Haiiii :3c
I am unashamed that I grew up on 2017-2019 Trans Reddit
A redditor once said "do not cringe, kill the part of you that cringes." And I genuinely think this is good advice that a lot of people need to hear.
Now have most people moved on from 2017-2019 era Trans Reddit because they either came out and left Reddit, or moved to a more r/196 and trans Twitter centric shitposting environment? Almost certainly.
Do I still think about 2017-2019 era Trans Reddit because it represents a time where I was more hopeful about coming out and the broader acceptance of trans people? Way to come after me like that, but yes almost certainly
Buuuuut, archiving trans spaces is really really really important. So much gets lost and that's really sad :(
So in addition to this wonderful meme about the era, I'm going to write down some stuff about 2017-2019 trans reddit that I haven't seen anyone else try and log. This is part of a longer term project to properly preserve this data and information by dumping the contents of the subreddit to my NAS, but I need to get drives and storage ready, because this is likely terabytes of data.
Traa-tan
I wasThe tale of Obi-Wan Kenobot
ObiWanKenobot was a Reddit user in 2017 Reddit and honestly the main thing I remember is that she was such a hot trending part of trans Reddit for easily two months. Multiple traa/egg_irl posts about her and I remember when there was some subreddit drama there was a post of Princess Leia saying "Help me u/ObiWanKenobot, you're my only hope" in hope that the mom who was posting trans prequel memes would somehow fix a bunch of teenagers and young 20 year olds infighting.
Her story was basically this, she found estradiol and spiro pills in her child's pockets while doing laundry and put a post up on Reddit. First r/Drugs asking to identify the two pills on a since-nuked thread. I can't find an archive but I remember reading the thread. A few redditors incorrectly asserted adderall or other drugs until one member says that it's HRT. She proceeds to post on r/MTF asking about how to have this conversation with her kid. I've mirrored a copy of the thread, but the summary is that the kid was in fact DIYing HRT and her daughter comes out to her and she is very much behind her and supportive.
The Felixposting Drama and GaySoundsShitposts Papal Schism
This was like a 4 day drama that was wild. Very basically, every single trans shitposting subreddit at this time was either very boring memes or funny shitposting which was complimented by people making posts about getting forced to have a haircut, a bad coming out, or just straight spiraling anxiety. And this is still very much the case, I mean look at this Snafu from Reddit 9 months ago:
So trans Reddit meme communities have always been like this, but traa was really extreme in the sense that basically 60% of the posts were stories with the other 40% being actual memes. The mods were unhappy about this, and decided to ban low-quality posts, particularly "felixposting" and other story posts. Since we're talking about trans teens on Reddit that were anywhere in the US, most of these stories were also kinda sad (even the happy ones). To illustrate, enjoy this snafu I made:
So this has been par for the course, but at one point the post quality got really bad, so finally they decided to issue a post banning felixposting, story posts, and low-quality posts. Everyone on r/traa revolted and it got so big that a new subreddit was opened in protest called r/GaySoundsShitposts which allowed felixposting. Then, someone leaked a Discord conversation between the mods who wanted to hold the line and talked down to the users. This even broke containment to r/subredditdrama drama (with a pretty punny title, Mods in a pickle as users egg on a transition to drama) and a real nasty on on r/drama that thankfully got 0 upvotes and removed. Finally the mods issued an apology and mostly restored felixposting. Arguably, the quality in posts on r/traa did somewhat continue to go down, and I personally stopped browsing traa for roughly a year in 2019 until picking back up in 2020, with 196 becoming my go to place for browsing.
r/traaNSFW and r/itsafetish
In hindsight, holy shit this was like the little baby version of getting quote tweeted by libsoftiktok or a republican congresswoman in the covid/post-covid era. Very basically, r/traa had teens on it so the general policy was that any memes that were truly NSFW should go be posted on r/traaNSFW. Seems fine right? Well, as it turns out, TERFs really love trying to find any trans person displaying an inch of sexuality and moralize about them not being real women to other TERFs and chuds.
On Reddit, the subreddit r/itsafetish was opened, which served as a way for TERFs and chuds to go into trans subreddits, find posts about trans people being happy and type a "TDS-filled rant with one hand" to quote Kirbizia. So at least multiple times over the existence of this subreddit, a particularly spicy r/traaNSFW post would get posted in the sub, the user would subsequently get death threats, and r/traaNSFW would get brigaded. The subreddit would shut down, and then finally
r/itsafetish was finally banned in June 2020 with a wave other subreddits including r/LGBdroptheT. Thus, TERFs were gone, and the last trans person to ever get crucified over having any sort of fun with their life ended after the closure of these subreddits. Eventually, Joe Biden heard the news and wrote an executive order declaring that all HRT should be sold over the counter at every Walmart to commemorate the occasion /j
If you couldn't tell that's sarcasm