#but if i rationalize this... i’m perceived by people as an androgynous-presenting woman.

[weirwoodking]

hmm thinking about the way that the mid-2010 internet’s “let’s all make fun of the cringe sjw snowflake teen girls with blue hair who call themselves boys” era genuinely made me extremely ashamed to think of myself as anything but cis afab since I was like 14

#internalizing it as ‘it’ll just be a phase i go through and i’ll just come off as attention-seeking’ #but then never talking about it to anyone so how could i be seeking attention? #and then six years later it’s like... well the phase isn’t going away. this is still here #and i don’t even really know what to call myself because i’ve never even been out as a lesbian (irl) so i have no public identity #and i’ve always just considered myself more to be just ‘gay’ than ‘a lesbian’ #i’m still attracted to women so what do i call myself if i start identifying as nonbinary? #google says you can be a nonbinary lesbian but i know that a ton of cis lesbians hate it when nonbinary people call themselves lesbians #so i feel like i’d just be pissing people off #but if i rationalize this... i’m perceived by people as an androgynous-presenting woman. #so if i am dating a woman i will be perceived by others as a butch lesbian. so through society’s lens i’m a lesbian #and then on the other hand i think ‘well i just shouldn’t care about labels i’ll just be me 🤪’ #but then a part of me wants a label and an identity and terms and whatnot... #i’ve never wanted to label myself ‘queer’ cause i just don’t like that word for me #maybe ‘nonbinary and gay’ is what i’ll settle on for right now... #ignore me i’m just having a lil life crisis #today is the oversharing day #.txt

[murkypondwater]

The features TERFs look for to decide whether a woman is a trans woman or not, the features that they tear trans women down for having, are the same features that people used against me all my life. I'm afab, I bleed from my crotch whenever my organs decide it's time to do that, I'm feminine presenting, but even so, I have been societally punished for not having the body that people associate with women. I've been through some shit just because my body does not outwardly line up with what people believe a woman is supposed to look like. I've never dated a cis guy with larger hands than me, ever, and I've dated a lot of guys. I'm naturally taller and sturdier/wider than most cis guys. My jaw is square and my features are masculine, or androgynous at best. I've always naturally just had quite a bit of muscle; I'm the one my family would go to if they needed help with heavy lifting. I'm not curvy and I'm not pretty and even as a kid, even when my outfits consisted of almost exclusively pink and I wasn't allowed to have short hair, people have always, always perceived me as a boy.

I've been punished for that. Mistreated. Harassed. Bullied. Called slurs and discriminated against at jobs and in school. People loudly discussed my gender in public. People would ask me if I was a boy or a girl. Public bathrooms were awkward and uncomfortable. Clothes shopping was humiliating; women's clothes are too small and don't fit my body type, men's clothes are restricting to masculine presentation...

I don't consider myself a woman or a man, although TERFs would either call me a woman or a "gender traitor", but for fuck's sake- the society that they want, the ideas that they perpetuate, the attitudes and behaviors that they hold, all of those made my life an absolute living hell! I see posts from TERFs all the time shitting on trans women that would literally apply to me and that perpetuate the same things that made it unacceptable for me to exist as a girl and woman growing up.

I see this shit and I just cannot fathom how they could possibly rationalize their bullshit when it actively hurts afab people and women. That cis woman that was kicked out of a public women's bathroom because she looked too masculine to be a cis woman. My entire fucking life. Any afab person or cis woman with the natural ability to grow a beard or with a body build that isn't traditionally feminine or that is too visibly muscular. We all suffer because if you pretend that being a woman means ABC every time, when actually it can mean ABCDEFGGIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, you're just pushing the status quo that dictates what a woman is allowed to be. And what a woman is punished for not being.

There's no reason, there's no logic, there's no binary and yet they keep pretending that there is even at the cost of the wellbeing of people that aren't the Right Kind of Woman. Usually I can dismiss their nonsense as what it is- nonsense- but other times I see a chart that some asshole TERF made showing what trans women think they look like vs what they actually look like, and the "actually look like" part is me, and I just feel a little crushed.

#terfs dni #not that that would stop them #they have no sense of respect or boundaries even with people they consider women #it's not about being a woman #its about being their idea of what a woman should be #and they'll tear down every afab person in their path to make sure women are not allowed to exist outside that binary idea #anti science #transphobia #tw transphobia #period mention #afab #agender