#but it really moves me that she frame transition as joyfully giving yourself permission to approach your body
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'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
-Casey Plett, Consciousness
#this quote always moves me almost to tears when i remember it#i'm not a trans woman and i don't share the author's specific experiences with transition#but it really moves me that she frame transition as joyfully giving yourself permission to approach your body#not as something that has to be disciplined and deprived and made small in all these various ways#but as a means for experiencing pleasure and joy and delight and for insisting that our feelings and desires are worth#valuing and exploring and treasuring#i always used to think of prioritizing those things for myself as selfish and irresponsible#but who does it harm to want to experience pleasure in your own body?#it's such a beautifully simple and powerful switch to have flip in your head#and equally why are we forced to deny our own pleasure in transition and anything else related to our bodies in the name of moral rectitude#this is why i get so confused and pissed off when other trans people are fatphobic for example#like why are you so invested in politics of shame and disgust that never had any purpose other than#violently disciplining people as if they've violated moral codes by existing in a body#to say nothing of white people being racist in gay and trans communities#like again this system of violence is foundational to homophobia and transphobia#so why are you acting like it has nothing to do with you#even if you are unmoved by the urgency of other people's suffering which btw you should be moved by#what do you hope to gain by acting a collaborator and handmaiden to those systems#Casey Plett#she really is one of my favorite authors i wish more non-canadians read her#this quote is from a series of columns she did ont transition and every single one is a banger#i love when she talks about the people-pleasing elements of dysphoria and transition denial#she's so sharp about noting how many of us deny our own dysphoria on the grounds that others like and validate our bodies#that's how i always felt during my cis conventionally feminine era#it pleased other people so much and also that reception felt so hollow and joyless to me because i hated it#i get less of that positive feedback but that feels so unimportant next to the joy and pleasure i get to experience#said with the understanding that i'm very privileged in being able to prioritize those things without fear. but it was a switch flip#personal nonsense
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