Come the fuck on, this is just outright gaslighting now. I have at NO point demanded that @artificialset@hexbear.net stops posting about her surgery regret, i have at no point said it invalidates her experience, i have at no point said it makes her any less vaid than other trans people, all i was asking for was to put a spoiler tag on statements that are a necessary vent for one user and deeply hurtful and upsetting material for another. That’s completely normal behavior around here and around any other trans community i’m in. wtf is up with this sudden hate for spoiler tags and CWs? Are we suddenly a community of free speech absolutists who do not want to bother with the special snowflakes? Because this is how these reactions are coming off to me. I use spoiler tags all the time when i’m talking about issues like dysphoria etc. That does not mean i am not free to talk about these issues, it especially does not mean it invalidates anybody with a different experience, it just means that it hurts me when i walk in here after the stuff i’ve just described and get hit over the head with a post that unintentionally, but unavoidably opens up fresh wounds for me. I understand now that this comm does not give a fuck about my feelings, whatever, i just find the entire reaction to the request to be very different from what i would have expected from this site.

I never said anywhere it strikes a different chord at all. You being able to get phallo is fundamentally the same struggle about healthcare and bodily autonomy every other trans person seeking gender affirming care goes through, i do not see a difference there, it’s all the same fight to inhabit a body that matches one’s gender identity. And that should never work along a predefined pathway of the “correct” way to transition or be misconstrued as having to fall within a binary, cisnormative, endonormative understanding of how bodies are supposed to look like within a gendered context. The states of our body and how we perceive them do not allow others to draw conclusions about our gender identity. That’s up for ourselves alone to decide, not for anybody else. I’m not denying any of these positions. My approach to trans, inter and nonbinary liberation is full acceptance of self identification and bodily autonomy, and that fully includes recognizing that people may change their mind about specific transition steps without that invalidating their gender identity and without voiding their future access to gender affirming care. A truly gatekeeping-free approach isn’t even possible without that part, without recognizing that in some cases, it’s necessary to try a certain step and then, afterwards, be able to correct it again in the unlikely case it didn’t work as intended or expected. That regret can happen should neither restrict access to gender affirming care nor sideline reconstructive treatments for people with regret. Regret should not be weaponized against you, it should not be weaponized against me, it should have no bearing on the care either of us receive. That isn’t what this is about.

The reason i asked you about using spoiler tags is the simple fact that issues regarding dysphoria / gender incongruence, body image etc. can routinely be difficult and painful to other trans people. This applies to all kinds of subjects and does not touch upon the validity of these feelings. It applies especially when these feelings resonate with the reader in some way - if your struggle was entirely unrelated to mine, how could it bother me to read about it? Why would that hurt me? Why would i care? Like i said upthread, i routinely spoiler my own dysphoria posts because i know from personal experience that kind of material can exacerbate dysphoric symptoms in other trans people and lead directly to painful dysphoric episodes. I don’t know if this is as bad for you as it is for me, we all react differently and have different strategies to handle these feelings, but back when i still used reddit, i had to unsub from entire trans subreddits because they worsened certain forms of dysphoria in me, to the point i had to talk it though with my therapist. But at the same time, trans people absolutely need to vent about such issues. For many of us, there are days where we just need to scream into the void how much we hate the parts of ourself that cause us pain. That’s perfectly normal, valid and necessary. From all i can tell,

is not fundamentally different from what you experience post surgery. It just relates to having or not having certain parts and how these parts are arranged, but the feelings are fundamentally the same. That’s why your accounts get to me in the first place. For me, having to read about your surgery regret actively worsens my own bottom dysphoria in complex, roundabout, but very tangible ways. That does not mean your regret is wrong in any way, or that i want to prevent you from expressing it, it just means that it is distressing to me when it pops up out of the blue, that it had gotten to the point where i was mildly anxious to read through the weekly queer thread because of it, and that it was emotionally devastating to me when i came across it on thursday evening, after all i dealt with on that day. And my normal reaction to that is to just spoiler that stuff so that people can still post it freely whereas others can simply scroll past it without having to read it. To me, that’s a completely normal way to keep online trans communities safe and accessible for everybody, to give everyone the room we need. It’s in no way different from any other post about bottom dysphoria, i see it as perfectly normal practice to put a CW on all of these accounts.

If that’s not how you want to handle these things as a mod of this comm, that’s fine with me. I get that now. It’s just not what i would have expected here, i seriously thought that my request was completely within the ordinary and i’m sorry it still makes you feel hurt and belittled. I feel especially sorry that it ties so strongly into how you are treated in the medical system. I can relate way too well to that, i think many of us do, and i just wish i could reverse this entire exchange because of it. I should have thought twice before … no, that’s not right. I sat in front of that original post for almost an hour because i was unsure how to word it. I did not think twice about it, i mulled it over again and again, unsure how to approach it just like i’m unsure how to approach this post and i came to the wrong conclusion. I thought i could write that in a way that does not hurt you, and i was wrong about that. I hope i am right this time.