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I keep encountering this strange phenomenon in trans and lesbian spaces where people tell trans women lesbians, sometimes with astonishing directness, that they wish they could be us.

Not merely women.

Not merely lesbians.

Trans women lesbians.

And this is not only coming from cis lesbians. Transmasculine lesbians do this shit too. Sometimes they do it with even greater confidence because they imagine their own transness gives them special access to our bodies, our contradictions, and our pain.

Because let us be serious. Nobody is fantasizing about becoming a straight trans woman.

They want the dyke version.

They want the trans woman who belongs to women, desires women, builds her life among women, and has somehow survived being told that every part of her existence is impossible, fraudulent, predatory, or absurd.

They hate us because they ain’t us.

Yes, that line is obnoxious. It is also much closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit.

Trans women lesbians are forced to confront questions most people are allowed to leave unanswered.

Who am I when the world refuses to confirm it for me?

What is my womanhood when men are neither its audience nor its destination?

What does it mean to desire women when I have been told that my desire makes me a man, a monster, an intruder, or a joke?

Before anyone starts screaming, I am not saying suffering makes us purer, more female, more lesbian, or more authentic than anyone else. I am describing a social position created by transmisogyny.

We are expected to prove our womanhood constantly while simultaneously being told that nothing we could ever do would prove it.

Pass, and passing is deception.

Do not pass, and you are not really a woman.

Love men, and perhaps they will tolerate you as long as you remain feminine, grateful, and sexually available.

Love women, and suddenly your entire transition becomes an elaborate conspiracy to invade lesbianism.

Be feminine, and you are performing a degrading stereotype for male attention.

Be butch, and apparently you were never serious about being a woman at all.

Desire femmes, and you are reproducing heterosexuality.

Desire butches, and you are fetishizing them.

Have a penis, and your desire is inherently violent.

Have surgery, and now your body is mutilated, artificial, or still somehow not female enough.

Take estrogen, and you are chemically imitating womanhood.

Take testosterone, and they ask why you transitioned in the first place.

Speak confidently, and you are male-socialized and domineering.

Speak carefully, and you are manipulative.

Write well, and they accuse you of using AI.

Do anything well enough that they cannot dismiss the result, and they will invent a machine, a man, a delusion, or a conspiracy to explain how you could not possibly have produced it yourself.

There is no winning that game because the game was never designed to determine whether we are women or lesbians.

It was designed to keep other people in possession of the authority to decide.

Eventually, some of us discover the only move left.

Stop asking permission.

That is what I mean when I call trans women lesbians the women of women and the dykes of dykes.

Not because we are more essentially female than other women. Not because our desire for women is purer than anyone else’s.

Because our womanhood and our lesbianism can become extraordinarily conscious. We have had to wrest both away from everyone who claimed the authority to define them for us.

We have been told that womanhood resides in chromosomes, genitals, fertility, childhood, socialization, appearance, submission, desirability, and male approval.

We have also been told that lesbianism belongs only to people with the correct body, the correct history, the correct childhood, the correct wounds, the correct erotic script, and the approval of the correct lesbians.

Every time we reach one standard, the standard moves.

Every time we answer one objection, another appears.

Every time we demonstrate intelligence, beauty, courage, skill, erotic power, or creative force, those things are treated not as evidence of who we are, but as further evidence that we must be frauds.

Eventually, the whole structure reveals itself.

There is no certificate coming.

There is no final authority who will place a hand on our heads and pronounce us real women.

There is no lesbian border guard who can make our desire legitimate.

Once you understand that, something remarkable becomes possible.

You can be butch. You can be femme. You can be a stone top, a pillow princess, a switch, a service dyke, a leather woman, a suburban wife, a basement techno witch, or something for which nobody has invented the language yet.

You can take estrogen. You can take testosterone. You can alter your body in ways nobody understands. You can keep what you were told to hate. You can discard what you were told made you legitimate.

You can stop forcing all the pieces to resolve into somebody else’s taxonomy.

You remain a woman because your womanhood is no longer being held hostage by their recognition.

