The world doesn't like me completing a thought or connecting the dots in a way that makes sense to me. It seems to like things broken up into smaller silos that involve "coloring within the lines."
This is part of why I have so many blogs: To try to follow some unstated rule about "being on topic" or something.
In practice, that means many of my posts on "unrelated" blogs are very much related. This one is sort of the rest of the story or thought for a brief piece elsewhere.
Genevieve frankly ruined my life for helping her. I did not expect that.
I thought any number of other people might try to destroy me for helping her but it never crossed my mind that she would.
In part because of that experience, I feel like I have some idea why TERFs do what they do.
Genevieve did so much damage to my life and the harm has persisted so long, I can kind of imagine how one might use such an experience to justify being a TERF. Furthermore, Genevieve was terrible about acting like she had the worst problems ever in the history of the universe and no one else's problems mattered, especially not mine.
I don't imagine the trans community will ever embrace my writing or appreciate anything I say. I doubt they see me as an ally.
Trans individuals live with enormous distress and seem desperate to have people side with them blindly. Their pain and desperation is such they trend towards "You're either for us or against us." and it leaves little room for nuance.
Genevieve was barely a legal adult when I met her. I embraced her as the third child I never had and always wanted.
When the relationship ended dramatically after nine months, it felt like a spiritual miscarriage. I finally stopped longing for a third child, something life-threatening health issues, divorce and poverty had failed to end.
I write a variety of things to try to address what I feel was the real problem here:
Heteronormative culture the world over.
Her life, my life and the lives of other people involved in the mess were all trampled by it. It's pointless to blame her in specific.
I write to try to cast a light on such things in hopes that it will be curative in a way that TERFs and transphobia and so forth are very much not.