An introduction is a good place to start. My name is Finn, I’m trans masculine and the majority of the time I am a man. Recently I went into hospital with pancreatitis and experienced the worst pain of my life. In the subsequent days of recovery, I got to thinking. I was thinking about my experiences as a trans man in needing medical care, being a trans man in general, eventually trailing towards the overarching “what does it all mean” that I assume everyone comes to. I was thinking so much and I thought, “why not start writing it down?” Surely, I am not alone in these thoughts, and if I can open a conversation with other people about my experiences, that’s a good thing.
I’d like to talk about emotional labour as a trans person, especially when interacting online. I have made the unfortunate decision to have a presence on Twitter, which can be a hub for vitriol, especially towards the marginalised. Usually, I tailor my experience to one that suits me. I follow friends, musicians, actors, like we all do. I also follow a large amount of trans-related charities, activists and voices in the community, and the majority of what I see is trans-positive. I just have the bad habit of going into a trans-inclusive tweet and scrolling down to read the comments. This doesn’t tend to go anywhere, as I simply don’t want to expend the emotional labour that would be required to even acknowledge transphobes, but I wouldn’t be writing an essay about emotional labour if I hadn’t done something. On a trans-inclusive tweet about cervical healthcare, someone had simply commented “Women” in response to “everyone with a cervix”. I, rather foolishly, decided to engage and state the facts, that I am a man with a cervix.
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