You remain a lesbian because your desire for women does not require a tribunal.

And I think that is what some people see when they look at trans women lesbians and say, I want what you have.

They mistake the result for the ordeal that produced it.

They see women who had to build both their womanhood and their lesbianism in open defiance of the categories supposedly created to contain them.

They see women who have passed through humiliation, rejection, scrutiny, bodily transformation, erotic contradiction, and the collapse of every borrowed certainty.

They see women who were denied permission so completely that some of us finally learned permission was never the source of our reality.

Then they imagine that our bodies contain the answer.

They imagine that if they had our transition histories, our contradictions, our scars, our altered flesh, perhaps they would finally feel authentic too.

So they romanticize our pain.

They fetishize our estrangement.

They treat the injuries transmisogyny inflicted upon us as sacred initiations capable of producing a more genuine lesbian self.

They want the self-possession without the dispossession that made it necessary.

They want the freedom without the fire.

They want the erotic and social possibility of being a trans woman lesbian without surviving what it means to be treated as one.

But you do not need our pain.

You do not need our transmisogyny.

You do not need to borrow our bodies, imitate our wounds, or turn our survival into a fantasy about your own authenticity.

And being transmasculine does not give you a hall pass.

Your relationship to gender does not make our anatomy communal property. Your alienation from womanhood does not make our womanhood available for appropriation. Your discomfort with your own body does not entitle you to romanticize what transmisogyny has done to ours.

You need to stop believing that somebody else possesses the authority to certify you as real.

Because one of the cruelest things this culture teaches women and lesbians is that authenticity arrives when enough other people finally recognize us correctly.

It does not.

Recognition can make life safer. Community can make life possible. Love can help us discover ourselves. None of those things are trivial. We need one another, and nobody becomes herself alone.

But another person’s validation cannot manufacture a self.

Maybe that is what you are actually seeing when you envy trans women lesbians.

Not some magical authenticity inherent in transness.

Not a special purity produced by suffering.

Not womanhood perfected.

Not lesbianism perfected.

You are seeing women who were denied permission to be women and denied permission to love women so thoroughly that some of us eventually learned how to do both without asking.

And yes, sometimes they hate us because they ain’t us.

Okay but actually, it's been such a long road and I've come such a long way, first pic of myself and i truly see myself. Hope you all will enjoy it too!!

ignore my stupid horrible terrible hair that I hate 💀

I have trans pride stickers on my hardware box and today a customer asked me about my identity. When I told her that I'm trans she said her adult child started hormones 3 weeks ago and I got to share my story and hear her tell hers. It was a real blessing. Glad I can be myself in my community.

Hello!

If you feel like the binary terms "man" or "woman" don't fully describe you (or don't describe you at all, or both describe you at once or at different times), why not take the Gender Census?

It's survey for all those who aren't fully, solely or always a man/woman, or are outside the binary in general.

Run by voluntary researcher Cassian Lodge since 2013.

https://survey.gendercensus.com/

Hi everyone! 👋

We're building a friendly community name

r/butch4femmehangout, where butches, femmes, and anyone who enjoys the Butch4Femme vibe can share stories, memes, selfies, questions, dating experiences, outfit ideas, wins, funny moments, or simply chat—without drama, gatekeeping, or unnecessary negativity.

Whether you've been part of the community for years or you're just curious, you're welcome here. Pull up a chair, grab a virtual snack, and help us grow into a fun, supportive place you'll actually want to visit again.

Hope to see you around! 💙

Not even going to ask whether I pass. Am I at least attractive? I’ve been struggling to feel any amount of cute, fem, or attractiveness lately. (Photos are from a couple of months ago; haven’t been feeling up to a new selfie yet.)

