Things that are awesome:

Getting complemented on my outfit (striped slacks, vest, button down shirt, and tie) by two teenagers of indeterminate age who were at the HP thing at my local library. As a gender nonconforming future teacher planning to teach teens, this felt really positive.

Things that are not awesome:

Forgetting that sometimes “don’t read the comments” should be applied to more than just news related writing.

Read a blog post about why dfab/afab people who are not trans men might want top surgery and things to consider when considering that as an option written by a woman who had gone through that process, with the inclusion of post-surgery reactions of others to her decision.

This is an idea I relate to. And many of the commenters did as well.

But there were also the comment(s) along the lines of “cutting off healthy breasts makes you a bad feminist”, “you did this for horrible reasons”, and “you were only uncomfortable with your breasts because of gender norms/expectations/stereotypes/etc, only the abolishment of gender, not surgery, will fix this problem and this article made me sad.”

So what if someone’s issues with wanting their breasts reduced or gone does have something to do with the negative impact of Western gender bullshit? If all the gender bullshit was abolished tomorrow, that wouldn’t change anything for people who have spent their whole lives dealing with it. It wouldn’t do jack shit to make them feel better. And treating people who feel this way as if they are wrong and to be pitied also changes nothing for the better and only makes things worse for them.

I think it pinged my anxiety, because I got that “ohshit” chest-tightening fight-or-flight chest pain. It didn’t last as long as it would have before I got on my current medication, but the reaction was still there. Now mostly I’m just sad and minorly pissed off, but better for having gotten the feeling off my chest. Which is a bit bitterly pun-y way to put it given the topic.