#i don’t have an essence of a woman. i have like. a poorly functioning intestinal tract

[flareguncalamity]

i’m sure someone on here has said this before, but i think cis tiktok really took “feminine in a masculine way” and ran with it without realizing that the appeal of being feminine in a masculine way to genderqueer people, especially afab genderqueer people, isn’t just looking hot or whatever. it’s specifically the discordance of being perceived as masculine and performing femininity.

Like, you see cis women on tiktok with the caption “trying to be feminine in a masculine way!” and then they’ll wear these super femmey suits with their hair back and like. that’s cool i guess? i’m glad you feel confident. but the angst that genderqueer people feel over wanting to be feminine in a masculine way is derived from how this feeling almost seems like an impossible goal. like, femininity is standard for women, so when people perceive you as a woman and you dress feminine there’s no perceived deviance at all. you’re just dressing and acting like how a woman should, according to the audience of people who see you on the street. The part you feel that you lack when you say ‘in a masculine way’ is the part where your femininity gets to be nonstandard.

there’s almost a kind of grossness to when cis men in particular do femininity. it ranges at times from “haha ironic comedy, isn’t it so WEIRD and WACKY when men wear skirts???” gross to something almost demonic (like how men wearing makeup were treated at the height of the satanic panic). there’s like, falseness. like the femininity is separate from you somehow, as a facade, and that there’s some kind of clash between the femininity and the person underneath. and i’m not saying those are good things- the opposite, it’s really, really bad that we treat gender deviance this way. but the longing for this experience as an afab genderqueer person is the longing to exist in a role that is non-normative without sacrificing the things we love about femininity, and to be able to be feminine without having that related back to some quintessential nature of your gender as determined by broader society. I honestly feel like Natalie Wynn described this really well when she said that for her, as a woman, there’s no “de-dragging” where the womanhood falls away from her and she ceases to be feminine in a way that a drag queen might after a performance is over. I think what genderqueer people want when they want to be feminine in a masculine way is to have that ability, to have their femininity be a costume that they can take off at will.

anyways all this to say that i don’t think cosplaying as modcloth-workwear girlboss is going to help me achieve my gender euphoria goal of old church ladies sneering at me in derision every time i wear a dress. although honestly that is a great idea for a drag queen character