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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • It’s an interesting read - a lot of her experiences she’s discussing boil down to feeling she was ignored or her voice minimized because of her perceived gender identity and assumptions about how she was raised and what she would feel.

    I liked her discussion and thought her perspective on purposely not transitioning was an interesting view. This was a really good analogy and drove home the point for me:

    Imagine, dear reader, a cis-woman evenly saying:

    “I wish I looked like that but I don’t and can’t. It sucks and it makes me feel really awful if I brood on it. That’s why I focus on my writing—I’d rather make things. Investing in and building things that aren’t my body helps me cope with the body issues I’ve been saddled with against my will.”

    She doesn’t sound like she needs advice on how makeup will actually fix her core problem, does she? She seems like she’s doing alright. I’m her and I’m trans. That’s all.

    Some big quotes that hit home through this post were

    Do I need to be inspected and dissected by the people who laughed at me in order to receive my credential?

    “I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”

    Oof.

    I don’t know if it’s just the sections of the internet I frequent these days, but this intense, misandrist views don’t seem to be as common as they once were, and not as accepted.

    I was born into that shitty town, maleness, in the remains of outdated ideals and misplaced machismo and repression and there are some good people stuck living there. They are not in charge. They did not build it. And I don’t feel okay just moving out and saying “fuck y’all — bootstrap your way out or die out, I was never one of you.” I want to make it a better, healthier place—not spend all my time talking about how shitty it is and how anyone who would choose to live there deserves it.


  • I think the unsaid part is just time spent together- when you’re a kid it’s easy to have dozens of hours a week to hang out and bond. As you age, there’s other time commitments - kids, spouse, family, maintaining a house, etc. In order to have that emotional investment you need to get past the awkward first stages of friendship.

    I think a lot of people lose/drop their hobbies, or the things that let them bond and meet other people. It’s hard to say “I dropped football and now I lost 50% of male conversation” without more info. If all your friends are only bonding over football, yeah. So find other things to do! There’s a million of them, and people are always passionate about their own interests. Find people with similar interests.

    The author also mentions “it feels like they’re always just someone’s partner” and that’s very telling. Are the only men you’re engaging with those who are partners of your own spouse? Well no shit you’re not feeling like you have friends. I like my wife’s friends partners, but they’re firmly in the acquaintance category.