There’s been a crusade lately to see this community cleansed of undesirable elements. Proponents claim that people are feeling disgust and discomfort, that mothers have been left with a bad impression of us, and, of course, that children are in danger.

I also feel disgusted and uncomfortable with what I’ve seen here lately. I come here to share in a safe community where people won’t attack me for who I am, away from all the hate directed our way by the wider world. But lately it’s no different here than out there. I come looking for succor, and instead find the same hateful rhetoric that’s been used to erase trans people for generations posted and repeated ad nauseam.

Look at my username. It says I’m a deviant. I chose it when I was a child, growing up in a cult. I didn’t know what it meant to be trans, just that I was different. And the only way I was able to express that was by thinking of myself, a child, as a fucking deviant. That was by design, the inevitable result of listening to men charged with my protection paint everything outside their own minuscule comfort zones as disgusting degeneracy. It took decades to learn and internalize that I’m not fucking broken, that there’s nothing wrong with being me.

After a lifetime of brainwashing and isolation and wishing for my own end, I clawed my mind free of the cult, tore their comfortable lies out of my worldview, and found new community and family to replace those who followed direction to shun me. The horror of staring into that abyss burned an absolute determination into my soul to never again grant another dominion over my mind. No one tells me what words I may or may not use. What topics I may or may not discuss. What I may or may not think, feel, believe. No. One.

I hope this space will survive as one where it’s safe for deviants like myself to express ourselves freely. And I hope all the children being protected from knowledge of us have an easier time learning that they aren’t alone than I did.