Title: The Tricky Thing About Being Trans and Having a Mental Illness
Panel 1
(Two people are talking.)
Robot: There’s this tricky thing with being trans and also having a mental illness.
Person: I don’t know. Mental illness is mental illness no matter who you are, right?
Panel 2
(The same two people are talking.)
Robot: Well, yes and no. Anyone can have a mental illness, but when you have an identity that a lot of people think is sick, made-up, criminal, or dangerous, those messages tend to amplify and validate the distortions that a mental illness creates.
Person: How do you mean?
Panel 3
Robot: Well, my brain might be constantly telling me something, and then the world around me seems to agree with it…
Panel 4
(Robot’s brain is talking. Others are talking off-screen.)
Brain: You’re sick, you’re not right. There’s something wrong with you that will never get better.
Off-Screen Quotes:
“I don’t want any of those perverts anywhere near my children!”
“Indulging this gender-fantasy will only make it worse. You need to see a doctor and get treatment.”
Panel 5
(Robot’s brain is talking. Others are talking off- screen.)
Brain: Everything about you is a lie. You have no sense of self. You’re empty inside.
Off-Screen quotes:
“Are you sure you aren’t just gay?”
“There are only two genders. It’s just biology.”
“This is [dead name]. [Wrong pronoun] works in development…”
Panel 6
(Robot’s brain is talking. Others are talking off- screen.)
Brain: The world hates you. They’re out to get you.
Off-Screen quotes:
“If I ever see a man going into a woman’s bathroom, I’ll follow him in – with a baseball bat.”
“Hey! Hey you! What are you? Freak!”
“Another black trans woman murdered last week. Police are not treating this as a hate crime…”
Panel 7
(Robot’s brain is talking. Others are talking off- screen.)
Brain: You’re worthless. You’re useless. No one will ever love you. You don’t matter.
Off-Screen Quotes:
“Get out of my house! You’re not welcome under this roof.”
“You’re…you’re trans? I wish you had told me sooner… Look, I’m not gay. I mean, I know that’s not…you seem cool, but that’s just not my thing. I’m going to go.”
“Jeez, can you imagine what his – I mean her wife must be going through?”
Panel 8
Robot: In my case, I find that my mental illness amplifies the negative messages I get from the world around me. And the way the world treats trans folk like me validates how my brain is interpreting those messages.
Panel 9
Text: (two bubbles of text to either side of a person) Trans folk hear a lot of negative things about the validity of their gender, their value as people, and the safety of their bodies.
Mentally ill people get a lot of messages that they’re making up or imagining facts and feelings, that they are inherently unstable and dangerous, and that they shouldn’t trust themselves.
Panel 10
(The two people are talking.)
Person: Yeah, that’s a heck of an intersection. What can I do?
Robot: Try to validate feelings rather than denying experiences.
You can’t always separate the experience of mental illness from the experience of oppression, and trying to do so can result in gaslighting someone into further distrusting themselves or pushing them away.
Panel 11
(A Black man is talking with a white person. He has a thought bubble with the names of Black people murdered by police.)
Black Man’s Thought Bubble: Alfred Olango, Tawon Boyd, Terence Crutcher, Terrence Sterling, Levonia Riggins, Alfred Toe, Fred Barlow, Paul O’Neal, Donnell Thompson Jr., Dalvin Hollins, Delrawn Small, Deravis Rogers, Clarence Howard, Antrun Shumpert
White Person’s Thought Bubble: Paranoid much?
Black Man: I’m worried about my government murdering me.
White Person: That seems a little extreme. I’m sure that’s not going to happen. Don’t worry!
Panel 12
Robot: The trans community’s long history of being pathologized and discriminated against by medical and psychiatric institutions makes it difficult to talk openly about how mental illness affects us – and can seriously impact our ability to get help. It’s important that the people supporting us understand that this is a complex and sensitive issue.
Panel 13
Person: As a cisgender person, it would be awfully presumptuous for me to presume I knew better than you what it’s like to be trans. Even though I also have OCD, I shouldn’t presume that my experience of that is the same as your experience of being trans and having OCD.
Robot: Now you’ve got it!
