Existing on the Internet as a Trans Person

This article contains themes of transphobia, infertility, derogatory language/slurs, and threats of violence, and may be triggering to the LGBTQ+ community.

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• Transgender (trans; adj): a person whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth.

• Cisgender (cis; adj): a person whose gender identity corresponds with their assigned sex at birth.

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I do not owe respect to anyone who thinks my right to exist should be a debate. This shouldn't be a controversial statement, and yet it offends a lot of people. There's a lot of hypocrisy that exists in the world: uneducated people who don't care to be educated, convinced that their narrow-minded opinions are certified fact. No one is born a bigot. I often wonder what makes people so hateful. I've spent a lot of time wondering how people become so defiant and misinformed.

It's hard to admit when you're wrong. We've all been there: called out for a mistake or a problematic statement, and there's nowhere that miscommunication happens more than the Internet. It's humiliating to be corrected publicly, and when the internet contains so much conflicting news and opinions, it's easy to get wrapped up in misinformation. People become so brainwashed by media that they lose interest in doing their own research or thinking for themselves.

I exist as a trans person on social media platforms. I live in a small city littered with white supremacists and conservatives. The Internet has always been a dangerous place. People's opinions are based off what they hear in the media. Hatred stems from fear, and I used to think it was my job to teach hateful people how to overcome their hatred. As transphobic crime increases at an astronomical rate, so do the people that flock to us in anger. It wasn't always like this. I don't remember when it started, and I'm not sure it will ever end.

For ages, I used the social media handle "hugsforqueerkids". To me, it was obvious: I'm a queer adult who grew up in a family that didn't let me explore my identity, and I used to feel ashamed. And so I took it upon myself to create a safe space for queer youth who have no one else, acting as a sort of mentor, the way I needed someone to act for me. I use social media as a virtual diary, a place where I discuss LGBTQ+ rights, and feminism, and parenthood. I think the biggest problem with the internet is that it's anonymous. It's a place people can go to say whatever they want with little repercussions, and this makes people bold. If no one knows who you are, it's easy to sit behind a screen and tell someone else to kill themselves.

So many adults need to learn the difference between having an opinion and violating human rights. If your opinion is that trans people are a mockery and don't deserve to exist in the same space as you, that's not an opinion. It's hate speech, and I guaranteed if the tables were turned, it would suddenly become an issue. I've spent far too much energy attempting to show compassion to those who hate me the most. I've wasted far too much time attempting to educate and reason with those who have no interest in evolving. It took me many years to understand that I'm not responsible for the comfort of others. My identity, my happiness, my safety - all of that is more important than making people comfortable. We're entitled to cater our social accounts to best suit us, regardless of how it affects other people.

The thing about hateful people is that they're generally miserable. Good people don't spend their time harassing marginalized communities. Secure people don't take out their problems on others. Transphobes are so deeply insecure and unhappy with themselves that the idea of a happy trans person makes them feel confused and angry. We're supposed to be miserable. We're supposed to be insecure and self-loathing, the way that society expects us to be. Seeing a trans person happy and thriving goes so far against people's expectations that it makes them uncomfortable, and so they push that discomfort onto us, so that the problem is us and not them.

The opinions of internet strangers mean nothing. Something I came to understand recently is that hate is a cry for attention. People start arguments for the sake of starting arguments, project their insecurities onto other people. Transphobes recycle the same argument, thinking maybe it will make sense the next time it's used, and it never does. I wonder how people can convince themselves of so many things that don't make sense, and then I remember that it's easier to believe crazy things than manage your own insecurities.

So many people need to learn the difference between 'learning about trans issues' and 'ignorance and perversion'. It's great to educate yourself! Most trans people are more than happy to answer questions about our experiences. But with that being said, there comes a point where questions cross the line between genuine education and casual transphobia, and people love to use their right to education as an excuse to get angry for being called out.

Nobody is out here trying to make your cis kid trans, or your straight kid gay. All we're trying to do is make queer and trans kids into adults. People claim to care about children's safety, while exposing them to weapons on the daily, screaming that trans people are a threat! It was never about the safety of children. It's only ever been about the comfort of the people raising them.

Sometimes it makes me sad. I can't imagine spending every day with so much hate in my heart. It comes from people who are closeted and afraid, knowing like the rest of us that coming out can be scary and dangerous. It comes from people who have been taught that their religion and community will cast them away for being different. It comes from people who hear so much conflicting information that they don't know what to believe, so they believe what they're told most by the ones they love.

In the past few months, I've experienced an influx of transphobic hate on social media. When I was younger, it bothered me. When it comes to hate comments, there are two options: exert energy into arguing with people whose minds won't be changed, or block and move on. The latter is always the best choice, but that doesn't mean it's always easy. If you throw a rock at someone, it might injure them, but their skin will heal eventually. Physical pain hurts, but words hurt differently. They leave scars on a person that don't heal, and can't be seen by other people. Words can be twisted into anything, interpreted in different ways by different people.

