Political Memes

I work in gender affirming care that includes pediatric populations and have my services listed online for referrals. It’s not super common to be fair but every once in a while I get an email or voicemail that’s like “you’re a child abuser and you should die” or some shit. It’s why I specifically say voicemail; I don’t answer calls to my business phone bc of this. Everything gets screened and I call back. Thankfully it’s infrequent and this has been enough to ensure I never have to engage with these people.

You’re absolutely right though. I’ve posted about my work before and people will sometimes be like “thank you for doing what you do”. I appreciate that, and those comments outnumber these threats, which again are not very common, but they stick out. Even the ones that don’t wish me dead. Once I got an email that just said “f*g enabler”. I don’t know why I remember that. It was years ago.

It’s the knowledge that someone out there absolutely hates you and wants you to die without knowing anything (really) about who you are, I think.

The really sad part of this is that this is a core part of the minority stress model; that feeling constant oppression from the world around you is noxious and has measurable consequences on physical and mental health. If he and his dumb racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, etc cronies reflected on their experience and practiced empathy for even a moment they would realize that this stress is something experienced almost constantly by someone on their hit list, because of them.

Edit: while I appreciate the positivity I genuinely didn’t mean for this to be a “please give me positive support” thing. I dunno I always feel awkward posting about this because it’s like I’m fishing for compliments at the expense of one of the most marginalized communities out there. You don’t need to thank me, though I do appreciate it quite a bit