The idea of ‘internalized transphobia’ is particularly insidious: your questions and doubts about your own identity and whether transition makes sense for you becomes something you have an ethical responsibility to overcome because internalized transphobia doesn’t
just hurt you and
isn’t just a sign of being trans—
it hurts other trans people. Your ‘internalized transphobia’ hurts other trans people
even if you keep your thoughts to yourself. When you doubt and ‘invalidate’ yourself, you doubt and invalidate other trans people. You harm other trans people whenever you don’t perceive or think about them in the way they want others to see them.
This effectively abolishes the privacy of the mind as a space where you’re free to explore ideas. Not only must you express yourself
publicly in approved ways, you must think only approved thoughts. Operating under these expectations, questions and doubts—which are already threatening to a fragile (false) sense of self—produce added anxiety and fear: that you are causing harm, that your treachery will be discovered, and that you’ll lose the community you rely on for emotional support if you cannot bring your questions and doubts under control.
the fuck is Owen Jones on about