You know what they say. There's no hate like Christian love. There's a sense of irony in the fact that people spew comments like, "Troon!" or "Groomer!" or "Pedo!" as they cry that we are using slurs. A lot of people don't realize that transphobia hurts cis people, too. Transphobia always seems to go hand-in-hand with misogyny. A common argument is that trans women aren't real women because they can't give birth, or that trans men aren't real men because they can't get someone pregnant. This argument is obviously wrong, but it's also supremely invalidating to cis women and men who struggle with infertility. Is a cis woman not a woman if she can't give birth? Womanhood is not defined by your ability to reproduce.

When I was younger, I wanted to be famous. I learned a long time ago that that would be a nightmare. I get told I'm going to hell, but I'm a trans person living in the most right-wing place in Canada, and I'm already there. It's not like it matters how many precautions you take to protect your peace. Most social media platforms don't care about trans rights anyway. I suppose it goes without saying that the Internet is a breeding ground for hatred. In the midst of a trans genocide, I suppose it's foolish to expect the ability to block the hatred.

Recently, I took to disabling comments on social media posts. I feel kind of like a kindergarten teacher: taking away the privileges of his whole class because a few students keep abusing them. Public forums are a place intended for public interactions, and I have many genuine, worthwhile conversations with people. But I'm tired. The more attention you gain, the more time you put into filtering and blocking. There's a difference between free speech and hate speech, and I'm tired of trying to explain this.

Transphobes don't understand how algorithms work. They comment on posts of strangers to complain about seeing them, and then get angry when similar posts appear. It would be humorous if it weren't so pitiful. People with common sense understand that transphobic arguments don't make sense. People with common sense understand the cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy that seep through every hate comment. Most don't understand language. Some get confused and tell me I'm a man, and I'll never be a real woman!

I don't think I could tell you how many times I've had people threaten to call child protective services on me. It's not just strangers, either. Several years ago, this was threatened by my brother in law after making a heterophobic joke. Even my partner, a cisgender man, is targeted regularly on the Internet for his relationship to me. I think the thing that hurts the most is knowing a good chunk of anti-trans rhetoric comes from inside the LGBTQ+ community itself. How can you target and ostracize a marginalized community if you know what it feels like to be the target?

Cis is not a slur. I shouldn't have to explain it anymore. By calling transphobic people cisgender, we put them on the same level as us: so that we are no longer default and other. I have been followed by people who want to be the first to insult and threaten me on every post. I've had people find allies or other trans people who interact on posts, just to harass them too. I've had strangers stalk my social media pages, commenting on every post to tell me I'm sad or brainwashed. Most people don't act like this. Most people don't go out of their way to harass internet strangers. But you know how it is. My haters are truly my biggest fans.

Every day the world becomes more awful and hateful, and I'm scared it won't back down until all of us are dead. They actively rally for violence while screaming that we are the violent ones, harbouring hate and misinformation because it's easier than thinking for themselves. I try to ignore hate on the internet. It's the internet; we all know what that's like. Usually I just block hate comments and move on, trying to be unbothered, because you can't educate people who don't care to learn, and responding only gives them more fuel for hate. But sometimes it gets to you. I can only brush off so much violence before it becomes exhausting - and it's so hard to find compassion for people who think people like me would be worth more dead than we are alive.

It's not even just transphobia. Being told to kill myself, or that I deserve to have my child taken away, or that some random internet troll will come beat the shit out of me - I'm not even bothered by that anymore. I'm not sad for me. I'm sad for every marginalized group that is targeted and threatened, and every queer youth who is forced to live in the closet to stay alive, and every trans person who is ridiculed and attacked for just existing in public. Every day, it feels as though I'm being pulled further into some rage-fuelled dystopia, and there's no safe space.

I have an eight year old gender non-conforming son. I can't pretend I don't worry about him. In the third grade, he's already been told by countless people that he looks like a girl, or he shouldn't paint his nails, or to stop wearing his favourite glittery pink sweater. And I'm not sad for me. I'm sad for children like my son, whose self-expression is stifled and ridiculed by grown adults who have nothing better to do with their time. As an adult, I've learned that the opinions of others don't matter as long as I'm not hurting anyone. As a recovering people pleaser, I still struggle to disregard how others feel. At eight years old, my son is anxious about being bullied, and so he tones himself down in public, and that makes me so angry.

Gender is so tiring to explain to people. I'm a long-haired, slightly bearded alien man, and I like to wear skirts and high heeled boots. I'm a feminine man and also not a man at all. I don't wear feminine clothing and grow out my hair because I regret transitioning, but because gender is an outdated clusterfuck of a concept, and it means whatever I want it to mean.