But she was just… in love. She didn’t want male attention; she just wanted attention from a very specific male because she liked him. You could argue she was throwing someone under the bus, his wife, since Meredith was technically his lover. But she didn’t know he was married! They fucked a couple times, and only after, she found out he had a wife. Conveniently, he hadn’t told her anything until the wife literally showed up at the hospital they worked at. He was separated and not divorced. After she found out, in a very human display of love, she begged him to choose her as a desperate attempt to keep him.

I was surprised. I thought the term “pick me girl” was different from the term “different from other girls.” I assumed it had better origins. Apparently, the origin is even worse.

To most people, Meredith’s reaction was pathetic, dramatic, and over the top. Cringe. A couple episodes later, the show itself makes fun of the scene, with Meredith cringing at herself and telling her best friend, Christina, how embarrassing that was. The show felt the need to justify the scene! Because it was so pathetic!

And suddenly, I saw the pattern. Sure, some girls indeed use misogyny to flirt with the boys they like, but the real problem was being pathetic. I remembered the videos I saw online of grown women (and sometimes men) pretending to be pick-me girls as comedy. Many times, they included the misogynistic aspect of it, but the point of the comedy was making fun of a girl who was head over heels over a guy who doesn’t like her much.

I could say the same about the girl who’s different. The most feminist interpretation would be making fun of men who say “you’re different from other girls” to the woman they like because they think most women are frivolous and assume the comment is flattering by elevating her to the position of “better than them.” But that isn’t how the term was used. In its worst instances, I saw people make fun of masculine girls as an accusation that they were just masculine because they were misogynistic and didn’t like girly things. And, again, many girls had a tomboy phase under the intention of “I don’t want to be stupid like other girls,” but accusing someone of going through the same when you don’t know them is unreal to me. Masculine girls exist. Lesbians exist. Tomboys exist. Autistic girls exist. Feminist girls exist. And, well, women don’t dress for men. Our existence isn’t about them.

What impressed me in this whole thought process was how feminist things could be easily weaponized against the victim. It reminded me of TERFs, who mostly attack transgender women under the guise of protecting little girls, when the obvious oppressor is cis men, not trans girls. TERFs end up being a “feminist” movement that attacks victims: trans women. One of the most vulnerable groups of women on Earth, if not the most. I also remembered how Christian women use feminism to shut pro-choice people up by saying that “future women are being aborted.”

And it particularly reminded me of women who hate men and end up hating the women who love them. Not because they actually hate men (they often have boyfriends and brothers they love), but they just want to hate women in a feminist way. This one is interesting to me, not just because it’s very relevant, but because man-hating can take people to victim-blame in ways I’d never seen inside feminist bubbles.

Recently I’ve seen an article on Substack where the main picture was a woman cooking, and the white TikTok text read “girl who said she hated men cooking for me.” The title was something like “hating men in performative ways,” which again, pointed at the woman in the meme, the woman being humiliated online, as the performative man-hater. Instead of painting her as a victim to a shitty man. If the woman in the picture is indeed a man-hater, she has all the reason to be a misandrist with a boyfriend like that.

This whole misandrist movement going on very conveniently has shifted to judging what women do in relationships. “Women stay in relationships with shitty men; isn’t it awful and unfeminist of them to do so?” Well, victims usually don’t leave very easily, you see.

The problem with being a misandrist while heterosexual is that you will inevitably fall for a man, and that will inevitably make you not hate him so much anymore. And guess what? He can use that to his advantage and abuse you like many other men would. Now, as a lesbian, do I understand the dynamics of falling for men? No. But will I ever judge a woman for being vulnerable when she likes someone? Also no. Moreover, will I ever judge a woman for wanting to be fucked by the sex that abuses women?! No. Because I know life is more difficult than this black and white thinking. Being a hetero woman is liking men; being misandrist is hating them. It’s gonna be complicated for misandrist hetero women, and that’s ok. I won’t judge them for it, because the point of feminism is not going around judging how women express themselves or if women are un-feministically dating abusers or not. The point of feminism is changing our material reality. The point is changing MEN, not women. We should be bullying MEN, not little girls who wear black. We should be picking apart the behavior of men in heterosexual relationships, not what the woman does to survive in it. The point of it is accessing the power MEN have; it’s telling MEN how to speak to us, and it’s telling MEN they shouldn’t believe or do certain things. And gently informing women they don’t have to bend to the standards men push on us. Is it that hard to understand?

Much like girlboss feminism, we’re falling for the trap of telling women what to do. “Do the superwoman pose,” they told millennial women. “Ask for the raise!” “Lean in!” always focused on what the woman has to do to achieve the male’s success individually. It’s all a very subtle game of victim blaming. “The respect you wanted from men was always there. The problem is you are too weak, too stupid, too vapid, and too unconfident to actually get it. If only you changed your whole personality, the world would bend for you!” and then you do all those things and get pregnant… Well… those non-feminist bosses will now have you begging for maternity leave at the office, and they will say, “You have to be working like a dog until that baby pops out.” Feminism!

You see where I’m getting at?

“Your golden retriever boyfriend is an idiot.” “Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend?” All things that sound feminist but are laser-focused on blaming the women who partner with men. It wouldn’t surprise me if heterosexual women left feminist bubbles completely for the sake of protecting their peace relating to their choice in partners. Sometimes a mediocre man can be more fulfilling than a girl online who judges you all the time and offers no community or comfort.

I’ve even seen people conflate boy moms with moms of abusers. Accusing moms of grown men who have killed multiple people of being bad at their role as mothers, assuming the moms didn’t control the man-child well enough as an adult.

I’ve seen feminists judge women who date famous abusers as if they probably aren’t victims in that man’s hands too. I’ve seen feminists judge people like Angelina Jolie, who have been in abusive relationships multiple times, by saying there has to be something wrong with girls who are always getting abused, maybe BPD?

I think it’s especially intriguing how the supposed man-haters are treating women, because what that informs me is that they hate men and also women. Ultimately resulting in a hate for everyone, which can’t be good for feminism, can it? If you hate everyone, can you really make a change in the world? I doubt it. If you do things out of hate, your activism won’t last very long. If you see feminism as a limitation to your actions as a woman, your activism won’t last very long either. See political lesbianism. Some heterosexual women were trying really hard to be lesbians in the 60s and 70s as a way to boycott men and spare themselves the pain of abuse and oppression coming from a partner. Did they succeed? Not for very long. After all, liking men romantically and sexually is in their hetero nature, so it didn’t last for most of them.

My opinion on misandry is not very spicy. Hate is a feeling, and we can’t fully control emotions. Additionally, I think harboring some level of skepticism towards your oppressor is actually healthy and safer for you, as an individual. In that way, you can catch onto what they say and do, instead of letting everything slide. But I don’t think hating men should become a political goal or lead to one. And I don’t think queer women, or even women who prefer to be single, should be judging the women who love them. Because, man, it might be fucking cheesy, but love wins over hate any time. And if you love women, you will defend them, and understand that the goal isn’t respectability politics-ing our way into equality, the goal is actual equality, respectability or not.

To contextualize, being raised Mormon was the most traumatizing aspect of my life. Not to trauma dump, but I’ve been sexually harassed three times by three different people, and yet the worst thing that has happened to me was being raised to be a quiet, pleasant presence in the background of someone else’s life as a Mormon girl.

What does that have to do with ghosting?—I’ll get there.

I’m a disciple of the theory that Mormonism is true American religiosity. It’s the juice of the Protestant work ethic and the root of tradwife propaganda (as we can see by Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm’s fame). And, like many American women, I was also taught to be as submissive and passive as I possibly could because of that cult. And that brings us to many interpersonal problems.

Conservatives pride themselves on not changing, on going back. On being normal, average, and following the rules. But what actually happens is that everyone is changing whether we want to admit it or not. We are a sum of all the societal forces that touch us. Neoliberalism has influenced our minds in ways we can’t conceive unless we dig deeper and deeper into how we were convinced of certain beliefs, like the belief there will always be someone else. You can befriend someone, but if it doesn’t land, it’s ok. You can try to date, but if that person doesn’t fit perfectly with everything you expect, including things that don’t or won’t affect anyone else… you can always try again with a new and improved version. And like a game, you go through the levels, always seeing someone as a phase of your life and never as someone who will stay. It can be emotionally easier to see people that way, since we aren’t in community with them. Since anyone can leave the school, the neighborhood, the city, or the country at any moment.

I was born a Neoliberal under Mormonism. So I learned two things: a good girl doesn’t instigate a fight, and everyone can be replaced.

On top of those beliefs, I learned more things: good women are peacemakers, and, as shown in Disney movies, a soulmate shows up seamlessly, ready, fully cooked, a real man.

Eventually I found out I was a lesbian, but the point is that according to these stories, your partner will be perfect. No flaws, no growth to do, just beautiful, rich, and able to read what you need and want straight from your mind. When you say “no,” he knows that you mean a polite “yes”; you just don’t want to be seen as a woman who says “yes” too easily. Conservatism grooms women to play a role to have love. And love is conditional on how well you play that role.

To make the propaganda more effective, conservatism associates these roles to a specific aesthetic that, semiotically, is real femininity. Perfect hair, perfect body, perfect soul.

@Thaliavacha, a friend of mine from Substack, once told me that womanhood is impossible to achieve for everyone. That all women are failed women because the standards are so impossibly high. And as someone who has met many Nara Smiths, I can assure you that she is 100% right. Nara is precisely the type of woman every woman would envy at church, and a couple months later, we would find out her husband had been cheating on her with another married woman in the ward. And as any conservative will say, the incapacity to keep a husband faithful is solely the wife’s fault.

It’s impossible to win. Especially when you believe those lies about who a woman ought to be.

We are raised to not fight but also not to feel. That perfection doesn’t exist, but we should strive for it anyway.

I will say, I think the most fucked-up part of growing up Mormon was the invasion of privacy. You could say that sharing what kind of porn you watch with your Bishop is an invasion of privacy; it definitely is, but the one that bothered me the most was God’s invasion of privacy.

I remember the day I asked my dad something like, “Dad, someone at church said God knows our hearts. What does that mean?” Considering I was 6, I probably said, “Dad, God… Sonia from church said… she said that God knows hearts. What is that?” But either way, he answered, “God knows your hearts because he knows your thoughts. He knows what you think and want and all your intentions.” I remember being completely confused. How does He know? And then realizing He was powerful, and He would be able to do that. I shrunk. Does He know all the bad things I think about? And the angry stuff? And the horny stuff? I didn’t know what horny or sexual things were, but I definitely already knew that nakedness is shameful, genitals are not to be talked about, and kissing is all for adults. Immediately, my confidence diminished. If an all-powerful God knows what I think, He can punish me, and no one will know what I did, but I have sinned in my head.

It became my obsession. Controlling my mind and being so pure that God would read my thoughts and think I was good.

How does that translate to being raised a woman? It usually means conservative women repress anger and sexual thoughts. It means that we’re ashamed when we lose control of those. It means we like when other people, especially men, can just guess what we need, because it’s hard to do it on our own when we have no sense of self. It means I was raised to be insecure.

To be extremely fair, it’s not like Mormon men are raised to be titans of bravery and confidence. It’s a common experience for Mormon girls to find Mormon guys unappealing because they tend to be insecure, and that’s not the attractive male stereotype. Conservatism keeps men insecure too, but women are expected to control themselves in ways men aren’t. Maybe this is why it’s so hot when women lose control and go and have real sexual awakenings or go on killing sprees—as so many books, movies, and songs have explored in the last couple of years.

In my late teen years, I started deconstructing my Mormon beliefs. I didn’t know this was what I was doing, of course. In my head, I was just “questioning.” But changing a little bit every day caused me many problems. Friends would think I was inconsistent; they said I changed values every day, and it was confusing and “hypocritical” (you see, most of my friends were conservative at the time, so of course, changing my mind was bad).

I found out that having a friend, or someone to kiss, for a couple months before things got bad was the way to go. I needed to connect with someone but not for so long that we would have grudges, or a history, or a “you said this, remember?” because I couldn’t deal with any relationship that was deeper than a kiddie pool.

So I learned to enjoy my stay, knowing from the start that I would feel hurt, or angry, or offended, or worse… I would cause hurt, anger, and offense, and I would escape.

People fear what they don’t know and I didn’t know how to stop a discussion when I was the one bringing it up. When I tried to show anger, I’d go overboard, say things that hurt on purpose, with the expectation they’d leave me, not the expectation that things would be solved. And something I’ve learned with expectations in relationships is that even if you never say them out loud, your partner might hear them.

If you expect to solve the issue, you will act differently than someone who doesn’t expect to solve shit, and instead, wait for your counterpart to leave forever. Friends and partners pick up on these cues.

It was like that until I got an online friend called Tuga. My goal was that I wanted to stay, even if things got messy or confusing. Then I found another friend, Putri. I had that same goal. Then another friend, Loops.

From my perspective, I was accumulating friends, because I had never kept a friend for years before. Staying and trying to solve things was new. Trying to hold my tongue and open my heart was new.

Instead of calling someone “spineless,” I would say I was tired of the same promises that aren’t tied to anything secure. I explained that their word didn’t mean much when they didn’t go through with it.

Instead of accusing someone of leading me on, I said I was over the games, and I wanted her to stop trying to play them with me. I called her my friend and informed her I was seeing other people. Which made her jealous and sad, but I guess I don’t have all the time in the world, and I also didn’t run away.

Instead of calling someone a transphobe, I said their views about trans women in female sports were wrong and that I’d die by the trans community’s side. I told them my perspective and waited for the best. Months later, she changed her mind. Last week, she apologized for the opinion she had and how wrong it was. She called her past self conservative and said it was a fucked opinion to have. I wouldn’t have seen that if I hadn’t stayed.

