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Having the cis women superiority blues

Started by HelloKitty, November 16, 2013, 07:46:51 AM

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HelloKitty

Dose anyone here ever feel inferior in any way to cis women?

I only ask because I do feel that way. Like they have usually much better sounding voices, have periods, can get preggo and are socialized as girls from birth onwards.

Somehow I feel that cis girls will never really accept me as one of them and so I will always be an outsider looking into the "girl world." I'm also afraid that cis girls can easily tell I'm a trans woman and then will treat me differently than they would a cis girl.

I at times, well at most tines just feel like a lesser, second rate girl than the cis ones. I wanna stop feeling this way but don't know how. :(

Am just having one of those dreadful downer days today :/

(Edit: I am not implying that cis gender women are superior. It's just how I feel much of the time. Perhaps this will change in time as I'm still early-ish in transition, so here's hoping)
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Ltl89

I know what you're saying.  Yes, I do at times.  However it's usually more jealousy than inferiority for me.  Still, I get those feelings to.  Remember the source of those feelings are internal and not actually because you or I are truly inferior.   No one is superior to another person in life despite their status.   We all come from the same place and we all end up the same.
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Valerie

Well, I'm cis, but I'm an ally who's been intentionally educating herself for several years now, so I kinda' don't count. 

You only mentioned how you feel, not how others have treated you or behave around you.  Sooo...

Here's the thing: Despite the fact that you feel inferior, are you able to play it off as though you're not?  Can you enter women's space with your head held high & a twinkle in your eye, reminding yourself that yes, you do belong here? 

Because you'll get all sorts of reactions from people ranging from ignorant to accepting, but what matters is how you see yourself.  If you can talk some confidence in yourself at least to the point that you come across as self-assured & comfortable in your own skin, 1) The reactions of others will have less power over you over time and 2) anyone who might look at you askance will be the one looking like a fool. 

Walk this world knowing that you belong here.  Remember that you're a kind, intelligent, productive member of society and that the world is better because you're in it.  Live that reality. 


Hope ya' feel better.....   
~V
"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."                 
                                                             ~Paulo Coelho


                                 :icon_flower:
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Sybil

I used to feel that way, but not anymore. I'm sorry if this is long, but I feel the need to be detailed:

Voices: not all trans women have worse sounding voices. A lot of us blend in just fine and go so far as to be awarded compliments and reap envy. To be fair, we're inherently at a disadvantage, but it is definitely not impossible to overcome it.

Periods & Pregnancy: I can't really defend this, and one of my prime replies to hateful people is "I would gladly trade having no period to make you stop trying to hurt and control me so much." There's no defense here, but it doesn't make cis women any superior and it's silly to feel that way. Really, what can we do about it? Does it change how we were made? Does it make our pain go away?

Some cis women can't have periods, and periods aren't (generally) treated as something grand and necessary to be a beautiful person. The closest of my cis women friends have never held periods above my head, and they think it's ridiculous that many people try to use them as a way to bind trans reality. They like to joke about how storing nutrients in the center of their body and dealing with cramps somehow buys their identity and allows them to be who they are, as if it were a gatekeeper.

My largest personal anguish for having no period ties into the next thing you mentioned: pregnancy. It's depressing at times, but at least we can still reproduce and there's no secret code that says you have to father a child beyond fertilizing an egg. With careful planning, you could definitely mother a child.

Socialization as girls: this gets to me, too. I can really understand this one. While it, at the very best, puts us behind the curve of being socialized as women, it again isn't necessary to become a beautiful person. Much of it can be learned or deduced when you're going through transition (or before then, depending on your life). It helps to make you a unique person with a wider array of perspective than most people. Many of us eventually come to a point where we have a fair understanding of both worlds, and we begin to see how much it has tempered our sense of decency and understanding for our peers.

However, what I think is the toughest about socialization is actual childhood memories. It's true, we can never get those back or change them. It's really painful, but again, we can't do much about it. Does it really make us inferior if we didn't get to wear dresses or weren't allowed to play with dolls, or that we would have been laughed at and harassed for wearing cosmetics? Does it really make us inferior when there are cis girls -- who identify as girls -- but have even more typically boyish interests than a lot of little and teenage boys do? I think all it really means, and honestly not even for all of us, is that we didn't have as much freedom to express ourselves as children growing up.
Why do I always write such incredibly long posts?
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Alainaluvsu

Quote from: Valerie on November 16, 2013, 09:26:14 AM
Well, I'm cis, but I'm an ally who's been intentionally educating herself for several years now, so I kinda' don't count. 

You only mentioned how you feel, not how others have treated you or behave around you.  Sooo...

Here's the thing: Despite the fact that you feel inferior, are you able to play it off as though you're not?  Can you enter women's space with your head held high & a twinkle in your eye, reminding yourself that yes, you do belong here? 

Because you'll get all sorts of reactions from people ranging from ignorant to accepting, but what matters is how you see yourself.  If you can talk some confidence in yourself at least to the point that you come across as self-assured & comfortable in your own skin, 1) The reactions of others will have less power over you over time and 2) anyone who might look at you askance will be the one looking like a fool. 

Walk this world knowing that you belong here.  Remember that you're a kind, intelligent, productive member of society and that the world is better because you're in it.  Live that reality. 


Hope ya' feel better.....   
~V

I was about to say this (except the being cis-gendered part). Perfectly said. I feel like I'm inferior in lots of ways in individual traits, but I know I do belong. Keeping a head held high, no apologies attitude is the only way you'll be happy post-transition. It's hard some days when you think about the early childhood that was robbed from you, but you can't live in the past and you can't dwell over things you can't change.
To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.



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