Author's Note and Content Warning

This post may cause distress to the reader as it addresses contemporary issues for queer and transgender people as of March 2025, as well as other topics relative to mental health, stress, dysphoria, transition, medicine, etc. This is not the primary intent but is a side effect, as this post *is* intended to be a raw and mostly unredacted opinion, one that portrays the thoughts, worries and concerns going through my head on a now daily basis.

This is a departure from my usually more technologically-minded blog content, and i am making an assumption that it is also slightly more likely to be read by people that are unaware of who i am, so for the purposes of making it simple, i will provide an introduction that provides sufficient context about myself to this post.

I am maya, a - currently - 26 year old queer transgender woman living in Switzerland. I came out at 23 years old and have been on hormones for close to 2 years.

Introduction

I've debated writing this post for the better part of the month, as i was catching up on my backlog of content from last summer, and it is basically a spiritual successor to a blog post from November that never got released due to never having been completed.

The "November Incident"

In it, i wanted to discuss identity, specifically an incident that occurred in November where i was forced to confront a significant portion of my past. One of my major regrets up to that point was that i had not realized that i was trans earlier on in my life, and that i'd spent a majority of the previous years burning myself out in a quest to leave any form of trace behind that i had existed and that my life had had any impact. In effect, i wasn't giving myself time to think about myself, because i felt less like a human and more like a human-shaped shell.

Most people unfamiliar with dysphoria ended up parsing my reticence to talk about myself as a quirk, although some later said they had seen the familiar shadow of a veil of sadness within my eyes. My friends at the time were all made during this period, and as such in their frame of reference it was a baseline.

The "November Incident", as i now call it, specifically was caused by reflecting upon my newfound happiness, and emerged from me blaming the me of a few years past for not realizing that a major problem existed and taking action on it, where i had instead sought refuge in alcohol and the familiar landscapes of virtual realities. My other claim to blame was that, at that point, i did have a few trans friends, but... i did not feel that it was something that applied to me because i didn't feel like it could... not realizing that this was simply because i did not feel any connection to my identity at all. This blame originated from the thought that, had i realized i was trans earlier, i could have potentially sought out hormone blockers earlier, and maybe impeded some of the weight gain and some of the later stage masculinizing hormonal developments.

Processing all of this information caused a significant mental breakdown which ended up lasting a bit more than a week, but at the end of it i ended up choosing to forgive the me of a few years past, not because they didn't take action, but simply because they were not in a place where they could have realized the need to take action.

And this brings us to today, where i feel secure about my identity in a way i never have, and where i am happy. ## What i am has been given the opportunity to become a matter to be debated.

This happiness would be much greater if today wasn't also the latest day in the increasingly frenetic sequence of days, weeks and months where what has enabled me to survive to this day - a darker part of my past i do not wish to go into detail about - to thrive and to be happy, has become a political topic.

Thankfully, this is becoming more evident to the public ever since the new administration of the United States has taken office, with the implementation increasingly sweeping federal decisions impacting many facets of the participation of trans people in public life as well as a hardline transphobic stance - including the constant abysmal and transphobic treatment of Senator Sarah McBride, the first and single transgender legislator to have walked the halls of the Senate. However, this push at the federal level only pales in comparison to the propositions put forward in state legislatures, such as 2024 US HB 5009 and 2024 FL H 1425.

It is important to realize this isn't a problem specific to the United States , and that it did not start with them - nor the opinion piece that shapes their approach to legislature, namely "Project 2025" - but has been a growing problem in a a number of Western countries.

If one looks to the recent past, one can for example see an uptick in media personalities - including but not limited to a specific British children's book author - vilifying trans persons online.

One might think that a few voices of that calibre would only have a small impact, but this persistence - and the ability to use money to influence opinion - has enabled a minority opinion to ingrain itself in minds and for it to become something that one can debate, and as such has enabled the politicisation thereof.

This in turn has led to the fabrication of evidence to support the erasure of trans existence, such as the infamous "Cass Review", which seeks to provide guidance for the care of trans youth and effectively labels it as detrimental and dangerous. This "Review" has been criticized and debunked by several associations of medical practitioners worldwide, as well as other subject matter experts (such as an article in BMC Medical Research Methology you can read here), but this has not stopped it from being weaponized in the political arena to pass legislation.

Forced assimilationism is a threat

It is also important to realize that whilst trans people may be among the first and more visible targets, turning our existence into a debate is not isolated to us. The fight for equal rights affects peoples and persons of color, indigenous peoples and persons, queer persons, religious peoples and persons, immigrant persons, and more, which is - to be said - persons from a variety of ethnic, religious, professional, political (etc.) origins and stances. Our strength lies in heterogeneity and diversity, but it makes us easier to isolate as groups if we fail to recognize that our struggle is intersectional, and that this struggle may be different in presentation but is at its core a shared trait.

