By: Robot Hugs

From: Everyday Feminism

Text says: “The Tricky Thing About Being Trans and Having a Mental Illness.”

Trigger warning: Misgendering, anti-trans violence (specific), invalidation, perception of trans folks as violent/ill/hyper-sexual, negative self-talk, police violence, mention of murder, racism/racist violence, gaslighting, and medical/psychiatric abuse.

A person with short blue hair and a pink long-sleeve shirt is looking down and playing with their hands. They say: “There’s this tricky thing with being trans and having a mental illness.”

A second person with an orange mohawk and a long-sleeve green shirt. They say” “I don’t know, mental illness is mental illness no matter who you are, right?”

The blue hair person says: “Well, yes and no. Anyone can have a mental illness, but when you have an identity that a lot of people think is sick, made up, criminal, or dangerous, those messages tend to amplify and validate the distortions that a mental illness creates.”

The orange hair person says: “How do you mean?”

The blue hair person says: “Well, my brain might be constantly telling me something, and then the world around me seems to agree with it…”

The brain of the blue hair person is saying: “You’re sick, you’re not right. There’s something wrong with you that will never get better.”

People off-screen are saying: “Indulging this gender-fantasy will only make it worse. You need to see a doctor and get treatment,” and “I don’t want any of those perverts anywhere near my children!”

The brain is saying: “Everything about you is a lie. You have no sense of self. You’re empty inside.”

The people off-screen are saying: “Are you sure you aren’t just gay?” and “There are only two genders. It’s just biology,” and “This is [dead name]. [Wrong pronoun] works in development…”

The brain is saying: “The world hates you. They’re out to get you.”

The people off-screen are saying: “Hey! Hey you! What are you? Freak!” and “Another black trans woman murdered last week. Police are not treating this as a hate crime…” and ““If I ever see a man going into a woman’s bathroom, I’ll follow him in – with a baseball bat.”

The brain says: “You’re worthless. You’re useless. No one will ever love you. You don’t matter.”

The people off-screen are saying: “Get out of my house! You’re not welcome under this roof” and “You’re…you’re trans? I wish you had told me sooner… Look, I’m not gay. I mean, I know that’s not…you seem cool, but that’s just not my thing. I’m going to go” and “Jeez, can you imagine what his – I mean her wife must be going through?”

The blue hair person is clutching their chest and saying: “In my case, I find that my mental illness amplifies the negative messages I get from the world around me. And the way the world treats trans folk like me validates how my brain is interpreting those messages.”

There are two attached puzzle pieces, to highlight the connection between the two statements.

One says: “Trans folk hear a lot of negative things about the validity of their gender, their value as people, and the safety of their bodies.”

The second says: Mentally ill people get a lot of messages that they’re making up or imagining facts and feelings, that they are inherently unstable and dangerous, and that they shouldn’t trust themselves.

The person with the blue hair is now talking to the person with the orange hair.

The person with the orange hair says: “Yeah, that’s a heck of an intersection. What can I do?”

The person with blue hair says: “Try to validate feelings rather than denying experiences.

You can’t always separate the experience of mental illness from the experience of oppression, and trying to do so can result in gaslighting someone into further distrusting themselves or pushing them away.”

There are two new people. The first is a black person with short and spiky red hair. They are wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt. They are thinking a list of names: “Alfred Olango, Tawon Boyd, Terence Crutcher, Terrence Sterling, Levonia Riggins, Alfred Toe, Fred Barlow, Paul O’Neal, Donnell Thompson Jr., Dalvin Hollins, Delrawn Small, Deravis Rogers, Clarence Howard, Antrun Shumpert.”

A person white person with mid-length blonde hair and a pink long-sleeve shirt thinks: “…paranoid much?”

The black person says: “I’m worried about my government murdering me.”

The white person says: “That seems a little extreme. I’m sure that’s not going to happen. Don’t worry!”

The original trans person with blue hair says: “The trans community’s long history of being pathologized and discriminated against by medical and psychiatric institutions makes it difficult to talk openly about how mental illness affects us – and can seriously impact our ability to get help. It’s important that the people supporting us understand that this is a complex and sensitive issue.”

The person with orange hair and the person with blue hair are talking to each other.

The person with orange hair says: “As a cisgender person, it would be awfully presumptuous for me to presume I knew better than you what it’s like to be trans. Even though I also have OCD, I shouldn’t presume that my experience of that is the same as your experience of being trans and having OCD.”

The person with blue hair responds: Now you’ve got it!”