I drew most of this strip back in like October of last year and have been leery of putting it up ever since, to a degree greater than I am leery of putting forth anything I write or do. The most recent thing I have worried about: the reaction to Jessica Udischas’s awesome Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl, specifically this strip, which got her banned from posting to reddit’s r/transgender. That is awful and I’m mad at everyone who gave her shit about the strip, because it’s sad and really beautiful and I feel really really fortunate never to have experienced anything as bad as what she’s drawn, and expecting people who do experience shit because of their identity on a regular basis to somehow magically rise above that shit so you can feel comfortable that Everything Is Okay is NO GOOD.
About this strip specifically, or I dunno why I am leery of it: I’ve been really fortunate to retain a lot of cis friends after transitioning. It sucks to have that be something that I can consider myself fortunate about because it’s not really the norm. But at the same time, this privilege differential is real, I did watch the way I was treated change in subtle ways that line up in wackily coincidental fashion with the overall ways society is structured, and I end up thinking more often than I’d like to admit: if it came down to it, like if I did something that pissed this person off or something, at what point would they use my being trans against me? At what point would they reveal that All Along they were tolerating/humoring me rather than actually believing me? To what extent am I a joke or humorous detail to people I like and trust when I am not present?
I don’t think this is an irrational fear. And a lot of the time in late 2013 I had pretty much Cathy’s experience: spending hours reading tumblr as my primary point of contact with Other Trans Women and feeling the grim sense after it, when I spent time with cis friends, of whatever this emotion resolves to: it’s only a matter of time before this breaks down. It’s only a matter of time before I become a problem for these people. Maybe it has happened already.
I don’t think this as often anymore–honestly because I have met and spent time with more trans women since 2013 and I do kind of feel like I’d have A Place To Go To in terms of human contact if things got bad, which puts less immediate strain on friendships with cis people, same way maybe that knowing you have enough money to survive for a few months if you quit your job tomorrow makes it easier to go to that job. But I do still think it, and there is not a way not to think it, and it is one of the grimmest parts about being trans: the inextinguishable paranoia that at any moment, it can turn into trans vs. cis, that maybe everyone is waiting for that moment. If you think this is crazy and that I should get over it, I encourage you to step into the mysterious cabinet that lets you live as a trans person for the next 24 hours and get back to me on this idea.
Mona, as written, is not gonna (intentionally anyway) be a jerk to Cathy in this way, which I know with 100% certainty because I write her. But I mean Cathy doesn’t know that about Mona, just as I don’t know that about other people I know whom I don’t write dialogue for (though the people I *do* write dialogue for are okay is the thing), just as they don’t know that about me when we’re on opposite sides of other privilege differentials. Yet their friendship is of long standing and overall social forces are not a metric one can use to evaluate a specific connection between people. And it’s not like Mona is fucking up here in any way, except in the general ways that she is a fuckup. THE WORLD IS FUCKING UP IS MORE THE THING AND WE ARE ALL CAUGHT IN ITS WEB.
I don’t know I’ll just post this, maybe other people have had the fun experience of feeling extra depressed and alienated after reading tumblr and harboring suspicions of everyone they know who does not share their context
