It occurs to me that this is a strange thought (I am AFAB). That I needed to feel secure in my masculine side before I felt comfortable to explore my feminine side. This is part of what tells me I'm not 100% female. Sure as fuck I'm not a woman. Though I am, "adult human female", the perceived societal definition and baggage of the word simply does not fit me as a person.

It took a long while to get where I am today - and not idly so. It has taken a lot of purposeful reflection, work, and pushing back on boundaries that were not of my own creation. I went from absolutely hating myself all the way up into my mid-twenties, to currently feeling quite at home, comfortable, and confident with my body and self (though I am still working on the mind part of that equation). So though I often feel more masculine than feminine, I am happy with my body the way it is. I wish everyone could feel so at home in their own skin.

Now that I've become more comfortable with my humanity it really frustrates me that things are divided by gender.

I have seen it where socks are separated by gender; not because they are made differently, but because maybe they have different colour patterns, or maybe the sizes go up to a larger or smaller number for the fit. The exact same kinds of socks listed separately as "men's" and "women's".

Fucking socks.

..... -heavy sigh- I consider it one of those first-third-world inconveniences of having to look in multiple sections in both physical and digital stores in order to find the best item to suit your needs and preferences. ("First-third-world" is a term I have given to the U.S. for being both unbelievable wealthy and so utterly contemptible. It can redeem itself by generally being less awful, one improvement of which is universal healthcare - which would be quite a feat, but still just a drop in the pond for the work that's still ahead of us, especially when some people seem insistent upon running backwards.)

Things being separated by gender isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is made very much worse when you live in a society where too great a proportion of the population think it's ok to harass others for not conforming to whatever the standard is they're "supposed" to be conforming to.

Having bathrooms be segregated, especially when they're single-stall bathrooms is just the weirdest thing to me. I've used communal bathrooms that were being actively used by people of all walks. It's just a bathroom. We all need to piss and shit and we all need a place to do it. What difference does it make what anyone else's genitalia is?

If transphobes are so worried about men attacking women in a bathroom, I would argue that bathrooms would be safer if they were communal. To talk to them in their own terms: A place "where men aren't supposed to go" would empower some individuals to take advantage of a space where they would be sure no other man would enter, so nobody to fight against them and protect women from them. Regardless of gender, a neutral bathroom would increase the amount of through traffic since you're not limiting it to roughly half the population. More through traffic means the space is less predicable and less "safe" for someone who is trying to achieve nefarious means.

But, you know, what do I know. I live in my own little bubble outside of society most of the time and being an atheist means that a bunch of walls that other people have simply do not exist for me. It's easy to pass through a barrier that isn't there.

... I've veered off topic, naturally. I came here to talk about masculinity and femininity and then raced off down my usual rabbit hole. The instigating force that brought this up was that I bought some pretty, girly clothes, and I feel confident enough to wear them and feel good about myself... 

So. ~ Pictures ~