It's insanely frustrating to me that people who claim to know better always fall into their own traps. It's my mother trying to assure me I'm smart even when I fail, who then calls herself insulting things over spilled milk. It's my father teaching me about science and the scientific method, only to weeks later start talking about archeological "evidence" of some dumb eurocentric theory that no respectable scientist actually agrees with. And, most of all, its my so-called feminist sister insisting that she HAS to shave because it's what she just Naturally finds more attractive.

God forbid you actually rethink your standards, right? Your ideals, all these things you were taught to love and hate... She calls ME brainwashed for daring to do something with my body she wouldn't do to her own, and in the same breath will insist that she CAN'T unlearn sociatal expectations for women. As if it's not as simple as broadening your horizons? Maybe I'm speaking from a place of privalage because I had already extremely varied representations of gender in the media I consumed as an impressionable kid, but even as an adult, I find myself running into expectations I have of people based on their appearances, and actively learning to disangage from those biases. It IS possible. So why does she, someone who's attracted to only women and insists she's a better feminist than me, get to cross her arms and just give up on ACTUALLY doing something to untangle her own learned sexism?

Is it too hard to awknoladge fat people ARE people? Is it too hard to just accept bodyhair as part of the human body? Why is it that her calling her hair texture "ugly" is ok, but me saying the shape of my body is incongruent with my gender is some expression of suppressed trauma I haven't addressed? She's so quick to call my need for a transition misogynistic that she doesn't even realise all the things SHE's doing that are ACTUALLY fully drenched in the toxic shit she was taught from birth. That WE were taught from birth.

Like I wasn't there when grandma kept talking about wanting to meet her great grandkids when we were all 10. Like I wasn't there when our uncle would consistantly give more attention and adult responsibility to his son than his daughters. Like I wasn't there when our mother talked so low of our aunt for having a divorce.

And now my sister, once my only confidant for all my feelings of alianation and dysphoria, gets to look me in the eyes and say all transwomen are predators and all nonbinary people are too, without even batting an EYE, and somehow I'm the one in the wrong for telling her she's delusional.

I had to yell her out of the room when that happened. She wouldn't leave, she refused to leave. It's like her only source of comfort in this world is "winning" stupid arguements with people who never asked to have them in the first place. People who are doing worse than her, emotionally, mentally, financially... What does she get out of this? A sense of pride? Accomplishment? Does she thinks she's being a Good Feminist by continuisly overstating the differences between men and women to the point of comedy??

And I'M the disgusting one for being attracted to fat people. I'M the disgusting one for thinking you shouldn't shave if you don't want to. I'M the disgusting one for excersising my bodily autonomy as an adult. And, of course, let's not forget, I'M the immature child for telling her to unlearn the internalised misogyny that's been plaguing her, to just accept people as they are and actually be tolerant of differences, both in appearance and opinion, because god forbid you actually change your mind on anything, or even allow someone to imply your opinion isn't the whole truth and nothing but.

And I have to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to the people I hurt when parroting back all this bullshit. When she was first falling down the radicalisation pipeline and pulling me down with her because I thought she just knew better than me, about everything. When I wore the word "trandmedicalist" proudly. God, I'm so sorry. I WAS the poison. I WAS the person saying you couldn't be who you really were if it didn't line up with my personal understanding of the world. I didn't listen, I didn't care to, because her acceptance of me, her saying I'm valid, meant more to me then than other people's experiances as trans people. It was bad, and I was bad, and I hope I've learned. I'm still learning. I want to listen. I want to understand, and cultural differences may make it difficult, but you should be yourself anyway. Spite me, spite my sister, spite every radfem and transphobe and asshole conservative, and never apologise for being yourself. I'll help you carve out a place for yourself in this world, even if I don't get it, even if I don't belong there. I want to do this for you, whoever you are, because it's the one thing I desperately wanted that nearly pushed me into being a radfem myself - that desperate need for acceptance, for community, for validation.

I want to say I know better now, but, I don't want to fall into my own trap.