"Trans Panic" is Weak as Fuck

"Trans panic" is basically just mind-turned-off people terrified that they might like something and then find out it has some specific label attached to it by other people, making up stories in their heads about that, and then getting all weird about it.

When it happens to ME- when something I like turns out to have some unexpected thing about it - I... still... like the thing. I don't suddenly not like the thing after all now that I know there's this one label people use about it. And I especially don't "panic".

It's another symptom of what's wrong with society: people have lost touch with themselves. Not each other, like all the media keeps going on about; themselves.

Do you like a thing? Then you like it. It doesn't MATTER how many other people like it or not, or whether they like you, or what they call it.

Let's use some simple examples.

Let's pretend I like something but it turns out to be ACTUALLY bad. Like, genuinely in some way a bad THING. What would I do then? Well, if I really, really liked a particular food, for example, but I found out it was made by exploiting a group or destroying the environment or whatever, I would... get this... still like the food! I would, however, stop involving myself in it. I would just use the magic of willpower and not eat it anymore. Even though I liked it, so I would WISH I could eat it. That's how morality *works*. You change your own behavior so as to avoid committing what you consider to be sin. Even if you don't WANT to. Even if it's inconvenient, deprives you of something, is scary, or whatever. If you think something is bad to do, don't do it. It's not rocket surgery.

But what if it WASN'T bad? What if, let's say, I THOUGHT it was ONE kind of food, and I liked it, but then I found out it was called ANOTHER kind of food? What if I thought it was called strawberries but it was ACTUALLY called raspberries, or cherries, or something? I would... and this is key... STILL LIKE IT. And I still wouldn't "panic".

OK, OK, I hear "gotcha" types saying, but those aren't the same thing. Cool point, I can do that one too:

What if I was LED TO BELIEVE I would like something, and I DID believe that I would like it, and was excited about that, and then it turned out it was something I'm not into after all? Like, if a movie was billed as science fiction and all my friends said how much I would love it and I got really wound up looking forward to it because it totally looked like my kind of movie... and then a bit into it, it turned out to be a thinly disguised romance, or period drama, which I am not into?

Would I "PANIC"? Would I try to destroy the film and the vehicle by which I was seeing it, seek out and burn every copy of it and every movie like it? Would I shriek at people that they were sick, sick, sick for thinking that was a science fiction film? Would I scream about how awful it was that some other person might think it WAS science fiction, as it was being billed and hyped, and end up accidentally seeing it? Would I tell my friends how terrifying it would be if someone else DID see it and then STILL think it was a science fiction film, in opposition to my opinion about that, and rail at them with copies of film critics' analyses of what makes a genre?

What? Like, seriously, WHAT? No, I am a rational being. I would just go do something else.

This whole mess can be seen in people saying they're "afraid they might vote wrong if they vote for who they WANT to win but then that person does not win". In people saying they WOULD like a thing but it's "for kids" or "girls" or "nerds" or "boys" or "dogs". In people not reporting assault because "the person who did it is popular/powerful/holy/'nice' so it probably wasn't actually a big deal". In people saying the thing that has upset them badly is "silly, they should be less upset". In people changing their minds about what they WANT TO EAT because someone else raised an eyebrow.

The farther out of touch with your own self you are, the scarier everything is. So you seek hiding places and excuses and you try not to look. Or you face shit and pull yourself together.

Sure, turning around and really getting in touch with yourself and then BEING yourself IS scary, but it's scary like learning to walk. Maybe you'll fall down more than if you kept crawling, but come on, you're SUPPOSED to walk. (Metaphorically, of course; my daughter can't walk and I'm not being an ableist dick. Language is how it is, and this is an ANALOGY.)

The whole idea that a man can be JUSTIFIED in killing a woman because he didn't expect her to have been born with a penis so he "panicked" when he found that out is INSANE.

And it ABSOLUTELY reinforces the image that it's the patriarchally-brainwashed cis men who are "the emotional ones". The fragile ones. The immature ones. The ones with the wildly inflated sense of misplaced entitlement.

They panic, get confused, and so on ALL THE TIME, then SAY SO, and then use that as justification for RAGE. Dude, calm the fuck DOWN! Can't you handle the slightest incident of brief confusion without it pissing you off like someone shat in your air conditioner? Can't you learn new things? Can't you handle that anyone who does something you don't understand or don't want for yourself, or makes a simple mistake, isn't doing that AT YOU? No, you say, you CAN'T... AND you're proud of that? And you say it justifies rage, justifies MURDER? What the FUCK?

"Something was unexpected about this person and I don't fully understand it so... it SCARED me, so of course I HAD to beat the everloving crap out of someone helpless to make myself not scared!" is NOT the flex these men think it is, except to themselves. It makes them look like fragile little reactive dysfunctional toddlers, actually.

So they're in charge of war...