Of course, the temptation was always there: Just block them. Just delete their contact. You don’t owe them anything. They should have known better. A real friend would know; a good person would know; a good partner would know. Can’t they just google it? Can’t they just find perfection before trying to have connections? I don’t want to debate and I definitely don’t want to be the bigger person. I don’t need to educate you! I will simply protect my peace. There are 8 billion people in this world, for fuck’s sake. I can always find another one, a better one. – But under those thoughts there were always my own insecurities: What if they reject me first? What if I’m the one who gets dumped? What if they are the ones that will call me out, and I will have to change for the better? And after that, will they forgive me for being angry? Will they see me as a monster? Imperfect, unfeminine, emotional? Will they see me as replaceable, like I saw them?

Staying, even when I felt like I shouldn’t, was the best thing I’ve learned to do. The second one was leaving when necessary.

You see, you shouldn’t stay every time. For example, if I was trans, I probably shouldn’t have kept a friendship with the person that said trans people shouldn’t be in sports, it would harm my self-esteem. I only stayed because as a cis woman, I had the time, the energy, and the hope that it was just a fluke in her values; I could call her out more effectively. She used the right pronouns for trans people; she thought they deserved free healthcare to do the surgeries they wanted to do, but in that one sport aspect, she had the wrong value, and I knew it was possible for her to change. And I’m glad I stayed to watch that. Nowadays, she can’t stop talking about Emma Darcy and all the trans related things they post on Instagram.

But like I said, some connections can’t be saved.

There was this girl I tried to connect to who I ended up ghosting. The relationship was very short-lived: we traveled together, and she made the itinerary, but she didn’t have proper times to eat in her itinerary. I remember that after a Pabblo Vittar show, I had to eat a churro for dinner because it was the only thing I could catch without interrupting her itinerary. She was an insomniac and didn’t let me sleep a full night or nap during the day. She made little comments that would imply I’m a rich kid, spoiled, extremist, Americanized, and anti-Brazilian. We had one heart-to-heart, where she shared that she felt alone for being an only child. I said, “It must have been hard; it makes sense you want to go out and find your own friends and family as an adult, I can relate to that.” She laughed and apologized for “treating me like a therapist.” This took me aback. I usually tell people much more than that. On the iceberg of oversharing, that wasn’t even underwater. Would she think I’m treating her like a therapist if I talked about my feelings? She continued the next day. She woke me up by blasting a Katy Perry song in the kitchen, and at night, she said she couldn’t like someone who didn’t listen to Brazilian songs (me). I told her that was very superficial—already decided I’d end it eventually, because there was nothing to salvage. She was jealous of me for some reason, and she refused to connect without judging. So I avoided talking to her about it, and after ghosting her for a month, she blocked me.

It was the right decision.

The only thing I regret was not telling her why I was done. And taking so long to have the guts to do so. But it was good it ended.

Nowadays, I try to bring up disagreements early on to see how people react to them. If they react well, I might consider them for a long-term thing. If they apologize for disagreeing, pretend they didn’t say anything, or get super angry and defensive, then I usually keep an eye on them for a little while, and if it becomes a pattern, I communicate it. Like a healthy person would do.

Nowadays, I avoid sentences like “you are” and “your… is.” It’s much better to solve things by saying “I feel…,” “…matters to me,” or “I don’t like WHEN you do this.”

And I have to say, there is nothing that makes me feel more feminine than expressing myself and showing up for my values. I’ve never felt more like a woman before.

The issue and the blessing of staying is that I have more complex relationships than I used to have. There was this girl I almost had a threesome with. Her girlfriend was digging it in the beginning; I was hyped until her girlfriend got really jealous and wanted us to stop being friends. W, my friend, wanted to keep a secret friendship. I said I wasn’t very comfortable with that and told her to inform her girlfriend first, but that I’d love to be her friend again. This happened 2 months ago, but I still wait for a text going, “She’s fine with it. Wanna be friends again??” And even though it’s messy, I don’t try to run. Even though I want to run, because there are so many things to consider, I put myself through it because people are not, in fact, replaceable. I’m not afraid of my emotions anymore, and I want to have long-term friends.

People usually say they want to grow old with a partner, but y’know what would bring me almost as much joy? Having a healthy decades-old friendship. Watching them change, and get older, and get happier. And this is the hidden value of staying. You will get rejected more, yes. But you also might find real people, be a real person, and have real history. Some people know how that feels; I didn’t. The only long-term friendship I had was with my cousins. And I would die for them, but it isn’t the same as choosing to be in the same group as someone, they’ll always be family. Hopefully, I’ll get even better at navigating complex connections, but meanwhile, trying to have a healthy discussion and not ghosting has been more than enough to keep most of those friendships going.

If you have no proof this man has ever attacked someone, hearing a person who knows him say he couldn’t hurt a fly can bring the you, as part of the jury, to imagine that between an abuser and an angel, he probably fucked up sometimes, but it wasn’t as bad as the victim says. Here, we learn the abuser has an out; by painting himself as the real victim, he can turn the game. If people see him as a flawed but good man, his actions are diminished. And if he somehow proves the victim isn’t perfect, now the whole story is debatable. And that is easy to do, because no victim is perfect, not according to the society we live in.

By defending someone’s total innocence, you take away their agency and accountability. But by giving them too much agency and accountability, you can fall into other traps, like victim blaming, carceral mentality, and meritocracy.

Most feminists can defend a victim if a rich, famous white man is accused of being the perpetrator and there are multiple victims. Especially if those victims are teens, or poor, or fans of his. Intersectional feminists will see it more clearly, since there are multiple axes showing who the abuser is: older vs. younger, famous vs. non-famous, rich vs. poor, men vs. women, (and the multiple victims showing a pattern) make him almost impossible to be abused, but so easy to be the abuser.

But when the accused is a white woman, suddenly, things get a little murkier.

Many misogynistic men often debate women online, saying that “men are raped too.” And it’s a very convenient way of shutting the discussion down, because what you’re implying is that women are raping men, which is not the case. Most male victims are raped by other men.

Now, let’s look at the data they actually want to bring up. Who are the men being raped by women? Usually, they aren’t even men yet. If a woman rapes a man, she is often raping a teen, a child, a disabled man, or even a young adult who usually has no sexual experience.

So, you see, other axes are at play.

Let’s pick another famous example. She’s a singer, super famous, super rich, and adored by her LGBTQ fans. Multiple victims come out. A couple of young boys, young gay men, and lesbians/bisexual women are her main targets.

Is she probably the abuser? Yes.

She might not have enough “wins” if we compare her to the men I mentioned previously, since she is a woman, but compared to non-famous queer people and children/teens, she can abuse them.

Now, imagine a Black male celebrity. He has been famous since he was a kid, rumored to have been abused as a child. He is soft-spoken; many would say he is feminine. He lived under his abusive dad’s wings for very long, but now he is a complete superstar. Rich, famous. His victims are mostly children; is he probably the abuser? Yes. He has the power to abuse those children, at least.

However, in this case, we could say racism is a factor of consideration. And homophobia too.

It isn’t the first time a Black man is accused of sexual impropriety for being Black. And it isn’t the first time a feminine man is accused of touching children, just for being feminine, or rather… “deviant.”

The waters get murkier. And if you are a fan of their work, you can go from sensible to a total victim-blaming asshole. I am usually a very sensible person, and I can spot these cases easily, but I have to say, the fact that I like Michael’s songs does make everything more confusing to me, even though I know he had the power to abuse children.

If we can feel favoritism towards people we don’t even know, consider how well we do with people we do. With people we talk with, who treat us well, who are charismatic, who are comforting, and who helped you once when you were going through something.

Murkier.

If we are talking about our circles, there is also a high chance they aren’t that rich or powerful, and it can be harder to spot if they’re capable of abuse.

Murkier.

Now, let’s take a couple of steps back, from celebrities to your friends group. There probably won’t be courts, and there is probably no public proof; there is no power or fame, except for some level of microfame or insular power—the “she has a lot of Instagram followers” kind.

I went through the following situation a couple of months ago: I met this girl on Bumble BFF. She was autistic, bi, and vegan. After meeting her, she told me she was broke; she dropped out of university too. And she was living with her boyfriend. She had recently been diagnosed with BPD and PMDD, and her boyfriend was mean.

She told me confusing stories about how he would yell at her for apparently no reason. About how he expected sex more than she wanted to do it. She talked about how they lived together and how they had been together for years, and it seemed the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t gentle anymore; he wasn’t romantic like he used to be.

Naturally, I was attached to the yelling part, the sexual coercion, and the money imbalance.

Until one day she introduced him to me.

He was Black. Now, that usually doesn’t matter, but in my investigation of who might be abusing whom, it was relevant because she was white.

Murkier.

I noticed he was holding her things with him, like a cute boyfriend. And he had water and snacks in his bag… for her. Every time she seemed to feel off, he would ask her how she was. He stayed when she wanted him to stay. And I talked to him about cats.

You see, cats are the kind of litmus test few people know about. He loved cats; she didn’t. She was afraid of them, she said. He said he loved having cats and wished he could have one in his apartment. I talked about mine, and he nodded and suggested better ways to take care of them, seemingly more careful than I was.

I felt like I had enough information to take a big jump.

When my friend and I went out by ourselves, a week or so later, I asked her to tell me about the yelling again. I asked, “Do you yell at him?” and she said yes. I, confused, since I was under the impression he was the only one yelling, asked, “And who started yelling?” and she said it was her but that he shouldn’t yell at a woman.

Murkier.

It sounds feminist to say that, of course, she is appealing to her lack of power in a man vs. woman dynamic, but what she hides by pulling that is how she is white and he is Black. And more importantly, that he was defending himself and not starting the conflict. DARVO came to mind.

Another litmus test is asking someone if they think they are capable of bad things.

She told me she was way too fucked to do anything bad. She told me she can’t really change because autism and BPD made everything so hard. I asked about therapy (also a good test), and she said it didn’t really help her.

It’s much easier to see an abuser when they say they hate cats, that therapy is bullshit, that homeless people are vermin, and that women should obey. She was not like that; she hid what she believed under neutral language. So I was still confused by this whole thing. He still had financial power over her; he was still a man. I didn’t know who the abuser was until she chose me as her next target.

Murkier.

In that same outing, she said she wasn’t into how fat her boyfriend was. (That man was not fat; he was strong, and maybe not slim, but he was not fat.) It felt, in fact, very pointed to me. I was definitely fatter than him, with less muscle and more belly. I was confused by the implication I was not attractive to her, since I was not trying to be or looking forward to it either.

Two weeks later, she took me to a vegetarian restaurant with her boyfriend. Or rather, her ex-boyfriend. He broke up with her the week before, but they were still living together until she found a place for herself. I thought it was very generous of him, since most men would never do that.

He and I had a more pleasant talk than this girl and I ever did, which is very rare for me. I usually make friends with women much easier. I paid for my meal; he paid for his own and my friend’s meal, which again, was very kind. But maybe it was all for show. I couldn’t tell what his intentions were until my friend said, “Do you want me to pay you back?” and he said, “No, no worries,” and she answered, “Good, because I wasn’t going to.”

How… how do you say this to your ex-boyfriend who pays for your bills and just did you a favor? Even if he was toxic, why would you ask that in the first place? It seemed like she was flexing her power over him.

A couple of weeks later, we went out again to see a cat breeds exposition.

It was her idea, and I was really hyped.

We saw some cute kitties, and some of them could be held.

I saw a child hold a 3-month-old poorly, pulling his arms to her, while some adults (who never owned cats in their lives) gushed at the sight of the small child hurting a cat. Thankfully another child decided to take the cat away, holding it correctly this time, and then another child, and another one, while I wondered where the hell the supervisor was.

My friend came out of the bathroom and asked what was up; I expressed my anger. I said it was so irresponsible to let a child hold a cat like this. What if they dropped the cat on the floor? It could have run away. People have no respect for animals!

She told me to calm down.

Now, I wasn’t screaming. I was simply… angry. But I kept quiet after that, attending to my own insecurities that women shouldn’t feel anger and how masculine and toxic that was.

We went to a bookstore, and after sitting down to read a bit, she asked if she could come over to my apartment. My place was a mess, I said. She said it was ok. I said she would have to sit down while I fixed everything. She said it was ok. So, naturally, I said yes. She asked if we could go to the grocery store downstairs first; I said yes.

We walked around the grocery store, and she looked at some things, casually. I didn’t know what she wanted to buy, so I was just looking around, uninterested. Until she asked if I had snacks at my place. I said I didn’t. She asked if she could choose something to eat; I said yes. I didn’t understand I was going to pay for everything by the end of it.

But I did.

So, we went to my place, and I cleaned the floor, the litterbox, and the dishes. I had untreated hypothyroidism at the time, and I was still recovering from a major surgery, but I did it for her comfort. And she picked up on that. Of course she did. They always do.

I suggested we watch White Chicks, but I couldn’t find Portuguese subtitles for it. She said it was fine, that she spoke English, and the movie started. She didn’t understand a word. She said she was bored and wanted to watch YouTube videos. I said “ok,” and we watched a Minion swimming suit review. It was exactly that, a woman who bought a swimming suit with a yellow Minion on it, and she was reviewing the product. I wish I were joking.

After that, she said, “What do girls do when they’re alone?” which was the straightest way to flirt I’ve ever heard. And since I was not into her, I didn’t know what to say to that. She asked for a hug; I hugged her. Her hug lasted quite a while. I was uncomfortable, so I decided to say, “Hey, I know this might not be the case, but I just want to say, I don’t want to date anyone right now.” I said, as politely as I could. She answered, “You’re not my type either”. As if that was even remotely related to what I had said. So I answered, “I didn’t ask, but ok.”

I felt like that was the female version of calling you a bitch when you say “no.”

Mind you, I was awfully aware I wasn’t her type. She made that very clear beforehand.

Days later, I thought about what happened: how I paid for snacks, exerted myself, was pressured, and didn’t like her company. After the minion swimming suit review, she would watch videos about feminism, except it was the kind of white hetero feminism that sees equality as men paying up, being submissive for once, and letting women in their “divine feminine.” Meaning, the kind of feminism that was successfully turned conservative, selfish, and capitalist.

