I’m a trans woman and I don’t know how to explain myself in the most righteous way but I am going to do my best.
Being a trans woman is not easy, first, you don’t know how to get into “femininity”, how to act in a certain way to be perceived as a woman, and even less how to feel about yourself and how you are suppose be, because, when you are not labeled as “actually womanly feminine female girl power woman”, it actually hurts. If you label things like doing make up or wearing dresses as “F E M I N I N E”, what am i by not doing those thing then?, or not liking those thing?, or not caring about those?, am i less woman?, do i have something against women?, do i hate women and womanhood?, am i a pick me girl how view other women as INFERIOR by not liking what “the other girls™” do?. After dealing with the several insecurities I carry on, I found out an answer: No.
I read a lot time ago, a post of someone that said that not liking k-pop, not liking the pink color or performing “male” attitudes like being dominant, and being a woman at the same time, was a sign of internalize misogyny and... it ruined my life. I know, it sounds silly, it sounds stupid, and makes not sense, but I watched a lot people repeating the same discourse with different word that I don’t know, i felt wrong by not thinking the same way, i don’t know about you, but at least for me hearing a statement by someone different than me always hits harder than a statement made up by my brain. This hits even harder when the statement doesn’t seen as clearly reasonable, it rather than diminish it credibility, increase it. Because my brain is that silly that thinks that if something doesn’t support itself in some reasonable ground, is because it just doesn’t need it. Sounds incredibly dumb?, it is, but my brain is my brain and likes to suppose things from nothings and take as “facts” nonsense ideas that heard on the internet.
I’m pretty dumb, i know, and being honest i could searched help really long ago, but didn't by feeling ashamed of it. I have cried, i have cursed, i have suffered a lot and I don't know if it gonna ends soon. When that pain, that overthinking, gets its peak, sometimes i even ask myself if it is time to stop the whole "I'm a woman" thing, it seems easier to be a man from this perspective, because men doesn't seen to think about this whole sh*t. Why?, well, as society, we tend to see cis-gender women as forever victims and men both as victimizer or saviors of the victims, with the whole "I'm not like other girls" phenomenon, we saw nothing but cis-gender women trying to perform a victimizer role and then being grounded for other women and men performing a savior role by trying to protect the forever victim, feminine and never treated as adults cis-gender women from the violent, masculine, bitchy and c*ck worshiper pick me girls.
Maybe you didn’t see it like that but the over-exposition of this phenomenon portray by cis-gender women savior made me think about the implications of it. I saw this evolved (in just some cases, I’m not gonna lie either) into a categorically hateful and condescending trend against cis-gender women who doesn’t like or want to be girly or feminine, which search the way to get this loss sisters into real femininity and womanhood again.
You would say, who you know that this whole drama goes around just cis-gender women?. Because, the reason to oblige cis-gender women to not misbehave is what they got between their let (not all cis-gender women have a vagina but most people not know it or just don't care about it). Issue that, cis-gender women are always portrayed and seen as weaker and less smart than men, their identity is not seen as compatible with something as dominance, violence, aggressiveness, anger and so on. And because most people bought with this idea as facts™, they tend to see any sign of "manly behavior" perform by cis-gender women as a tread to nature, womanhood, women themselves, society, feminism, and so on.
And maybe you would say, why do you feel called out by this?, i don't know, maybe because all I know about womanliness is portrayed by and sometimes to, cis-gender women, and they being called out, makes automatically be called out too. Maybe is the language, the women savior and the pick me girls always say girls or woman when they talk about cis-gender women, and then, I don't catch that I'm not in the same bag where "real", "normal" or "standard women are", and, you know, it feel horrible thinks that trans women are in the "that second kind of women bag" meanwhile cis-gender women are in the "main women bag".
What's my point then, I don't pal, i just want to tell you about my day, later i will come up with a well written and argued essay of then thousand words.
Knowing all the implication and silliness of the issue, I still thinking about this sh*t, asking me if I am feminine or soft enough to be considered as a good woman, a girls girl, enough woman, or someone with the right to call themself a woman. Is hard but i got nothing to try to go through it, if I don't have the enough strength, i will never be happy. As simple as that.
This is the first part of a entries series about my experience as a trans woman, maybe I won't finish it what so ever like a lot of non-finished-yet projects I have accumulated at the past of the time. But I don't know pal, I want to just try out for once with this Medium thing. Writing about what's around my head really helps me with my stress and I really happy for it so I'm gonna keep writing at least for know.
Thanks for reading <3
