has anyone else (unfortunately) had extensive experience with a narcissist?