I did a fun (for me) science thread, but I promised I'd do a thread about trans men, virilismia, and the stigma against ugly women, so let's go! To start out: Are you a trans man whose spent some part of your life being perceived as an ugly woman? What do you make of that?
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This is woven into counseling around testosterone, and gatekeeping trans male transition. "Effects are permanent. You can never go back." But, you CAN go back to thinking of yourself as a woman. You CAN go back to presenting femme. You can never go back... to being fuckable.
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If being fuckable by straight cis men (and transphobic lesbians) is synonymous with being a woman, then transition becomes this one way door we can walk through... but never fully return from.
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This attitude is very rarely challenged. The people who challenge it most often are radical feminists (which makes things A LITTLE AWKWARD), and trans women (also awkward, though less so, and for very different reasons).
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Despite the awkwardness, though, I think trans men can look to radical feminist traditions and to trans women. For instance, I've really drawn strength from comedian
@rileyjsilverman (not, let me be clear, an ugly woman) and her embrace of the voice nature gave her.Show this thread -
These traditions suggest that women don't have to be pretty, and may, in fact, own their power by rejecting prettiness. But they can also provide a framework for naming and rejecting the pressure to be a pretty woman as a trans man or nonbinary person. /end
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this is one reason i had so much self-loathing. i thought no one would want to be with someone like me? like fuck, i was considered "too hairy" if i didn't shave my body hair before testosterone.
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I had this too- even as a lesbian who did really well with other lesbians, there was still this creeping sense of inferiority for not being pretty or noticed by men. And, when I managed pretty, I hated my looks even more. It was so confusing!
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This particular attitude effected us even when Apryl, our femme presenting headmate, was host. As an intersex AFAB person, this toxic rhetoric was thrown at us a lot, and at the time, Apryl wasn't even trying to transition, we just happened to have natural facial hair.
Jamie -
These were all when Apryl was host. Before we embraced being intersex. We shaved our face, which caused us a lot of pain. Our face breaks out really bad when we shave it.
pic.twitter.com/ZJiNRCtKsy
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