sanderlay: The Mirror & Social Norms of Beauty…One of my personal struggles is my lov
sanderlay: The Mirror & Social Norms of Beauty…One of my personal struggles is my love / hate relationship with the mirror, how I look compared to social norms. For myself my innate need to be my feminine self has never been solely about my reflection. It’s about how I feel in those clothes, those feelings those feminine clothes invoke as I wear them. It’s about my girl inside having a voice and being her feminine self on the outside. But I must be honest that I dislike seeing my male reflection, my face, and invokes some of my gender dysphoria. I try and tend to look into myself and choose to see her and not him, and that helps.You see… “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.” It’s trying to be comfortable in my own skin the way I see myself and who I am, fighting my own learned social norms that proclaim a male body can’t be feminine and reflect femininity. It can… and it does.I don’t see myself as a boy / man. I don’t think having a male body and having a penis should automatically dictate my gender identity as masculine person. I had that mask or persona, played the role of masculinity, tried to deny my feminine self, for over fifty years. It was a failed experiment and not who I am inside. The resulting gender dysphoria is not pleasant to say it mildly to live with. You can’t hate who you truly are.That love / hate relationship also extends to my penis, what some see as symbolic of masculinity. I dislike having it and its erections and a bulge I try to tuck away and hide. I don’t want to impale anyone with it. I would much prefer a smooth sensitive vagina. But I do appreciate being able to stand up to pee. But I would trade that advantage in a heart beat for a neo-vagina.But with all that said I have other elements of masculinity as compared to my more dominant feminine self. So I have to walk the line between worlds of our binary obsessed social norms in society and UN-learn my preconceptions of beauty in gender. I have to accept him and the contributions he has brought to my life, the strength of this body.This is an ongoing path I walk to be who I am and accept who I am despite what others might say and think. I can’t give in or go back to that failed mask experiment of pure masculinity. Most do not feel, or relate to, how I feel inside. This is my path to walk, not theirs, to be my true self, my more dominate feminine girl / woman inside to be seen on the outside for all to see. -- source link