Trans appearances (2 of 2): "MOLESTED."

Back when I taught at the art school, one of the things that I truly treasured was the insightful intuitive leaps that students would make with material, that you just wouldn't get in any other classroom.

It was like some visual - vibe thing that people cued into that was a real part of whatever you were discussing, but they'd see that when others wouldn't, and it would then lead them to some greater valid insight from a really unique angle, that most other people just aren't capable of coming up with.

Anyhow, with that, I feel like a similar thing came up recently in a text conversation that I was having with my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's) clothes.

Basically, we were discussing how many young trans men have a distinctive visual culture with like hair and piercings and tatts and all looking all marked up and unapproachable, but they're also quite out-of-it people, and he said in so many words that yes, they do have that style, and it is like --

                             MOLESTED.

And, as soon as he said that, I knew it was true, although I wasn't sure why, but it did just seem incontrovertibly true, that these trans men were somehow reproducing the vibe of people in their late teens and early 20s who had been severely molested to the point where it just majorly f*cked with their heads.

In his original conversation when I went back, he had texted -

But they are all so proudly "not like the rest of us"

Even if it means being an ugly unidentifiable anime creature

[. . .]

I'm sure they'd frame it as all this gender nonsense

But that's not what it looks like it looks like molested people trying to be repulsive 

- and later when I told him how I couldn't stop thinking about his point he had texted -

I remember once being in the supermarket at [removed] & seeing these young people. They were then on the bus with me after (or train [. . .]) & one was prob "amab" the other "afab" -- both had weird colored hair, both had big noise canceling headphones, & they were like this "neurodivergent" "enby" cliche... & they MADE themselves look bad. Like it was very "stay away from me" coded.

I just thought at that point that it was like girls who hide their molestation shame behind fat.

- and, I mean, what more can you say.

At some point, too, I pointed out how many seem profoundly uncomfortable with themselves and don't appear to possess an integrated adult sexuality, but rather are pushing it down and channeling it in weird ways, and how sometimes on Grindr you see these incredibly fat trans men who are like eighteen or nineteen or twenty and whose profiles are like, lights are off, come use my holes.  

 And, as he responded perceptively, that too comes off as MOLESTED.