7:18am May 5, 2015

I started writing a poem about gender.

And it was a good poem. It expressed things I haven’t been able to express. Clearly and succinctly.

But then I remembered what it would look like through the standard tumblr-and-somewhat-elsewhere set of mental widgets about what gender identity is and all its purported magical powers.

And I stopped and closed the window and may never try to write it again.

It was deeply personal. I don’t have the spoons to put out deeply personal writing, or ideas derived from deeply personal experiences, and be threatened with cybershunning from not only the trans community but even the autistic community… for things that I either never said at all, never meant at all, or came out with the wrong words because I’m fucking autistic too you know.

And while there are auties who thrive on the linguistic and ideological and even socialpredictability of critical theory (their own words, don’t even think off telling me I’m making them up) and the mess that has coopted the words social justice these days. There are auties who not only don’t but can’t. And funny how it’s always those of us in the second group who get shunned or steamrollered or pelted with vegetables our deliberately cut off from our own communities, all for having or even just looking like we have dissenting opinions.

And I can’t afford to get cut off from any more community right now.

So for now I will shut up in mixed company. Mixed company meaning the people who thrive in these environments and people lucky to survive them at all. And honestly name recognition is a big way I’ve survived saying things that would otherwise get me shunned, but with the community’s short memories, it won’t be long before people will shun me while using ideas and phrases that my friends and i coined over a decade ago send got passed down with less and less credit. And also using ideas gleaned from bullies and stalkers that have preyed upon community members since years before I was even involved in said communities, and by autistic community standards I’m practically a dinosaur.

Anyway. Just can’t put myself out there to be ripped to shreds right now and that saddens me beyond belief. I long for the trans communities I remember where people weren’t that threatened by personal experiences that contradicted ideologies. Because the ideologies that are entrenched now didn’t exist yet. You don’t even know, many of you, how many trans and genderless people in need you are shoving out in the name of ideologies. It was so much easier when we could just talk.

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