By far the most effective psyop that the 4chan/adjacent websites' misery stew inflicts on its users is the idea that they're just hated for having problems, rather than the reality which is that they are having those problems exploited to radicalize them into insular hate communities that want them to alienate anyone not in the community, and that they are being manipulated into alienating everyone who could support them.

So much of the criticism I've gotten for the orangecel desaturatoid comic on twitter boils down to "you simply do not understand that my way of coping with dysphoria by going to the dysphoria worsening website and stewing in misery is necessary, because your dysphoria is simply lesser. Stop invalidating my dysphoria, which is more real than yours, and demands that I do this."

This illustrates a fundamental part of how these communities operate: Anyone who criticizes the way they operate must simply be the Other that they build up in their minds. It's all reflexive ways to dismiss outsiders. Chad/passoids/normies simply do not understand. Nobody in the out-group has any familiarity with how it feels, nobody has ever gotten out, nobody is telling you that this is bad for you from experience.

It's absolutely baffling watching these barely even adults say that I, someone who transitioned in my mid-20s, can't possibly understand what dysphoria is like. I was so uncomfortable being perceived at all as a teenager that I simply did not go outside. I lived in MMOs. Until I learned that voice training was possible I was so hopeless about even trying transition that I didn't dare to consider the option.

I would stay up hours past midnight in meaningless fucking arguments on 4chan that served no other purpose than to make me miserable. I fucking know how you feel because I was you, and I am telling you, get the fuck out of there.

I used /lgbt/ and the reddit satellites every day for almost 2 years, because I was already so ashamed and hopeless i couldn't function. The colourful queer positivity I saw everywhere else was agonising: I just wanted SOMEBODY to say "I get it: this is a terrifying, unfair, lonely nightmare and you're not unacceptable for resenting it."

It was the only place I (wrongly) felt actually cared about a fucked-up mid-20s trans woman, too terrified and humiliated to leave her room anymore. I HATED hearing from people who talked about joy and pride when i couldn't even imagine it. Only 4chan talked about those shitty feelings without asking me to do things I couldn't do, like make friends or not hate myself or hope for something impossible.

It was the only contact I had with the trans community and the only time i was open with anyone at all. I had some wonderful conversations on there and it probably saved my life. I still haven't really replaced it: I'm isolated and have no support at all because i'm irrationally terrified of being the ugly, stupid freak annoying the Real Women. I was like that long before 4chan and i still have trouble with it. I'm still half in the closet.

But yeah: for all I loved about the board, it's a neverending sinkhole of bitterness and it only drags you down. Somehow I grew out of it. If I'd stayed I would never have come out to anyone, or told anyone my name, or even stopped wearing shitty men's clothes outside. I'm still a depressed, abnormal, lonely wreck and i'm still falling very short, but I'm genuinely so much better now.

I think this is a really really important perspective that isn't well discussed online. the lines between what we call 'the tar pit' and 'radicalisation' and 'self harm' and 'self soothing' are often blurry, and almost always entangle people who are already in crisis or can feel themselves teetering close to it. when you're in that place, the well-meaning shit people say to you can feel like the equivalent of 'just take up pilates for your depression'. it feels condescending at best, and reality warping at worst. but you still have to hear it, unfortunately. you still have to see light coming in through the cracks, even if it hurts your eyes. it's the only way they'll eventually adjust.

Sorry liberal but there is only 5 genders

Worker, engineer, automaton, child and amputee

really happy for these illegal aliens in federal prisons who are getting transgender operations

the way fandoms are desperate to make all aroace characters romance and sex favorable but then dont do anything remotely similar to any other identity is astounding. hmm i wonder why

