I’ll be honest with you. Your trans friends are tired. I’m exhausted. After months of seeing you-know-who pop up on our timelines or some hashtag about them trending I’m sick of it. Now to know that it has all led up to a transphobic, poorly written novel which was in production- or at the very least was pitched -while her publishers represented trans writers, it all seems like an elaborate hit piece on an entire group of marginalised people. So I’m sick of hearing about her or anyone who supports her and I know that I’m not the only one. Do us a favour and stop tweeting about her or sending your trans friends articles about how shitty she is (trust me, we know). Instead start boosting trans creatives. I have been seeing more of this type of thing trending, which is heartwarming, so I’m mostly reiterating the point in my own medium. The sheer frequency of this is what brings me to my topic, which is the importance of cultivating your own online experience.
This essay is primarily aimed at other trans people, but I hope that I can offer useful advice to anyone else who may be reading too. For starters, I love the internet, and I have done for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I played endless flash games. As I grew up I discovered fanfiction (I refuse to be embarrassed because it led me to my current aspirations). I have made countless friends over the years, some I no longer talk to, some I do even after ten long years. It is a seemingly bottomless pit of information and knowledge and I think that on the whole it really is an incredible thing. Without it I may not have even discovered who I really am. I didn’t know what “transgender” really meant until I learned about it online, and it was a blessing that I did. I finally had a word to describe how I was feeling, and unless you’ve felt it you have no idea what that was like. Now, however, with the ever growing focus on social media (or maybe because I feel like I’ve aged ten years with each birthday), it doesn’t feel the same.
Continue reading “online self-care”