Thank you for sharing your experience. This clears up quite a bit for me and I’m a bit surprised with myself it wasn’t obvious sooner. I think I’m just fascinated by societal norms about gender presentation and how it evolves over time. What you explained makes total sense to me.
Oh absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people see us and get a little stuck on the gender presentation bit. Hell, I did as a teenager.
In fact, for a long time (and still in some places) in order to medically transition you had to do something called “real life experience”, which was living as your preferred gender for however long the therapist wanted. Now theoretically that could be a frustrating roadblock that has notmal issues, but basically be come out, change your name, use your pronouns, etc. However this also caused problems of essentially forcing overcompliance to gendered expectations. In college a friend of mine was told by a therapist that she wouldn’t get approval to start hormones if she didn’t start wearing makeup and dresses to her sessions. It used to be a joke in trans communities that we’d basically ham it up for doctors then go home and put on jeans and a t-shirt like everyone else wears.
It’s a bit outdated but the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano deals with quite a bit around transness and feminism.
Thank you for sharing your experience. This clears up quite a bit for me and I’m a bit surprised with myself it wasn’t obvious sooner. I think I’m just fascinated by societal norms about gender presentation and how it evolves over time. What you explained makes total sense to me.
Thank you!
Oh absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people see us and get a little stuck on the gender presentation bit. Hell, I did as a teenager.
In fact, for a long time (and still in some places) in order to medically transition you had to do something called “real life experience”, which was living as your preferred gender for however long the therapist wanted. Now theoretically that could be a frustrating roadblock that has notmal issues, but basically be come out, change your name, use your pronouns, etc. However this also caused problems of essentially forcing overcompliance to gendered expectations. In college a friend of mine was told by a therapist that she wouldn’t get approval to start hormones if she didn’t start wearing makeup and dresses to her sessions. It used to be a joke in trans communities that we’d basically ham it up for doctors then go home and put on jeans and a t-shirt like everyone else wears.
It’s a bit outdated but the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano deals with quite a bit around transness and feminism.