Don't Turn Your Back On Me

 You know, I am getting really tired of my body deciding to have spontaneous food sensitivities.  Not so much the gluten issues but more of a "HAHAHA EVERYTHING YOU PUT IN YOUR MOUTH WILL GIVE YOU HEARTBURN" type of deal.  Fun!  At least the antacids are delicious.

I've been having trouble reconciling my gender with my feminism, and with femininity.

 Oh, it's not that I disagree with everything that the current, most mainstream brand of feminism stands for.  There were some issues I had before I came out, namely some of the transmisogyny aimed at trans women, and several people not realizing that not every woman's experience is the same; that is, they had NO concept of intersectionality.  My views on those haven't changed.  I still think they should be eliminated.

Now...I do worry about stating my views on feminism, what I find wrong with it, and how it can be improved.  Because I think one of the biggest things I've struggled to work out is where do I fall when I talk about these things?  Part of me thinks that because I spent so much of my life identifying as female (even if I never felt 100% comfortable with it), I do have the right to have those opinions.  But now I feel like that mindset is really presumptuous and disgusting, because it means I'm shoving my way into a women's-only space and talking over women (cis and trans).  I usually am too terrified to put my opinion forth even when it's asked for, so I don't think I'm really in danger of doing this, but at the same time, I feel like it's a valid concern.

The next thing is femininity.  Even before I came out, I wasn't 100%  comfortable with looking femme.  Objectively, I know that this doesn't make me a horrible, interally transphobic, chauvinistic dick.  Still, I look at some of my fellow self-made men (ha, I love that term!) and some of them are femme as fuck and look absolutely breathtaking.  And I feel bad because hey, being femme =/= being female, and these guys are a perfect example of that.  Trans men, non-binary femmes, femme genderqueers, femme agender folks (and to an extent cis men, as they're affected by narrow patriarchal values too) are not any less of a man because they like things that are traditionally coded as feminine.  That's outdated, bigoted thinking that still persists, and it pisses me off.  And yeah,

At the same time, though, I don't think I should have to sacrifice being happy with myself and loving myself in order to prove to the world at large that HEY I AM NOT TRANSMISOGYNISTIC (at least I bust ass to make sure I am not, but if I am PLEASE call me out on it).  I always feel more comfortable in clothes that are masculine-coded.  Physically, they fit my body better, as I have some weird proportions that are fun to deal with along with the general body dysphoria.  What they do for me mentally, though, is so much more.  I feel more authentic and more "me".

I'm hoping that therapy for gender dysphoria will help me out with these things, because I've spent far too much of my life beating myself up for things that, in retrospect, I shouldn't have.  I think the anxiety issues that I've had for years just exacerbate this self-defeating way of thinking.  :\