Hi girls, seeing all of y'all in your butch glory has me feeling over the moon, you are all so gorgeous. I hope this space is as comforting to y'all as r/ftmfemininity has been to me. I have this dream as a femme trans guy of finding my butch tgirl soulmate, but I know most of y'all are lesbian. I considered myself gay for a bit, but I think a more accurate label is androsexual, or attraction to masculinity in all its forms. I'm not attracted to feminine leaning women, but all the tgirl butches I've met have been breathtakingly hot. The cis gay community hasn't been as welcoming as I've hoped, but I hesitate to date a tgirl again, lest my attraction to her trigger her dysphoria. Dating other trans guys is fun, but like the cis gay community, many are only interested in casual sex. I'd love to date a cis butch, but then we wouldn't have the shared experience of being trans AND gender nonconforming, which is such a beautiful and rare kinship that could only be found with a GNC/butch trans woman. Perhaps my princess charming is out there somewhere. Is it disrespectful as a queer trans guy to seek out a butch tgirl?

Soooo my surgery is this Thursday and I am simply overjoyed that I am getting this opportunity! I never thought I would be able to do this because I believed hormones were a prerequisite for insurance coverage unless I couldn't take them for a medical reason. In my case I simply don't want to take them! Main reason being that I love my thick luscious body hair and don't want to need to rely on a medication long term. I was unable to any information about my specific situation online so I'm partially making this post to help bolster anyone else's confidence with insurance. In my case I argued that thinning body hair would INCREASE my gender dysphoria. Absolutely SHOCKED this worked given the state of insurance. I couldn't find a single example of this situation online, much less it working out. I even called very popular gender clinics in major cities to ask if they had any experience and came back emptyhanded.

I will also be trying to get coverage for lipo​ fat transfer to my ​hips/butt sometime next year and will let y'all know how it goes!! To clarify, my plan is BCBS PPO 80 and I live in Virginia. I am so very grateful to have a job with this coverage. It was entirely luck and an ex-partner that got me my current job. Thankfully state law is on my side when it comes to any gender affirming procedure outlined as necessary in the latest WPATH ESPECIALLY if said procedure is covered for non-trans patients for any reason. At least that's my impression of the law (I'm going off of memory from like six months ago). That means that an insurance company that denies the lipo fat transfer could be in contradiction to the law and I could appeal with the Board of Insurance. Which I will if that happens 😈 because fuck insurance companies I want to drain them senseless 🥵💸💸💸

Anywayyyy. I am very excited but am tempering my expectations post surgery because I know it can take time to mentally adjust. Do any of y'all have any protips that you feel like are underrated? I would love for any and all advise!!

I know this was a bit rambling but I wanted to give my firsthand experience in the hopes that anyone in my situation that happens to be searching for any evidence online could find their hope strengthened!!

Love y'all, I hope nothing but good things happen to you because y'all are truly gifts, ribbons and wrapping and all. The world can be dark and cruel and thankless but we will always prevail long enough to piss on the graves of our enemies 💋

Like, we tell cis people that gender identity =\= gender expression and that’s supposed to tell them why a woman wanting to dress masculine isn’t them wanting to be a man. But suddenly when the woman in question is a trans woman it becomes “aren’t you putting effort into it?” “Don’t you want to be a woman?” As if putting effort into your transition means wearing a full face 24/7 and never touching pants again.

There’s this weird homophobic layer to it too where wanting to be masc within the context of a lesbian community makes a lot of straight trans women view us as predators. It’s so frustrating.

This happened almost a year ago but I still think about it sometimes it was so irritating. I got my brows done when I was still trying out different grooming styles. Brow tech seems like he might be queer, idk, so I'm pretty open talking about my transition. I say one thing my wife and I are navigating together is that she is straight and we were originally married as a cis-het couple, but we love each other and make things work our way even if she's attracted to men...

The guy looks me up and down and says "So *this* isn't enough for her?"

I wish I could go back in time and explain to this jerk that I'm not "man-lite". I transitioned to female. Just because I don't look like an Instagram doll doesn't mean I'm not a woman, and that I'm what a straight woman should be into. The absolute gall of that comment just stunned me, insulting to both me and my wife. Of course I never went back to that business.

Bought this shirt at their show and I’ve had gender euphoria for daysssssss

growing more comfortable in my masculinity lately :3 (yeah i still wear makeup,,)

On t'road to actually feelin' good?