I was mad at her for treating me like she treated her boyfriend. But for the first time ever, I had to look at myself as one of the categories I could easily put other people in.

I was not as white as her, not as skinny as her; I was more visibly queer than her and obviously alone in a new city where I knew no one. I had more money, but that was about it.

She had the capacity to abuse me. And it seemed like she had the desire to do so too.

One night, she texted me to inform me she was crying. I asked what happened. She said her ex-boyfriend had ignored her all day and that he didn’t care if she lived or died. I said I was sorry it happened, but I couldn’t muster more than that. She apologized for bothering me in true passive-aggressive fashion. And I asked a friend of a friend who knew her ex-boyfriend to ask what that ordeal was about. Apparently he was sick and couldn’t get out of bed, and when she came to him crying and he couldn’t comfort her, she got angry. Trying to avoid a fight, he closed the door to keep her out of his bedroom. And she texted me right after.

Now… It was clear as day who the abuser was. It was her all along.

I sent her a text explaining all the things I’ve observed about them and how I was not interested in defending and justifying her actions since she was the toxic one and therefore was not interested in a friendship anymore.

When feminists say “believe victims,” it oftentimes means “believe the person that said they were a victim first,” and that can be a bad tip. Abusers who know about DARVO will say they are the victims from the beginning. While some victims are not willing to go forward and, often, take a more avoidant approach to the abuse they went through.

As feminists, I don’t think we should be looking at the behavior of victims too closely, since most victims aren’t perfect and shouldn’t be expected to act perfectly.

The problem is when we assume our group is not capable of bad things.

This essay was inspired by an argument I saw on Substack, which was started by a cis Black woman saying that trans women were too similar to men and didn’t understand patriarchy like cis women do. She said their misogyny was too similar to cis men’s misogyny, and she couldn’t not see it.

You see, in the cis vs. trans axis, cis women easily abuse trans women. And if you can see it in the men vs. women comparison or the white vs. Black one, you can’t be ignorant to the reality that cis women OFTEN oppress and abuse trans women, and we are happy to do so.

Y’know, just like Katy Perry being accused of sexual harassment by Ruby Rose, cishet women have a clear advantage over women who aren’t cis or het.

I’ve seen many cishet women online talk about how abusive lesbians are, but the reality is that straight women harass and rape us more than the opposite, and the same happens to trans women in the hands of cis women, whether hetero or not.

After downloading Substack, I became friends with four different trans women, and all of them told me similar stories where cis women were in a clear advantage, and yet assumed the trans woman had a higher capacity for evil than they did. Some of those cis women weren’t abusers, but some were.

And the reason why this is so hard to accept is because women in general are so used to a position of victimhood that we cannot see ourselves as abusers, even when we are. And we can be. Children know this; teens know this. Trans women know this; cis lesbians know this. Animals know this.

If you buy into hierarchies, you will abuse whoever is under you, and you will accept abuse from whoever is over you. And you will think that’s normal; you will think this is just how life goes: “Dog eat dog world.”

Understanding intersectional feminism is understanding that you, yes, you reading this, can also be an abuser if the opportunity and the desire show themselves to you, and unfortunately, even if you were a victim before, you can be someone else’s villain.

I think the phrase “hurt people hurt people” is kind of incomplete. Sometimes people that have never been hurt hurt people. In fact, they often do. But hurt people only hurt people when their victims are under them in the social hierarchy.

This was in 2021, by the way. About a year before everyone found out what celebrities were taking to be as skinny as possible. My brother was taking Ozempic already. He would throw up, shed/shat some kilograms, and feel sluggish all day, and eventually, he stopped. “The weight I’m losing isn’t worth it; I don’t want to take this anymore.”

Now, I took the doctor’s advice seriously. Ozempic isn’t for me, but maybe I shouldn’t be vegan. I was vegetarian for the animals, I was vegan for the diet, and I was gluten-free to avoid carbs more efficiently (getting to anorexic territory). I also had a thousand other symptoms: I had to sleep about 11 hours a night, I felt like I was being hunted for sport 24/7, and I was so depressed I legit thought I should just kill myself if my life didn’t improve. Naturally, I thought this was anxiety, because I had all the symptoms. I went to a psychiatrist, who asked for a blood test first. Thyroid levels were a little over average, but “nothing to worry about.” I took Sertraline (Zoloft), and it gave me the energy I thought I’d never have again—an amount of energy most people would still consider disabling.

Since I was a little girl, I knew all I wanted to do was sit down.

At 10 years old, I would play for 15 minutes, and I’d need to stop and rest.

I’d watch other kids play and have fun while I waited to catch my breath. Eventually, it influenced my personality. I’d say I preferred to have a nice conversation than to have fun—10 years old, by the way. I think this is one of those butterfly effect moments, where my coping strategy of wanting that exhaustion to be consensual turned me into this person I wouldn’t have become otherwise.

I couldn’t move my body much or run. I couldn’t swim for long; my muscles would get sore. So sitting down and thinking, as well as reading, made me get into questioning things a lot. Sometimes I wonder if hypothyroidism knocked on my door as a way to make me the woman I am today, as if fate was intentional, a designer of sorts.

At 14, I became vegetarian as a way to impress the girl I was into but also because I legitimately cared about animals, and I had just found out you can actually survive without eating them.

At 18, I was burnt out from school; I had to take a gap year or else I’d jump from the car Ladybird style. I had friends and lovers, all of which I had to ignore after I decided I wouldn’t spend energy on my phone anymore, and I stopped using it. I had no WhatsApp, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Telegram, and no social media. I’d watch YouTube and write and read every day, thinking that my problems were wholly psychological and it was under my power to change my mind and my biology.

I burnt out again when I got into college. I was so anxious, I couldn’t sleep my usual 11 hours, and I was so tired the next day I couldn’t focus. I became vegan as a way to combat the weight gain that suddenly started happening. “For the first time in my life, let me be skinny”, I remember talking to an amalgamation of God/the Universe/my higher self. My conclusion was that, if it was a matter of controlling my mind, I’d get there because I couldn’t stop trying.

I remember trying to meditate before sleeping. Exercising in the morning to have more energy during the day. I wanted muscle.

As a young kid, I had mad biceps, quads, and abs. I thought, I must be genetically blessed in some way; I just have to focus on the gym.

Every day I’d work out, take creatine, take protein shakes, take supplements, sleep for 11 hours, try to pass the semester, take my depression meds, go to therapy, and find support online. I tried everything.

My mental health was doing slightly better. I still couldn’t sleep very well, and sertraline killed my libido. I was not feeling thirsty, or even hungry. At least I wasn’t constipated anymore… Because I was eating as much fiber as a horse does. So naturally, I cut off gluten. “My grandma is allergic,” I thought. Maybe that’s what’s happening.

I tried, and it semi-worked. I could eat more and gain slightly less weight. I got “skinny” (overweight by 3kg) and my gains at the gym were showing up slightly—even though I physically could not lift more weight than what I was lifting. Until the doctor told me that maybe I shouldn’t be vegan anymore since my albumin—the golden standard to evaluate someone’s malnutrition—was way too low. He also said there was no reason to cut gluten since I wasn’t celiac.

In 2024, I followed his advice. I started eating meat again, eggs again, and pasta again. I ballooned. From 70kg to 97kg in a matter of a year. New stretchmarks everywhere. But at least I wasn’t so anxious anymore (because of zoloft), and my blood tests seemed normal, and yet, I was feeling awful about my body. The silver lining was that I finally had enough energy to work. I might have been avoiding mirrors, but at least I could actually do something with my life.

PS: I was still going to the gym, going to failure, lifting 90 kg on the squat rack, and feeling every single one of those 90 kg on my muscles the next week because I simply couldn’t recover fast enough.

I tried ignoring it, ignoring the fact I looked like I did. I tried body positivity. I tried and tried and tried. I was at a point where I was tired of trying.

Since I stopped being vegan, I got extremely constipated. And that is probably the reason why my endometriosis went from silent to the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. Constipation can cause a recycling of the estrogen you make/take. And when that happens, your estrogen levels go up, and if you have a tumor that reacts to said estrogen (like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or endometriosis), the tumor grows fast.

My endometriosis was deep infiltrating. The right side of my vaginal canal was becoming a ball.

I went to a doctor, armed with knowledge, fully knowing it was endometriosis.

She ordered a routine exam.

I had ovarian cysts but no other symptoms for PCOS, though. My sugar was ok. My testosterone was low. “PCOS is the problem,” she said. “You probably have insulin resistance.” I didn’t.

I begged for an MRI. She gave me the referral.

I had endometriosis.

I asked her how I should go about removing my uterus.

She said that’s a terrible idea and said I should accept my condition, that it’s chronic. She referred me to a nutritionist.

So I went to another doctor.

He said he would remove my uterus.

Insurance denied the surgery. But I couldn’t afford to not have it; I couldn’t walk anymore.

I sent a letter to my insurance explaining my symptoms and ending it with a threat of legal action.

Suddenly, insurance approved the surgery.

I removed my uterus.

I got an infection.

The bacteria were resistant. I’m hospitalized.

I’m raped by the hospital’s emergency gynecologist.

I go home.

The iron I was losing due to the heavy bleeding was slowly recovered—but I was still exhausted.

The pelvic pain lessened more and more as months went by, but I was still exhausted.

Finally, I googled all my symptoms again and again. I met a girl with hypothyroidism; she explained how she felt when it wasn’t treated: the same symptoms as mine.

And one of the scariest days of my life happened.

It’s 2pm; I feel weak. So weak. I cancel all classes for the day, apologize to my students, and lie down in bed, breathing slower and slower. I’d close my eyes accidentally and open them again, scared. My breathing was stopping. I forced myself to keep breathing. I couldn’t call the ambulance because I was also having a lot of brain fog. And I think that even if I knew this was actually that bad, I’d still not be able to reach my phone. My vision got grainy. I felt my heart go slower. I was still scared. I faint. I wake up. I faint. I wake up. I faint.

I tell myself, “If you want to survive, you need to spend less energy thinking.”

I meditate. I get distracted. I meditate. I get distracted. I get scared; I faint. I wake up; I faint.

When I finally feel like I can breathe again, it’s dark outside.

I spent about 4 hours in that bed.

The next day, I call the hospital I was raped at (overall a good hospital) and beg for an appointment with an endocrinologist. I get in, and I explain my symptoms: she offers me Ozempic. I say “no” and explain I have a history with anorexia.

Naturally, she must have assumed these days are long past, since she is looking at an obese woman. But I had been eating 1 meal a day for the last 4 months, when I knew I needed more to feel slightly better. (Maybe that was exactly what triggered my extremely low thyroid hormones the day before).

She orders a couple blood tests. I leave the hospital and get them immediately. Hypothyroidism. I fucking knew it.

I googled the meds. And then I found out Liothyronine (T3) is better than Levothyroxine (T4), but doctors don’t prescribe it, essentially because it’s too effective and, therefore, dangerous. If you double-dose or forget a dose, it can ruin your day. If you pull a “I don’t want to take this anymore” and go cold turkey, you can die in a couple days. So I bought it illegally.

I hadn’t been going to the gym since my uterus removal. I felt weak, confused, exhausted, anxious, depressed, and essentially like dead weight to my mom, who was taking care of me. I understand this to be internalized ableism. But I couldn’t help feeling that way.

I started taking Liothyronine. First day: thirst. Second day: hunger. Third day: slept 6 hours and felt ok. Fourth day: slimmer face. Fifth day: I can read again. Fourth day: The post-surgery pain lessened. Fifth day: I think I’m losing weight. Sixth day: I can focus at work.

Second week: I’m eating like a teenage boy.

Third week: My muscles don’t hurt or twitch anymore after walking for 20 minutes.

Fourth week: I watch a TV show about rapists, and I don’t feel triggered.

Fifth week: Maybe I never had anxiety.

Sixth week: I can eat for pleasure? I can have ice cream?

Seventh week: libido comes back.

Eighth week: I go to a gyno to check if I have any endometriosis left. No endometriosis. The results show healthy small ovaries; the possible PCOS diagnosis is discarded.

Ninth week: PCOS is renamed as PMOS. Thank fuck I don’t have either.

Fourth month: I have lost 15kg while eating like a teenage boy. I’m back to the gym. I’m studying for med school and planning to go to college again and go from college dropout to doctor.

Now, I look into the mirror and I see a much skinnier version of myself. A skinny version that eats ice cream and burgers and pasta, a skinny version that doesn’t see the gym as a way to compensate for lack of control but instead goes to the gym to feel strong. I look at my loose skin on my belly and legs, and I don’t feel sexy. But I also don’t feel like it’s my fault, for the first time ever. I also have other goals, mainly dealing with my ableist beliefs (that came out when I was extremely sick) and fatphobic beliefs, that would pop out since I was a kid and are much weaker and quieter now, but I still have a long way to go if I want to be a better-than-average doctor and treat my patients better than I was treated.

— Empty platitudes filled with girly shit! Woman, can't you see you're vapid? Your brand of spiritual politics pale in comparison to my powerful platitudes of violence and change at every cost. Your careful demeanor won't change the world like a gun would.

And when you tell me the gun has to be aimed at something meaningful, who do you think you talk to? Panic isn't coursing through you? Why aren’t you unsafe at the world and at yourself, like I am everyday every year every decade?

— Man, couldn't you just empathize with the enemy for one second?

— Empathy for the enemy… are you deaf or blind?

— The potential for harm…

— For harm? Do you think they care about harm? They would harm you, me and all a thousand times.

— You're dismissive of responsibility, take no accountability, see no reasoning in the deepest meanings.

— And you're blind at the clock. The time is ticking. This planet won't wait for us to get to a perfect conclusion, can't we be imperfect in our aim? We can afford to hurt the wrong person once every full moon. Or do we have to hope for a perfect time before the world comes to halt?

— You care for a bullet more than you care for human life. It has to be perfect.

— It can't be.

— But we have to be. You think we can afford to hurt the wrong person, and I say we can't, I say we can't hurt a soul.

— When will it be perfect?

— To shoot?

— To shoot.

