u/__mafia

i'll start:
• taking eye contact or lack of it personally. same with physical contact.
• unwilling or unable to directly express boundaries or preferences
• saying literally when they mean figuratively
• calling people performative for having deep knowledge about something they care about while claiming to care about things they have next to zero knowledge about.
• related to prev, making small talk about subjects they don't know about and don't care to learn about (don't ask me about the weather if you don't want to hear about meteorology).
• treating vocabulary as a measure of intelligence unless someone uses words they don't know at which point they call it pretentious
• not being a nerd about anything
• pretending to know or care about something they don't actually know or care about WHILE not being interested in actually learning about it
• inability to empathize with animals while anthropomorphizing anything with even vaguely human-like qualities (cough cough, AI) but still somehow unable to empathize with ND people
• not having a Thing. doesn't have to be a special interest, doesn't even have to be a long term thing, but cmon at least have a favorite hobby.
• not knowing any fun facts and/or not caring about fun facts about anything

worst possible news update, and a massive TW for discussion of hate violence.

the day after Q was murdered at work, there was a second murder. the same night as i attended his memorial, a 19-year-old trans girl, who was a student at the local university, was stabbed to death in the laundry room of her off-campus student housing with (supposedly) controlled access. her murderer is still at large and the media won't even report her name. it's undisclosed because they were supposed to notify her family, but she may have been no contact, so the victim anonymity policy remains indefinite.

i'm still waiting to hear back from all my transfem friends, praying they're all okay. she's the second trans student who's been murdered in as many years. this state is supposed to be one of the safest for trans people in the country, this city is supposed to be the safest in the state. i was considering leaving the country before all this but now i'm genuinely convinced it might be time. the cops barely even seem to be trying. the citys soulless conservatives are fucking celebrating. i don't even know what to say. i'm angry beyond fucking words.

she was at home. in school. she was supposed to be fucking safe. the killer wasn't even a student. the cops barely seem to be doing fucking anything, they can't even tell us how he got in. all they seem to care about was that the suspect was black. if you're trans in america, even in a blue city, please be careful. i don't even have words for this

my mom and i came to the united states from bratislava, slovakia when i was young, but since my transition i've only lived in america. due to the worsening political and economic climate here i am strongly considering moving back to europe. ii haven't decided fully yet, but i would like to hear more about others experiences being trans in the regions i previously mentioned before i make any further decisions.

some additional context about me: i'm 21FtM trans guy, i've been on T a little over a year and i'm fairly cis-passing, but haven't had top surgery yet. i speak slovak and english proficiently and my czech and french are passable (although my french is purely academic parisian french, not natively spoke. or practiced), but i pick up languages fast, especially other slavic languages. i can't move back to slovakia bc of the political climate, but i spent some time living in prague and am strongly considering the czech republic.

would love to hear anyone's experiences in this regard

(i'm trans but used the ally flair bc it's in the opposite direction, i'm FtM. lmk if you want me to change the tag though)
this only semi-serious, i was talking to a friend of mine who's mtf trans, i was telling her something about my dad's reaction when i came out as bi way back in middle school. he'd had a few beers and was in a decent mood when i brought it up, he said basically "yeah whatever makes you happy, i don't care about that sorta thing, i mean i've definitely questioned my sexuality more than the average guy" and when i asked wdym he was basically "well i thought i might be gay for awhile but i think i just liked women in a way that felt gay." i, being 13 and very confused at this point but he was quiet for awhile and then said something along the lines of "idk the idea of me being into men just never seemed gay the way it did with my gay friends so i figured the whole sexuality thing was just subjective."

for context my parents are weird about queer subjects in the opposite ways (mom doesn't really care about gender but she's weird about sexuality vs my dad who doesn't care about sexuality but he's very sensitive about gender.) i also recently found out my mom happened to also be bisexual the entire time and just,, never bothered to mention it lol

to this day that was the most open conversation between us lol. he's not a talkative guy, the only other time he really talked about his personal life was if you brought up the catholic church (he's a militant ex catholic atheist) and then when his friend from work came out as trans and she started transitioning, he would always talk about how excited for her he was. i met her later when she joined his math rock band as the new guitarist (my dad plays bass) and she was the first trans person i'd ever met.

after telling my friend about all that she just looked at me and asked are you sure your dad isn't an egg?? never thought about it like that before so i'm curious to hear your thoughts.