I want to talk about this because this has been a very major issue for me. I’ve suffered through various kinds of internalized bigotry for a very long time. I’ve had immense internalized racism due to the fact that I’m black alongside internalized anti-neurodivergent sentiment and internalized queer/transphobia.
It’s like every time I feel like I might be able to get rid of these ideas, they keep coming back. Unfortunately, these thoughts run very intensely too. My internalized bigotry is not mild at all, and it usually manifests in ways like being scared and/or uncomfortable around black people, feeling disgusted by trans people when I see them, and insulting neurodivergent people usually through snarky comments I make under my breath.
I even get really frustrated when I see stuff that supports people like me. Seeing “Black Lives Matter” posts on social media drives me mad, alongside things like “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” that just makes me cry. It makes me FURIOUS, and I really want to overcome this kind of thinking, especially for being trans.
I’d argue that my internalized transphobia is the strongest and harshest out of all my forms of internalized bigotry. It started from my family being extremely transphobic to the point of disowning me and kicking me out, but it exacerbated and reached its peak due to the transmedicalist tendencies within the trans communities I’ve visited online. I am non-binary, and even though I have gender dysphoria and am medically transitioning, I have been discriminated against by so many damn truscum that my mindset started expressing violent animosity towards trans people period. This eventually shifted my mind to believing that this is MOST (or maybe even all) of the trans community, and it makes me irrationally angry at anything that’s pro-trans.
This issue has been going on for so damn long, and it’s causing way too much turmoil, depression, and utter distress for me to no longer do anything about it and just leave it untouched. With that in mind, how do I ACTUALLY shift my mindset to not hate myself and other people over these characteristics? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
It comes from both emotion and internalized belief in a way.
Even when I feel like things are logically incorrect, my strong emotions override any sense of rationality. Thanks for providing that emotional exercise. It sounds like a very useful tool, and I will utilize it during more intense breakdowns, but at the moment, I feel fairly calm and grounded.
Also, religion plays a huge part in this, and I’m glad you mentioned it. I was raised in a Catholic immigrant family from a country that hardly acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Homosexuality itself was legalized there in 2018, but it’s still highly socially unacceptable. My family made no room for compromise with me being queer, and told me that it was inherently wrong, evil, and that I’d automatically be banished to hell for engaging in acts like gender transition and engaging in romantic/sexual interactions with people who are the same sex as the one I was assigned at birth. To this day, I internalize a lot of their bigotry even though I’m an atheist now. They were highly ignorant, yet still so fervent in preaching their hate, and it hasn’t escaped my mind much.