— When is it ever perfect to hurt someone?

— Shouldn't we solve the problem first and deal with the consequences later?

— And who said the problem will be solved afterwards? We need to go back to the drawing board.

— You've been on this drawing board for millenia.

— We have to write more.

— We have to destroy more.

— We shouldn’t hurt people.

— We shouldn’t think about it.

— And when will your shallow actions retire? Celestial bodies are no ticking time bombs. What is the exact hour, minute, second of the stopping of Earth? The stupid man knows more than me, since I'm such a silly woman.

— It won't be tomorrow but it won't be in a million years.

— Then it can't be tomorrow

— Then it can't be in a million years!

— It shouldn't be solved today, tomorrow and the week after.

— Your softness is easily called weakness where I'm at.

— Your hardness is easily called extremism where I'm at.

— The issues shouldn't be solved at all, you say, because I'm such a stupid man.

— Dictator-like thoughts without purpose, classic male hubris! Man, can't you see you're monstruous? Your brand of violent politics pale in comparison to my detailed thoughts of empathy and wait at every cost. Your scary demeanor won't change the world like philosophy would.

And when you tell me philosophy has to be useful, who do you think you're talking to? Shame isn't coursing through you? You say I'm not insecure but I am and feel all of it. I won't move or organize or do, I won't talk or connect or shoot… so soon. There is a tiny little box, where all the anger I feel lives in, where nothing can be truly felt, and everything has to be thoroughly thought through.

— We should shoot now at the wrong target.

— We should never shoot at the right target.

I was a very playful, social child. The kind of kid people would say “hi” to just because I smiled at them once. I used to have friends everywhere, of any age. A very charismatic kid. I always loved people and never understood the concept of shyness, people were cool! But the coolest people… those were the shy ones: I wanted to be their friend the most (maybe I liked the challenge). And many times, I succeeded, but the vibe shifted quite rapidly. Popular people were all smiles, all small talk, all touchy, loud, charismatic. They knew what to say! Silences were awkward to them but they never mentioned it, the neurotypical popular world was all about knowing the rules and only letting in the people who could pick up on them. That’s why making friends with shy people felt like another world.

While the world of popular kids passed by like a happy saturated blur of motion, and shapeless smiles and laughs, the world of shy people was slower, colder and sober. It felt like a direct confrontation with reality, which was very attractive to me. It was almost like those shy people were seeing shit for how it was, while the popular kids couldn’t… or wouldn’t.

My love for shy people was never well seen by the popular kids. Some popular kids would clock me as one of them, others would say I couldn’t be one of them if I talked with “those people”. Quickly I realized I had to pick a lane, and I did. I picked the weird people, “at least they weren’t fake!” That’s what I told myself. It was the language I had to explain that choice at the time. But nowadays, I see it as me having to choose between neurotypicals and neurodivergent people in a world where I could technically do both.

The problem is, my dad is autistic and my mom is ADHD. So since birth, I had already picked a lane. Not by diagnosis but by familiarity (ha!). What I’m saying is that I’m like a dog that was raised by cats, and instead of connecting with dogs, I have looked for cats instead. Because cats are family.

Now, what does that have to do with being alone? Everything.

You see, my family was famous at church for being so closed off. No one could befriend my dad, he always said “I don’t have friends” with a smile on his face, as if it was an accomplishment. My mom, on the other hand, wasn’t proud of not having friends, she just didn’t have them. Every time she got close to having one, she blew it off, and cut contact. My older brother was bullied relentlessly, my older sister didn’t tell me shit about her life ever (still doesn’t). I was in a family of loners. And me? I was just there.

What I absorbed from the environment I was in was that real adults don’t have friends. Real adults have families. They might even have colleagues, but that’s as intense as it gets. Friendships are for children and adolescent-minded adults who couldn’t build a family for themselves. As you can see, this is not really autistic related, but I was also raised Mormon so shit like this overlaps. Autistic people in religious environments tend to be the most faithful, the closest they can be to the ideal church-goer. The black and white thoughts are there for every single doctrine, including, in this case, the family is everything doctrine.

To be fair, my parents were probably just using the doctrine as some sort of justification for why they don’t want to have friends. But in mini Hanna’s mind, I thought they were being for real. I thought adults wouldn’t lie to children. I thought about things literally… Wait, am I autistic? Who knows.

The point is, I took it seriously.

I admired the fact my parents didn’t need friends, that they were self sufficient as fuck, that they could just pull a fucking Cast Away and survive dire conditions by themselves with no one’s help… or that’s what they said. Reality wasn’t that isolating. They had a maid/nanny, and my mom got help from her parents a lot. They had community at church and never really lived by themselves. The extended family would show up every week for Sunday lunches and work colleagues were always mentioned. While I received the message that they were independent, they were also cheating on the philosophy they preached.

In 2023, I moved out. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to rest. I wanted to do shit on my own and be independent! I wanted to be far far away from my family. I wanted to write my own destiny. Except. I hadn’t considered that I didn’t know anyone in this new city and that my parents would be on the other side of the country and that any help I might need would be paid… That I had to do all the dishes, all the meals and feed my cats many times a day, as well as work, even when I’m sick since I work by myself (independent, again).

I expected solitude to be relaxing.

I expected to go out every weekend by myself, have a lot of fun and sleep calmly, knowing no one could ever stop me.

Well. I got sick. Endometriosis plus sciatica were ruining me. Considering both inflamed spots were in my pelvis, on the right side, all I knew was pain and exhaustion. I pushed myself, very careful not to trigger the burnout I had after high school, afraid everything would crumble if I only made one meaningless decision incorrectly.

I took a long fucking time to ask for help. And when I did, it was from my mom.

My mom came as fast as possible. Family is everything, remember?

I felt peace for the first time since moving out. We ate at restaurants, she did the dishes while I recovered from surgery. I could actually go out and feel like I wasn’t abandoning my cats at home, it was great. Until she left.

Since then, I've been trying to ride a depression that feels rather conditional. The condition is if I'm able to handle my chores or not. If I can handle problems or not. If I can hit my goals or not. If I fail at one thing, depression sets, and I just want to die. Admitting that to my family would be a failure, though. “So you don’t want to live alone because you need people? Who does that?” would be the summarized version of it. And honestly, a lot of people would think the same if someone explained they don’t wanna live alone because it’s, well… lonely.

Living alone is fucking tiring. There is no one to do you a favor. And in theory, that sounds small, right? Let’s say, you’re very cozy in bed. Very very cozy. Perfect position. You’re so fucking sleepy. But the fucking light is on. What do you do?

If you live with your family you can scream your sister’s name until she shows up asking “what?” and then you ask her to turn off the light and she says “I can’t believe you just screamed my name for this” and then she turns off the light and leaves your room, you didn’t even move or think and you sleep calmly.

If you live alone, you think to yourself “why the fuck did I not turn it off?”. Something super small becomes your fault. “Now I have to get up” And you don’t want to. “Can’t a girl get a fucking break?” You commiserate. “Ok, I’m gonna do it. NOW” and you get up, all tired, and pissed, turn off the light and go back to bed. The position is changed, the blanket is not on top of you anymore, your feet are in the air, and you are there wondering when the fuck the love of your life will fall from the sky to spare you from loneliness.

Additionally, this isn’t just about being autistic or raised Mormon. But also about neoliberalism. That’s right, this is the part of the essay I blame everything on capitalism.

Why the fuck do we romanticize living alone? Why did I do it? Why do people see having roommates as the same as being broke or being a Peter Pan adult? Why can’t people just let others include friends in their lives?

And I’m aware this is a champagne problem.

Most people in this world today will never be in the position of living alone, and yet I’m here bitching about it. But it’s true. I was really sold a lie. Solitude is not for everyone, and being awkwardly social is more my vibe than being a hermit. Neoliberalism tells us solitude is the same as finding oneself, it’s the way to go! Until you find the love of your life, of course; someone you can have children with, because we need more workers, I mean, children.

And this is the crux of it. Admitting you need people. Admitting we need each other. Admitting that the homeless woman with naked children is your family too. Only a capitalist world could be this connected through the internet and not have solved poverty. Only a capitalist world would tell you that living alone is empowering because you do everything by yourself. Only capitalism would tell you that adults don’t need friends or leisure. We have to admit it, isolation makes great consumers. The more isolated you are, the more people you’ll have to hire, the more products you’ll need, the more meds you will have to take and you will work like a dog to pay for those services and products while you wait for the perfect partner to happen to you, because you don’t have friends anymore.

CAVEAT: This essay is for the comfort of bisexual women, queer women and lesbians (as well as non binary people if it so applies). If you are a guy, please be respectful, and don’t act like this essay is about you, and most importantly, don’t act like you know everything about lesbians just because you’ve read this.

At 13, I fell for my best friend. Hard. I drew her, I thought of her all the time. I thought about hugging her, loving her, kissing her. The sexual part of it only came after a year or so while this crush developed, when I finally understood how lesbians had fucked. And I was into it.

It should be a very straight forward story, after all, I knew from an early age, and I liked the idea of being with women. That’s quite simple… lesbian! And that’s how I thought about it for a long time too. As a child I used to have meaningless crushes on boys, but it was not even close to the crushes I had on girls. Girls were prettier, nicer, better friends, more intelligent, and better in every way. I had crushes on adult women and to me, that felt extra perverted (as if straight teen girls don’t have crushes on grown men too) and I felt incredibly bad for being so attracted to women.

Cutting to now, I’ve had sex with men, and I’ve sexted men. Was I experimenting? I guess, but also I was horny and wanted to scratch the itch. Knowing how hard it is to find women to have a casual fling, I chose the biggest man whore in my circle and explained sex was all I wanted. It was ok, he was respectful, and I sexted men after this too.

I also dated this trans boy very briefly. I was 20 and he was 19, it was all online. But I couldn’t get over the fact that I’d be dating a man if this continued, and I hated the idea so much. After a month, I told him it wouldn’t work. Even though he was a sweetheart and I was sexually into him, the romantic part was doomed to fail. He completely understood, and let me go with kindness.

Now, I call myself a lesbian. And the reason is quite simple. I would never date a man. And I also don’t think I could fuck one men for long enough that he gets attached. I’m disgusted by the idea, and I just love women so much that having a girlfriend would make me hornier than having a fling with a guy. So I simply kept this information to myself, until, one day, on twitter, I saw some lesbians talk about bi-lesbianism.

And this is not a term I like for myself. I prefer to say I’m homoromantic bisexual, but to simplify things, I just say I’m a lesbian. After all, I’ll never date a man or introduce a man as a partner to anyone I care about. Women are the center of my world, and I love it.

This sounds like a very confusing experience, but I’ve met other women like me before. Confusing lesbians, if you will. I had a friend who liked to imagine herself with a dick when she fucked a girl, and she said she wasn’t trans, the idea just turned her on. I’ve also met a lesbian that was a cuck, and wanted a guy to fuck her girlfriend. I’ve met lesbians who exclusively watch gay guy porn, or gay guy fanfics. But of course, the whole thing was very “hush hush, please don’t tell anyone”, and it usually came with the admission they’d question if they were lesbians, even though they had lesbian sex on the daily.

Many people will argue that these girls were just bi. And if they so wished, they could have called themselves bi, sure. But that wasn’t the case. I’m not saying that lesbians who only like vag, and would only kiss girls, and aren’t interested in men in any way don’t exist. But humans are very often messier than not, and that’s a reality, just like the 110% lesbians also are a reality.

Something about cisgender lesbians, we are not very liberated. Most people (even in the queer community) assume women have lower libidos than men, are less horny, and even less kinky. I don’t think that’s true. Women are more traumatized, and more repressed, and less confident in what they want, sometimes even when it’s clear as day. There’s a reason gay boys very often know they’re gay much younger than dykes. Sexuality is not a thing for women in most people’s minds and when we ourselves assume we don’t have a sexuality to begin with, it’s harder to understand what is happening.

This subject can ramify in a thousand different directions. Rape culture is one of them, the fake “male loneliness epidemic” too. But I’m exploring how this shows up in lesbian relationships and the community today.

In 2021, I got an online girlfriend. We talked for a whole day easily. We understood each other in a way I’ve never experienced before, and she was older than me (hot), so naturally, I assumed she was as sexually into me as I was into her. She was 38 but she was a virgin. I didn’t care. After 3 years of relationship, we must have sexted about 30 times. And I was always initiating it, I hated when we sexted because she was so obviously just wanting to please me. Where was the desire? Where was the passion? I was so confused, we matched so well romantically.

I finally understood that she was asexual, very asexual too. We had problems because of this. I didn’t want to cheat, but I did wanna fuck. I was gonna explode, but I persisted (like women often do) and ignored my sexual impulses for the good of the relationship. The reason we broke up was another one completely, but I was so relieved. I just needed to fuck a girl. Now. and in real life, please. I did. It was hot, it was nice. I met this new girl at a club and then she cancelled our first date because she ended up wanting to go back to her ex (can’t relate).

So yeah, readers, lesbianism isn’t simple. It isn’t black and white. And it comes with so much shame sometimes.

As a teen, I was embarrassed about liking women, as a young adult, I was embarrassed about liking men sexually. It was complicated.

Most anti bi-lesbian arguments on the hellsite (twitter) were very focused on defining lesbianism by the exclusion of men. To be a lesbian is to not like men. And although on the surface it seems harmless, the core of the argument is that men are the sexuality definers.

Have you ever met a bi man? They seem less common than bi women, right? I have, and he called himself gay. Until he started flirting with me, and I asked him if he liked girls too. He said he did. I asked if he was bi, he confirmed. He explained he doesn’t say it right away to people because they never believe that he would like girls too, even though he did. Again, being into men is considered the sexuality definer.

You’ve probably met a bi girl before, and have seen some version of a biphobic joke implying that bi women don’t like women and are actually just into men, Again, men are considered the sexuality definers.

Now, are you getting the theme here? Attraction to men is the real deal to a heteronormative society. And I don’t think that we, as queer people, should be considering men to be the center of the universe. Like I said, the center of my universe has always been and will always be women.

