If I were to transition today and didn’t pass as well as Jessica, and everyone felt obligated to call me a woman, they would be wireheading me: making me think my transition was successful, even though it wasn’t.
This is the same fuckin’ diseased mentality that gets cis women harassed in changing rooms for having jawlines that are slightly too heavy.
The math is also weird and unclear in that way which feels like a person reaching for grandiose Theories Of It All without any experience solving more mundane problems first.
I’ve heard a variant of this as self-hating fatphobia. “If I wear a bikini & you body positive people admire me in it, you’re tricking me into thinking I’ve managed to pass for an attractive (ie. thin) person.” It probably has an equivalent in every form of body-oriented self-hatred & it’s sad & infuriating simultaneously. Infuriating partly because it’s outright enraged at the existence of people who don’t care if they pass as cis, thin, able-bodied, etc.
I had a friend for many years who would do this. To be clear, this person was otherwise a decent friend and I had good times with them. But they would constantly declare, loudly, to everyone, how fat they were. They would make constant comments on how fat, their relatives were. They’d insist that other people were making special arrangements for them because of their fatness.
No matter how many times people would assure this person that we largely did not care or consider their weight as any factor in hanging out with them or interacting with them, they would deny it. No matter how many times I or anyone else carefully suggested that there may be some value in speaking to a therapist about their anxiety around their weight, they would not listen.
This same person would also complain how much fat shame society as a whole inflicts. But they refused to acknowledge their own.
It is sad, and infuriating, and it eventually pushed me and many other people away.
I feel like this is not an uncommon sentiment, the whole “but what if i don’t pass and feel stupid making everyone call me a woman?” thing. Most people don’t make this feeling the basis for an entire philosophical edifice, though.
Also the answer to the conundrum is just like, okay, so don’t do that then! No one said you have to! It’s not really about whether you are a woman in some cosmic sense, it’s just about what makes you feel most comfortable – if you want to transition but really feel that weird about the social transition part, you can always just take estrogen for the mental/physical effects and keep calling yourself a guy. Then do the rest of the stuff if/when strangers start consistently assuming you’re a woman anyway (after all, they’re not your friends, they have no reason to “lie” to you). It’s not the 1990s anymore, there’s no rule that says you have to come out to everyone in your life as the first step.
Exactly. Yeah some trans women really don’t pass, some cis women don’t either. Nobody benefits from increased scrutiny on people’s gender except people selling fear of trans people or selling the tools to conform to gendered expectations.
But also if you’re unhappy with your meat sack change it because there’s no evidence you get another.
This is the same fuckin’ diseased mentality that gets cis women harassed in changing rooms for having jawlines that are slightly too heavy.
The math is also weird and unclear in that way which feels like a person reaching for grandiose Theories Of It All without any experience solving more mundane problems first.
I’ve heard a variant of this as self-hating fatphobia. “If I wear a bikini & you body positive people admire me in it, you’re tricking me into thinking I’ve managed to pass for an attractive (ie. thin) person.” It probably has an equivalent in every form of body-oriented self-hatred & it’s sad & infuriating simultaneously. Infuriating partly because it’s outright enraged at the existence of people who don’t care if they pass as cis, thin, able-bodied, etc.
I had a friend for many years who would do this. To be clear, this person was otherwise a decent friend and I had good times with them. But they would constantly declare, loudly, to everyone, how fat they were. They would make constant comments on how fat, their relatives were. They’d insist that other people were making special arrangements for them because of their fatness.
No matter how many times people would assure this person that we largely did not care or consider their weight as any factor in hanging out with them or interacting with them, they would deny it. No matter how many times I or anyone else carefully suggested that there may be some value in speaking to a therapist about their anxiety around their weight, they would not listen.
This same person would also complain how much fat shame society as a whole inflicts. But they refused to acknowledge their own.
It is sad, and infuriating, and it eventually pushed me and many other people away.
I feel like this is not an uncommon sentiment, the whole “but what if i don’t pass and feel stupid making everyone call me a woman?” thing. Most people don’t make this feeling the basis for an entire philosophical edifice, though.
Also the answer to the conundrum is just like, okay, so don’t do that then! No one said you have to! It’s not really about whether you are a woman in some cosmic sense, it’s just about what makes you feel most comfortable – if you want to transition but really feel that weird about the social transition part, you can always just take estrogen for the mental/physical effects and keep calling yourself a guy. Then do the rest of the stuff if/when strangers start consistently assuming you’re a woman anyway (after all, they’re not your friends, they have no reason to “lie” to you). It’s not the 1990s anymore, there’s no rule that says you have to come out to everyone in your life as the first step.
🎶 I see the girls go by dressed in their summer clothes / Priors all updating until my darkness goes 🎶
Zack’s ability to externalise problems onto all others is stupendous even as a rationalist
Exactly. Yeah some trans women really don’t pass, some cis women don’t either. Nobody benefits from increased scrutiny on people’s gender except people selling fear of trans people or selling the tools to conform to gendered expectations.
But also if you’re unhappy with your meat sack change it because there’s no evidence you get another.