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Online trans communities: lifeline or quicksand?

The New York Times bungles it

Eliza Mondegreen

May 25, 2023

The New York Times decided to take a drunken ramble through my research area. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write a whole thing today, merely to say that it’s very easy to praise what you don’t understand and that’s exactly what the Times does here.

Here are a few of the many, many, many things I’ve written about questioning your gender online:

Trans identity and doubt: My talk at Genspect's The Bigger Picture

Eliza Mondegreen

May 15

Trans identity and doubt: My talk at Genspect's The Bigger Picture

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure to attend and speak at Genspect’s The Bigger Picture conference in Killarney, Ireland. It was truly an amazing three days. This is the rough text of the talk I gave about trans identity and doubt. In many ways, trans and the Internet have grown up together. From the 1980s on, the Internet has been a prime site for gende…

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tl;dr: The Internet did not make me trans but I would not be trans without the Internet

Eliza Mondegreen

January 19, 2022

tl;dr: The Internet did not make me trans but I would not be trans without the Internet: For me, i wouldn't have realized I'm trans (ftm) had i not learned about it from the internet. So the internet did not make me trans but rather helped me realize

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Seeking refuge in idiosyncratic sexual identities (and yaoi)

Eliza Mondegreen

Feb 27

Seeking refuge in idiosyncratic sexual identities (and yaoi)

My latest Genspect post is a doozy. Let’s talk about “gay trans guys”—formerly known as heterosexual females. Some self-identified “gay trans guys” apply the label“autoandrophilia” to their own experiences, a term that mirrors Ray Blanchard’s concept of “autogynephilia”—love of one’s self as a woman—and, like autogynephilia, is embraced by some trans and…

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"I'm not sure about my gender. What is this called?"

Eliza Mondegreen

May 25, 2022

A young woman asks Reddit: "I'm not sure about my gender. What is this called?" Oh, oh, I recognize this: it's called being at an early stage of indoctrination into a body-modification cult! This is how cultic groups operate. First, the cult dismantles everything you think you know about yourself, including the absolute basics: am I a man or a woman? Do …

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The trans treadmill in one Reddit post

Eliza Mondegreen

June 14, 2022

‘Cis’ girl to testosterone and a double mastectomy (scheduled, at least, if not yet performed) in one year: Dysphoria also tends to be like 'if you give a mouse a cookie' - like, pre transition when I'd dress masc id think 'huh I don't like my boobs in this'. So I got a binder. Then I started thinking about how small my arms were, so I started working o…

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Why does gender dysphoria get worse after you come out as trans and with every step toward transition?

Eliza Mondegreen

November 30, 2022

Why does gender dysphoria get worse after you come out as trans and with every step toward transition?

Redditor asks r/FTMMen: “is it normal for dysphoria and mental health to get worse with time[?]” so i used to be in denial about being trans. during that time i was actually more functional, productive and "happy" than now. for context i'm now in a limbo where i can't go on t (for the first time) for 2 years, and have ran out of ways to ease dysphoria. s…

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Trans thought experiments: Heads, you're trans. Tails, you're not 'cis.'

Eliza Mondegreen

May 16, 2022

Trans thought experiments: Heads, you're trans. Tails, you're not 'cis.'

Online trans communities are short on definitions—if you think you might be trans, you probably are, whatever that means to you!—but trans thought experiments abound. Take one of the most popular thought experiments: what if there were a magic button you could push that would turn you into the opposite sex?

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Extremism-fluid: The neo-Nazi-to-trans pipeline

Eliza Mondegreen

Jan 18

Extremism-fluid: The neo-Nazi-to-trans pipeline

"When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program. In pre-Hitlerian Germany it was often a toss up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis.

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Your struggles are valid... unless you're struggling with growing up as a girl or gay (or both), in which case you're probably trans

Eliza Mondegreen

May 30, 2022

Your struggles are valid... unless you're struggling with growing up as a girl or gay (or both), in which case you're probably trans

Validity discourse is everywhere online. Whatever you struggle with—from obsessive thoughts and crippling anxiety to opening the mail, answering the phone, and your basic ‘adulting’—the Internet wants you to know: your struggles are just as valid as anybody else’s.

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Phobia indoctrination, not trans genocide

Eliza Mondegreen

Feb 6

Phobia indoctrination, not trans genocide

‘Trans genocide’ is back. And that means we need to talk about phobia indoctrination again—because there’s no trans genocide. Claims of ‘trans genocide’ rest on two pillars. The first is the idea that ‘trans’ pharmaceuticals and surgeries are life-saving, therefore regulations that restrict access in any way—such as by removing public funding or opening…

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Resilience or terror?

Eliza Mondegreen

Feb 21

As red states restrict or ban pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for gender-questioning youth, the trans community goes to some very, very dark places. On Reddit, this poster asks: “If you were forced to detransition, would life be worth living?”

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'How long did it take for you to go from “Am I trans?” to “Maybe I’m trans” to “I’m trans”?'

