#take a gander at a stereotype about trans guys! :D

[shaaaaaaar]

hi it is 1 am and i am here to complain

i’m really fucking tired of people treating me like i’m soft or fragile or innocent/naive, that kinda stuff. it’s been a thing for most of my life no matter how much i try to prove its not really true, and its so frustrating. because i’m easily startled and i have anxiety, i’m some fragile boy meant to be protected and whose too soft for stuff.

most people don’t actually mean any harm with it. the concern is good willed and comes from a place of kindness, but ends up feeling condescending. i’ll be shielded from anything mildly scary and i won’t be told specifically why but it’s pretty easy to deduce that it’s because the tone is horror or it’s mildly violent or whatever. the sensitivity is appreciated, but it often is either over exaggerating things i’ve said i don’t like (for example i don’t particularly like gore but that’ll be overblown to like. someone avoiding telling me about shit like yandere sim. because people die. exclusively me.) or shit i’m fine with but there’s a darker tone so “he wouldn’t like it”. a lot of the time it doesn’t feel like there’s consideration for me specifically and instead an assumption of me not liking darker-toned stuff.

a lot of the time people treating me softly comes off as patronizing. something that really sticks out to me is i was asked recently to hold onto something while a person left for a moment and got told that the thing i was told to hold was there to protect ME. the legal adult. an inanimate object. another one is i’ll be told for HYPOTHETICALS i’m not allowed to have sharp objects because “i don’t trust you to not accidentally cut yourself”. i’ll be told i can have blunt objects, but nothing sharp. i’m always characterized by being weak-willed or the anxious one and… it gets very tiring. especially when none of this treatment is given to anyone else, only me. it gets noticeable.

another part of it is i tend to be less harsh on people. i try not to be too judgemental and harsh on people, maybe to a fault (i’ve got more shit to work on than that). so when i run into assholes, i’m treated like the innocent “too sweet for this world” guy because im… not a dickwad to people? i had a friend group once who all became friends bc they made a groupchat to complain about basically an entire community of people. i had nothing to add with complaints (even if i did wanna rant to the extent they did, i barely knew the people they talked about), i was just willing to listen and found it morbidly interesting. hindsight 20/20 i should’ve figured these guys were assholes (and christ they were assholes) but that isn’t the important part. in that friend group i was ALWAYS treated like the little innocent bean and if i knew something mildly fucked up it was a shocker. which got exhausting.

at the end of the day its because i have anxiety problems. that’s the smoking gun. anxiety has always been a part of my life and mine is considerably worse than a lot of people’s nervousness. with my friends i’m the guy who has “more anxiety problems” and i don’t like being boiled down to that sure but i agree that i have a lot. but frankly, being treated like i’m weak actually makes me feel more anxious. because it leaves me feeling pathetic and humiliated. being treated like i need to be protected only serves to make me feel either defenseless or disrespected. i’m well aware that i’m not a weak person. i’ve been aware of this for a long time.

yes, i am a more sensitive person. sometimes i’m pretty fragile. i get nervous very easily and treating me more gently isn’t exactly bad because the gentility is mindfulness of my sensitivity. there’s a line, though. because at some point it stops being sensitive and becomes being patronizing. it stops being mindful of my anxiety and becomes making me all about my anxiety. cradling someone with anxiety, or at least cradling me, isn’t the solution to anything. it makes things worse and only serves to solidify the notion that i’m weak. to be blunt, being sensitive, being anxious, hell, being fragile, doesn’t mean being weak. it doesn’t mean i need to be protected and my world needs to be baby-proofed. i mean hell, i spend a lot of my time trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone because what’s the point of baby-proofing? nothing will change.

ironically i have no clue how to go about actually telling people this (despite the fact i’ve had the intention to find some opportunity for months now) and somehow i’ve ended up on tumblr at 1 am rambling about it. which isn’t solving anything. i really do need to go about that because it’s important

ok it’s 2 am now so i’m leaving bye