PLEASE dont derail this about shipping characters of other identities please let this one post be about an aroace struggle

i think "many queer people are purposefully deprived of regular IRL social interaction with other people, both queer and not, by our society" and "lots of queer discourse on the internet would be rendered irrelevant if the people engaging in it were regularly interacting with other queer people in real life rather than online" are two statements that can and shouls coexist

fuck it. i'll go one step further too and say that the shit you guys argue about on here not only doesn't actually matter in IRL queer communities, you are actively contributing to the destruction of queer spaces. some day you will look around you as the last gay/lesbian bar in your area closes down due to lack of business, or as the lynching of a local queer youth goes unmourned, and ask "who did this to us?" and the answer will be you. by shredding any solidarity within the queer community and turning on your fellow queers in a moral panic. you did this. you killed your local queer community, and you did so gleefully. so maybe, idk, focus less on fighting your fellow queers and more on rebuilding the bridges you've burned. just a thought

I really don't know how to explain to people that supporting gender liberation (liberation for trans people, liberation for gnc people, liberation from all oppressive gender roles) means you have to be able to see someone you think is cis "crossdressing" and be cool about it. You have to be able to see someone presenting in a way that doesn't make sense to you and not interrogate them about their identity. You have to be able to hear someone express a gender identity you don't understand and go "Huh! Neat," and go about your business. If you truly want gender liberation for all then you have to stop trying to exert control over other people's genders, period.

Also it’s fine if they do it for horny reasons actually

Johnny J Jaw Helldiver

Johnny J. Jaw, of the well-to-do Jaw family, nephew of Senator Jerold J. Jaw, Is eager and ready for his easy life as a hero of the federation. Kiss a few babies, stomp a few bugs. Get elected! 

Powerful statements like these, that juxtapose the condemnation of such a simple and pure thing as love with the honour and worship of violence and death, always hit me hard and stay with me for days

This is the tombstone of Technical Sergeant Leonard Philip Matlovich, the first gay service member to intentionally out himself in order to fight the ban on gay people in the military. He hadn’t only served for Vietnam, he was a career Air Force member in good standing who would have liked to continue his career even though he knew coming out would most likely make that impossible. He’d also been an elder in the LDS church but was excommunicated

He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 which was the first time an openly gay person appeared on the cover of a U.S. magazine and had their name printed in that magazine

He was an advocate for AIDs/HIV patients from the start of the outbreak in the 70s. He contracted the virus in 1986 and died 2 years later

His name doesn’t appear on his tombstone because he wanted it to be a memorial for all gay veterans

here’s the King himself

and here’s his grave in its full glory, with the pink triangles and everything! the words over the dates of his birth and death are referencing the extermination of lgbt people during the holocaust and the HIV crisis, respectively.

Pride in space

You can buy these posters here !

No Man’s Sky take note

You have rights because

faggots and dykes fought for them.

Respect that you cunt

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

oh haiku bot. i thought i couldn’t love you more

WAIT

these men are too psychotic to see the gendie dogma when it's in front of them

Trans dogma doesn’t exist that’s a terf and transphobe community construct as you’re that only ones that use it.

And once more please someone tell us all where Larps vanished to and why? Because she from everything known was caught stalking one of the “Aidens” she used to regularly harass IRL.

TIM/TIF still came from 4 chan.

what the fuck are you guys going on about?

Okay...

1. The TERF thinks there is some all encompassing dogma and agenda behind the trans demographic.

2. She is using TIM/TIF which is that Trans Identified Male/Female bullshit. Non clinical misgendering hate terms created by 4Channers and brought here to Tumblr by the Rudefem/TERF @Larpsandtherealgirl who was the terf that invented and popularized going after trans mascs and called them Fujos and popularized the use of Aiden as a dig on trans masc names.

Larps vanished off the face of ALL social media and people had found out that her 30 year old ass had physically stalked a trans masc minor IRL and  had been caught so this is why she has no access or left an explanation why no one misses her ass or even talks about her.

And like all TERFs the one here has zero problem with using that language.

Just like she has no problem in using mental health as a social weapon.

Huh, yeah, stalking a transmasc because his existence pisses her off sounds about right for a TERF. That’s something you would do too, right @velvetlibery ? Stalk and harass a transperson in order to protect women? Also, lostelvenqueen is a ciswoman, not trans. Ironic how someone who is concerned about “women being erased” automatically assumes their detractors are always male.