I Am a Transwoman. I Am in the Closet. I Am Not Coming Out | Hacker News Reader

I Am a Transwoman. I Am in the Closet. I Am Not Coming Out

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21 pointszbentley20 comments

Thanks for posting this. A lot to reflect on here. I'm a cis white male and while I can't relate to everything said here I definitely feel the "you're a cis white male so shut up and listen" frustration. I'm married to a black woman and speak out often on pro black (and all minorities) and pro women issues. And it really fucking sucks being told to shut up and sit down by those communities and being treated like the enemy. I understand why they feel that way. It just sucks. But I tell myself that it sucks even worse for them and what they have to experience and I love them and continue to fight for them because I know it's right. But it's hard.

But this isn't about me and what I go through. I'm just saying I get what this author is saying. And it really sucks. I hope that one day she is able to come out of the closet. Maybe she won't. That's her choice. But I hate that the world makes her feel like this. And until the world is more ready and accepting of people like her, I will start speaking out on things like this for people like her who feel they can't safely do so.

Also as a male feminist ally who doesn't really read women/queer/poc authors (I don't read too many books period) I really need to start doing so more.

> Also as a male feminist ally who doesn't really read women/queer/poc authors (I don't read too many books period) I really need to start doing so more.

It dawned on me that after picking up books again (mostly SciFi), I had not read anything by a female author, nor had I read anything with a strong female or POC main character.

This kinda thing is probably not surprising to most who read classic SciFi. But if anyone has any recommendations for decent classic/modern SciFi novels by female, or with female protagonist I'd be interested.

I also just got back into reading, so forgive me if I've glossed over some incredible classic that meets that criteria.

Also, people might ask why it matters. How could it not? I've been readin stories about, a broken man, a bullish man, a smart man, a confused man. All men! I need some strong female characters to switch it up. William Gibson's Necromancer had something going with Molly, but it left more to be desired for me.

Classic scifi? C. J. Cherryh and Ursula K. Le Guin come to mind.

One person's decent is another's rubbish.

I have fairly low standards. If the author can (or can hire an editor to) put together decent sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, these days, I'll settle for that.

However, I cannot abide fiction that is "only you can save the universe" or anything that childish.

I also can't abide worldbuilding with hereditary elites (political, magical, whatever) or slavery in it -- the idea that some people are better than others because of who their parents were is anathema.

For MilSF, try Linda Nagata's The Red: First Light--although the main character is a man. For light ent, try M.C. A. Hogarth, or Julia Huni, or Becky Chambers.

For lots more suggestions, sift James Davis Nicoll's review site.[1]

1. https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/

I've been in exactly that situation, and it's definitely hard. It's infuriating to be told that you're wrong using bogus catchall arguments like "mansplaining". It's awful to be treated as the enemy when you really want to help and can genuinely contribute.

It is a useful, if aggravating, exercise to recognize that they've all been shut down many times, and this is what that feels like. Turning it around back at you is neither fair nor helpful, but it does give you a glimpse of why it's so important.

Fixing racism and sexism and other problems means working with people, and the effort won't all be focused where it should be. And saying "Well, if you won't make it easy for me then I won't help" is your privilege showing: you can walk away from it. They can't.

That's going to mean shutting up and listening, and hearing a lot that you don't like. You're not just the outsider, you're the newcomer, and they've heard whatever you have to say before. You are neither so smart, nor so insightful, nor possessed of such a novel perspective as you think. Even if they appear not to know something you know, that doesn't mean you can fix anything by saying it until you've come to a place where you understand each other's language. Because what you're listening for is a lot of stuff that you're not hearing at first, in the subtext and assumptions and connections.

So you have my sympathy, and respect for sticking with it. That's the right thing. Even if it was really awful at times.

I think I finally get it. The contemporary expression of "gender" is like an arrow that only ever points fully to the left or fully to the right.

What an unhelpful oversimplification and bias.

It's like a conveyor belt that can only reason about what's been dropped on it after the things move off the left side or the right side.

How can we stop the conveyor belt and take notice of where everything just is?

> I didn’t post or share this. Someone found it and spread it and that’s perfectly okay,

Doesn’t seem ok, does it? I guess I am confused. What does “didn’t post” mean in this context?

> what you’re reading is essentially a diary entry

This seems like how I treat semi-public content I write not intended for an audience. Sure it’s technically available to the public, but it wasn’t intended to be consumed by the public. I’m obscure, my content is usually obscure, it being spotted and becoming more widespread is unexpected and makes me reconsider lack of caution in anything I might have said for my own purposes.

Then why post it online?

Reused alias on a different site, that now identifies you publicly through social media.

Because many forms of human social norms include a “private but not strongly so” register with neither the friction and psychological barriers of ‘true’ secrecy nor the overt exposure of publicity, and in fact a huge amount of communication takes place in that register, such as most conversation among groups socializing in public spaces.

In the digital world, this hits a wall of “the security mechanisms don't integrate with the nuances of human social understanding directly” and gets split off into “posts that are technically public but not really addressed to the public” and “invite-only areas which would probably be okay being somewhat more open but lack a good way of moderating this without leaving things open all the way”.

But why not just write her diary in a word document?

If it is online, it is public. I’m not understanding why that wasn’t the expectation here.

Me? Because clicking “submit” sometimes feels more committed than clicking “save”.

But… why use an blog to keep a private diary you don’t want to share? Why not just open up a text file on your computer, or even put pen to paper?

I answered you. It’s fine if that’s not satisfying.

I don’t think you did answer my question, which was why use an online platform at all for something private. But my question was to the author of the article / diary entry anyway, not you.

It seems like, given that this is the only post by the account, they made an unrelated-to-their-public-face account and posted something deeply personal technically publicly visible to an account with no attention paid to it, and then somebody came upon it and shared it widely.

(It's also possible that medium has a "drafts" feature with unlisted-but-accessible posts that they kept it in and someone somehow found a link to it? I don't know, I don't use medium, just spitballing scenarios that fit.)

I don't quite understand the desire of people to post something somewhere public but not at the same time, but I have seen people do it before. (That is, I understand the desire when you are, for example, deliberately attempting to circulate information that would be troublesome if linked to you, but less so when you don't actually want it to propagate?)

Thinking more on it, I suppose it might be akin to a long-form version of the catharsis some people found from things like PostSecret, wherein people's short snippet darkest secrets were anonymously shared for other people to consume without being linked to the originating party.

Is this really the the thing to focus on? Awful lot of fascinating content in there otherwise.

I feel bad about my initial response. I related personally to it, but then I related that back instead of what I really think should be said: yes it’s okay. The author said it’s okay. You should trust her judgment.

Sometimes our fearful mind is the only prison strong enough to hold us trapped.

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