Some people on the hellsite went far enough to affirm that bi-lesbianism is like calling yourself vegan and eating meat on the side. I think this kind of comparison is especially ridiculous. Veganism is restriction of certain kinds of food, lesbianism is richness, joy, abundance. There is no restriction in liking women, and the idea of comparing lesbianism to a diet is fucking crazy to me.

If feels like lesbians subscribe to the biblical ideal that sodomy is real gayness, and we’re some sort of celibate little group that would never touch such things. As if lesbianism is virginity, instead of a sexuality you can bathe yourself in and have so much pleasure you can’t even describe it. These exclusionary lesbians sanitize lesbianism so much, they end up making a huge percentage of lesbians ashamed. You’d assume that at least the “real” lesbians would have some peace, but even they end up having to walk a very strict path, where saying a male character is pretty is considered too much. Where even comphet is “fake” and is just bisexuality.

I’d like to talk about someone else too. A bi friend of mine who is only into women! She says that when she was younger and hornier (like me) she would fuck men and women and love it. She's now 42 though, she only likes women and doesn’t feel attracted to men at all. Is she a lesbian now? Some exclusionary lesbians would say yes. Others would say that if she has enjoyed sex with a man ever, she could never be a lesbian. In their heads, men define sexuality even when they aren’t there. Go figure.

I believe it would be wiser if we started defining lesbianism by the love of women, instead of defining it by the dislike of men. I’d like to be remembered for what I love. I also want to hold your queer hand when I say this: You can absolutely call yourself a lesbian if you think it’s the right label for you, even if for all intents and purposes, you like men. I believe that the only thing you need to define yourself as a lesbian is to be obsessed with women. Take this last sentence however you want. Just don’t be ashamed of your desires. If you’re ashamed, you will feel alone, and that shouldn’t be happening in a community that prides itself in freedom, joy and liberation.

I started working as a teacher in 2023, but it wasn’t the first time I saw myself in this spot of therapist. I have been my friends’ therapist since I decided to take my own healing seriously as a teenager. I was listening to them carefully, empathizing, having visions of me living as they live, feeling what they feel, and giving advice carefully, kindly, with an open mind. I saw how alone they felt in their struggles. In my little mind simulations, I felt utterly alone in their shoes. So I put in the work to understand people in depth. I read psychology books, learned to interpret scientific papers and tested what I found again and again, in myself first, and in others as a tip or an idea.

My reading took me to studying various disorders, mainly autism. I related to those symptoms, I related to that history, and I read as much as I could from actual autistics about their own experiences, partially because I wanted to understand myself and the weird people I always seemed to attract and felt attracted to/by.

Since that happened, I’ve talked to two friends about their own autistic traits. They seemed to suffer more than me, and since both of them felt the need to be validated, they got the evaluation done. Both were, in fact, autistic. And although I was very happy with the news that I was right (aren’t we all a bit self-centered sometimes?), I was also thinking about their life stories.

My first friend, who I won’t name, was emotionally abused by her mom, neglected socially, severely anxious, and her younger brother got all of the money and attention she never had. She was often put on cleaning duty in her house while her dear dad and brother did nothing. She became the family’s Cinderella, and I was so mad at her mom for doing this to her, I couldn’t help but express it. My friend was defensive and told me she loved her mom, inferring I shouldn’t talk about her. I got the message that I shouldn’t criticize her mom too much, to not hurt my friend’s feelings. But the abuse continued. Eventually, we stopped being friends for no apparent reason (on my side). But her story reverberates in my head, still.

My second friend, a more recent friendship, was evaluated after I paid for it. She was broke and even though she is only 23, her dad has always said he is “very worried” about her future, because she “isn’t hard-working enough”. Just to make things abundantly clear, my friend takes notes on what people tell her and reads them again to herself in the bathroom, to not forget any relevant information. And even though her hypothyroidism has been beating her ass, she still goes to work by bus, does her 8 hours and comes back to study, because she has college on the weekends. My friend is more hard-working than her dad and most people I know.

Both of these friends were autistic. They grew up very lonely, with few friends themselves. Frequently losing short-lived connections with no clear reason as to why it was a common occurence. They felt bad about their appearances, their intelligence, their personalities. Everything seemed to be the problem. “People just notice I’m weird, and a bad person and eventually, they all leave” they would say.

My story is a bit more complicated than that. I was less neglected socially than my “fun” friends (it’s how I called my autistic friends before I knew what autism was). I had an older sister that taught me to be polite, smart, and cut-throat, like she is. And although the mormon church was a place of a lot of trauma for me, I also had the opportunity to compare the world with the church: the social expectations changing in real time, the right word inside of the church being the wrong word outside; I was forced to observe the social nuances of the places I entered. I also had close contact with my younger cousins, whom I taught about the world. In sum, although I relate to autism, and do wonder if I should get my own evaluation done, I’m usually less socially stunted than most autistics, and this got me wondering about social neglect and social rejection as a marginalization tool.

The common past of a socially stunted person

1. Immature parents

Many socially stunted people have parents who were not loving, not caring, avoidant and not emotionally present. When the child needed guidance, they offered nothing, or shitty advice. When the child needed love, they offered nothing or a call-out instead. When the child needed to be called out, they laughed at them, or scolded them too severely. In general, socially stunted kids are usually raised by socially stunted parents.

“We like to imagine that most children will be born into homes where they will be loved. But love will not be present if the grown-ups who aren’t do not know how to love” (bell hooks)

2. No stable long-term friendships as a child

Being an only child, as well as being homeschooled are common memetic images of an awkward kid: self-centered, righteous and close-minded. I don’t think that’s true, or rather, I think these aspects are too simplistic to judge a person by in isolation. Many only children and homeschooled children had cousins around, neighborhood kids in their house, extracurricular classes from a young age that kept them socially sharp. As much as I hated the church, I’ve had childhood friends there since I was a baby. As much as having siblings and cousins could be shitty, I also had to learn to control my emotions, comfort people, entertain others and judge less in order to keep the friendship comfortable for them -- and for me. Additionally, the fact that it was long term and we were forced to see each other the next day, made conflict resolution inevitable. Calling each other out was the only way to solve problems, because we couldn’t leave! Now, if you didn’t have that, you probably never learned to share food and toys, you saw yourself playing on your own more, and the only fighting going on was from top to bottom: your parents vs you, and they always won.

3. School friends saw them as replaceable

Now, if you don’t have experience with people outside of school, because your parents are distant, and you don’t have siblings or friends, and there isn’t a community you go to -- What happens? You’re already socially stunted and people around you at school might avoid you. Not because you’re dumb, or ugly, or not cool. But because you offended someone, or because you only like to hear your own voice, because you are aggressive towards other people’s points of view, because, maybe, you never learned to be a good friend.

However, there’s a caveat here. Some kids ARE evil, some kids are bullies, and some kids do care if you’re not cool, not pretty, or not clever. But when you’re trying to talk to everybody, and nobody gives you the time of the day, you’re either marginalized or a bad friend, or both. (After all, marginalized people are often socially stunted against their will).

Remember, please, that even the kid who is a bad friend due to neglect shouldn’t be chastised for not knowing how to be a good friend -- my point here is bigger than putting the blame on a neglected kid. The point is the lack of third spaces, the distance between neighbors, the increasing hours at work, the money being so tight, that parents can’t pay for the kid to have extracurricular classes. Parents are so burnt out they can’t be there emotionally even if they try. There is also a point to be made about people who want to have more than one children not being able to, due to lack of support and money. The problem here is that many children born in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s grew up confused as to why everybody seems to figure friendships and relationships out and they can’t.

You already know that I’ve been helping friends through this journey. Most of them got a little better, felt a little more daring to make new friends, set boundaries, break up with their shitty partners, fight their parents, stand up for themselves, and feel stronger now that they have connections outside of work, school or their immediate family. But I’d like to share in detail how this process was for me, too.

I had to do it by myself, with the resources I had. It was 2013 when I had my first phone that could access YouTube. It was a Galaxy 3S mini, I loved that fucking phone. At that time, I wasn’t aware I was a bad friend, I always had one BFF and that was enough for me. When she wasn’t there anymore, I would jump to the next, not seeing a pattern yet, but going with my natural lesbian flow of intense friendships that mimicked my growing desire for romance.

When I was a tween, I had a falling out with my BFF. She was hurt about something I had done. I was defensive, and, without thinking, I argued with her about how ried to prove to her I was a good friend and ended up giving the impression I was sacrificing myself when it was actually my pleasure. She didn’t give me the “you’re a bad friend” feedback because most people are never that direct. I had to digest it for years to get the message that I was just a cunt to her, and that’s why she wanted distance.

After the falling out, I wondered “why is it hurting so much?” I had to think about how close I wanted to be with her and if that was natural. I had to consider if those feelings were totally new or just a more intense version of previous girl crushes. I was 13 and I had realized I was a lesbian, but not yet fully realized that I lost her because I was a bad friend.

Right when I was going through that drama, I had made another friend, she knew all about my crush and she was not homophobic at all (which surprised me). She listened to my monologues and rants. I loved to hear the sound of my own voice constantly and never ask my friend for anything back, just acting like she was my royal counselor, hired to listen and occasionally give me advice. I was mean to her, I called her ugly! I called her untalented. I was a fucking bitch.

This friend eventually said that her therapist didn’t like how I was treating her and said that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I understood what I had done, I apologized, but it was too late. She just didn’t want to be my friend anymore.

I was still going through my lesbian acceptance journey (that I’m embarrassed to admit, it took about 5 years to be completed), but being rejected cut deep, and I was under the impression I was being rejected because there was something inherently wrong with me, something people noticed, something I couldn’t fully hide. The internalized homophobia didn’t help, because it felt like all of my relationships were doomed because I was some sort of pervert, a broken pervert at that.

In an attempt to be better, I read lots of philosophy books. At first, many of the conservatives, of course, because I couldn’t bear to change my views too radically. Descartes, Kant, and finally, Aristotle. He made me think about virtues in a way that has never left my brain. Til this day, I’m thinking “I’m being kind but am I being too kind? Is there a perfect way to hit a balanced way to want to be respected without it becoming an ego problem? Can I strike a balance between not wanting to be a perpetrator but not letting myself be a victim?”. In general, Aristotle made me think of my faults and my strengths in a neutral manner, not so deeply attached to my traumas, but as a way to develop. Suddenly, I wasn’t stuck in my shittiness, I felt free to grow.

Then I made a Facebook account and started being intrigued by all the feminist stuff going around at the time. I particularly liked the posts where women were sharing their past stories with men (it was relatable to me, since I was a victim of sexual abuse at a very young age). While most of my friends were posting pictures of them with their friends (Instagram wasn’t yet super famous) I was posting memes and dumb shit, as well as pictures of food, sharing my friend’s stuff and stalking them in general. I didn’t realize this was awkward to do, until people started making fun of me. I was quick to delete Facebook so I started watching more YouTube videos. Lots of videos about “how to know if you’re a lesbian”, lots of coming out videos, lots of videos about trans people. I subscribed to the idea that I had to listen to all sides first and to figure out my own opinion later. At first, I followed many terfs, and then I realized the terfs were definitely wrong when I was like 17. I took my sweet time to finally unsubscribe to all of the them, and I realized that transmedicalists had a very similar rhetoric as the terfs I once watched, so, as an experiment, I followed the people that everyone seemed to make fun of (Riley J Denis, and Ash Hardell) and all the sweet ones that were accepting of everybody (Jammi Dodger) and decided to do that in all aspects of my politics. If the “extreme” and “too accepting” were dangerous, I would see red flags, just like I noticed them with the terfs. So I finally gave them the time of day. I unsubscribed to the creationists, the mormons, the conservatives, the trans medicalists, the lesbians that had imaginary beef with trans women, the apologists in general. And I waited... For sure the extremists would show their true colors right? Their hate towards me? For sure they were irrational, and unscientific, and living in a world of sunshine and rainbows that our dirty awful world could never become... right?

Not really. No red flags. They were actually extremely kind to conservatives that said the most vitriolic shit about them. They made me think in ways I never thought before, I was shocked by their strength, and their willingness to believe that the world could be better, that people could be better. I was so impressed at how well read they were in comparison to conservatives, and how they never seemed to rely on “normalcy” and “common sense” as an argument. Instead, they used logic that was clear, they used history. So they are... the rational ones? My world was put upside down. I knew I had to be braver, I needed to be more like them. I needed to come out, and to read more, and to change myself to be a real leftist, not a christian posing as a leftist online.

As I said, it took years. And I’m embarrassed by how long it took til this day. I had to wait for my brain to take information I wasn’t ready to absorb, my mental health was in shambles because all week I’d watch amazing rational people talking about Philosophy and Science and Politics with such knowledge and then go to Mormon Church to hear the most homophobic and transphobic shit under the guise of “family values” as if christianity wasn’t separating gay kids from their parents.

I had a war going on inside me. I wanted to come out, but I still believed in the Mormon God, I hoped my parents could help me and instead they shoved me back into the closet. But I came out again and again, even though the threat of being kicked out was looming over me. My brother semi rejected me, my sister was the worst of them all, and I was left with my little cousin who is the straightest, least homophobic mormon bimbo you’ve ever met.

I finally decided to put a stop to that madness at 18 years old. I knew I had to leave the church, and I didn’t want to leave while my name was kept in the books, just for them to stalk me wherever I go, and count me in as one the members when I’m fucking not. So I talked to a pro-bono lawyer online to take away my name from the books officially. Of course, according to the Mormon bureaucracy, the report had to be signed by my stake president, and the lawyer explained I didn’t have to ask it myself, he would do it. The problem is that the president was besties with my dad, who was his counselor. I remember feeling my heart beat so fast every single time I remembered what I had done, wondering when my dad would finally find out. When he did, three months later, I was obviously screamed at, scolded, told I was going to hell, that I embarrassed him, that he would lose his opportunity to be bishop, all because of me. Thank God, that little rant of his came on a good day for me, I was waiting for it. I was prepared. I wondered if my grandma would take me in if dad kicked me out. But after I saw that wouldn’t happen, I could finally breathe. I breathing I did. And I decided I’d be a better friend, now that I knew I wasn’t rotten from the inside. Here’s what I did:

Tips for friendless adults who consider themselves awful

1. Realizing that you’re socially not there yet

Seeing my two friends leave was not enough, I had to process what I had done to lose both friendships, and finally accept that I was not good company. I wasn’t easy to deal with, I wasn’t kind, I didn’t know who I was and I put all of this on them for them to solve. In this step, you need to realize what exactly you did, why you did it, and why it’s unfair.

