What an excellent piece. I’m sorry if its going public has put you more in the limelight than you ever necessarily wanted to be, and the gross responses you’ve had to field as a result, but I’m glad that this is out there.

I am a (sort of?) cis woman who is constantly questioning my own identity. My romantic identity(panromantic? Biromantic? Quoiromantic? How many of those things can you be at once?), my sexual identity(heterosexual, because dicks turn me on? Asexual, because I have next to no interest in the idea of having sex? Demisexual, because maybe I haven’t found the right person? Grey ace?), and sometimes even my gender identity(I’m okay with being a girl, but sometimes I feel like that’s so limiting, and I’ve wished I was a boy, and sometimes I wish I could be both together, specifically with the associated sexual characteristics aka intersex — is that a legitimate identity, or a personal kink? What does it mean that I love my vagina but hate my breasts?). But I am incredibly privileged to have never felt significantly uncomfortable in any of my identities, only uncertain. I wish everyone who occupied those spaces in between hard identifiers could have as easy a time of it; it’s not a wish I can grant, but it’s a reality I try to work toward.

That said, I’m glad you said everything here. As a fiercely intersectional feminist, I nonetheless get angry and worn down by patriarchal views and narratives — and especially patriarchal opposition — and when I do I think I probably regurgitate a lot of those ‘lol boys ain’t shit’ or ‘a cis guy can’t possibly understand X’ messages than I should. And while it’s understandable to be ground down by The Discourse, as people insist on calling it, that doesn’t justify falling into limiting, damaging Us vs. Them mindsets. I try to be better than that, but your writing is a timely reminder that I have a ways to go yet, because I am not better than that often enough.

Also, I understand why ‘Not All Men’ has become shorthand for ‘ignoring the actual problem in favor of reminding everyone that not ALL men are like this, therefore any action taken to avoid/deal with the men who ARE like this is unreasonable and wrong!’, since that is a common attitude. However, the feminist movement has its own problems with this exact type of sentiment. Not ALL feminists are misandrists. Not ALL feminists are TERFs. Not ALL feminists are racist. Not ALL feminists are stereotypical bra-burners with quote-unquote ‘lesbian haircuts’. And a lot of feminists will go out of their way to inform people of that, when we’re stereotyped or called out like that. And they’re not wrong, necessarily…but, okay, what about the feminists who ARE? We can’t simply sweep them under the rug. We have to acknowledge them and deal with them. Our not doing that makes us no better than the men derailing conversation about male predators and the safeguards people have to take to avoid them by going ‘not all men are like that!!!’ We’re just ducking the point of the conversation and the very real problem it represents. The ‘Not All Men’ phenomenon exists in most groups —occasionally the point is justified, such as when someone IS painting stereotypes with a broad brush(because, remember children, cis men can be harmfully stereotyped too EVEN IF they tend to enjoy more privilege than the rest of us, and equality doesn’t mean ‘making things unjust for cis men the way they’ve been unjust for other people’), and occasionally the point is pure responsibility-absolving conversation-destroying derailment. It’s not just cis men that do it.

I don’t want to trigger your dysphoria, so feel free to ignore or not answer this question if it makes you uncomfortable, but as someone who genuinely wishes the world was a better place for you — what would make you more comfortable in your life as it is now? I understand transitioning isn’t something you can handle, or even necessarily something you want. But what changes to the social environment would you like to see? What would help you come closer to feeling like you’re in a good place, or the place you’re meant to be? I say this in full acceptance that for many people realizing their 100% ideal life simply isn’t possible, but I like to think that there’s ways you could at least get a little closer. More acceptance in the LGBT+ community for non-transitioning trans people? More social acceptance for people who ignore the gender binary to wear the clothes they feel good in? People curbing their kneejerk responses to male-bodied people (I don’t want to say cis men here, not everyone with a male body and a male experience is in fact a man, as you yourself demonstrate) talking about feminine things, to judge by content and not by source? Other things I’m not perhaps thinking of?

My goal with feminism, and other kinds of social activism, is that I want to help people and ensure that everyone has — at the very least — equal opportunity for a great life by their own standards. So if transitioning is beyond your reach, I want to know what would work to help you — and others like you — in other ways.