Today’s gender thought: I’ve come a long way in accepting my fully realized gender identity, articulating that masculinizing my outward appearance has inherently aided in embracing my innate femininity - a sentiment I know I am not alone in. However, coming to terms with my femininity was intricately & covertly interwoven with needing to unpack my own internal desirability politics, as I hadn’t realized that our relation to how we believe we may be perceived by others deeply influences the subconscious of our explorations of self. At the beginning of my transition, having had my queer politics shaped by a predominantly lesbian experience and suddenly hyper aware of my lack of alignment with the only community I’d ever known, I overcompensated for my expression by doing things like wearing ‘typically male’ clothing & attempting to change my mannerisms. It didn’t so much have to do with ‘passing’, but rather it was my own programmed binary thought that if I came off too effeminate, I’d confuse or deter the women I had interest in, who through the problematic lens of stereotypes might assume I was now just a gay boy (which has happened). But after some thorough unlearning, I remembered — you get back the energy you put out. And so it is no surprise that when I de-gendered the relationships in my head and stopped caring what anyone thought of my presentation to finally indulge in my whole self, I instinctively drew towards me a far more expansive and layered complex queer experience than I had thought possible. I came across women who said my femininity as a masculine person was what attracted them to me most, and that my fluid expression and relation to my womanhood was in fact, very desirable. Who knew the very parts of myself I was most afraid to have rejected were the parts that made me attractive to others? And so all of this is to say.. this is your friendly reminder that you don’t need to compensate for anything. As it goes — be yourself and the rest will follow, your life will be so much richer for it. The right people will see your value, your worth, and your attraction. The right people will stay. You are perfectly desirable just the way you are. ✨