Curate, connect, and discover
It might sound strange, but peaking about gender helped me to accept my bisexuality, understand feminism and start me on a real path to understand that I'm a person whose actual consent matters.
When I was younger and unsure (and quite hateful about) my bisexuality, and thoughtlessly repeated some feminist talking points, I ignored all of my doubts because they know better. At first, I didn't know why I was uncomfortable and upset about the push for bisexual women to accept being in sapphic relationships with males. Or why it was transphobic for a bisexual woman to not date/have sex with a TIM. Etc etc etc.
I doubted myself and my upset until I saw the sexual harassment of lesbians, and others that were much more intelligent and switched on than myself pointing out the lesbophobia and rape promotion and apologism, as well as the repeated, underlined anger about sexuality and consent.
It was first my outrage about lesbians (and, to a much lesser extent, gay men) that made me realise, wow, my sexuality doesn't implicitly suggest consent, which then made me sit back and actually consider how other women were fawning to avoid the rage and lesbophobia and biphobia and doxxing and rape and death threats, which then spread further to understanding my existence as a woman.
There's a stereotypical and misogynistic point that men bring up about how feminists are always miserable and obsessed about oppression, as if it ruins us somehow, but it absolutely does feel more grounding.
You spend your whole life isolated and only allowed crumbs of sanitised and safe "feminism," to the point where you dismiss every slight and every harm, from the mansplaining to the assaults as random or bad luck or whatever else, and then suddenly, you're not crazy or oversensitive anymore, you're able to understand it.
As twisted as it sounds, it's grounding and peaceful, too. If you can break free and question the so-called holy right of males taking everything female for themselves, when family members, friends, the media, charities and even governments promote it all as progressive, then you can question everything, and there's no more empowering start to a journey than that.
Does anyone else feel more grounded since becoming gc. I'm no longer being asked to ignore my instincts, my emotions, and the reality around me in favour of a constant "religious" trial. I used to be so disassociated, but now I can just point out the obvious and not feel like I'm going to burn in hell for it lmao. Lots of religious words in here but you get it. I mean it when I say tras are spiritual. You have to be to ignore reality that much. And it feels just as good when you deconvert.