I went to the birthday party of a friend who has only recently become more than an acquaintanceship. I will probably reference this birthday party again in future stories because I was the only person there (unknowingly) that wasn’t a part of the “polycule”. IE I was the only one who wasn’t fucking at least one other person there.

Why I am creating a friendship with this person can really be summed up to two things. One is pity, but the other is that he seems to want connection outside his “polycule” (who would have thought transactional relationships based around sex would be shallow?), and is genuinely trying to be my friend and connect with me on a deep level. What someone who is used to transactional relationships considers deep is almost sad to me, but that is a separate issue. He is making an effort, and I appreciate that. I also think we need to bring back that idea that not everyone needs to be your best friend. It’s fine if your friendship is based on a shared hobby and that’s all it is – we need friends for fun too.

Anyway, I was speaking to my friend’s “main partner” – who identifies as a trans man (ie, a female who during COVID decided she was nonbinary, then shortly after started taking testosterone, and then last year decided she was a man after taking testosterone for 3 years). I will use female pronouns for her, and call her Lyra. As well as another trans man (another female who identifies as a man), whom I will also use female pronouns for and call Mikaela.

Lyra, a couple months ago, got a double mastectomy (ie, “top surgery” in the trans vernacular). The timing was interesting to me because I found out about it through someone in our friend group whose family member was going through a double mastectomy for breast cancer at the same time, and the friend’s description from coping with the trauma of the double mastectomy of her family member (and rightfully so), to speaking about Lyra’s top surgery and how wonderful that was, was so jarring to me. Just a name switch and a loose justification of “affirmation” and something in the previous sentence that was grievous and a tragedy was now something to be celebrated and shown off. (And Lyra posted so many topless photos on social media of recovery to empower all those others looking to do the same to their bodies.)

Lyra, at dinner, grasped at her chest and gave a half smile, looking at Mikaela and I (technically the only 2 other women there), and said “It’s really weird, I sometimes can still feel them there.” My heart sunk, I was trying to calculate what to say, but my main want was to acknowledge that it was a difficult thing, even if it was “good”. I had heard from her partner that she, after surgery, “reverted” to wanting to be more like a woman for a time. The surgeon had told her that was “typical” (disgusting, if it’s typical, that’s probably a sign it’s very traumatic and bad), but she’d eventually get over it.

Mikaela jumped in, and Mikaela herself hasn’t had top surgery (yet). Mikaela related it to how, when she was using her strap on sometimes, she felt like it was one with her. And she could “feel like it was her dick”. Lyra wasn’t offended at the notion, but she corrected her. “No, like my breasts, I can feel them like they’re still here.”

Mikaela was definitely offended at that. The look on her face was of pure disgust. She immediately stopped talking and turned away until we were talking about something else. I don’t know if it made her resentful that someone who got the surgery she wanted was “complaining” about it, or that it “triggered her own dysphoria” (a phrase that I am convinced is in place of feeling the shame of reality setting in) by either acknowledging that there is a price to the surgery, or not affirming her delusional sensations from a piece of silicon attached to her waist. Part of me wonders if she was resentful of being treated as “one of the girls” that Lyra could relate to as we were the only two who had breasts at the table. Despite the fact the Lyra claims to be a man, and therefore Mikaela should, by the ideology, recognize her as such and those were man breasts, but queer people are petty and jump through hoops just to be offended so I wouldn’t put it past her.

Even in queer spaces, it isn’t ok for them to speak to each other of something even innocuous and documented as phantom limb syndrome. Which is the definition of a “lived experience” since feeling sensations from a body part no longer there is only for the individual. No one else can even bear witness. It can be shown on a brain scan, but to the lay person it is the definition of “you have to take my word for it.” Which what wokeism, especially queer wokeism, is based on. Except they, like all wokeism, don’t like the lived experiences that don’t match the rhetoric. If your brain can still feel your breasts as if they were never gone at times, are you truly in the wrong body? Is your brain rejecting the affirmation you claim to need? Lyra didn’t even say she expressed doubt of her choice because of it. Simply mentioning it was happening was enough for a cold shoulder.

This phenomena of not being able to be open in “safe spaces” is unlike any other protected group. Women speak of needing women-only spaces because that is where women feel safe to open up and speak about how men treat them. This how young women learn what to look out for to avoid abusive men and women who had experience with it can share and feel validated that they are not alone. How they see-by sharing-patterns of society and see issues that they wouldn’t have seen in an isolated environment. There is a term in Hebrew for when Jews assemble to talk about what they deal with from the main culture. Black culture has a lot of jokes hinging on having to act a certain way around whites vs. what they do alone. They will discuss problems within their culture that they wouldn’t discuss with white people for fear of a racist perspective destroying the nuances like gang violence or destruction of the black family. All is about being safe to discuss the good and bad in the group that knows the intricacies and will give grace to allow productive problem solving, or simply to get perspective if you’re noticing a larger pattern against the group or just overthinking minor infractions against you personally. A safe group lets you talk, but allows for disagreements and different points of view, as there is a pre-established trust that your view won’t be disregarded or attacked based on bigoted reasons they might normally be by an “outsider”.

Wokeism has obviously corrupted the idea of a “safe space”. It is something that naturally happens when people are willing to be vulnerable with each other, but now it is politicized as a way to be able to say whatever you want without repercussions. Which is absurd, because the point of which was these spaces would validate abuses that are hard to speak about (not microaggressions), but also check radical thinking to be able to keep the community itself stable. The community would condemn radical solutions that would harm the group and ostracize the members who relentlessly promoted them.

Yet for a queer space to not allow a safe space where one can speak with their supposed friends who are in their group earnestly about something like phantom limb syndrome – a guaranteed side effect of the surgery – is alarming. It means the group isn’t set up to police itself and weed out “radicals” for the common good of the group. It isn’t there to affirm the bads as well as the goods of the experience. It is understandable if they are the oppressed group that they claim to be, why they wouldn’t want to talk about their phantom breasts with an outsider. They might get a flippant “I told you so” or a “you see, your brain says you’re a woman” that disregards what they perceive as their identity. But from someone on the in group you should be able to get someone who understands you view yourself as a man, but can empathize with the continued difficulty of transition without judging you for it. The fact that the in group doesn’t want to face said difficulties or sway from the narrative they tell outsiders is the most telling. Each is in it for selfish reasons, but are validated in their delusions as a group. They are affirmed because there is a group of them, but do not want to move the group forward, only themselves for their own benefit. Pointing out the negatives only makes them question themselves and their rhetoric in the ideology. Those dark thoughts of shame that they’re in a perpetual existential crisis and are responsible for it and the impending fallout begin creeping in at the slightest blip in the paradise ideology they have built for themselves. Like any cult, if you’re not in perpetual joy, it must be something you’re doing wrong, so Lyra clearly wasn’t queering hard enough that she felt the need to mention her phantom breasts or even to have felt them at all.

If there is no space for community solidarity for queer/trans people, is there truly a sustainable community? And sadder yet, these mentally ill, vulnerable people cannot be open and honest with others in a group that they fell into because they felt so isolated and misunderstood. It’s a façade of acceptance, but they’re all still alone and lost.