A woman not shaving or wearing a dress or wearing makeup or wearing femme clothes or having styled or long hair or caring how she looks or using a masc name or whatever else is actually a neutral thing and not a sign of her being depressed or giving up or being sad or whatever

Extremely predictable, tbh, that this post, made my a trans woman about my experiences as a woman, about my relationship with gender, about how I get pressure to perform to a more feminized gender presentation, mostly from other women, is being reblogged as #radblr because I didn't actually mention being trans, since it wasn't relevant. I'm thirty or forty years old and I have very, very little interest in arguing with anyone on tumblr anymore, but if you're out there relating to this post, and also performatively yelling that trans women are men, or talking about how "you people don't really view yourself as women" or whatever, then all I can say is perhaps pause a moment to consider that our experiences are not all that different, and maybe choose empathy rather than whatever reactive hate you have been choosing.

dislike how many mental health posts on here are just "you've never done anything wrong in your life ever and they were evil for that"

maybe you did do something wrong. maybe you hurt someone. maybe you have said awful things. maybe you were just as bad as them. maybe. but what matters is that you move on. you have to try. you have to wake up and be kinder. you have to learn and listen and grow. maybe you did do something wrong but that doesn't mean you have to keep doing that. as long as you are alive, you can change

sex workers should be allowed to kill their clients if they feel like it

sex workers should be

allowed to kill their clients

if they feel like it

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

TMEs the second something bad happens to transfems:

NPR did a story on the ruling and *only* talked to trans men.

^Literally talking to anyone but trans women about this ban

Which is super sus considering they've got noted transfem activists and journalists in their roster as recently as March 30th:

But look at some other notable reporting on this topic from supposedly queer-friendly NPR. Note how frequently the discussion pivots from transfems to TME people. Note how the bans always focus on transfems but the "experts" are rarely transfem. Note how frequently we are minimized and dismissed as a tiny minority. Note how often economic impacts are discussed in lieu of the fact that this is just dehumanization plain and simple. And go through the other examples with these ideas in mind.

And on the rare occasion they actually talk to a trans girl in sports, they go on and on about how much she sucks at sports as some sort of "gotcha"

It's not just NPR, but it's notable that the network frequently cited as the most left-leaning and socially accepting news network in the States has a glaring transmisogyny problem.

the positioning of transfem hypervisibility and transmasc invisibility as two opposing forces is so insidious and dangerous because it reinforces the status quo where trans men's voices are already valued over trans women's

trans women can never speak because we're already apparently soaking up all the attention... nevermind that the "attention" is fearmongering government propaganda

trans women can take up no space, because any amount of attention is further proof that we hog the spotlight from trans men. our visibility is thought of as coming at the cost of that of trans men. so if a trans man speaks over us or silences us, he's just seen as balancing the scales. but our visibility and theirs are not actually opposing forces. a decrease in visibility for trans women is not an increase for trans men. it's just a decrease

It's also a blatant lie. Even when the government attacks and dehumanizes transfems through law, the news media *scrambles* to talk to anyone but a trans woman. Not even supposedly "woke" NPR can get this one right:

The three most recent articles about the trans sports bans specifically list transmascs as their "experts" although the ban has nothing to do with them or their participation in sports, and the one time they actually talk to a transfem athelete about this (several months ago) they spend like a third of the article talking about how shitty she is at her sport of choice as some sort of "gotcha."

Even when we're genuinely being centered by supposedly supportive people, we're belittled and mocked.

I reblogged this yesterday, but I want to reblog it again. Diabetic ketoacidosis turns your blood acidic and will essentially burn you from the inside out.

The stories you hear of people dying from rationing, this is what happens to their body.

Affordable insulin isn’t just a right, it’s a necessity.

No one should have to die like that when it’s preventable with access to proper medication.

cis women are not on the hook for normalizing unshaven legs or bare faces because their performances of femininity are thought of as natural and innate. they go unremarked upon

trans women's femininity is treated as contrived and artificial, so every little thing we do to perform it is thought of as a Choice, which means we are Choosing to uphold regressive beauty standards

we and cis women are both held to the standard that women are supposed to have bare legs, but we are thought of as being responsible for this standard, rather than being influenced and subjugated by it just like every other woman is

part of this comes from the idea that trans women are somehow immune to misogynistic standards. people seem to think that we won't face any consequence for not performing patriarchal standards of femininity, unlike ~real~ women, who are under ~real~ pressure to do these things. so the responsibility falls on us to normalize these things, because we are supposedly in the best position to do so

distressingly few people seem to have gotten it through their skulls that trans women are held to especially high standards of femininity, and the consequences for failing to perform it are especially bad

yes, we are punished for our femininity, but this does not mean we are rewarded for not achieving patriarchal femininity either. it's not either or. we are punished for both. there is not actually a win condition, trans womanhood is a double bind under patriarchy

very worth noting, by the way, that testosterone puberty can give you very thick, dark leg hair, not to mention other body hair. I don't shave my leg hair, and sure I think of this as a partly political decision, but I also speak from a place of privilege, having very thin and wispy leg hair thanks to genetics and 8 years of HRT

it's already not my place to judge what other women do with their bodies, but it would especially not be my place to judge what women with thicker and darker leg hair than me do with it. absolutely goddamn ridiculous to ask the women who will be most affected by the stigma against women's leg hair to suck it up and deal with it lest they be called "regressive" by people who can absolutely afford not to shave theirs. be fucking for real