This very same heterogeneity is seen as a threat by the primary drivers of opinion that lead the effort in targeting us, but it is also something that is being weaponized against us, by vilifying one group more than others and isolating it, before eradicating it and moving on to the next one. The techniques used for this are quite evident, for example by extracting edge cases ("bad apples") and misrepresenting them as the norm, or by sealioning or engaging in deflections and whataboutisms.

Enforcing cultural assimilation and the surrender of our diversity for some homogenous blob can only be detrimental. To pre-empt the obligatory sealion in disguise, this obviously does not mean that certain cultural practices that act to curb individual freedoms are good, but neither is enforcing one set of cultural standards. Governance under the principal of equal rights implies equality amongst the governed, which may require for members of cultures rooted in inequality to adapt in specific ways (e.g.: patriarchal systems, caste systems, etc.). Cultural adaptation and enforced assimilation are two very different things.

Beyond culture, forced assimilationism is found in other common practices of the 20th and 21st century, with the one that comes to my mind being conversion therapy, which affects queer persons predominantly. However it is my opinion that the redaction, retraction or erasure of references to queerness act in a similar way and has quite an insidious impact.

Had i known more queer or trans persons and actually taken the time to discuss identity in general, and/or been in a situation where such things could actually be discussed, and/or had i not grown up in a conservative area and gone to a Christian school and high school, and/or had i had some form of exposure to literally any form of queer representation, and/or had any form of exposure to the internet in a bubble where queerness wasn't considered alien and bad, perhaps i would've figured myself a lot earlier. But that sentence contained a lot of "if"s, and realizing this collection of constraints and their general effect on my upbringing was the deciding factor in how i came to forgive the past me during the aforementioned "November Incident".

Forced assimilationism causes harm, and causes misery, and that is final.

i must live on, because others were unable to

This will probably be the hardest part to write of this post, and by the time the last word is written i will likely have cried a few times already.

Because it affects such a small portion of the population, many people fall prey to the narrative that trans and queer people already enjoy all of the same rights as others, or to the narrative that no legislation is being passed that affects us. But because we are such a small portion of the population, and we share a common struggle, queer and trans people end up knowing many others.

And in the last few months, especially since the inauguration, a number of my friends - primarily based in the US - have reported being denied hormones, being abused by administrative processes (such as maliciously changing a gender marker in the United States even if the necessary documentation is in order), increased processing times, criminalization, and removal of protections against harassment and discrimination.

To precede any form of sealioning, it must be said that other people in the US are being denied due process or having their civil liberties infringed, because anyone who isn't a white male American citizen is currently experiencing this major shift in world dynamics.

However this entire situation has been causing distress to the safety and the physical and mental wellbeing of many transgender individuals - understandable, because for many of us "going back" is simply out of the question - and some of them have made the choice of removing themselves from the equation. This has happened to an upsetting number of friends and acquaintances, the legacy of whom I must now live with, and whose absence I must now live with.

As a meager respite, this is not a global status quo and some areas of the world are still *safer* than others. It however brings me confusion that some of my friends do not see this pattern of vilification, or choose to downplay, ignore, or downright negate the increasing impact it has on the lives of people in our community, and not simply on their own lives with whatever personal privilege they benefit from. Regardless of what minimal privilege we as individuals benefit from, our fight is and will always remain intersectional, and we cannot afford to lose sight of our core struggles amongst our smaller differences.

Conclusion

i am who i am, i love who i love, i have tastes, i have distastes, and none of this is anyone's business but my own unless i make the active choice of sharing this information. These baseline characteristics of my existence should not give anyone credence or right to wish for an end to my existence, or my conversion to a "normal" human being (which, in effect, would lead to the same result).

The moral panic surrounding transgender or other forms of queer persons is mostly manufactured, and whilst i don't intend to offend, it is often interesting to see the course of events unveil hypocrisy of the highest order, when fervent detractors end up being convicted of what they accuse transgender and queer persons of. Not to generalize, but the saying "nearer the church, the farther from God" feels relevant, if only partially.

What i want for me and my own is to live, and to live with others, as i have done since birth, and as we have all always done for ages. Had i lived in Ancient Greece, i might've been one of the Enarees and worshipped, but that isn't what i am asking for, simply for the same rights and respect you would afford any other human being.

With much love,
maya