You should have gone to bed a few hours ago, and to be fair, you did — but not to fall asleep. No, you’ve been doomscrolling on Twitter for whoever knows how long. You don’t want to look at the clock.
You’ll always call it Twitter. Your friends joke that it’s the only appropriate time to use a deadname. One of your mutuals posted a joke about that earlier, and you would have retweeted it, if they hadn’t gotten suspended for saying ‘cis’ in a tweet thirty seconds later.
It’s a slur, apparently, according to Elon. You haven’t seen justice for all the ones you’ve been called in the past, though.
Maybe you’re in a bedroom that belongs to someone else; someone dead yet still here, a friend, a lover, or family, if you’re one of the lucky few to still have it. You’ve heard the stories, and you keep hearing them day by day by day. Families ousting their children without a second thought, perhaps like yourself — or, possibly worse, you’re allowed to remain housed with some sort of caveat that you must perform to the standards of those keeping a roof over your head.
Cis people are weird about trans people. But you can’t tweet that. Not without accidentally proving your point.
Regardless, you are still doomscrolling on Twitter, stupid rules or not.
You feel it’s gotten slowly worse over the last month. Well, it was already pretty bad, but it’s as if every day comes with a new lambasting of anti-trans sentiment. Last week (or was it two weeks ago? Lockdown still wreaks havoc on your ability to tell time.) you were seeing, all over, grifters crawling out of the woodwork to claim that Mr. Beast’s transgender friend was the downfall of the millionaire’s career, or something stupid like that.
Reasonable person you are, you politely (or perhaps aggressively, you’re entitled to defend yourself) told others that Ava Tyson was just a trans woman doing her own thing, and she’s allowed to find herself. Perhaps you related to the struggle of daring to be transfem on the internet. Perhaps you were just defending your sisters.
And then this week she was allegedly outed for being a pedophile. Or just liking one weird thing from Shadman. You haven’t looked into the details, nor do you really want to. The same grifters claiming she was out to destroy her friend’s career are now doubling down. Every other tweet you’ve seen for the last while has been about Ava Tyson, amongst all the Gofundmes of your mutuals and mutuals-in-law.
You’d donate if you could. All you can do is retweet. Curious, you scroll back, only to find not one has been fully funded yet, only garnering scraps of retweets, likes, and supportive replies.
Absently, you wonder how much those blue-check accounts are making. Maybe those could cover the costs of at least a few of them.
Backing out of your own account to continue down your timeline, switching from ‘For You’ to ‘Following’ to hopefully see some brighter posts, you’re greeted by what’s expected of your mutuals. Maybe it’s swathes of fanart of your favorite franchise. Maybe it’s simple life posts about daily goings-on, like the silly things their pets get up to. Maybe it’s fursuit WIPs upon WIPs. Perhaps a blend of all, or something completely different.
But soon, a name keeps popping up. Imane Khelif. Oh, right, the Olympics are happening, aren’t they? Initially, it’s a few posts. Quote-retweets of those you follow dunking on weird people. Apparently this lady beat a different boxer in, like, forty seconds, and people are being racist about it because the other boxer was white. Or something. It’s late, and you’re only sort-of following this thread.
As you scroll, though, more posts keep coming. All about Imane.
They’re calling her a man.
But Imane Khelif is a completely cisgender woman.
Soon, your timeline — both following and algorithmic — are blowing up. She’s a man. She’s a woman. She has high testosterone. She’s been tested, and doesn’t. Logan Paul (or was it the other one?) jumps in. Elon Musk. JK Rowling — whose house is apparently full of black mold which might explain some things — butts in with her opinion, because of course she does.
You’ve seen this all before, at least in chunks and pieces. Caster Semenya catching heat for ‘high testosterone levels’. The actual transgender boxer in this year’s Olympics — Hergie Bacyadan — being forced to compete against women, despite being an out trans man. Frivolous claims of men transitioning and upturning their entire lives solely to gain an advantage in a women’s league.
You think about Michael Phelps. You wonder if having above-average testosterone is as much of an advantage as being double-jointed having no fear response. Or does it only matter when it threatens the binary?
You turn off your phone and roll over in bed. Every other day, you hear something. A death. An attack. One of your friends being accused of all manner of things for the sole crime of doing an innocuous activity while being transgender. As soon as a trans person does it, it’s a ‘fetish,’ apparently.
You think about the death rates. About your replies being full of “41%” comments the last time you were brave enough to post a picture. The public oglings by those who see you as a novel sex object, the fear, the sheer danger you and others put yourselves in by merely daring to exist out in public. Knowing that, at any moment, someone you looked up to can just declare you a target.
But sure. Cis people are the ones suffering prosecution, you scoff to yourself.
It’s late now. Too late to still be awake on a work night. Imane is charging those who targeted her with defamation in a court of law. You’re hanging out with your friends tomorrow. You could use some air.
It’s a small victory. But it’s what keeps you going.
Maybe September will bring greener pastures.
