When I considered the possibility joining the trans community, I thought I would be meeting family. That expectation was not completely fulfilled, but it was also not a complete disappointment. People from the community treated me with love and kindness. But a few of the trans women were not so welcoming. They talked about me, judged me, made me feel inferior, and even body shamed me.
The first experience I had with body shaming left me in completely disbelief because it came from a trans woman. I had never been judged for my looks as a woman previously. The woman who did it compared me to my thinner and fairer-skinned friend. Where other women were just being appreciative of my facial features, she protested that black can’t be beautiful, and fat can’t be feminine.
I weighed 57 kilos then and my friend weighed 49 kilos . She was setting an unhealthy weight goal for a 5’6″ inch girl. I didn’t like it. Despite my social anxiety, I had taken an eleven hour train trip to meet this woman. But she constantly teased me for not being fairer.
The first experience I had with body shaming left me in completely disbelief because it came from a trans woman.
When I was on hormones, I was becoming more feminine. I was receiving positive comments from others. My dysphoria distress was lessening. I was becoming more comfortable in my skin. But because of an unfortunate situation, I had stop the hormones.
Soon after that, I became the victim of bullying about my appearance from another unhappy trans woman. When I first met this woman, she was kind to me. She even invited me to her house. I thought we might become good friends.
But her constant need for validation regarding her femininity was unbearable. It was bizarre. She even asked for validation from complete strangers. One day when we were visiting her house by train, she kept asked other passengers how feminine she looks. It was ridiculous and embarrassing.
When another passengers pointed to me and said that I have feminine features, she took it as a veiled criticism of her own beauty. Her insecurity led her to an examination of my features. She pointed out everything wrong with my appearance, all so that she could feel good about herself.
Also Read: 7 Tips On How to Pass As Masculine For Trans Men
Then other trans women traveling with us began spreading fallacies about me among the other passengers. They told them I was born intersex, that my breasts were not the result of hormone treatments, but I have them naturally. I didn’t like it. It did not come off as a compliment. It seemed to be another form of criticism. It trivialized my long struggle to overcome my assigned gender and live out my experienced gender.
Some trans women spreads fallacies about being transgender. And they do so with great confidence.They put forward certain terms and conditions for anyone to be a valid transgender woman. A trans woman’s clothing and hair length becomes more important to her than her trapped spirit.
They also have suffered through the conflict between their assigned gender and their experienced gender. But now desperately clinging to their new feminine identity, they try to differentiate themselves from those who are still struggling to gain social acceptance. They spitefully refer to them as male. They use the gender pronoun ‘he’ in spite of the obvious comfort it causes.
A trans woman’s clothing and hair length becomes more important to her than her trapped spirit.
In my rational mind, I know it is OK if I am not attractive to everyone. But my inner worry machine is constantly telling me I am attractive to no one. Sometimes I think I am just not attractive. May be all the positive comments I got have just been made out of kindness. Maybe none of them were true.
I have searched endlessly on Google for procedures that will add to my beauty and increase my value as a woman. I have been ready to inject things underneath my eyes that will make it plumper. I have been ready to peel off my brown skin to get a fairer complexion. I have even been ready to put myself at risk by having surgery on my eyelids.
Of course I can’t afford any of that. These are things I once did not even imagine. Now that I know that I cannot afford them sometimes makes me desperately unhappy.
I am not critical of trans women who have needed these procedures to stop their distress. But I am very critical of them when they begin attacking others for not being feminine enough. Many of us had go through male puberty. We did not want the masculinization that it brought. And judging us for it is both irrational and unkind.
Society’s conventional idea of beauty is a contagious virus that infects and damages women. And trans women are no exception.
Also Read: Diary Of A Muslim Transgender Girl
Featured Image Credit: Healthline
