I’m gonna be real honest here. Truly honest. Feel free to share, I don’t care, I WANT women to know they’re not alone and that bodily hatred is NOT the answer. This is public, so everyone knows. I was going to transition. I discovered queer, trans theory, I assumed not conforming to my gender role made me a man. Where would that have taken me? What would I have done to my life, to my body, to my mind? I mean I was having close friends call me HIM and wanted to bind my breasts, if not slice them off.
NO LIBERAL, TRANS, OR MALE ALLY DID ANYTHING BUT ENCOURAGE ME. I was so masculine! I felt dysphoric about my breasts–they told me to cut ’em off! Hated my vagina–clearly, should’ve had a penis. Played in the dirt, assertive–yup. I must’ve been a man.
Radical feminism, while it’s activism and community has it’s faults, saved me from mutilating my body. It made me PROUD of my body, PROUD to be a WOMAN. I’m so scared of what would’ve happened if I didn’t keep just the slightest of open minds, and my heart breaks every time a strong girl announce her “manhood.” You are not a man, you can never be a man, you are a perfect womyn in a perfect form.
So don’t assume all “TERFs” don’t understand. Don’t tell me I don’t know dysphoria. Don’t tell me I didn’t struggle with this, that for many years it made me cut and hurt–thank the stars I was lucky enough to come to love myself and have a sisterhood rescue me.
I just thought it needed to be said.