homophobes in my head

[Guest loveisfriends]

The last few days the instagram algorithm started showing me homo and transphobic posts & reels with mean comments.

At first, I only read them and acknowledged how awful they are.

But now I think the comments have really gotten into my head and I hate it.

I wanted to explain two headcanons in a fanfic of mine. One character I headcanon as demiromantic and the other as aromantic but in a queer platonic relationship.

While I was writing that into the footnotes, I suddenly though: [warning: homophobia, acephobia] "ugh demiromantic? And what is a queer platonic relationship? They just make stuff up nowadays".

AND I REALLY JUST WENT: oh yeah, I should probably not write that in the footnotes.

I hate everything about that thought process.

Now I decided to write this headcanon info into my fanfic notes anyway because whe cant let the homophobes win.

But it scares me, how easily I was influenced for a few moments there. And its still there, in my head, these awful thoughts, even though they arent mine.

Has anyone ever head a similar experience? How can I stop adopting mean comments?

[Rackson]

Yeah, sadly I have had a similar experience where when I hang around people that are homophobic and their thoughts seep into my brain. I wonder "Am i just and a$$hole doing this for attention" or "it seems people are just making up new genders to feel special". I don't really think those things deep down in my heart, but I can't help be scared how quickly those thoughts can be planted into my brain. To answer your question, yes, it is normal to sometimes have those thoughts sneak their way into your brain. I don't know how to get rid of them, but I know that as long as they don't deep root themselves into your beliefs, then you will be okay.

 

[dewy]

It's more common than you think, lots of people have experiences like this. Internalization of stuff like this is very much a thing but it's not a fun subject so you don't see it talked about a lot. As a trans guy who's existed on the internet for a while I internalized a lot of transphobia from the things I would see and would have thoughts like I'm making this up for attention, I'm just trying to be special, etc and feel bad about it, but that's par for the course for internalized transphobia.

It helps to learn how to curate your online experience so you don't see things like that. The internet makes it VERY easy to see a bunch of negativity and nastiness that's disproportionate to what the general public actually thinks. Over the years I have seen a LOT of infighting within the LGBT+ community which is quite upsetting. After stepping back, talking to my friends, and seeing how it's much more common for people to be like "I don't care how other LGBT+ people identify/express themselves as long as they're not hurting anyone" it helped.

I am not very well versed in Instagram so I'm just going to give some general advice for the internet - don't be afraid to use buttons like block, unfollow, not interested, and leave chat. I used to have the "block button is only for horrible people" attitude then I realized I could just... block someone if seeing their stuff annoys or otherwise upsets me and it helped a lot. If you don't like someone's posts, you can block them, and if a group chat/forum is upsetting, you can leave. It will make your experience a lot better not engaging with things like this - I know it has for me.

TL;DR: It's more common than you think. Learn how to curate your internet experience so you aren't seeing things that upset you often. Take a break from social media or the internet as a whole if you need to.

Also for your posts I recommend looking into the privacy and security settings for wherever you post or spend a lot of time on. For me turning on "moderate comments" for my fics has given me peace of mind as I feel that people who may want to leave a nasty comment will be easily deterred by the "The creator has chosen to moderate comments and they will appear publicly after approval" message.