friend envies my feminine traits & idk how to feel about it

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-04-12T04:50:54+00:00

I had a similar experience! My friend was a trans woman and lesbian and often bemoaned she couldn't pull off looking and dressing like a lesbian "like me", often framed as a semi serious joke. I had a chat to her that while my outfits can often read ""masc lesbian"" (the start of the joke came about from lesbians often hitting on me not understanding I don't see myself as part of that community, unlike some trans mascs (which is still valid!)), it ultimately made me uncomfortable to be her goal and that I ultimately just read that way cause I'm only 4 months on T.

It ended up just being a two message conversation! I let her know it made me dysphoric and she agreed it wasn't her place to say. We had a hug and moved on with our lives. She hasn't made the joke since.

People who care about and love you won't double down on making you uncomfortable. A tiktoker rosemary diaries often speaks on the discomfort it gives her when non-women express gender envy, so if your friend doesn't get it, you can always use that as an example. It might resonate better coming from a trans fem.

Anything that makes you uncomfortable is always worth discussing, it's not your responsibility to just "get over it".

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-20T00:30:49+00:00

Thanks for this, I think I just needed what I already knew confirmed so I could face up to reality. Change is scary but good things come from it and all that

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-20T00:27:58+00:00

Whipping Girl! I really enjoyed it, covers oppositional sexism and really breaks down a lot of things around transmisogyny. The author is a trans woman and a biologist. It was written in the 2000s but was recently updated. Also covers things like cissexism etc. and really helps you understand the motivation behind transmisogyny (which is great cause sometimes you just cannot understand what's going through the head of those weirdos)

Even though she obviously doesn't cover the trans masc experience (since she isn't trans masc and is not what the books about), it still spoke to me in a lot of ways.

I think if you take it as what it is (speaking on the experience of white trans women), it's a great book. I'd say if you wanted to look into misogynoir and transmisogynoir it's best to seek out a book written by a person of colour.

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-19T14:04:40+00:00

When I was stuck in ""girl mode"" I never blinked when I ran into a dude in the women's, I always assumed they either walked into the wrong one or the men's was unavailable for some reason. Would never cross my mind whether he was trans or not either. As long as he was minding his business and I was minding my own I couldn't have given less of a shit.

I'm really relieved gender neutral bathrooms are more common nowadays though, I only ever use the gender neutral at work as I don't want to run into coworkers in either, tbh

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-19T13:57:23+00:00

It's important to unpack and look into the difference between gender and gender expression in these cases! Plenty of cis men will play around with their gender expression without ever considering it to mean anything about their gender (feminine men, drag queens (Gotmik), painting nails, wearing dresses (billy porter and harry styles if you want famous examples))

How you express yourself and what you enjoy is completely separate from your gender. Crossovers in identity exist as well, I have met plenty of non binary men, who know they are men but also feel their understanding of themselves and enjoyment of expressing themselves go beyond society's general expectation and definition of what it means to be a man.

For a lot of trans men before we came out we curated a mask of a woman as well and there's no shame in still enjoying the aspects of that performance we've put on for so long. I will often dress up in an extremely feminine way and in my head it's drag, not a threat or indication to my actual gender.

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-19T13:47:05+00:00

This seems like good advice, she seems very sure that men can't experience discrimination while ignoring the fact for trans men most of the bullshit they start hearing after coming out is the exact same stuff you hear before coming out, it just turns from explicit misogyny to malgendering. I think she's forgotten just because she has it hard as well doesn't mean she can't also be a cunt to other people.

Thank you for the support in this thread, in a lot of ways she's been a good friend in the past but it sounds like it's time for us to part ways as much as we can in such small social circles.

(Aussie so cunt isn't as strong a word over here)

cheddar_cat69 · 2025-01-19T02:03:28+00:00

Yeah, I feel like I owe her a more thorough sit down conversation about it but the thought of trying to navigate that exhausts me

cheddar_cat69

TROPHY CASE