#u havent pretended to be better and this whole rant ofc isnt really aimed at u

[butchviking]

tbf there are women (like me) who when we put on makeup are fully aware that we are putting it on only to conform to gender norms and avoid social stigma. like yeah it’s different than women who have never worn makeup, but i feel like there’s more of a scale. i only wear it once or twice a month and honestly it makes me a little angry when i do. if/when i become more willing to take on the consequences of eschewing gender norms i will never wear it again

ok so that post was one i put in my queue when i was angry - bc u shouldnt argue on the internet when ur angry lmao and i do too often so sometimes i put shit in queue to discuss when ive calmed down. problem is my queue is currently over two weeks long so sometimes i forget exactly what prompted the post. HOWEVER.

if i recall correctly that was abt this attitude i see, more often than not from gender-conforming women, that gnc women who disidentify with their sex are. basically self-absorbed sexist idiots who, by disidentifying, are implying that all women except them must love the female gender role and must love being oppressed. like a ~im not like the other girls~ thing. but with 'not like the other girls' i think a lot of ppl are now coming to recognise that, yeah, sometimes it's a sexist statement bc one particular woman thinks she's sooooo much deeper and more human than the other women around her - but sometimes, it's because she can see very clearly that she's NOT like other women. and has felt ostracisation and loneliness about that nd has felt like there must be something wrong with her for being so unlike the typical women in her life. and with trans identity it's often the same thing.

i just can no longer make the space in my heart to sympathise with gender-conforming women who act like gnc women disidentifying w womanhood is some kind of personal attack on them, or on all women. women in makeup and heels who act like it's a slight against them for a gnc woman (who will pretty certainly have faced shit in her life for being gnc) to look at them and say. i'm not her. i'm not whatever she is. i must be something different because if that's what women are then i'm not one and i don't want to be one. it's an argument i'm so fucking tired of hearing and nine times out of ten i will stand w a gnc female who identifies as trans bc she doesn't see any room in the definition of womanhood for her any day before i stand w gender-conforming women who mock or belittle her for that.

i recognise there's a scale of gender conformity, and makeup was just one example, and i know not all women who wear makeup wear it all the time - but, as you say, it is a concession to avoid social stigma. so to me it's like. let she who is without sin cast the first stone. how's a woman who makes concessions to gender because she doesn't have the strength to face the repercussions of refusing to conform going to criticise other women for the concessions they make to get through the repercussions they are facing for refusing to conform.

and one extra point: you say 'it’s different than women who have never worn makeup' but, while i know there are such women out there (and by god, good for them), it's worth noting that for some women - for me, personally - they might have made concessions to gender at times. because they felt like it's what they had to do. what they were supposed to do. as a girl. as a woman. and sometimes, it's disidentifying with womanhood that makes them feel like they're ALLOWED to not do that shit anymore. for several years as a teen i shaved my legs & my pits, wore light makeup most days, even wore skirts and dresses at times. it made me feel like an alien. i hated it. but i'd always been given the message that it was just What Women Do and it's part of growing up that you have to get used to that. and when i discovered i didn't 'have to be a woman' there was a freedom in that for me. i could stop shaving. i never had to wear makeup. when someone told me i walked like a man or dressed like a man or talked like a man or whatever, it didn't have to be an insult. i could take pride in being as masculine and as free & unconstrained by the trappings of femininity as i liked. sure, that's a concession to gender in its own way. patriarchy isn't going to be overthrown by women only feeling comfortable with gender non-conformity when they convince themselves they aren't women. but patriarchy isn't going to be overthrown by women wearing heels and makeup so people will be nice to them, either. you're no better than us.