One of the things that drives me up the wall about the idea that we should judge a person's gender by how they look is... not everybody has the ability to achieve the kind of look that reflects their gender.
Like, mascs with CAIS can't really take testosterone to look more masc. A lot of intersex variations really hamstring traditional methods of gender transition.
Long covid has been really hard on me in so many ways. One of them is taking away so much ability to play with my gender expression. Presenting androgynously is actually a lot of work! Even as an intersex person with mixed sex characteristics! It requires so much careful work to have that exact balance of gender signals because people in our society are just *so* conditioned to round people to the nearest apparent binary gender. 🙃
I grew my hair out because I don't have the energy to get regular hair cuts. (Short hair requires. so. much. maintenance. omg.) I struggle to breathe and have pericarditis, so a binder just seems like a real bad idea.
I've felt like my gender sodality is intergender for a long time now (even before I had that language to actually articulate it). I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm also fatiguegender because of how much long covid has limited my expression.
The gender dysphoria I've been getting from being so trapped in the feminine box has made me aware in new ways that I am not really a woman. I didn't used to think of myself as somebody who had a lot of dysphoria and now it's a regular problem in my life 😭
Not assuming people's genders based on their appearance is a form of access. It enables people whose genders don't match their appearance to access spaces and conversations that would otherwise inaccessible due to dysphoria. It gives people energy to do things other than either try to correct misgenderings or suffer through it.
