Bra Burning Feminism

-John Berger, Ways of Seeing.

Oh anon, sweetie, you chose the wrong person to send this shit too.

I’m not answering this for your benefit. I don’t owe you an explanation for who I am. I’m answering in case doing so helps make other trans folks who get similar messages or in case it educates someone else.

I’ve spent a lot of time questioning my identity. 20 years of figuring myself out, then 8 months of growing into myself, figuring it out - and yes, writing and talking about my identity in great detail. I guarantee that I’ve done more self-reflection than you EVER have.

I know exactly who I am now. I am a proud nonbinary person. Not because of any stereotypes about what boys and girls should be like but because it’s who I am, right down to my bones. It doesn’t matter how masculine or feminine or androgynous I present, it doesn’t change who I am. Just as you changing your clothes doesn’t change your gender.

I don’t have internalised misogyny. Not anymore - I did growing up. I hated pink, I hated make up, I hated skirts, anything associated with little girls. And I made fun of girls who did like those things. As a teenager, I was “not like other girls” I thought I was cooler and funnier because I was friends with the boys.

But all of that was complete bullshit. Of course it was - there’s nothing wrong with being a girly girl. I clung to that and was so dismissive of feminity because feminity made me uncomfortable, it caused me dysphoria. I didn’t know that then but I do now.

I’m not nonbinary because of internalised misogyny. In fact, I unlearned that misogyny by accepting myself as I am (a nonbinary person). When I figured out my identity I could stop punishing myself and hating myself for the feminity I showed because I learned to accept myself. And that meant I could stop hating the feminity I saw in others too.

I love girls. I love masculine girls and feminine girls and androgynous girls and all kinds of girls. They’re smart and funny and cool and brilliant. My best friends and some of my biggest role models are girls and they can do anything they put their mind to.

I’m just not one 🤷‍♂️ I can’t help that.

My identity as a nonbinary person isn’t patchworked from the patriarchy and it’s not about rejecting womanhood. It’s who I am. It’s home. It’s a part of me right down to my roots (and I promise you the patriarchy does not think of nonbinary people as allies lmao).

Also Theo isn’t a boy’s name. It’s MY name.

And indeed, Theo is a unisex name (yes there are girls named Theo!) It could be short for Theodore or Theodora. But it’s funny how you assume that masculine is default isn’t it?? Almost as if… You have some internalised misogyny of your own?

How come you had to use different pronouns and change your name to admit that you like pink. Woman just means you have a vagina. Nothing else. Why are you trying so hard to DIVORCE yourself from that if it doesn’t bother you?

Like, first she is annoyed by the guy, okay? She has zero interest, she finds him tedious and sees no reason she should be interested in him, or she sees him purely as a friend and does not expect any kind of romance. Holy hell could I relate to that!

And then they’re forced together by some circumstance – his persistent interest or their jobs or being literally stranded or whatever – and it’s incredibly awkward but they eventually find a way to coexist together and she even discovers positive aspects of his personality. He’s not such a bad guy, he’s alright. And that happened in a lot of my relationships with men, too. I learnt to tolerate them and even appreciate their good qualities.

And then often without any kind of active choice on her part suddenly they’re in a context where he wants more from her.

And here’s where my interpretations of those scenes differed from what the writers intend. See, I thought the hesitations of those in-love heterosexual women were the same as my own total lack of interest and how I had to work myself up to perform romantic love – or sexual interest – for someone I wasn’t actually, it turns out, attracted to.

Because it looks, from the outside, exactly like the chain of events in my own relationships with men. When it seemed like I’d gone too far to gracefully extricate myself the right thing was to just… try my very hardest to be in love, to try to love the guy as wholeheartedly as all people need to be loved, or do my best to at least play the part.

And I thought that was what real romance was, I thought those were the usual internal workings of a woman deeply in love, to decide to try to love someone purely because she’d reached a point where he wanted more and she’d gone this far and how could she not? Especially if he’d made some big romantic gesture, or needed saving, or was less annoying than initially presumed.

“Love as a choice” made sense to me then in a way it was never intended to mean. I thought I was choosing to be in love with these guys. When straight women chose to stay, I saw them choosing to be in love. In the back of my mind I always knew I could flip my “feelings” off like a switch, but I chose to stay and perform love, and really I think I thought that was normal.

It looks so similar from the outside.