this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
74 points (100.0% liked)
chat
8534 readers
176 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think that a fair number of them are very repressed (sexuality and/or gender) and being confronted with something outside of the cishet norm causes them distress because those repressed thoughts are resurfaced. The thought of losing their entire community if they ever considered and explored those feelings in earning thus keeps them deeply in the closet. The anger and hate come in part from being forced to confront themselves in uncomfortable ways as well as seeing others living happily while not "following the rules".
Gender identity struggles can happen even for cis people. Look at the explosion of "alpha male" content over the past decade (maybe you don't see this much in your life, though). Women are also bombarded with so many things telling them how to be the perfect woman. You're a bit older than me but we both grew up in very different times with little to no gender diverse representation. For me, that meant always feeling a bit wrong with this role of "boy" or "man" that I was saddled with. I had a period where I went really hard into "masculine" hobbies and traits, suffered a lot, got burned out. I didn't really get it until I started meeting queer/trans people and found myself intensifying intuitively with their struggles.
Gender dysphoria is like any other struggle with mental health: there are effective and ineffective treatments, people who say it doesn't exist, those who call trans people dangerous to society, and so on. You don't necessarily have to understand exactly what's going on for us, just that we're human and trying to live in a way they makes us happy in our bodies and minds. And it would not be all that difficult, really, if the media and government stopped giving transphobes that want to kill us so much undue credibility.