𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

On the other hand, when I describe the experience of passing to some cis people, they look at me with what I take to be a mixture of confusion and pity. This is especially true of cis people who knew me before I transitioned. & I sometimes get unambiguously clocked by strangers.

And when you get mixed feedback, the pessimistic outlook tends to dominate. If some people say I look great and some people say I look like a man, I'm emotionally going to conclude that I look like a man and the people who say I look good are simply patronizing me.

Online praise is especially flimsy. If you know me online you only know what I look like with a lot of makeup, from the right angles, in the right lighting, from the selection of pictures & videos I curate. You don't know what I look at in the mirror first thing in the morning.

Like a lot of trans people, I rely for psychological sustenance on positive feedback from other trans people. And there are a lot of great spaces online where everyone is full of love and praise for everyone else. And mostly that's good. But it can be undermined horribly.

Sometimes I'll make a complaint like "I sound like a man in that video." And some well-meaning person will say: "well you're a woman so any way you talk is womanly!" And my heart sinks and I'll think: "The fuck? Is my beard shadow womanly beard shadow?"

"Is everyone just patronizing me? Are all compliments lies?" "Is this just a hugbox where whatever makes trans women feel good must be true?" This sends me into a death spiral where I distrust all positive feedback and only what hurts seems real.

This is how you end up reading threads about yourself on 4chan/lgbt at 2am with a bottle of gin and just reveling in the masochistic glory of being called an AGP hon by other self-loathing trans women who screech at each other about being AGP hons all day.

This is very bad, of course. It's sadsacks externalizing their own self-loathing, and it's not the truth anymore than the cushiest hugbox is the truth. It's—what's the opposite of a hugbox? An iron maiden. But it feels like truth when you hate yourself.