I first heard the term “minority stress” from my friend Tacitus, long before I encountered it in Judith Butler’s writing. I had no idea what he was no about. he suggested that I read Erving Goffman’s book “Stigma” (a somewhat dated and problematic book, but nonetheless useful beginning to understanding the problems). He wanted me to understand what it might mean to become a eunuch and join a tiny minority. I felt charged up by it, rather than depressed: when I first came out, being gay was neither trendy nor safe … and I kinda missed those days!

However, my first coming out was a very long time ago when the world was young and so was I. Years of living and a difficult marriage have worn me thin and life is more stressful. In addition to the day-to-day difficulties in my life, beginning to explore the world as a eunuch really did introduce me to the reality of minority stress.

Minority stress is the chronic emotional strain experienced by people in marginalised groups. It’s not just the obvious stuff – homophobia, transphobia, discrimination. It’s the thousand subtle ways the world tells you that you are too much, too confusing, too difficult. It’s the stress of always having to explain yourself. Of being tolerated, but never quite understood.

For those of us who live at the edges of the already-edged – eunuchs, nullos, castrated people, the post-binary, the unspeakably queer – the stress becomes layered. We are a minority within a minority, nested inside other groups that are themselves marginalised. LGBTQ+… then trans… then non-binary… and then… us. So rare that even the language fails us sometimes.

I have felt it most keenly in supposedly safe spaces – queer spaces, trans groups, inclusive communities. The expectation that if I am trans, I must be transitioning in a recognisable way. That if I am non-binary, I must still play by the aesthetic rules of androgyny. That if I talk about castration, it must be a kink. If I mention the word “eunuch,” people either laugh nervously or look away – or cross their legs in an obvious display of discomfort.

The stress comes from being illegible. From constantly having to explain the same things to new people. From watching others’ eyes cloud over in confusion or discomfort. From being corrected about my own identity, as though others know it better than I do. From always having to choose between being honest and being palatable.

Judith Butler talks about the way identity is performative – not in the sense of being fake, but in the sense of being shaped and understood through repetition and recognition. But what happens when your identity is so rare, so unrecognised, that there is no familiar performance for people to read?

What happens when your very existence throws people off script?

I’ve been told I was too intense, too focussed, too open, too weird, by professionals, friends, and family. I’ve been told I make people uncomfortable. I’ve been asked if I’m trying to be shocking. It’s been suggested that I must be mentally ill. I’ve been asked – gently, kindly, always kindly – if I’m sure.

What I haven’t been, very often, is seen.

And that’s what minority stress ultimately comes down to, I think – the longing to be seen, and the pain of repeatedly not being.

It’s not just that the world rejects us. It’s that it doesn’t know how to hold us. It hasn’t made room for us. Sometimes even our friends and lovers struggle to hold us. They want to understand, but we stretch the limits of the scripts they’ve learned.

And so we carry the stress in our bodies, in our hearts, in the little self-erasing adjustments we make. We learn to become easy to be around. We go quiet. We let things slide. We tell the edited version. We apologise.

But telling the truth – this blog, for example – is part of how I resist that pull. Writing helps me make myself legible, even if I remain hard to categorise. It’s my way of carving out a space in the world where someone like me can exist.

If you know that feeling – of being a minority within a minority, of never quite fitting even where you’re meant to belong – then I hope you know this too:

You’re not too much. You’re not making it up. And the world doesn’t get to tell you who you are.

Let’s keep telling our stories. That’s how we make room.