kathartickat

promises 💘

here’s the link and the story, it’s Amazing

Anyways, when I got top surgery, I was very swollen and insecure about it for a long time (I had peri.) So the day I was finally able to ditch the surgical binder, and binders in general forever, I went to the center’s drop in hours to hang out where I thought I’d be more comfortable going without one in public for the first time in a decade.

She knew I’d recently had surgery, and yet as soon as she walked in the door and saw me she exclaimed “hey, nice boobs!”

I left and didn’t go back for months. People treated me like I was overreacting or too sensitive. Because “it’s just Sally, she’s just kinda like that.” I wound up feeling mostly like I enabled the behavior by not holding her accountable before, so I should let it go because it was really my own fault for “letting” her say things like that. But I was scared if it ever became a “he said, she said” scenario, I’d be dismissed outright in favor of being protective of trans women regardless of the context.

Same woman has gone out of her way to tell me repeatedly that she used to be afraid of me at events because I dress like a hick. Which I absolutely often do, and it would have been almost funny to hear just once. But for her to bring it up multiple times felt more like her saying “you should really be less yourself to avoid making other people uncomfortable with their own baseless assumptions about you.”

I don’t tend to talk about this because solidarity is important to me and I’m afraid of causing unintended harm to trans women as a group for sharing my experiences with one specific person. So thanks for providing a space that felt safe enough to speak on it without fear of having my experiences weaponized against people I love.