I spent like 3 years in that subreddit without really believing I was transgender. Around 2021 I shocked myself when I responded to a bigoted comment and automatically wanted to say “we” when describing trans people. I was so immersed in trans culture and felt such an affinity for them that I was already thinking of myself as a transfem before I was ever consciously certain. Simply not knowing I wanted to be a woman held me back for my entire childhood, but because of r/traaa, I could finally graduate from ignorance to denial.
r/egg_irl had a big impact, but if hadn’t spent so much time in r/traaa, then the egg memes would’ve scared me off. If I haven’t spent so much time there, then I might not have cracked and finally gotten to experience actually living for once. If not for that safe space, I might’ve never been able to disarm all the internalized transphobia and gatekeeping that can be all too common in more pickme trans spaces. A big part of why blahaj.zone is so important to me is that it reminds me of that place which no longer exists.
Thank you, but I do wish I wasn’t so important. I wish more people posted so I was only one of many rather than half the posts here.
I appreciate you voicing this. There are a lot of affectionate jokes that people make about people who post often, but we don’t often talk about the pressure that this involves.
It’s part of why I make an effort to comment on things. It feels like it’s my attempt to make the people posting feel seen and appreciated, as well as doing a small part to try to help sustain communities until they have more people engaging. It’s odd to feel such a sense of duty over the notion of posting and commenting on online memes, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