another thing is that when you criticize crossdressers / drag performers wholesale by emphasizing particular styles of dress or makeup associated with them as a "mockery" of womanhood, when your criticism hinges entirely on the framing of beautification practices associated with these labels as excessive, exaggerated, unnatural for an "actual woman", the standard of womanhood being invoked, consciously or not, is, *explicitly*, a white oneâbecause womanhood is defined from the standpoint of whiteness and eurocentrism.
the bar for "passing" as a woman as a brown or black person is much higher, black and brown people are consistently expected to modify their bodies in "unnatural" ways to a much greater degree to emphasize their femininity, whether it's straightening their hair, silicone pads, wearing more makeup, more revealing clothing, undergoing cosmetic surgeries to shift fat around their body, etc
similarly, most of the practices and procedures decried as "mocking" and "misogynistic", as "defiling" womanhood, in so many posts by white transfeminists on this website are the same fucking practices used by women, cis and trans, who are not white, trying to make their womanhood more legible in societies that associate femininity with whiteness
when you decry the prevalence of "obviously fake tits and thighs and garish makeup" in drag, often paired with the assertion that the intent is simply to ridicule womanhood and no one could genuinely derive gendered actualization from it, it echoes much of the criticism levied at travestis and the prevalence of silicone injections among predominantly black transfeminine people in Brazil, who wished to emphasize a particular standard of beauty that may not be considered "natural" to white cis women in America.
this, the travesti's beautification practices being contrasted negatively with the emerging field of transsexuality, the push by medical institutions to make existing embodiments of what we now call transfemininity conform to the transsexual patient's more "natural" and "dignified" womanhood, which more closely resembles the eurocentric beauty standards set by American sexologists and captured by the Brazilian clinic, is intrinsically tied to the travesti's greater marginalization from cis society
think about what cultural expectations you're upholding by framing femininity and effeminacy and its associated practices as needing to defer to the sanctity of "actual" womanhood, whose womanhood is that, what groups of people this statement protectsâdoes this logic actually become meaningfully progressive when you append "trans" to it?
gummygunk
2087
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