i have hair almost down to my waist and was wearing a padded bra, which i usually do when i'm out (6 yrs post mastectomy) bc people get really weird about seeing a woman with a flat chest and usually i just want to have a peaceful time outside, but people were still very confused by me today, the same thing thursday when i went into the office. this hasn't happened to me in a while, but i've lost weight and have been wearing more androgynous outfits and very little makeup and i've been letting my eyebrows grow out from a pretty thinly plucked shape, so i gues now i'm confusing again. a lot of my very feminie presentation comes from a place of trying to reduce friction with a very transphobic society that assumes that i'm a trans woman because i am 6 foot tall with a flat chest and a sort of raspy voice. but i'm really tired of doing that. most of the time when i'm out / engaging with others i'm constantly, very actively trying to mitigate this discomfort. which of course makes me extremely self-conscious, and when you're extremely self-conscious, people react to you very poorly. i think it reads creepy. people think, oh, this person has something terrible to hide. that doesn't mean that i think someone that reads as a confident trans woman gets more positive reactions. i'm just saying that that isn't working; it's not even helping me move through life more easily unless i perform it perfectly, and idk, even then i don't feel "free of the burden of fear" but just terrified i'll slip up. anyway, i get really insane reactions. some of it is scary, especially since violent anti trans hatecrimes are increasing (yes, including in berlin where i live). though it is interesting the only two times people have spoken to me directly to find out what gender i was, it was complimentary or came from a place of intruige. anyway, i don't feel this very feminine presentation has much to do with me. there are things about it that i like, i like blending in / getting polite, positive attention, or even i don't know, sometimes it's not so polite, but i like getting attention from men either way (i feel like i need to add some kind of caveat to this, obviously i don't like getting harrassed). the more feminine clothes i wear i think are very pretty, and i like how i look in them. it's fun to be "a 31 year old woman." i'm not planning to stop doing this, but i want to be able to explore a more androgynous presentation again alongside it because that just doesn't feel like all there is to it. i have to learn to deal differently with the anxiety and fear i feel about being threatened = engage with it at all rather than avoid it. i sometimes wish i wasn't so tall & feel androgyny is easy to do in a way that upsets people less when you're shorter. but i mean, obviously that's just trying to avoid transmisogyny, which i feel i have no right to mourn not being able to do and i shouldn't live so much of my life trying to escape it either. at the end of the day, i am not a trans woman, and will always be able to escape that. it's been over 5 years now. i've experienced a total disruption of my view of myself "post transition" because instead of trying to explore what achieving a more androgynous presentation does for me, i've been trying to get ahead of the threats it attracts. idk, do i just live the rest of my life centering fear? idk what the answer is to this, it's not like it's unjustified anxiety. the other day a trans woman was attacked in berlin and she ended up in the hospital. this has happened a handful of times this year (been in the news - probably happens more often than it is reported). but regardless, it doesn't serve me. i also think i'm more attractive when i don't do this sort of totally unnatural costuming and some people do react to it very positively, which has newly allowed me to develope a sense of self-confidence in my identity. so now i guess is the time to figure this out more