This is gonna sound weird but I wish we were depicted with features that make us clockable like a brow ridge or shoulders or a blocky silhouette in art defending us.
Like I’ve been looking through comics and almost every depiction of a trans woman looks identical to a cis woman… which like, I get why a trans person would be uncomfortable with drawing dysphoric features, but I feel like it dulls the point of the political art.
Defending trans people who pass is easy, like even transphobes can do that, but defending trans people who aren’t conventionally attractive and don’t pass is much harder. Those are the people who get into confrontations in public bathrooms, and who experience the most hatred and constant micro-aggressions from almost everyone. The stage where you “don’t look good” is when you’re most vulnerable and is an almost universal experience for all trans women that tends to last much longer if you’re underprivileged.
I would just like seeing more stuff that affirms non-passing trans women are still women and that, in general, women don’t need to be pretty to deserve respect and basic decency from other people.
I am in the group of people who can’t pass, it’d require at least FFS, and I just don’t have the money and might never have enough.
It is a permanent sadness I have to bare, a bit like grief, but it’s also not like my life is over.
I’ve been told a couple of times that I have to keep going because some time in the future, things will be better, you’ll feel comfortable in your body, you’re just baby trans, etc. I think telling that to people kind of justifies the thinking that leads them to deciding that their lives aren’t worth living.
Like I had to accept that I actually am stuck with this, and it really sucks, like really sucks, but my life is still worth living even if dysphoria will be with me forever. I would never insinuate to anyone in a similar situation that things are hopeless. Maybe one day it will be better, but I’m not betting everything on it anymore. There’s more than just trans stuff and relationships in the world.
(Or idk, take what I say with a grain of salt. I am like terminally mentally ill and I needed to develop a nearly infinite tolerance for suffering.)
Exactly, it’s weird being told that I just have to be on hrt for 2-3 years when I’m at 6 years. And like you say, that doesn’t mean the transition is a failure! It does suck but I’m happy I got to get the changes I got.
(Oh and same thing here. Realising that was fun.)
Well, I’m being informed, to my great displeasure, that the HRT I was taking did nothing at all and I’m still within cis male ranges, so I’m starting the three year timer once I actually manage the task of begging my endocrinologist for enough HRT.
Ow I wish you all the best and hope it goes smoothly!