being ungendered in a body read as femme with a femme clothing aesthetic
icon: "revolutionary (a gif series of four nude self-portraits of/by me: one from the back with me looking over my shoulder, one from the front with my arms up and arched, one with an upraised, arched arm and the other arm across my belly in a dance pose, and one from the side with both hands raised in a shrug gesture)"
[recent gender ramblings that I posted on fb]
I feel like everyone who exists thinks of their own gender identity and sex identity as more real and valid than mine. I fight with myself to ever say anything about my experience related to someone else's because I imagine they are offended to be compared to my "pretend" self.
No one in particular has made me feel like I'm not valid, it's just this pervasive thing. I've been reflecting and I think it's because I don't know anyone else with my experience.
Afab + gender-free/ungendered + non-binary sexed + aggressively femmed aesthetic is a very particular experience and from the outside I think most people just read me as a cis woman. While that confers privilege, it also means that my selfhood often drowns in invisibility.
When I can't even witness myself it becomes really hard to feel like I am real.
My genitals really have nothing to do with my (un)gender except that people assume they understand what my genitals are from my clothes. To have people constantly guessing and always wrong is upsetting but there aren't clothes that would induce a correct assumption anyway.
I used to be anti-femme in clothing aesthetic because all the assumptions of weak, pliable, sweet, frail, easy-going, follower, submissive etc that get put on most people who dress femme made me so upset that I avoided the fuck out of looking like that. I wanted my clothes to communicate that I was powerful, forceful, strong, resistant, a leader, not someone you wanna fuck with, etc.
But then I got fat. Now I could wear a literal suit of armor and people would still assume all the same things as if I wore a damn tutu, because my large breasts and wide hips are considered so femme that it overwhelms everything else. I love my breasts and hips and I refuse to smash them flat or straight, so my body is always gonna read femme.
So now I am aggressively femme, though still not in a performative way. I usually don't wear makeup; I often have messy hair, and always wear it up in a braid; I never shave my body hair; on my feet I only wear comfortable black sneakers; I never paint my nails and I keep them very short. But I have come to embrace beading, appliqués, lace, ruffles, and even the color pink (though rarely).
I wear femme clothes defiantly, because I know people are going to get it wrong. I wear them because they don't mean weak, pliable, frail, easy-going, follower, submissive, etc; they mean whatever the fuck I want them to mean because only I can assign meaning to the clothes on my body. I will wear them when working out; I will wear them when topping someone; I will wear them in every situation where I am expected to be wearing boxed-in plain dark stiff heavy structured masc clothes. And I will make people accept the meaning I assign to how I dress.