#there's a real sense of trans(feminine but we can't have it all rip) and queer community

[gloriousmonsters]

just watched, surprisingly, one of the happiest queer movies I've watched to date

[autisticlee]

I just had a school memory unlocked from a time a grown ass man, a teacher/principal sexulized me as a minor and blamed me for it.

when i was a teen, i tried very hard to be as feminine as I could to ~force myself to be a girl~ just to make everyone happy, since they were very unhappy with my boyish ways that didn't go away as i became a teen, like they expected would happen. so they bullied me into wearing a feminine mask, so to speak.

anyway, I dressed overly feminine for a few years and copied hayley from paramore as much as i possibly could, because i didnt know how to be a "girl" and she had a fun fashion sense and was very loved and adored. seemed like a winner, so i chose her to emulate. if you know her, you may know of her often wearing shorts with tights under them, and that became my go-to outfit choice for a few years in school. I didn't like having bare legs, so when it was hot out i'd wear shorts with tights or leggings under them (winter was bright color skinny jeans).

there was no rule against this in dress code. nothing about tights related to shorts. only that tights can't be snagged/ripped and you had to wear something over tights and leggings and they can't be worn as pants alone. also, shorts/skirts had to be finger tip length. which they were. i made sure all my shorts were long enough. they were tights like this with green denim shorts over them:

well, one day the principal randomly pulled me from my lunch table and took me to a quiet, secluded spot to complain about my outfit. "has no one told you what you're wearing is inappropriate? *gestures to my legs*"

me confused, replying ????no?? I've been wearing this for a few years. and him telling me to never come back to school wearing that again. I asked him why, but of course, he didn't have a real answer besides "it's not allowed," while staring at my legs the whole time. I said it's not in the rule book, i checked before wearing it, so he said something like it should be obvious that it's not allowed to purposely distract the boys and male teachers, that I was knowingly trying to attract them to me and be ~sexy- and that's not appropriate at school. 😬

I said I was just wearing what I wanted to for myself. because people complained I wasn't feminine enough, it was hot out, and i dont like to have bare legs showing??? why is the combination of shorts and tights bad?! the rules say leggings need to have shorts or skirts over them. I don't like skirts. I even showed him my shorts are the proper length. but he still decided I was trying to be a whore at school for some reason. 🤢🤢🤢🤢

i'm asexual. and the sex repulsed kind to top it off. the pure insinuation of such thing was enough to make me insanely nauseous.

I was very distracted and uncomfortable the rest of the day in every class. literally no one else was distracted by my COVERED LEGS, though, like that man claimed.

that was the only time i'd ever gotten any complaints or mention of my clothing in 3 years i'd been wearing that same kind of thing. no one else cared. it was the first time he'd even seen me! I felt so uncomfortable and the way he talked and stared felt so violating.

that was the final straw that broke my gender and caused me to go full transmasc mode at that time. I was so disgusted that trying to be a girl for everyone meant I was sexulized as a literal CHILD that I gave up. I only wore "boy" clothes after that and cut all my hair off.

fast forward, we had to do a final presentation before graduating and I learned he was one of the judges for that. we had a "professional dress code" we had to follow for it. girls were to wear nice dresses or skirts and guys button downs and ties and stuff like that. one girl (who I suspect was actually also closet trans, nb, or trans masc) got approval for girls to wear dress pants. so I wore the most boyish outfit I could. pants, button down, suit vest, and tie. basically just to spite that man and the gross way he talked and looked at me. I wasn't going to satisfy his weird need to sexualize teen girls. I can't remember his reaction because I had to focus on doing a presentation in front of a bunch of people and that was a pain in the ass. it was a sensory nightmare so my brain made that part foggy.

I basically stick with androgynous to this day, because of gross shit from men and boys like this who decided being a girl or feminine is a crime because it means you ~must be trying to attract them and make them suffer~ i'm uncomfortable exploring feminine things even if I want to. this is why it took so long to fully figure out and explore and come out with being nonbinary rather than trans masc. I have even more traumatic stories related to gross men who went after me and made me push femininity away as much as possible, like the freak that blamed me for making him be a pedo 🤢 but yeah, maybe those are for another day....