#sorry slash you’re welcome for long reply. i’m on adhd meds.

[hailmaryfullofgrace55675]

imo "spend less time in trans spaces" is only a temporarily solution and it would be most beneficial to everyone if people who experience dysphoria from being around other trans people learned better coping mechanisms. cause like... seems kind of isolating otherwise? and in the same vein romance-repulsed people are better off learning to deal with it, especially cause they're very likely to see PDA between strangers in their day to day lives. like they don't have to do shit if they don't want to, but getting into internet slap fights isn't the way either lol.

Oh yeah for sure. “Confide in and process with friends” and “practice distress tolerance” were both meant to gesture at like, finding ways to cope with “I saw someone whose body is like mine or not like mine and I feel baaaaaaaad” when spending time in trans spaces. For a lot of people I think “meet transition goals” is necessary and/or sufficient - I don’t know that I would say this was dysphoria exactly, but when I was getting read as queer woman/woman aligned/nonbinary-but-not-transgender more, I felt more of a preoccupation with people who identified as nonbinary and DID want to be read those ways, and felt like I needed to understand myself in differentiation from them. Growing a beard and getting read those ways less made me care less what those people are up to. And I stopped seeing so many annoying fucking posts from them, so you know - common disengagement W.

I think for people whose dysphoria is triggered by seeing X, Y, or Z kind(s) of trans person there are often other kinds of trans people they’re more comfortable being in community with. Sometimes the trans people they’re more comfortable with are terrible for them, sometimes they’re enough community to help them get to a more self-realized and comfortable place.

Ultimately it’s definitely ideal to get to a point where you just don’t feel like shit when you see other trans people! In the interim I think short (e.g. “no more instagram today”) to medium (e.g. “no choir this year”) term disengagement is an important tool to at least know to consider when one can neither bear the discomfort nor make a change in one’s feeling-upon-seeing.

I think aromantic people who find romance aversive to witness are more likely (than trans people who get dysphoric around other trans people) to hypothetically be fine if they can just avoid the thing they dislike - getting dysphoric around other trans people basically only exists as a symptom of other miseries and makes it more difficult to address those miseries, whereas I think aromantic people can find witnessing romance aversive even if their lives are otherwise fine. But they’re also less likely to be able to avoid the thing - a large percentage of the population is in romantic relationships, most fiction takes place in worlds where this is also the case, and this is not considered a sensitive topic basically anywhere so it is not avoided or warned for.

Speculation zone: I think some “romance repulsion” is dispositional and unlikely to shift and basically the only things to do about it are practice distress tolerance and limit exposure. And some “romance repulsion” is situational and in response to social pressure around relationships and/or part of aromantic identity formation.

I think a lot of people who’ve been pressured around relationships become mildly triggered by this or that romance thing because they see (kissing, weddings, someone saying they have to go home for date night) and think “that is or reminds me of something I’ve been pressured to do by individuals or by society that I don’t want to do and that makes me feel bad”. Similarly, a lot of gender dysphoria is related to the pressure of gender assignment and all the coercive structures of cisnormativity. Well, everything but the most base physical the-blueprint-is-wrong stuff is related to living in the system, but I mean some of it is really visibly, traceably traumagenic.

I think a lot of people go through a phase in aromantic identity formation where they’re looking for feelings they have that affirm that they’re super aromantic for real and negative responses to romance can feel positively reassuring to focus on. IME a lot of trans people go through similar phases where feeling dysphoria is kind of gender affirming/affirming of transness so they focus on it when it happens, blow it up a bit in their minds, and sometimes even develop new aversions. I know when I was figuring stuff out as a teenager there were times when I dwelled on twinges and contemplated possible aversions. Honestly, I think this can be part of a necessary process of figuring out what one is actually averse to or dysphoric about. There are errors in both directions - stuff you think is important that you later realize you were kind of only caring about because you thought you should and stuff you continue staring past without seeing because you don’t understand or can’t deal with it yet. But that’s inevitable with self exploration, nobody nails every aspect of their desires down perfect on the first try.

And a lot of people understandably experience being surrounded by talk of romance and people in romantic relationships as an isolating and alienating reminder of a marginalized difference.

Anyway, for both dysphoria and romance repulsion I think there are for sure some things that it benefits and behooves people to sit down and just think through and talk out and desensitize themselves to until they can go to the LGBT center without feeling like they’re being attacked or making a bad post online about how out queer lives hurt their feelings. But/and for a lot of these triggers it is necessary and/or sufficient to become more secure in oneself and lead a happier and more realized life.