Firstly I guess I realised by reading all that shit how hard some trans women have it with the fucking stupid expectations society puts on women. I experience(d) it from an afab perspective and I was very sensitive to it where I was always super aware of my appearance and never comfortable if I wasn’t sure that all my hairs were in place (or removed), my skin looked smooth and my clothes were clean and proper but not too boring.

I super much relate to comparing oneself with the prettiest girls and realising that I’ll never look like that. When I look around me now I see that a lot women don’t conform to the expectations I had set for myself, and those women are just living their life being pretty and comfortable and nice. I literally felt like the world was ending anytime I had a pimple that I couldn’t hide with concealer or I realised that some part of me wasn’t shaven well. At some point I realised my fingers have hair and immediately felt like everyone around me was looking at it while thinking I’m gross, so from then on I had to shave my fucking fingers lol. I’m not really sure how me being trans masc influenced this obsession I had with conforming to all femme expectations. Maybe I thought if I reached my impossible goal of femme perfection I would finally feel more connected to my body?

I stopped shaving at all a while ago because I realised that I didn’t dislike my bodily hair, I was just scared that other people would find my hair gross. Now that I realised I’m trans I stopped doing most of the things I used to do to appear like a proper feminine women and I notice a difference in how people look at me and talk to me. I get dirty looks sometimes and people seem more hesitant to approach me. This reaction was basically my biggest fear when I was younger and now I’m just learning to live with it because letting strangers dictate how I look and behave is silly and it made me very unhappy.

I sympathise a lot with trans women who struggle with these same insecurities and high expectations and I can imagine that adding being trans to the mix can make those feelings much worse.

When I read the part about cis women being lucky for having to put in no effort to look femme I felt a bit defensive about it though because of my own struggle with appearing femme enough even though I was born with the femme hormones.

But it also made me realise that me being trans masc makes it so much easier for me to deal with that internal struggle I had because I now know that I definitely don’t have to live up to the expectations of a gender I don’t identify with, and it feels like a huge weight taken off of my shoulders.

I’ll end my long train of thoughts by adding that I’m proud of this space for having some great posters with really good views on gender constructs to help combat unhealthy gender expectations.