2. Realizing it isn’t because you are bad at your core

I had a lot to unpack in this aspect. The Mormon church makes people feel bad for feeling sexual desire, and acting on it, and anything is seen as “acting on it”. Reading smut, watching porn, consuming nude art, or having actual sex. But also, I had another layer of sexual shame: not only I am gay, but I’m also particularly horny as well. I was into my friends, and into teachers, and into women double my age. I was curious, and I knew that even among lesbians, what I was into was probably going to be questioned (I didn’t fully know what kink was at the time). Now, at a deeper level, I was also not-white. I know that to the average white, I just look latina. But I’m actually Indigenous, Black and white. And according to Mormon lore, that makes me sinful. I had to unpack that too on top of everything else. So here I recommend that you understand your insecurities, your baggage and your past. The goal here is not to feel amazing about yourself, since that takes much longer. The goal is neutrality: I’m human, I’m ok, I deserve good things.

3. Figuring out who you are, why you are and what you need

This one has a lot to do with step one, now that you realized what you do wrong to offend, hurt or make kind people leave, you might need to do intense introspection to figure out why you are like that, what you need to do, what you need from life, and who you are through those needs (and wants). Many people wonder how to figure out who they are but it’s kinda simple. You are your needs and your desires. And if you want to love who you are, you need to remove the shame from those needs and desires.

4. Realizing that we all need community

This one is an important step for the loners. I know that putting yourself out there is a pain in the ass, when I was figuring myself out, I thought I needed to be lonely to fix myself, but I quickly realized that without practice, I’d never know if I’m a good friend, a good partner or a good person. I needed proof.

5. Realizing that it doesn’t matter how marginalized you are, you can still find friends - although it will be harder

I put myself in such a position that I went from radical conservative to radical leftist in a couple of years, which is a transition that scares both sides a lot. Conservatives think you’ve become the devil, and leftists wonder if you really absorbed the message, or if you’ll turn back to your conservative ways after having a minor disagreement. Now, living in Brazil, the most common flavor of leftism here is not the same as the flavor I am. Many leftists here are so focused on class, they think we should throw minorities under the bus so “Dona Maria” can vote for leftist candidates without having to accept trans people. And I don’t want to bend to that sort of leftism, I’m afraid. Having friends that understand that I’m not white is another problem. In Brazil, if you’re not Black, you’re white. and that fake dichotomy hurts Indigenous people and Asians a lot, but mixed people like me have to essentially pick a side. And of course, most of us choose the whiter side: trying to pass as white as much as they can.

In sum, It’s hard to have someone to talk to sincerely about my opinions without sounding like I’m fucking insane to most of them. Do I stop trying? No. Because I know I need people, everybody does.

6. Being a good friend (finally, the meat and potatoes)

a: don’t scream, don’t explode

If you learned to bottle your emotions and you were the kind of kid that screamed back at your parents (I was both), this is important to remember. Not only are you a jerk for screaming at people (I don’t care if the fight is intense or if you’re tired, btw), but people also have trauma about screaming. You don’t want to be a reminder of their trauma, it doesn’t matter how right it might feel for you to do so.

b: understand abuse

This one is very related to step a. If you don’t understand abuse, you’re either going to be abused, or be an abuser. Of course, even people that are aware of abuse can fall into it, but the most vulnerable are the people that don’t know about it in depth. You have to understand about financial abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse and how these play out in real life scenarios, and also learn about the red flags that come with them. Abusers are not going around saying “let me scream at my girlfriend today because she deserves it”. No, they get mad, don’t know how to control emotions, think they’re somehow justified, and do it without thinking. And then, sometimes, they realize what they did and ask for forgiveness and start lovebombing, to avoid being caught in their bullshit.

c: careful with “you” statements, especially “you are” statements. also with “your___ is”

Now this is the sort of thing that autistics especially need to pay attention to. Most of us have learned not to talk about people’s bodies from a young age. But many of us don’t realize that saying “you’re talkative” can make someone shut down immediately as well. Furthermore, if their parents are abusive and you go “your mom is a bitch”, guess who you’re hurting, if your friend loves her mom? Yeah. This is something I struggle with til this day. I get protective of the people I like, and when someone THEY like say something iffy, I jump to protect them immediately, not realizing I could be hurting them too. This is how I started paying attention to “you are” statements. Everytime I associate someone to a characteristic, I have to pause, think, acess the risk of offending them, and finally, do it.

d: careful with what you laugh at

Some people are very traumatized and sensitive towards being laughed at, or even with. Many autistic people have been in a situation where they thought they were laughing with someone, to only later realize they were being bullied. So if you’re miss laugh at everything, like me, hold your fucking chuckles if someone is being vulnerable. If you chuckle a lot while having sex because you’re giddy, but the other person is embarrassed, it’s time to stop the chuckling, and ask what is going on. If someone is telling you their opinion about something that matters to them, don’t laugh. Swallow that laugh if necessary, you need to take some shit seriously too.

d: listen: be genuinely curious

This might be the most important tip actually, it’s one that you can start practicing right away, and you don’t need to be deconstructed, therapized or even socially attuned to do it. Instead of talking about yourself, judging, giving shitty advice, or being uncomfortable, you can simply ask a question back, and carefully listen. What is it that you like doing? What is your dream job? Do you have quirks? What is your family like? - Let the person talk. It might sound superficial, but it’s what makes people feel safe with you. You’re curious about them, you care, you listen. They can come to you when they’re feeling good or bad. And this is why I still maintained friends even while I felt like absolute shit and didn’t know myself yet: I was curious about my friends instead.

e: compliments

This is also an easy one that doesn’t seem that important. Do you know when someone you like talks to you about a random girl that complimented their hair that day? Do you know how it is to be complimented yourself? Sometimes one compliment makes someone’s whole day, whole year or even a whole life. Someone who was never called a good friend (like me until I was 17) will be called a good friend once, and suddenly they realize they’re making progress, they’re being appreciated. We feel inspired to care about the things people compliment about us! That is a very powerful thing. And that is why it should be used with sincerity. Don’t do it to aspects you find to not be true. Don’t lie. Just genuinely appreciate people’s beauty, effort, intelligences (because there are many kinds), compliment their pose, their shoes, their hair. We all live a richer life when we feel like people are admiring us, like we bring good things to the table.

f: politics has a lot to do with self esteem when you are a minority

This one is relevant if you’re the person that is autistic AND socially stunted. If you’re gay, trans, Black, disabled, or any other minority as well -- Including the ones people consider to not be minorities but just “weird” groups, like kinky, furry, poly. Bottom line, you should probably be a leftist. And probably as much of a leftist as you can. Because conservatives fake liking us (when they even try to fake), and at least in leftist spaces, you can be seen with more humanity. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better. The more contact you have with open-minded people, the less alone you will feel, and that’s the point.

We all need people, we all want to feel loved, most of us want friends, most of us want romance, and a good chunk of us want sex too. All of that includes dealing with people and we’re all here to learn, so don’t let your beliefs hinder you completely, change your beliefs to free yourself instead.

Nowadays, I can finally put this narrative together. Growing up, I thought the real deal was motherhood. In the Mormon church, I was taught my goal was to be a mother, that the most important connection was between a mom and her child. I thought I couldn’t live without my family. And when I left the church, I was taught that romantic love is the real deal. After that, I realized romance and sex is not the most important part of living, romance was just a nice additional relationship to an already established healthy social life.

Eventually, I figured I didn’t want children, that romantic love is not the goal of life, and that my family was only welcome if they treated me well. What was left then? What relationships did I need? Friendships.

In our society, friendships are treated as a given, something low maintenance, something less important. Women often neglect friendships because of a romantic connection, and since it’s expected of them to fully commit to a relationship, it’s easier to understand such neglect. But what keeps humans alive is not if you have a spouse, children, or even parents. Friendships are doing the heavy lifting, they keep us afloat. They help in tiny ways, and when you have a couple of friends, those tiny things accumulate; they end up saving you from all kinds of hardship. Much has been said about community, third spaces, safety networks, safe people, found families, queerplatonic relationships, and although these terms can mean different things for everyone, and they can involve different levels of romantic and sexual attachment, the very first step is friendship. And to be able to do that, you need to be a good friend.

For context, my dad is autistic (diagnosed at the time as childhood schizophrenia) and my mom is ADHD. I'm apparently neither, as of now. But I grew up in a family of weird people with quirks, sensibilities, limitations and self-hating thoughts. They need structure and stable lowkey jobs. Most don't have any friends except for other relatives and church acquaintances. And they are all very religious.

Here comes me. I was always very emotional, very empathetic and would defend my family and my beliefs with claws and fangs. Naturally, I grew up with an inherent attraction to weirdos. I always looked forward to making what I considered fun friends instead of boring ones. To other people, what I considered “fun” was actually just weird. But I didn’t care.

Now, am I weird? I might not be diagnosed autistic or ADHD, I might not need to mask constantly, but I am. I am weird. The interesting part is that I can fake not being weird fairly well, and I could potentially only mingle with normal people, conservatives, people that don't scratch beyond the surface, people who rarely have existential crises, or who think faking it is necessary for society to run smoothly. But I never cared for those people, they are boring.

Some of my friends were: Lumi. She was awkward and had funny interests. Patricia was a 9-year-old atheist and feminist. Barbara was shy and didn't like people pointing at her, she was also obsessed with elephants. Thalita had a fairy-like persona and was always very hopeful. Nina was a weed addict and a sweetheart. Luisa was a bipolar artist. Arthur was an autistic nerdy kid. Putri was a depressed bisexual extremely reserved woman. Tuga was a sweet confused lovely autistic person. Loops is an autistic nerdy girl who would do anything to change her life, except y'know, actually changing it. And there’s also Wero, my newest friend, who is an autistic lesbian who loves hamsters and was desperate to be one of the popular kids as a teen.

I love complicated people. I love the people that define themselves as friendless, unbearable, too much and, although it's not a dealbreaker that they hate themselves, it has been a while I haven't met someone who likes, or even loves, being weird. As a kid, I had plenty of fun friends that loved themselves In my adolescence, they started getting depressed and now... holy shit. They all hate themselves.

Trigger warning: social rejection, depression, abuse, suicide.

There are many reasons for that self-hatred. I'll number a few.

1. We notice people hate us

Even though I fucking love the weirdos, I know that most people are not into them. I experience this as a normal-for-pay person. When I act like myself, people find it disturbing, awkward and cringey.

On the most superficial level, people often use the word "weird" to refer to suspicious or red-flag behavior. To the point that anything considered remotely weird by them is suspicious enough to avoid the person entirely. So, if you’re off-putting, before you even meet someone, your demeanor can be enough for you to be rejected.

If the weird person somehow breaks that glass and they get to the colleague stage, their sincerity about their faults and imperfections is seen as a problem to normal society. They don't know they have to fake being busy, intelligent, beautiful, emotionally mature, regulated, friendly and desired. The problem is: normal people think we should all be lying and posing in order to keep business running as usual. But a good chunk of weirdos can't fake it. They genuinely think that everybody else is busy, happy, desired, etc. They believe normal people! They fall for the lie! And I think the reason they do is exactly because they are being sincere about their lives and they expect people to also be telling the truth (many of them are also autistic and don't realize people might not be literal, AKA truthful).

Now, if the freak (c'est chic) manages to walk through those stages successfully, they might get abused. Unconventional people usually get bullied by everyone. And when I say everyone, it doesn't just mean classmates. It means teachers, siblings and even parents. It means friends and partners. Weirdos often date abusive people and accept egregious behavior because they think they deserve it, they think it's expected. Frequently, abusive men look for depressed, bpd, autistic, anxious girls to abuse. Their logic goes: "If everybody hates this woman, nobody will protect her". It's no surprise freaks and weirdos feel like shit after growing up

What comes from these social experiences is the belief that "everyone is doing well except me". And the reason (they are told by family and "friends") is their weirdness pushes potential friends, partners and jobs away. So naturally, as they grow up and their peers pose more and more fake happiness and stability, they develop hate for themselves and their unconventional personalities.

2. Capitalism makes us feel useless

I'll start this item argument with a rhetorical question: why are we on this Earth? Religious people say it's in order to be tested. Capitalism says it's to work and make money. On the other hand, nature says it was because the conditions were good for that to happen.

Now, if you're a weird person, you probably grew up socially stunted, believing you can't do many things, and that everybody around you is more capable to do essentially any job. Additionally, if you are autistic and have physical and mental limitations to the 8-hour work load, it becomes a perfect storm. Being bad at your job makes you feel even worse about yourself. Going on interviews and being rejected over and over is a trigger for your social rejection trauma. It's a lot of emotional work to look for a job, and getting the job is not a relief. The work becomes an unbearable weight, where you believe – often correctly – that normal people will clock and fire you.

I remember when I lied in my last job about being diagnosed autistic. It was a bit of a social experiment (I wanted to see how people would treat me), and never in my life was I treated with such disdain. I remember this specific moment when my boss was talking to the secretary about a friend's kid becoming autistic because she watched too many videos on the IPad. Now, if you believed I was truly autistic, why the fuck would you talk about my condition in such terms right in front of me?

In this job, people would often tell me to follow rules that were not being followed by anyone else. They faked being organized, they faked following many rules. They watched my classes on the camera and would give me excessive feedback when I was obviously doing well. They told me how to dress, what shoes to wear (we all wore casual clothes under the work vest) and they talked shit about me when I wasn't there. They fired me after a month.

