But what I am trying to say - is this can send you mad. Its like waking up one day and realising you live in a society in the midst of a mass psychosis and this can send you mad also.
This is so true, LemonSwan. I would estimate that at least once every six months someone (a different woman each time!) starts a thread about how this issue is negatively affecting her mental health, and each time plenty of posters echo her feelings. It’s certainly impacted mine, because yes, I do think we are living in a world in the grip of a mass psychosis, and it’s really scary and really destabilising.
For many of us it also has echoes of types of abuse we’ve experienced in the past, particularly the gaslighting on a mass scale, the DARVO, being accused of being the bad guys when we’re actually the ones being victimised/bullied/abused on a structural level. It’s genuinely massively triggering for some of us who have had to work our socks off to escape from those dynamics in our families or relationships only to find them replicated on a massive scale in society at large.
Of course, in this world where fake suicide stats abound and biologically male trans people are constantly portrayed as the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, and we are supposedly a terrible threat to their MH, the impact of a world captured by “trans rights activism” on our MH is generally not acknowledged at all.
And if it were, I’m sure it would go the same way as our experiences of DA and sexual violence and we would be accused of “weaponising our trauma”. For our own evil, power-crazed ends.
I would say the majority of those who promote this ideology are determined to portray us as the baddies, the bigots, the evil overlords. It’s a really dehumanising strategy and it’s important to fight that lie along with all the others, for the sake of our own mental well being.
Genderists often accuse us of trying to dehumanise trans people but as usual it’s a classic reversal (acknowledging that someone who is male is, actually, male is as far from “dehumanising” as you can get in a culture as biased towards males as ours is) because they are the ones busily dehumanising us, as is obvious from the slurs, insults and threats that are thrown our way, the constant need to paint us as unfeeling bigots, the point blank refusal to acknowledge that we might actually be starting from a place of basic humanity, respect, compassion.
And however much we know it’s all bullshit, the sense that we’re up against a constant barrage of this dehumanising scapegoating can nevertheless take its toll on some (many?) of us almost as much as the issue itself and the misogyny that underlies it.
So yes! We do absolutely need to be aware of and prioritise our own MH if it starts to stagger under the weight, and trust indeed in the “power of the exponential tag team” to carry on the fight when we can’t. Take breaks if and when you need to. Our numbers are growing and will only keep on growing as the truth begins to emerge.
(I only meant to write a quick post but I think I’ve ended up tubthumping again 
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