just had a "mild" moral OCD (not an exaggeration or hyperbole, genuine intrusive thought based issue I deal with) spiral over the idea i, a trans woman, am a scab betraying feminism over not liking my leg hair.
saw a random poll where trans women reported shaving leg hair more than any other demographic listed except possibly nonbinary people (cis women, trans men, nonbinary, etc)
saw a reminder that T darkens leg hair
but only after trudging through a hellscape mire of people either going through the same spiral, or getting angry at people in said spiral for making discussions about beauty standards about them (understandable, but... the fact it's a thing people are having genuine mental distress over probably means it's worth talking about).
generally feminism is not mainstream enough to cause people crushing self doubt over NOT being subversive enough. but there is one group that DOES have a massive social stigma against performing any kind of "gender conformity", AKA anything stereotypically feminine (because I guess stereotypical masculinity is the default and we just aren't going to interrogate that as feminists???) - Tranfeminine people, a group I'm a part of. So the main group of people this hurts... are also the only group everyone already uses as a sacrificial lamb and doesn't care about the happiness of.
i'm beginning to think the joke about people saying "it's ok to shave!!!" being an obvious display of affirming coercive gender norms is maybe not particularly innocent nor feminist rhetoric.
anyways people are incredibly fucking vicious about this discussion that is not normal or conducive to any other perspectives and especially not a transfeminine one.
saw people talking about how it's a widespread betrayal of women everywhere to shave your legs, analogous to scabbing during a strike.
and of course tons of stuff about sensory difficulty or whatever and lots of arguing about how it's used as an excuse to shave which is weird as hell to me because i don't know why women need an excuse to do anything to their bodies (except me i guess, because i am always at fault for everything?? wonder where that came from probably has nothing to do with how i've been treated for being transfeminine hahahahahah).
very very weird thing for people to focus on the sensory excuse thing. kinda becomes crypto-ableism after the tenth comment in a row making fun of people for it. like i've never seen someone made fun of for wearing makeup to avoid harassment or whatever even though that's objectively conforming to avoid being hurt for non-conformity. gosh i wonder why that is. maybe because it MAKES IT INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS THAT IT'S VICTIM BLAMING??? like of course people saying they shave their leg hair for sensory reasons are also doing it to avoid social harassment.
why the fuck are we acting like someone not having leg hair materially aids feminism in any way? if there was an active boycott movement, sure. i guess, but idk how effective that would be compared to actually boycotting "beauty products" and such. but there isn't, regardless. there's no union or other widespread unified organization that includes a massive portion of women that is insisting it's members not shave their leg hair.
it's purely self-soothing political self assurance over having a specific bodily expression. like what julia serano talked about in excluded. "i don't shave my legs so i'm better than those dirty heteronormative femmes that do" or whatever.
like even writing that out i'm worried i'm misapplying what i read because the idea that leg-shaving needs defending is considered so absurd on this site that this entire thing i've written and the sheer vitriol i have is making me do a double take.
but eh if it's wrong you'll probably tear it apart? hopefully? please? and please don't be too mean to me specifically you can debunk or disprove anything i write just like i??? oh god i am not in a good mental headspace i nearly just wrote out "please don't hurt me". i don't think that's a good indicator of tumblr's idea of mass organizing. writing that probably looks fake. I dunno this is all stream of consciousness
where am i going with this? idk i guess i just. i just wonder why this thing we consider a bedrock and always correct assumption, that leg shaving is always ok to dunk on and always trite to defend, seems to specifically affect trans women disproportionately? and how that's seen as an acceptable loss by feminists on this site including some transfeminists which, i don't think anyone means harm by it, but i think maybe my emotional spiral isn't just all in my head and might be a result of a more overlooked part of omnipresent transmisogyny?
and i mean, either way it seems to be a case of cis women being myopic and focusing entirely on their experience of "feminine" bodily expression as being entirely coercive, without considering that there are people outside of their cis experience for whom the coercion (sometimes, but only sometimes) goes the other direction?
please don't bully me. i know this could just be entirely an ocd spiral thing and in which case please just privately tell me i'm overreacting to internet stuff and not yknow tear me apart. im sorry this was so rambly.
does this have any merit or am i just on the fight part of the flight or fight reactions to my intrusive thoughts?
You've sent a few followup asks to this one which unfortunately I can't show here which noted that the "not" in "why the fuck are we acting like someone not having leg hair materially aids feminism in any way?" was a typo, and apologizing (needlessly) for sending it.
You've actually identified an important point that transfeminists have made against cisfeminists historically. In the past, feminists frequently fought for the rights of women to participate in masculinized activities and to reject feminized ones. They fought for women to enter the (paid) workforce, the ability for us to join the military, to vote and participate in politics, and of course, and they fought to loosen the restrictions around feminine beauty standards, making makeup less of a requirement, allowing us to wear pants, that kind of thing.
In this effort, not shaving one's legs was considered similarly subversive as a women entering a male dominated field was, and so it was valued highly.
The problem is that in the fight to allow women to do all of these things, cisfeminists forgot that the feminization and coupled devaluation of traditionally feminine things was also a product of patriarchy, that things which are traditionally considered to be feminine need to be revalued, not abandoned.
Transfeminists made this exact point in response to accusations of "conforming to patriarchal beauty standards", when we shave our legs, we do so not because patriarchy encourages it (which it does not) but because we see the value in feminized modes of expression. Obviously nobody's individual presentation choices are going to matter all that much in the grand scheme of feminist action, but a change in many people's personal presentation can push the boundaries of permitted modes of expression.
This is a broader point than just shaving your legs too, for more important examples, raising children and doing housework are both feminized labours which are nevertheless incredibly important to the functioning of society, women obviously should not be forced to do them, but we should not treat them as less valuable occupations or a less valuable kind of labour than traditional work, but in fact the exact opposite. If anything, child rearing and housework should be monetarily compensated like a "real" job.
Women should not be forced to be feminine just as much as the feminine should not be lesser than the masculine, both efforts are a core part of feminist action and their synthesis was only reached when transfems were allowed to contribute to the movement. (I'm oversimplifying a lot there to be clear but the point is generally accurate)
