While cis girls, throughout their socialization and lives in our culture, internalize cultural messages about ideal womanhood as a demand of what they need to be in order to be considered valuable, desirable, good women, they have the comparable ‘advantage’ of at least already being girls / women (or at least already having that assignment). Trans girls, though, are subjected to those same messages but internalize them as what is required to manifest womanhood at all. We’re swimming upstream against our gender assignment, and if THAT is what ‘being a woman is all about’, THAT gets internalized as the standard we need to live up not simply to be loved and valued, but in order to simply be read and perceived as ourselves. In other words, while cis girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be good girls, trans girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be.

This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty #2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to ‘fit in’ or be ‘good’. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather than who we aren’t.

Natalie Reed, Is He Checking Me Out, Or Just Staring At The Freak?

Read the whole thing.

(via kiriamaya)

(via kittensandscience)

Source: kiriamaya

623 Notes/ Hide

  1. racismschoolstorage reblogged this from racismschool
  2. salientverses reblogged this from ethiopienne
  3. muffinavashti19 reblogged this from ethiopienne
  4. aimsme reblogged this from acafenfan
  5. greatpostsexplainingthings reblogged this from allyouneedarecats
  6. lochaberaxe reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  7. eisreicher reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  8. temerei reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  9. ebolazaire reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  10. iranoutofcloudpuns reblogged this from loohand
  11. tesselation-tea reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  12. loohand reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  13. kuryree reblogged this from thymosophos
  14. thymosophos reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  15. samclamz reblogged this from holisticsexualhealth
  16. holisticsexualhealth reblogged this from fuckyeahsexeducation
  17. justasecondlove reblogged this from fuckyeahsexeducation
  18. shakendust reblogged this from ethiopienne
  19. wolfbad reblogged this from thursdaysoldier
  20. suleskerry reblogged this from inter-locution
  21. selfihateyouithink reblogged this from actuallycrowley