Hello. I am afab and nonbinary. If I know I’m with decent people, I honestly don’t care what pronouns people use for me or feminine terms but I really have a lot of misogynist issues. I absolute hate being viewed as a woman because I’m so worried and scared the person is a bigot. I absolutely cannot enjoy feminine things. I would never wear a dress, I would never wear a blouse, I would never wear makeup, etc due to the inappropriate remarks. I have always been tomboyish because it felt safer. I see this as a much bigger issue than my being nonbinary not being accepted. If this world wasn’t misogynist I honestly don’t think being viewed as a woman would be much of an issue for me although I would still see struggles with my being nonbinary being accepted. But because this world has issues with misogyny I simply cannot feel safe living this way and would rather appear as a trans man. I am absolutely aware of trans issues causing a lot of issues itself but I’d rather live as a nonbinary person being mistaken for a cis man instead of a cis woman. As I see it, cis woman < trans man < nonbinary. Am I thinking wrong?
- fdsaf
I do think that creating a clear hierarchy of how people are treated when that simply doesn’t exist is harmful and way oversimplified and a little ignorant. How we’re perceived and treated isn’t as simple as our gender. It’s also impacted by: presentation, if presentation “matches” gender, size/weight, health/perceived health/disability/degree of visibility of an illness/disability, neurodivergency and how obvious it is/how open you are about it, race, skin color and skin color shade, sexuality, financial status and how obvious that is, etc. These all can and do interplay and impact our experiences.
I think trying to directly compare the oppression-based experiences in some sort of Oppression Olympics is reductive, oversimplifying, and harmful.
I think creating a clear hierarchy of how valid you think you are depending on your gender and presentation is harmful.
I think internalizing/accepting misogyny is harmful.
I think perpetuating misogynstic ideals is harmful.
I think not ever getting to be your authentic self because you life your whole life around avoiding facing any potential negative things is harmful and incredibly sad.
I think having boundaries around your own dysphoria/euphoria/happiness/comfort is something we should all have.
I think misogyny and exorsexism/cissexism interacting and impacting your life is a common experiences. I think making decisions on how you dress/act in public in order to feel safe because of these overlaps is inherently sad but not wrong. It’s also a common experience, and we have to do what we have to do in order to survive.
I think if you’re bothered/unhappy by the state of how you think and/or perceive the world, then that’s absolutely something you should work on addressing, whatever that means for you.
~Tera
