being trans is contagious. being trans spreads through social networks. close knit friend groups will often seem to spontaneously transition at the same time. this is all true, and i know it from first-hand experience.

is that supposed to be scary, though??? [1/6]

cis people FREAK OUT when they learn about this, and point to it as evidence that being trans is made up / a delusion / a lifestyle / etc etc. but let me point one thing out:

you can't tell someone what you are until you know a word for it exists. [2/6]

until very, very, very recently (and even now we get almost nothing), there was nobody around to like... teach you what being trans is. there were no accurate depictions of trans people on tv, in books, in school curricula, at the library, anywhere, anywhere. [3/6]

this isn't an accident; there's been a concerted effort to conceal the existence, nature and humanity of deviants like trans and queer people going back centuries. to the extent that many people knew trans folks existed, it was only as twisted, unrelatable caricatures. [4/6]

and so, people who might have realized they're trans long ago live in the dark with these feelings they can't explain and so sweep under the rug... until one day, someone they trust says, "hey... i'm trans."

and you're like, "you can do that??" [5/6]

i'm just saying: a lot of these outraged cis folks love to throw around terms like "orwellian" to describe trans people demanding their own humanity, but they never, ever noticed the suppression of ideas going on under their own noses [6/6]

P.S. this is why i don't buy any statistics about what percentage of the population "is" trans. whatever you think the number is, it's going to go way, way, way, way up in our lifetime. cis folks will be absolutely shocked to find out, tho i sure won't!!

P.P.S. i should point out before someone else does that i've been a bit reductive -- trans people have always existed, and thus information about us has existed too, but from the POV of an uninformed young adult today vs. when i was growing up -- it's unimaginably more accessible

when i say "you can't be trans until you have a word for it," i don't mean to posit it's some sapir-whorfian psycholinguistic impossibility, but that there's tremendous power in knowing that the feelings you have are ground that many people have trodden before you

that's the truly insidious aspect of censorship -- it's not that it makes it impossible for you to explore censored ideas, it's that it denies you the confidence of knowing that you're not alone