I think that can be a faulty lens regarding mental health. With bipolar disorder, it's entirely possible to feel great while acting in an irrational manner: that's what mania essentially is.
And then there's the trans narrative: certain narratives = hormones, while other narratives = marginalisation, so I do think there's room to allow the possibility that the right-wingers might be right when they say the left is a politics of victimhood.
I don't see myself as a victim for being trans; more for being an idealist. Cis or trans, it's my crazy views on how things should be that mean people think I'm weird.
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Like, I try to avoid commenting on certain parts of the trans debate (particularly all that stuff about trans men and internet radicalisation ... that's very much not my fight), but one of the mums at my course asked me about why some trans people are anti-gay, and it's largely to do with what Dana said:
From My Body, My Business: this is an essential book on sex work.
(p. 184) "The front bar was all white gay guys. They had good jobs. If we were walking along the road in drag and they saw us, they'd duck into a shop.
They'd hide behind their men's Kākahu - men's clothes. They never admitted they were gay openly like we did. We were the face of gayness, even though we weren't gay. We were the ones who got beaten up.
They really learnt how to hide it. And they didn't like us, because they thought we were after their trade. Well, we weren't after their trade - we weren't after a gay man. I didn't want to have gay sex." - But yes, I do feel like this idea that 'distress' = hormones is utterly stupid. I mean, it's essentially a cosmetic decision. It's totally fine to have narcissistic reasons for pursuing those: I mean, that's the American Dream (lol). There's a robust debate to be had about internet radicalisation regarding trans issues, and also about whether normalising depictions of gender fluidity on the Internet is having a positive or negative effect on how society perceives real trans people. Those aren't my fight, though.
My mentor Dave Roil differs with me on sex and gender in schools: he's conservative in that way. I, however, think that teenagers need a really robust sex education that includes all diverse sexual and gender identities. If you take Kinsey seriously, around half of all people have gay thoughts, and that's a lot. Being trans is way less common, but we're a highly visible minority.