Melinda Robinson (she/they)
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melindarobinson.bsky.social
Melinda Robinson (she/they)
@melindarobinson.bsky.social
80 followers 61 following 57 posts
Philosophy MA student at Queen's University. My focus is on phenomenology, feminism, queer rights, neurodiversity and bioethics. Comparative classics is my secret crush.
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melindarobinson.bsky.social
People talk a lot about mental health in the trans community: such high rates of mental health problems must mean that these people are crazy, that they're sick. They need to be fixed. When I took my child to the doctor to talk about gender affirming care, he asked about anxiety. "What's that?" my daughter said. She wasn't serious -- she knows what anxiety is -- but it's not a routine feeling. Being trans, for her, has not meant growing up being told that she can't wear the clothes she feels comfortable in, that she can't use the name that sounds like hers, that she has to fit herself in a gendered box and play a social role that she can never play well enough because it isn't true. She hasn't had to worry that she would be rejected by her family for being herself. She hasn't been told that there is something wrong with her, that God will be disappointed unless she learns to perform masculinity. She hasn't kept this secret for years, or decades. She hasn't faced the trauma of actually being rejected by the people who were supposed to love her unconditionally. She hasn't been told over and over that she doesn't know who she is, that her instincts and her deepest feelings are wrong. My older kids didn't have this advantage, and I will regret that for as long as I live. I enabled a father, and a church, that insisted on harmful gender roles. I know this has taken a toll on their mental health, and I will always bear responsibility for that. But my younger daughter is growing up with the freedom to define herself. And it means she is not growing up with the anxiety, and the secrecy, and the fear. Trans people are not mentally ill because they're trans. They're mentally ill because we traumatize them and claim that we're doing it for their own good. That the naked hatred and abhorrence which so-called "Christians" display towards them is "love." And then we use the harm that we've inflicted as an evidence that they were broken from the start.
February 21, 2025 at 9:55 PM
melindarobinson.bsky.social
Aristotle has melted my brain. My head hurts, I feel physically ill. Unfortunately, this means I will probably be a massive fangirl by the end of the month.
November 29, 2024 at 12:27 AM