If you end up subscribing to the capitalist view of work as the purpose of life, of course being incapable of holding a job will be a moral and personal fault.

The solution for that, in my opinion, is realizing that we're here to live and to die. Working is a part of it, but not the meat and potatoes of life. And if Capitalism was a people-first system instead of a money-first system, we would let autistic people work however they like and they wouldn't feel the fear of homelessness breathing down their necks.

3. Social conventions suck ass

The story goes: you are born, you study, you get a job, you get married, you have children and you die.

Actually... it's not just that, is it? No, you have to be born healthy, you study what they want you to study, you get a respectable job, you get married to someone that is equally respected as you (and of the opposite gender), you have biological children and then you die old.

Mind you, not only are all of these already too controlling, this is also the simplified version. There is a plan for you on a year by year basis if you're normal and conservative enough.

Anything could break that little tale: being gay, being trans, being disabled, having a shitty job, studying the “wrong” subjects, being unmarried, not having children or even dying young. Anyone could break that little tale if they only choose one thing different from it. But let's be honest, most normal people don't care too much if you break one or two of these. For them, the problem is when you're uninterested in following the recipe, or when you don't follow too many of these steps. Suddenly, the suspicion arises, and again, you're isolated.

To TERFs, it was a big surprise that trans people were more often autistic than the cisgender population. And expectedly, they rubbed their slimy little hands to use ableism and transphobia together as one powerful oppression tool. To me, however, it was expected that trans people were often autistic. Same as anyone who isn't interested in the normal tale of life.

In 2025, I removed my uterus. It was a big and very easy decision. I have endometriosis and cramps were making me anemic and disabled. I went through chronic daily pain. I still do, but it's not the level 8-9 pain that I went through before the surgery. Naturally, I desired to remove my stupid little uterus.

In true neurotypical fashion, I lied to my family. I knew they were too religious to care for my chronic pain, so I told them the hysterectomy was necessary and recommended by a doctor (I was the one looking for a surgeon to remove that bitch). My family members genuinely, whole-heartedly, grieved my fertility. I could see in their faces the sadness and confusion. They wanted me to follow the tale of life, and they know I won't be able to. And that's advantageous for me. It's less awful to be forced to lose your fertility than to choose to lose it, in my family's mind.

As time passes, more conflict will arise from my choices regarding the tale of life. I'm a lesbian and one day I hope to have a long term partnership with a weird woman, and I know that when my family meets her, the tale of life will come to the surface and they will have to decide if my choice is acceptable or not. Will I care? Not at all, it's truly none of my business.

This story is frequent with weird people, though. With time, we feel more isolated due to our unconventional choices. It usually gets bad when we're teens but after a while, we get to choose if we love ourselves or not. Then, some of us start looking for weird people to be friends with, to partner with. Sometimes we get weirder. We go poly, we become furries, we get into weird fun kinks. We explore different drugs, therapies, family organizations, religions, philosophies. And why the hell shouldn't we?

I’m in a phase of my life where most weirdos are still going through it. Statistically, I know some of them won’t survive. Many autistics are suicidal and most of my friends are too. But since I’m in a happier, more cheerful phase, I think I can offer them the help and love they always deserved. I was lucky enough to make my own business and survive without depending on the good will of a boss that had the sweet little heart to like me, but I know most weirdos don’t have that luck. I wish to be that rock for my friends and hopefully make them realize they deserve good things, and that being weird is not a bad thing. It’s our strength.

To sum the treatment up, there is a gold standard and a fringe treatment. The gold standard only came to be because of how the drug entered the market. "T4 is safer than T3" is the lie many doctors tell patients nowadays, but the argument is faulty: if you take the T3 responsibly everyday, and taper it down if you want to stop taking it, it isn't dangerous at all. But that was different in the 20th century.

In its early stages, both hormones were made from cattle. And although they had a pretty good idea of how much hormone was in the pill, they couldn't be sure.T4 has a longer half-life, so if you accidentally produced a drug with more T4 in one pill, patients wouldn't have huge fluctuations and would, therefore, not feel so different day to day. T3 on the other hand, has a very short half-life and since those hormones affect heart rate, blood pressure, — sleep, hunger and thirst cues — as well as energy levels, any dosage mistakes were felt immediately. To avoid heart attacks, comas, and other less scary side effects, doctors decided it would be safer to prescribe T4 only pills.

However, this is not how pills are made nowadays. We don't use cattle, we have more effective ways to weigh and measure the amount of drugs in one pill. And since T3 is much more effective than T4, some patients prefer it.

Predictably, doctors didn't change their opinions on the matter. But patients have been gathering online and talking about how much T3 helped them to get a sense of normalcy back after years only taking T4. Since I am used to doubting doctors, the first thing I did was to reasearch instead of asking for my doctor's opinion. I wanted to know how thyroids worked, and what were the medicines used to treat a hypo one.

Now, I hadn't tried T4 yet, but there was a clear winner here. T3 helped people much more, it seemed, even if some people felt worse while taking it. Since I am also used to getting drugs with no prescriptions online, I did that with T3 and started my DIY treatment. I felt delighted doing it by myself, from my own curiosity and desire. I always adored treating myself like a lab rat, and this is not the first time I take a drug that wasn't prescribed to me. And I don't care.

While I waited for the pills to arrive, I was excited with the potential effect the drug could have on me. Excited with the new life that I would suddenly build from night to day. I would be a hiker, I would be a cook, my apartment would be flawless and I would have so many friends. I would become skinny and fit and happy, immediately. I would daydream about all the things I'd achieve.

After I took the first pill, I was shocked to notice I was calmer. 

The next day, I took it again, and oh my god, I was so hungry.

The next few days were filled with insomnia, and a bit of adaptation. I was having an easier time taking care of the apartment and I was shitting everyday, sometimes multiple times a day even though my diet was poor in fiber.

I've been taking T3 for a month now. It has been a thrilling and yet calming experience. Everything I thought I knew about myself changed, and I am actually sure that I like it.

If you hooked me to a lie detector, and I had to say "yes" or "no" to the following statements, I'd say yes over and over, and the detector would say "not lying" everytime (if they were that effective).

I'm a very emotional person. Yes.

I'm easily distracted. Yes.

Don't forget: I'm anxious. Yes.

I'm disorganized, my memories are messy, my life is messy and I don't have the energy of a normal person. Yes.

But this is, in fact, not how I am while taking this drug.

I'm sure there are millions of people that have gone through this identity dilemma. Am I who I am with this drug? Does this drug hide who I am or does it highlight my strengths and weaknesses? What is me, what is drug? Even without taking the drug, how do I determine who I am and what is an outside force?

Now, the conclusion is inevitable. We are a mix of the in and the out. We are genotype and fenotype all mixed up until homogenous. Shake it, whip it, turn it to stiff peaks. Preheat the oven at 180ºC, bake it for 20 minutes until it grows. Take it out. Eat it while it's hot.

There is no quantifiable, touchable self. The self is all of it, yada yada yada.

All I know is that who I am now is not who I was before this drug. And that my dearest habits, that were calculated for my pre-T3 body and mind are not useful anymore, awkwardly so.

I found out recently that I can read. Like, truly enjoy a book. See the scenes in my head, pay attention to the words, and feel comfortable and even rested while doing it. Like it is fun. Not like a thing I have to do. It was beautiful.

So naturally, I've been reading this interesting book I bought last called A Little Life. 600 pages, but the pace is delicious. After getting to the part Jude (the protagonist) has a memory of his first occasion of sexual assault, caused by a man he trusted, I was sad, I was uncomfortable. I needed some time to reflect. 10 minutes later, I was interested to know what happened after that. And that caught me off-guard.

I used to be the kind of person that would not only cry at that, but also remember the sexual assault that happened to me. I'd get triggered, sad, affected. I'd tell my friends and my therapist about it, I'd write about it in my diary. All of it to try and process the feelings that I assumed were only there because I didn't do the work of processing them before. Apparently not.

It was such a huge discovery that the T3 had affected my trauma. I thought I had PTSD for the longest time, and maybe I do, but wow, T3 affected a lot of it. How much of it was physical, how much of it was psychological? I beg to understand it, but I don't. The physical and psychological also can't be separated.

Mindhunters, a copaganda TV show starring lesbian magnet Anna Torv, was a show I was dying to watch but couldn't bear to watch. This was two years ago. Every episode includes rape, and I would get triggered instantly if I persisted on watching it. I remember gulping when a line mentioned sexual assault. I was having a hard time.

But after my experience with the rape scene in A Little Life, I was eager to test myself. I called my ex-girlfriend and asked if she wanted to try watching it again. We did, and guess who had a good time? Me. We watched three forty-minute long episodes and I was having a blast, "Anna Torv is so hot and the cases are so interesting." I can't recognize myself anymore.

In my last therapy session, we had a casual conversation about our converging interest in psychology and not me and my life at all. I was having fun listening to her takes, I was into her opinions, and I had only noticed I didn't talk about myself at the last 15 minutes, and I let it go. I didn't want to talk about myself because nothing was bothering me. My therapist noticed that, and felt guilty for talking about our interest; she had to end the session but begged me to send her an audio message explaining what happened during the week. I simply told her my week was very boring and nothing new popped up... It was the truth. 

Additionally, political debate heats me up less than ever. Remembering war is going on in the world doesn't fill me with the emptiness and desperation it did before. I'm really impressed with how much T3 has affected my inner life, and how much it barely affected my energy levels.

Don't get me wrong, I am more energetic than ever. For the first time in my life, I can make three meals a day, exercise for 10 minutes, have fun and work. While also showering, talking with friends and reading. This was more than I have done with my days since I was a child, and maybe ever (when I was a child, I couldn't focus on daily goals, I'd just do whatever). 

I have finally reached normal energy levels, when I dreamed of explosive energy levels. Having a pristine apartment and being a hiker is not what most people can do, and I am fine with having the same energy levels as most people, it's kind of comforting, after decades of forcing myself to be normal, burning out and losing it. But the emotional part shocked me the most.

I don’t want to finish this article with a speech about how medical institutions actively disenfranchise women (women are 7 times more likely to develop hypothyroidism). But let’s pretend I did.

The point is not that the world is unfair and we can’t do anything about it. The point is that we need to be gayer and commit more crime.

Thank you.

Cancer:

1. a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body.

Three months ago, after a tiring day, I took a long hot everything shower. I had been stressed about my performance at work, and how to stay on top of chores; but I tried to take my time and enjoy the hot water touching my back. Shampoo, conditioner, shaving my hairy legs. So peaceful.

“I guess it's time to wash my vagina” I thought.

Squatting down, I awkwardly threw the water in the direction of my pelvis, going in and out gently, trying to rub the oils away.

Something is missing.

“Why can't I feel my cervix?”

I touch it again.

“Oh no” I repeated out loud a million times, poking my canal with greater confidence that it was somehow a fluke. It wasn't. I couldn't feel my cervix.

I guess I panicked because I knew something was wrong. I always had a little area inside my canal that was numb. Since I was about 16. When I fingered myself for the first time.

Google always said that it was normal to not feel the canal perfectly well. And a year before the shower incident, I had gone to the gynecologist asking about that weird rubbery part of my vagina, to which my lovely doctor said “that's just part of your hymen, dear, nothing to worry about”. I didn't know hymen parts could stay there on the walls, whew!

But now that area had grown. A lot. So I called the doctor. A new doctor, at the new city I am now living in. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Hopefully she will listen to me, and everything will work out.

Immediately after the call, I go to Doctor Google for answers. “Numbness?” Google says. “you probably mean dryness, right? that's a sign of menopause” - Google says. I am 24 years old.

Mining for answers was hard. I spent about 40 minutes trying to find a satisfying answer to no avail. Until I did. A blog post from a woman saying that her uterine cancer had pressed the nerves down her canal and caused the numbness. Her uterus had been removed, she had gone through chemo, and now she was in remission. Ok.

“Great. Let's try not to panic. It could be endometriosis. It's not amazing news but It's supposed to be a better diagnosis, I guess.”

I wait anxiously.

OBGYN day. The doctor calls me in. I'm nervous about taking my clothes off. Many women worry about smell, about being shaved and even about having a fupa, that wasn't the case. I'm always triggered by doctors opening my legs, due to sexual trauma I had with a Pediatrician in 2004, when I was 4 years old. Taking my clothes off was hard. I came out happy out of the bathroom, though. Proud of myself for facing this, but still weak in the legs.

“Come a little closer to the bottom. Closer. The very corner. Perfect. Now open.” I open my legs as I gulp. It's fine. “Have you been, ugh… exercising your pelvic muscles?” She asks, almost immediately.

“What” I say.

“Like, doing those internet pelvic exercises” She says.

“No”.

“Well, your right side muscles are very big. Bigger than the left side. It could also be that it's swollen. Have you ever had a bicycle accident or somehow have hurt your vagina?”

“No” I lie. I couldn't tell her about my sexual trauma while my legs were opened and she was inside me. That was something I couldn't do today.

“We should investigate this” She says, right before giving me a referral to an ultrasound. “New person opening my legs”, I thought “At least it's a woman.”

As the transvaginal ultrasound machine thingy entered me, I couldn't feel a thing. Nothing. It touched my cervix and I didn't feel it at all. But as soon as that touched the ceiling of my pelvis, it was easy to see what was wrong. Little popcorn sized cysts all over my ovaries. Of course! It was all PCOS all along.

It should have kept me silent, this diagnosis. But that swollen part of my canal was not really investigated. The numbness had no answers. I insisted. I Googled everything about the best exams for diagnosing endo.

“I think I need an MRI” I said to my gynecologist, days after my PCOS diagnosis.

“What for?” She said, confused.

“I think I have endometriosis”. Her face scrunched.

“But endometriosis has different symptoms than what you're describing. It usually comes with a lot of pain, cramping, bleeding. But you don't even bleed every month”

“Well… but I do feel a lot of pain” I lied. “And when I bleed, I bleed a lot” I semi lied. I knew I had to lie if I wanted that MRI.

