Something that happens a lot to trans women: someone doesn’t like us, concocts a half-believable rumor about us, sets it free, and hopes it reaches a critical mass and gravely injures us.

This happens all the time when you’re a public figure, and it only has to catch fire once.

After it catches fire here is what happens to you.

— Lost job opportunities
— Lost friendships
— Community inroads taken away
— New people stop associating with you because you’re “tainted”
— Sustained harassment campaign(s) + cyberstalking your online activity

— Gossip. Rumors get their own rumors
— Self-isolation
— Gaslighting and rumination (“I deserve this because I’m a bad person”)
— Paranoia (“I don’t know who to trust”)
— In some cases, CPTSD signs start to show

I don’t expect TME ppl to stop this cycle because culling trans fems from their circles is way too beneficial, but I kindly ask my fellow trans fems to consider not joining in on spreading rumors about trans fems you’ve never heard of... ppl purposefully make shit up about (1)

us all the time because they have a vested interest in our destruction. Yes, the end of the road here is death. And these campaigns always carry the possibility of a dead trans fem at the end of them, because they’re about complete and utter social ostracization (2)