wyrmenby parietal eye

im curious how this tends to manifest as far as common social experiences etc

like, what are the main things that tend to convince people they have to do things they dont want to in order to be accepted/etc? is it their social circles saying certain kinds of things? is this mainly something in circles that have lots of transmeds or lots of really-passing-fixated people, or is it broader than that? is it more offline or onlien? is it simply inaccurate mainstream ideas about what being trans is? is it other forms of them inferring "oh this is what other trans people expect of me"? is it just not seeing enough people like them in their circles and so feeling like they have to be more like others? just trying to feel out the common components of the social experiences that are pushing people the most

This is one of those things that I perhaps counter-intuitively blame on medical gatekeeping: because they're trying to prevent "regret" (or, if we're real, any harm to cis people at the expense of any amount of harm to trans people) everyone, potentially regretters or otherwise, shows up at the clinic knowing exactly what they're supposed to say and do to get healthcare, including continued healthcare and the ability to access surgery. It amounts to a series of hurdles you have to take a running leap to get past and some folks find they've leaped further than they wanted. I know people who've gotten surgeries they've later regretted because they were worried that if they told the NHS to give them more time they might not be allowed to access them at all.

But of course that's not all of it. There's social gatekeeping both from cis people and from other trans people to get past as well. I think trans people have gotten way better in the last 15 years that I've been kicking around at accepting nonbinary people and more overt messing with gender but that'll vary by location, demographic and so on. Trans people gatekeeping trans people do a great deal of harm.

That said, cis civilians, much like cis gatekeepers, have a lot of blame here. One of the reasons that trans community is so important is that for most of us coming out means losing the support, or at least substantive rather than superficial support, of the cis people around us. A lot of what we need each other for is help navigating hostile medical systems, hostile families, soon-to-be-former friends, hostile workplaces. It's like a bucket of cold water to the face to find the wind that was at your back propelling you in the direction of a normative life is now going the other direction and the only shelters from that particular storm are the support of other trans people and, long term and far more riskily, getting the cis people to think you're cis.

Not sure where I'm going with this other than to say there's a lot of work to be done to make sure that our communities do not internalise all of that pressure and instead recognise it for what it is.