“Then… yes, let's do the MRI” she said.

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” ― Maya Angelou

As if I had been hexed for lying, the pain started. The right side of my lower belly was hurting like a bitch. With paracetamol down my throat, I was ready for whatever. A week later I'd do the MRI anyway.

Now that day was a doozy (or should I say those days?). Liquid diet. Laxatives. Water. Pissing. Yet again opening my legs to a doctor. Gel up my vagina and spilling on my hospital clothes. Breathing in and out as hard as I could. Getting lightheaded. Losing my balance. Looking like I had pissed all over myself because of the gel. Great stuff.

A week later the imaging was available. No report, though. Of course that didn't stop me. I googled every single possible thing I could. How normal ovaries look like. How normal uteruses look like. Normal assholes. Normal kidneys, Normal canals. Normal cervixes. And then I checked one by one. PCOS. Fibroids. Endometriosis. Ovarian Cancer. Ovarian Torsion. Polyps. Endometriomas. Colon cancer.

My self diagnosis? I had endometriosis. And a weird growth on my right ovary. A thick layer of something over it. I also suspected of ovary torsion since my right ovary was so low, so painful, and so stuck under that layer of mysterious growth. At the end of the week, the report was available.

Endometriosis.

That was it. Like, the report just said: hey gurrrl thats endo probs. close to the ass. signed: doctor.

Simplistic as fuck. So I kept digging.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin

Now, I have anxiety. As you could probably tell.

Anyone that has met me can tell you I have an anxious body language. That I'm smart, and that I'm weird.

But I knew that digging deep into this subject would pay off, despite my crippling anxiety. My research made the MRI possible. And if I hadn't researched all about it, I wouldn't have a diagnosis.

And I don't know about you, but I prefer to know all about a serious health condition than to go on my merry way pretending I'm fine until shit hits the fan.

And research I did. Even on Dr. Googles fancier more studious cousin, Dr. Google Scholar. I also visited their fentanyl dealer friend, TikTok search. And what I found was not small.

“Endometriosis affects 10–15% of all women of reproductive age and 70% of women with chronic pelvic pain. Unfortunately, for many of these women there is often a delay in diagnosis of endometriosis resulting in unnecessary suffering and reduced quality of life. In patients aged 18–45 years, the average delay is 6.7 years” Parveen Parasar, Pinar Ozcan, Kathryn L Terry.

What I found was thousands of people talking about the disease. About being gaslit by doctors and nurses. Mistreated. Downright sexually abused. Neglected.

I already knew I was lucky. My gynecologist listened to me. I hadn't experienced chronic pain until the diagnosis was knocking at my door. No nausea. Not the worst cramps.

I also found out I was lucky my endometriosis was visible on the MRI.

“Not all endometriosis shows up on scans. You can still have endometriosis and have a negative scan result.”

https://www.endometriosis-uk.org

Going deeper and deeper the rabbit hole, I found a lot of mysticism, magical thinking, religious dogma and gender essentialism. You'd think it all came from women going through it, but it mostly came from doctors. The top 10 worst takes I've seen online from doctors were:

1. pregnancy cures endometriosis, so you should get pregnant

2. endometriosis doesn't exist

3. hormone replacement therapy or progesterone based pills are bad for you

4. excision surgery is not good in the first stages of endometriosis

5. sexual trauma causes endometriosis

Although these were the worst takes, there were milder opinions that cause more harm because of how common they are, like:

1. If you're young, you don't have it

2. eating well heals endometriosis

3. out of sight, out of mind (refusing imaging exams to patients)

4. pain is a part of womanhood

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” Genesis 3:16

Not by surprise, Christianity penetrates its repulsive fingers into everything related to human culture and perception in the west. And since gender is and always will be the thick lenses to which biology is interpreted, we can't escape the cisnormative and heteronormative expectation of it, even when we talk about health. “Women oughta feel pain” is a belief that even so called feminists hold and preaching biological determinism is common place in some radfem circles.

Hell, when I'm depressed, I can even hold these beliefs myself. Sometimes I can't escape the notion that my womb is the origin of my misery as a woman.

Since my diagnosis, I've been giving this in particular a lot of thought. Are wombs a danger to women? Are they our poison?

~How to take my uterus out with a plastic knife youtube tutorial~

It's important to realize that gender essentialism also affects who gets care and who doesn't. Considering transgender men are barred from OBGYN clinics, I can only imagine what happens if they get inside the doctor's office and talk about symptoms. Women are neglected but trans masculine people are getting straight up kicked out, unfortunately.

Of course, all of this is wrong. I'm not the first person to point it out and I won't be the last. But everyone has their argument about what is important to consider and what has to change, and I wanna share my 2 cents.

Endometriosis is cancer. And it should be researched and diagnosed as a type of cancer.

Now, why do I think that's the case?

I noticed the similarities fast, and anyone that has researched for a little bit can tell you that much. The foci act like tumors. There are stages 1, 2, 3 and 4. It spreads to tissue close to the uterus but also further into the body. “Endometriosis found in the brain” tiktoks and headlines are not uncommon. My best friend sent to me a tiktok about a woman with endometriosis focus on her tibia!

So I got curious. What is the difference between endometriosis and benign cancer?

Doctor google says it isn't cancer because… It isn't. And well, it doesn't explain why. And when the articles tried to explain it, they rapidly contradicted themselves. Others affirmed things that were simply untrue and very easy to disprove. Some of these faulty arguments were:

Endometriosis takes longer to grow and take space. Cancers are aggressive.

Well, it depends on the cancer. Most cancers grow inside people for longer than we think. Sometimes years, decades.

Plus, Deep Infiltrating Endometriosis can be very fast and aggressive.

Endometriosis affects only the pelvis.

Straight up untrue. Endometriosis has been found in various tissues. Including the brain, bones, fingers. I've seen a case where a woman bled through her belly button.

Endometriosis is not life threatening.

Except for when it is. And for these people it detroys the intestines, the ureters, the bladder, the rectum, etc.

There is no known genetic link between endometriosis and cancer, meaning endometriosis itself isn't cancer.

Again, it depends. The most common theory for the cause of endometriosis is genetic mutations. Just like, you guessed it, cancer.

~sighs~

Why are there only a couple doctors willing to affirm it is cancer?

The ambiguity of definition should create controversy, right?

Strangely, it doesn't.

I found at most 5 tiktok videos calling it cancer/tumor and like 2 academic studies exploring the question. Not a lot of material at all. No arguments proving that it isn't cancer. Nada. Just… a lot of defensiveness, which comes off as a red flag.

“Recent work leveraging technologic advancements in next-generation sequencing and ultra-sensitive approaches for rare mutation detection has challenged our pre-conceived notions of the separation between benign and malignant disease.” M Herman Chui, Tian-Li Wang, le-ming Shih

A week after my diagnosis, I scheduled a new appointment with my gynecologist. I knew what I wanted: endometriosis excision and a hysterectomy (uterus removal).

Armed with knowledge and chihuahua shaking levels, I waited 3 hours to be called in. I assumed it was just a bad day. I just didn't know how bad it would get.

I sat down, and talked about the report and the MRI. She asked where the images were. I said I'd send them to her work email so she could open them online. My doctor who was once an amazing listener seemed to have switched personalities: “Absolutely not, if you don't have the physical copy, I can't help you”.

I explained that the imaging clinic she recommended me was the one I went to and that they didnt offer me options for picking up the results physically, making me assume online was fine.

The doctor called the secretary, “Did they stop giving patients physical copies? No? Umm (Looks at me) It's ok, I'm just having a small problem here” She says, hanging up the phone. “I have to pick my daughter from school” She said. “Bring the actual images next time”.

I opened the pdf on my thick old android phone as fast I could. “Well, I… have it here” I offer her the phone.

“Look, I don't work with telemedicine or e-health” She said, with a dismissive hand motion. “Can I help you with anything else?”

“Well, yes. I've seen that reoccurrences of endometriosis are lower when there's a removal of the uterus. How do I go about it?”

“You want to take your uterus off?” She says, surprised.

“Yes, I want it to go away. And I dont mind taking hormones after…”

“Look, it doesn't go away. Surgery is not a cure for endometriosis.”

At this point on, I shutdown. I was aware that endometriosis was chronic, that surgery was just one way to treat it. But she wasn't listening. After a couple seconds letting her talk, I knew that if I wanted a hysterectomy, it wouldn't be with her help. Now I knew where she stood.

I thanked her and left. 3 hours waiting just be to dismissed.

“Conclusion: Patients with a history of endometriosis in whom total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy have been performed have a low risk of recurrence when HRT is administered. In those patients, HRT is a reasonable option” Roberto Matorras, M.A. Elorriaga, José Ignacio Pijoán, Olga Ramón, Francisco J Rodrı́guez-Escudero

The endometriosis was sinking in, my exhaustion tripled. I had heat waves. My hair was thinning (or should I say free falling?). The pain escalated and I questioned if it was all psychological.

It was the sixth month I had been living by myself, and I couldn't prepare myself a meal. I felt useless. Working was hard, I couldn't show up properly to my meetings. It was painful. Ibuprofen didn't work. Paracetamol didn't work. My Zoloft (that I've been taking for the past 3 years) wasn't providing the energy it once did. Monster energy wasn't enough either. I was ordering food 2 times a day.

One night, after excruciating pain, I googled “endometriosis gynecologist” and sent a text to the clinic that caught my eye: Pain Relief Institute.

The next morning, the secratary had answered with a full list of the doctors they had available for the appointments. All of them oncologists. At that time, I wasn't fully convinced that endometriosis was cancer, so I was confused by that. I asked her if having endometriosis was enough to talk directly to the oncologist surgeons and she explained that… yeah, it was.

“Huh… cool.” I thought.

It was the day of. I got into the hospital where the small cilinic is located. I sat down. It was packed with old ladies coming in and out the clinic. It made sense. Oncologists. Gyno specialists. Menopause. Cancer. Pain.

Sometimes I fear old age precisely because of pain and health risks, but who am I to fear the future when my present is already painful and risky?

15 minutes later and I'm called in.

Doctor asks what's up.

“Well, I have endometriosis and I wanna take it out”

“How's the pain, though?”

“Unbearable”

“When was the last time you had your period?”

“Three months ago” (It was the truth)

“How did you stop it? Hormones?”

“PCOS”

“Oh no.” He sits up “When did you get diagnosed with it?”

“3 weeks ago”

“And what took you so long to investigate?”

“I was raped as a 4 year old by a Pediatrician, and Gynecologists terrify me. So I avoided it for years.”

“Whoa” He said.

One thing about me, I'm TMI to a fault. In a trauma dumping competition, I will win and tell everyone how the competition was probably not the best for my mental health, due to my autism.

He said that hysterectomy was possible for me, and that excision is done in the same surgery. He said that HRT is a good option, but that it's a good idea to keep my ovaries. All things I've heard before. “Yes, I understand” I nodded.

Then he said that hysterectomy maybe the best option to “completely cure the endometriosis”.

Now. This information is false. But beggars can't be choosers and of course I wouldn't correct the doctor as he is agreeing with me on everything else.

“Should endometriosis be considered a ‘benign’ neoplasm, which harbors oncogenic driver mutations, along with the capacity for invasion and potentially for distant metastasis?” M Herman Chui, Tian-Li Wang, le-ming Shih

Walking home that day was great. I went to a café close to the hospital, sat down and bought a slice of apple pie. And a small cappuccino.

It gave me time to think.

What is cancer? Is there a way to know for sure endometriosis is NOT cancer?

I knew that cancer research lacked answers. I knew that it highly depends on the cancer, the person and the organ of origin. The stages mattered too, of course. But I was living under the assumption that scientists knew a lot more than they actually do.

Not only do they not know what cancer is on a deeper level, they also don't know what should be considered benign or not.

“Benign tumors do not spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. When removed, benign tumors usually don’t grow back, whereas cancerous tumors sometimes do.” What Is Cancer? was originally published by the National Cancer Institute

“Endometriosis is most commonly found in the pelvis. However, it is also found in organs not contiguous with the peritoneal cavity; these include the pericardium, lung, brain, and skin. One review of pathology specimen reports revealed that endometriosis has been identified in nearly all human organs” Elham N Samani, Ramanaiah Mamillapalli, Fei Li, Levent Mutlu, Demetra Hufnagel, Graciela Krikun, Hugh S Taylor

How the hell can these two statements coexist?

Moreover, are we even sure endometriosis is not malignant? The answer is no. We aren't.

From what I gathered, there's a spectrum.

If the growth is small, if its in the organ of origin and if it took a while to grow, it's probably benign.

If the growth is big, everywhere and infiltrating tissues nearby and far from the tissue of origin, it's probably malignant cancer.

Now why do I wanna call it cancer so bad?

Because doctors and patients don't take this condition seriously, at ALL. And that sucks.

Besides, calling it cancer is as incorrect as calling it not-cancer and doctors do it all the fucking time. I'll oppose that framework for the sake of making people get those diagnosis and act fast. Making endometriosis seem like a chill condition is letting women be convinced by fake news, diet culture and religious dogma until the situation is so unbearable, the treatment is ineffective.

Gluten free diets, dairy free diets and sugar free diets shouldn't be used as a replacement for actual treatment. Exercise prevents and helps inflammation, but it isn't a healing ritual. Having a baby will make the endometriosis pause growth for 9 months but guess what will happen after? It will grow again!

From what I've seen, the problems really start when we talk treatment. Would a doctor say to a man with prostate pain that he should try going gluten free? No, he wouldn't.

And women know that when the pain is chronic and all the nerves in your pelvis are acting up, something is not good. No doctor in the world should tell a woman going through this that she's just anxious, that she should get pregnant or that she should lose weight.

If it was classified as benign cancer, the patient wouldn't see the condition as one more reason she should go back to the gym, she would see it for what it is: something that needs medical treatment as soon as possible. And if the doctor in front of her doesn't want to treat her, she will go to the next one.

“I have walk away power” Chappell Roan