Mia Mingus’ piece on Access Intimacy describes a sense of comfort brought about when you and a stranger share an indescribable bond that stems from an unspoken understanding of each other’s needs. Interestingly, the people you have the closest bonds with don’t have to share your access needs for you to have strong access intimacy.

From personal experience, I find this to be true. One of the people I feel most comfortable about discussing transness with is actually a cis friend of mine. Sure, other trans people will have access intimacy with me by default, but for whatever reason, this friend is able to meet and then surpass this implicit understanding. It hurt to loose many friends and family over something that made me happier about myself. But it was almost equally euphoric when people I hadn’t thought would be accepting actually were. That sensation was a physical reaction to feeling those sudden changes in access intimacy. Oh, you’re already super supportive of others in my group? Oh you’re closeted yourself and you’re happy you have someone to talk to now? A lot of these interactions made it much easier to deal with the negative ones. An argument I hear a lot is that you can never truly understand someone’s lived experience, and this frustrates me when it’s used as an excuse to avoid trying, because a lot of the time, the person who experienced it may not truly understand it themselves. Just last week, I realized that when I was made to feel socially uncomfortable by my male peers as a kid, I was really experiencing dysphoria. This revelation was only made possible by years of personal growth and reflection. So, no, you don’t need to truly understand to try. To support them. To listen to them. To appreciate them. Empathy goes a long way. I believe that empathy is a large factor in fostering access intimacy between people who don’t share circumstances, and those that do.