Eliza Mondegreen

September 12, 2022

'How long did it take for you to go from “Am I trans?” to “Maybe I’m trans” to “I’m trans”?'

Answers run the gamut from “a few seconds” to “decades” but I’m struck by the number of answers in the one day to one month range: About a week to go from "I'm perfectly happy with my gender and my body, so why does this coming out story resonate with me so strongly?" to "I've been experiencing dysphoria for years, and it could well be gender dysphoria"…

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new source of dysphoria just dropped 🤙

Eliza Mondegreen

May 1

I’m on my way home from Ireland today! Look for updates from the European Professional Association for Transgender Health and Genspect conferences!

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How 'internalized transphobia' works

Eliza Mondegreen

March 30, 2022

This isn’t internalized transphobia. This is just what it feels like to run up against the impossible promises you were made when you transitioned: namely, the promise that you would become, that transition would be linear and that there would be a finish line.

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Fui quod es, eris quod sum

Eliza Mondegreen

Mar 27

The sticky subject of detransition comes up a lot in trans communities. Detransition undermines trans claims and demands in the healthcare sector, threatens the broader political objectives of trans activism, but most of all, the specter of detransition stalks individual trans people. Detransitioners say:

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Cult recruitment in progress

Eliza Mondegreen

October 31, 2022

This Reddit post has been on my mind (cross-posted to r/ftm and r/FTMover30) all weekend: Currently, I'm a 30-something, very masculine/male passing person that ID's publicly as a gay woman (so I guess butch? like... very butch). I've been describing to her how a large portion of my social anxiety comes from first meeting folks, and that very awkward, c…

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Thinking out loud about cult-like dynamics in trans communities

Eliza Mondegreen

December 14, 2021

Thinking out loud about cult-like dynamics in trans communities

Thread of threads I’ve written exploring cult-like dynamics in online trans communities… and there’s a lot more to come: How impossible expectations and demands isolate trans people from friends and family and increase their dependence on the conditional acceptance extended by trans communities.

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“Online, you can get rid of all the baggage of real life."

Eliza Mondegreen

April 27, 2021

“Online, you can get rid of all the baggage of real life."

Surreal that there's a totally different article in here — with all the same quotes and facts — that's less about "finding freedom" and connecting with your "true self" and more about sowing bodily dissociation and grooming kids into becoming lifelong medical patients:

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The Washington Post takes on autogynephilia, online radicalization, and maladaptive coping mechanisms

Eliza Mondegreen

July 4, 2021

The Washington Post takes on autogynephilia, online radicalization, and maladaptive coping mechanisms

As always with these types of articles, there's another story here that keeps slipping out around the edges of the approved narrative, including suggestions of autogynephilia, boundary-crossing, and social contagion... Thirty-year-old grasping for a sense of control in a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic...

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"but maybe NOT going on HRT is already screwing up your body with the wrong hormones?"

Eliza Mondegreen

Mar 13

"but maybe NOT going on HRT is already screwing up your body with the wrong hormones?"

An addendum to my piece for Genspect about what kids learn about doubt online. To briefly rehash: Ever felt “a sense of misalignment, disconnect, or estrangement from your own emotions”? How about “knowing you’re somehow different from everyone else, and wishing you could be normal like them”? Did you experience “a notable escalation in the severity of …

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"if that was my true self, then why did it take so much work?"

Eliza Mondegreen

Mar 15

"if that was my true self, then why did it take so much work?"

A teenager hesitating on the precipice of transition asks r/detrans for advice: I'm 18, identify as a guy and have been out of the closet to most of the people I know for about 2 years. I'm pre-everything. I wasn't sa'd as a child nor am I autistic. The waitlists for any type of treatment for trans people are extremely long here, so I really didn't have…

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"Can you guys pretend I did something really cool or interesting...?"

Eliza Mondegreen

Jan 30

This post puts a different—and much sadder—spin on the need for validation: "Can you guys pretend I did something really cool or interesting and make a comment about it using he/him pronouns to refer to me?" Does this kind of 'validation' help? I gotcha fam.

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17 Comments

Writes mungeribabu’s Substack

May 25

Good that you have responded it so quickly. And just like the previous NYT article, the comments from the readers (see Readers Picks) have been brutal, honest, and raw. Once again, an NYT article is getting brutally ratioed by the readers. And these are readers of the NY Times, for goodness sake!

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4 replies

Connecting The Dots

Writes Connecting the Dots

May 25

Excellent Post.

To your byline question...after reading the horror stories over at PITT...I would say "quicksand" can appropriately be replaced with "meat grinder".

We all need to start using terms that accurately explain the reality, of the effects, these radical cultic movements are having on the kids. As with pedophilia and pedophiles - I no longer use abuse, when referring to the crime of Child sexual assault. I use rape and sodomy. Abuse, takes the edge off the atrocities these rapists and sodomizers are committing on these kids. MAP's...give me a break...they are perverts, predators, molester and deviants.

Lets start using terms and language, that matches the untold damage these movements and actors are foisting on the most vulnerable of us...The children.

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