I swear, 90% of the talk about what's "more radical and progressive" in a queer context is just a smokescreen for transmisogyny. trans women are not your fucking radical "genderfucky" dressup dolls. we make our own damn choices about our own damn bodies and it's really fucking rancid that so many people feel entitled to have an opinion on what we do with OUR bodies

you assholes are no better than cis men

cis women are not on the hook for normalizing unshaven legs or bare faces because their performances of femininity are thought of as natural and innate. they go unremarked upon

trans women's femininity is treated as contrived and artificial, so every little thing we do to perform it is thought of as a Choice, which means we are Choosing to uphold regressive beauty standards

we and cis women are both held to the standard that women are supposed to have bare legs, but we are thought of as being responsible for this standard, rather than being influenced and subjugated by it just like every other woman is

part of this comes from the idea that trans women are somehow immune to misogynistic standards. people seem to think that we won't face any consequence for not performing patriarchal standards of femininity, unlike ~real~ women, who are under ~real~ pressure to do these things. so the responsibility falls on us to normalize these things, because we are supposedly in the best position to do so

distressingly few people seem to have gotten it through their skulls that trans women are held to especially high standards of femininity, and the consequences for failing to perform it are especially bad

yes, we are punished for our femininity, but this does not mean we are rewarded for not achieving patriarchal femininity either. it's not either or. we are punished for both. there is not actually a win condition, trans womanhood is a double bind under patriarchy

very worth noting, by the way, that testosterone puberty can give you very thick, dark leg hair, not to mention other body hair. I don't shave my leg hair, and sure I think of this as a partly political decision, but I also speak from a place of privilege, having very thin and wispy leg hair thanks to genetics and 8 years of HRT

it's already not my place to judge what other women do with their bodies, but it would especially not be my place to judge what women with thicker and darker leg hair than me do with it. absolutely goddamn ridiculous to ask the women who will be most affected by the stigma against women's leg hair to suck it up and deal with it lest they be called "regressive" by people who can absolutely afford not to shave theirs. be fucking for real

I swear, 90% of the talk about what's "more radical and progressive" in a queer context is just a smokescreen for transmisogyny. trans women are not your fucking radical "genderfucky" dressup dolls. we make our own damn choices about our own damn bodies and it's really fucking rancid that so many people feel entitled to have an opinion on what we do with OUR bodies

cis women are not on the hook for normalizing unshaven legs or bare faces because their performances of femininity are thought of as natural and innate. they go unremarked upon

trans women's femininity is treated as contrived and artificial, so every little thing we do to perform it is thought of as a Choice, which means we are Choosing to uphold regressive beauty standards

we and cis women are both held to the standard that women are supposed to have bare legs, but we are thought of as being responsible for this standard, rather than being influenced and subjugated by it just like every other woman is

part of this comes from the idea that trans women are somehow immune to misogynistic standards. people seem to think that we won't face any consequence for not performing patriarchal standards of femininity, unlike ~real~ women, who are under ~real~ pressure to do these things. so the responsibility falls on us to normalize these things, because we are supposedly in the best position to do so

distressingly few people seem to have gotten it through their skulls that trans women are held to especially high standards of femininity, and the consequences for failing to perform it are especially bad

yes, we are punished for our femininity, but this does not mean we are rewarded for not achieving patriarchal femininity either. it's not either or. we are punished for both. there is not actually a win condition, trans womanhood is a double bind under patriarchy

very worth noting, by the way, that testosterone puberty can give you very thick, dark leg hair, not to mention other body hair. I don't shave my leg hair, and sure I think of this as a partly political decision, but I also speak from a place of privilege, having very thin and wispy leg hair thanks to genetics and 8 years of HRT

it's already not my place to judge what other women do with their bodies, but it would especially not be my place to judge what women with thicker and darker leg hair than me do with it. absolutely goddamn ridiculous to ask the women who will be most affected by the stigma against women's leg hair to suck it up and deal with it lest they be called "regressive" by people who can absolutely afford not to shave theirs. be fucking for real

cis women are not on the hook for normalizing unshaven legs or bare faces because their performances of femininity are thought of as natural and innate. they go unremarked upon

trans women's femininity is treated as contrived and artificial, so every little thing we do to perform it is thought of as a Choice, which means we are Choosing to uphold regressive beauty standards

we and cis women are both held to the standard that women are supposed to have bare legs, but we are thought of as being responsible for this standard, rather than being influenced and subjugated by it just like every other woman is

part of this comes from the idea that trans women are somehow immune to misogynistic standards. people seem to think that we won't face any consequence for not performing patriarchal standards of femininity, unlike ~real~ women, who are under ~real~ pressure to do these things. so the responsibility falls on us to normalize these things, because we are supposedly in the best position to do so

distressingly few people seem to have gotten it through their skulls that trans women are held to especially high standards of femininity, and the consequences for failing to perform it are especially bad

yes, we are punished for our femininity, but this does not mean we are rewarded for not achieving patriarchal femininity either. it's not either or. we are punished for both. there is not actually a win condition, trans womanhood is a double bind under patriarchy