quill7513

the best thing you can do to resist it i think is make sure the people in your life know you value them for them and not for their aesthetic charm. everyone tell a friend right now that you think they’re funny, or that you apprecieate their kindness, or that you value their perspective, or anything that’s based on their persona and not their physical appearance. and if you are struck by someone’s physical charm, pause, and take a moment to notice their outfit and compliment that instead. their outfit required them to make choices about their personal sense of style

until further notice i’m assuming norwegian kroner

this reminds me of a story. a friend who who underwent HRT and surgical transition early in life with support of her parents. she started dating someone in her mid 20s. he was kind, patient, and gentle to her for the first months of their relationship. then the topic of kids came up. she was upfront with him. “we’d have to adopt. i’m trans” and it was like a lightswitch turned in him. he screamed at her for tricking him and stormed out sticking her with the restaraunt bill. by all of the things that supposedly matter in society, she had done everything right. she was conventionally attractive by femme standards, her physical appearance was so in alignment with femme standards in fact that this secret chud hadn’t even realized she was trans. but still, the moment she couldn’t perform the full societal standard for what it means to be femme presenting, she was met with threats of physical violence, abandoned, and left to fulfill a responsibility that it had been pre-agreed on he would cover.

and i ask you: who tricked who? the trans woman who in 2013 didn’t want to bring up her transness until she knew she was safe, or the man who said he was an ally up until the moment someone he said he loved turned out to require even basic allyship

REGROW YOUR HAIR. WORK YOUR MUSCLES LIKE YOU DID WHEN YOU WERE 17 EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE 40. EAT STEAK. YOUR VALUE AS A MASCULINE MALE IS TO PERFORM AGGRESSION, NOT IN YOUR ABILITY TO GROW OUT OF THAT BEHAVIOR

and if you interrogate where that insecurity has its roots, you will often find the answer is a society that constantly subjects women to judgement for their appearance, be that negative or positive judgement. it is simply the experience of being judged. botox, ozempic, plastic surgery, etc all becomes gender affirming care when you are femme in a society that requires femme identifying people to perform the role of disireable sexual object

the original post asks why. the original post also is why

and men have their own experiences with oppositional gaze, too, so we are clear. if you’ve ever heard the phrase “low t” applied to a man in his 30s or later, you have witnessed it