Disclaimers for this entire thing that is existence

So.... This site is not finished. This ring of interconnected pages, specifically, was supposed to be for a project for a university class, the deadline for which has already come and gone. I, for reasons that I hope are obvious, feel a good deal of shame over this, and have an impulse to abandon this site and forget I ever created it. On the other hand, I feel like there's something in this worth preserving and maintaining, and I want to keep working on it, despite the fact that that would kind of be cheating. My solution, then, is simple: The website, in its current state, will be archived here, and living copies will be made of all the pages here so I can continue working on it.

Bias

I am biased.

This is unavoidable.

The primary language I speak and the language I am writing this in, English, has its own language ideologies, most of which I am unaware of in my day-to-day interactions. Luckily for me the English speaker, most trans communities on the internet are overwhelmingly anglophone and leave little room for communication in languages other than English, in particular the ones I mostly participate in.

Furthermore, the communities I participate in are for the most part US-centric. The language used generally originates from American communities, and because of the dominance of English on the internet and American cultural dominance on top of that, has ended up spreading to everyone else, whether they want it or not. I remember a few months ago hearing about a Brazilian trans woman getting yelled at by American teenagers for calling herself a travesti, which is a term equivalent to transvestite (considered a pejorative in English) used by trans women living in Brazil.

Race, too, plays a role, as most of the people within my social circles are white, as am I. While political ideals generally align with the concept of the "social justice warrior" and the vast majority are opposed to racism, racist things still get said and done. White gays are not exempt from racism.

There are a few other factors that affect the biases of both myself and my social circles. I am transfeminine, and tend to associate more closely with other transfeminine people than transmasculine people. Most trans people on the internet I know are neurodivergent to some degree. Many are young; I know few people over twenty five but lots under eighteen. This also means that many of them are in a position of vulnerability from still being minors. Finally, the trans people I associate with online are the types of people who spend several hours a day online. I am also one of those people.

Language Use

Throughout this essay, I will be using language specific to trans communities. For the benefit of any readers (presumably most of you) who will be introduced to these terms for the first time, I will be providing a glossary at the end.

The primary term I will be using to describe the LGBTQ community as a whole and the people within it is queer. Queer, despite its history as a slur, is the standard term used in academia for our communities as a whole, and is the most inclusive term possible.

I will also, at times, mention slurs and other offensive language in this essay, all of which will relate to sexuality and gender. A balance must be struck between making clear what I'm talking about and not being insensitive to my readers, so I will use the "[letter]-slur" euphemism for slurs, and on the first occasion of each I will link to a page that has the actual slur on it, along with a description of why it's offensive.