Trans feminine people should be able to narrate our bodies on our own terms. If we say that we are women, then we are. If we say that we are femme, then we are. If we say that we have a pussy, a vagina, a clit, or anything else -- then we do. That's it.

So much of the way transmisogyny operates is about femininity and womanhood only being permissible for people who are assigned female at birth. Trans feminine people -- especially those of us who are visibly gender non-conforming -- are regarded and treated as both failed "men" and failed "women." Our femininity is imagined as perpetually abject: a failed gender project, a failed gender performance that will never quite live up to its "authentic" form. We are continually believed to be masquerading as cis women, appropriating or stealing from cis women, always desiring to become cis women.

Femininity does not belong to one body. In fact, much of what we regard as "femininity" was and continues to be meticulously created by trans feminine people and appropriated by cis women who erase us from feminism.

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