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Actually no: it is worth tweeting the whole thing I think. So idk, get your unfollows ready! (1/10k) https://twitter.com/manwhohatesfun/status/1325513524395782145">https://twitter.com/manwhohat...
When someone says something negative about me, the time from "but wait, that& #39;s not true" through "but what if it IS true? Let& #39;s entertain this!" to "that& #39;s always been true and I& #39;m bad" is at most 72 hours. Therefore: safety only comes from total consensus.
But this is at cross purposes with being a trans woman at all, because to be one is definitively to take a position about yourself. You can& #39;t exist as a trans woman without inherently asserting something about yourself and needing to defend it.
Thus I& #39;ve spent a lot of time talking with my therapist about TERFs. The conflict between me and TERFs can& #39;t be resolved. But there has to be some way to listen, I tell my therapist! To meet in the middle! That way there& #39;ll be no danger!
And her constant reply: you can& #39;t meet in the middle when someone asks you not to exist. And I& #39;m trying to learn this lesson, and that the existence of any conflict, ever, is not somehow a sign of personal failure. That this is in fact an impossibly arrogant thing to think.
Solidarity helps. It& #39;s easy for me to assume I& #39;m wrong but hard for me to assume people I care about are. If a TERF calls me a deluded predatory man, part of me will be like "well gosh, I& #39;d better mull that one over!" If she calls a friend that: WAR.
And listen: believing that safety only comes with total consensus is not just at cross purposes with transness, but at cross purposes with all adult relationality. It& #39;s part of my personal inheritance from patriarchy. I want to throw it away.
We want to "reach out to the right" because we view irreconcilable conflict as a sign of *national* failure. It& #39;s baked into the Constitution: all conflict can OF COURSE be resolved with sufficient reasoned debate! It& #39;s the end of history! There is no danger, none!
Again, the antivenom to this is solidarity. I can be dubious about my own beliefs, but not my friends& #39;. Thus feeling your constructive anger--your wish for different things--and caring about you helps me connect to my own, leads to some kind of growth.
I know this is humanity 101 but this is where I& #39;m at. And maybe you are there too, so maybe it& #39;s helpful to spell this out. You can be angry without hating. You can also honor your friends& #39; hate because it& #39;s legit. These are ways to find the ground you have to stand on.
Saying this out loud makes this easier for me to believe and sustain; if you needed this, I& #39;m glad; if this made your day worse, I mean, so be it. This conflict, at least, we can get beyond. 
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