Gregory's Server
One thing the internet has really helped with is establishing online personas for trans ppl.
For cis people, anonymous internet IDs are imaginary personas that we use to live in a make believe world.
For me, as a closeted trans person, I think it's the opposite: The physical world gave us an undesired physical persona that we cannot control, the internet allows us to create virtual personas where we can really be ourselves.
When I see trans people online, these are their real selves. Our online personas ARE us.
The average cis person may think "it's a dude playing a girl", but after experiencing what is it to be trans, I can no longer see it that way.
When I see trans people online, their online aliases feel way more real than their physical counterparts. I see a trans girl, I imagine her voice, her appearance to match their profile picture, and somehow... it clicks.
This is who they really are, and I can only hope that they find the means to bring that ideal to life, through surgery, hormones, etc.
So, thank you for this one, internet. For giving us a space where we can really be.
@yuki2501 I agree with this entirely, and thank you for saying it so brilliantly.
I think as a pre-transition trans guy, I always struggled to make an online persona that felt like "me". I think part of that was that I came from a geographical region where being really into computers wasn't for-girls, and as a "girl", I felt uneasy about being into the internet "too much". So I'd take one step in, and then another step back out.
I also had my second big commit-to-the-internet phase in the late 2000s (the first had been in the anonymous 90s), when the whole thing was about putting your real name and face out there and building your "personal brand" (ugh x1000). I never felt comfortable with doing this as a pre-transition person, obviously, as it was like enforcing that false persona that you mentioned on myself. So again, ambivalence.
But I can look back on the personas I did create in the 90s and 00s that reflected me, even if I only let myself dive into them briefly. They bear a strong energetic resemblance to what I know I truly am today, on here. Mastodon in 2018 was the first time I really let myself go online, and be both fully who I am, and as into this as I always have been. And it's been life changing for my transition, as much as any other aspect of my life.
@yuki2501 I agree with this entirely, and thank you for saying it so brilliantly.
I think as a pre-transition trans guy, I always struggled to make an online persona that felt like "me". I think part of that was that I came from a geographical region where being really into computers wasn't for-girls, and as a "girl", I felt uneasy about being into the internet "too much". So I'd take one step in, and then another step back out.