Chapter 23: Try harder – the cult of self-optimization

How empowerment becomes an obligation to perform.

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Anyone who wants to survive today has to shine. Not feel, not stumble, not cry, but sparkle. Self‑optimization is the new promise of salvation, sold in soft colors, serif fonts, and friendly advice how burning skin can be turned into a brand, how trauma can become an opportunity, and how the daily fight for survival can be repackaged as a productivity engine.

Empowerment is no longer a promise. It’s an obligation. And anyone who can’t keep up gets dropped.

Trans people, already born outside the norm, forced to explain and defend themselves, exist despite structural erasure. In the neoliberal paradigm they are not forgotten, but flipped, processed, and repurposed as long as they keep functioning.

Those who suffer must transform themselves. Those who fail didn’t try hard enough. Those who want to be visible must deliver: aesthetic, story, resilience, transformation, authenticity, education. Ideally all at once, ideally for free.

There is no public image of transness without a narrative. The story must be inspiring. Pain is allowed, but only in retrospect. The peak must be overcome, the voice steady, the face camera‑ready. Because no one wants to see the collapse. They want the resurrection, the phoenix motif, the beautified proof that everything will be okay if you just try hard enough.

“You need to try harder.” A sentence as smooth and cold as a surgical knife. It doesn’t hit like an insult. It feels like advice, yet it’s a verdict. Because it says: if you suffer, it’s your own fault. If you don’t make it through, the problem is your laziness, not the system.

This is where the violence lies: in the reversal of responsibility. Anyone who is trans is expected to educate, to self‑therapize, to adapt, to “develop,” and to do all that with a smile, with gratitude, with the humility of someone who has heard too many times that they are “allowed to belong.”

Anyone who doesn’t participate in this cycle of self‑care commands, body‑positivity messages, gender‑makeover content, and success stories is quickly labeled a problem: toxic, unwilling, and inconvenient.

What is sold as empowerment is often little more than repackaged social pressure. You can be anything, as long as you market it right.

Transness gets sliced into Instagram info‑tiles, managed in safe‑space workshops, and stamped with diversity campaign logos, as long as no one screams, no one disrupts, no one breaks. The neoliberal queer discourse loves visibility, but only as long as it remains profitable.

Anyone too angry is discarded. Anyone too broken is pathologized. Anyone too honest is ignored.

Meanwhile, many take that poison pill. They learn to market themselves, to manage themselves, to perform. Not out of joy, but out of necessity. Because anyone who doesn’t deliver, who isn’t “grateful,” who isn’t “reflective,” who doesn’t turn themselves into a personal brand, falls behind. Not because they have nothing to say, but because the stage is reserved for those who have learned to sell themselves in their own language.

It’s a new form of exploitation: not material, but symbolic. The stories, the suffering, the transitions — everything becomes content. Knowledge earned with blood is given away for free, because otherwise no one listens.

And anyone too tired to post, to write, to moderate, to explain, drops out, even from their own community. Because anyone who doesn’t constantly self‑optimize is considered backward. Anyone who doesn’t “develop” becomes a bad example. Anyone who fails to grow is blamed.

With this, transness is no longer liberation, but a high‑performance sport with lethal expectations. And the body — this fragile, battered, constantly questioned body — becomes the playing field for these demands.

Always in motion, always in flux, always in proof‑mode. Never simply present. Never simply enough. And even in failure, there still has to be meaning. Even collapse must be articulated, reflected upon, made blog‑ready. Because nothing is allowed to simply hurt. Everything has to have a purpose.

Keep in mind: in this neoliberal self‑optimization prison, every collapse becomes an obligation to perform. Anyone who doesn’t deliver gets thrown out.

That’s the curse of self‑optimization: even resistance becomes a project. Even withdrawal is read as a statement. Falling silent gives birth to a new narrative. And true rest, peace, and quiet, is no longer part of the plan.