Why Transphobia Teaches Us to Be Terrified of Regret
What if you start to change your gender and regret it?
Regret is a cardinal sin of capitalist culture. Capitalism is so terrified of what we might do with our regret that we aren’t taught to notice it. We have trouble recognizing regret when we already feel it. Thus, we rarely talk about what regret really means, when it’s appropriate, and whether it’s OK to feel it. Capitalism wants to stave off our potential regret about Certain Things (like whether we ought to drive automobiles in daily circles during climate crisis) and redirect our attention toward Other Things (like whether some people might temporarily believe they’re trans and then change their minds).
Sample Situations
Productivity lifehacks ask you to wake up and accomplish a dozen things before dawn. Probably you pay a monthly subscription fee for the punishment of being told to do this. And then you neglect to follow the advice. Or maybe one day you do wake up before dawn, and maybe you’re productive and satisfied with the choice you made that day. But maybe—here’s another possibility—you’re up early, you stab at some items on your to-do list, and you’re miserable. What is the point of doing boring tasks in the dark? you wonder. Do any of these “tasks” really need to be done? And you go back to…
