>>252151Everything you say about the awfulness of feeling looked at constantly, and the comments and all that….it really resonates with me. I've gone through periods of agoraphobia too, and I wonder a lot how common that is for detrans/tif women. I also wonder sometimes if I'm like, way way way more freaked out by this than normal but I don't think so – I think women just don't let it out that much. There have been periods in my life where people could have looked at me and thought I was a-okay with being the looked-at girly girl, and yeah, I was functioning and even in a good place, but the constant gaze was still a weight. And like, my sister is very femme, way more normal, has always loved fashion and all that, but she's confided in me often about how much she loathes the feeling of constant surveillance. I took her to my female-only gym once, and she couldn't stop talking about how much she loved it.
There are definitely a lot of detrans women who go super feminine out there now, but it's definitely not the whole of the community – when I first stumbled onto it in 2016ish, it was like….all butch lesbians. Not the case anymore, but they're definitely still around (a lot on tumblr) and I'm really, really grateful to them. I've become more and more frustrated with the way detrans stories are becoming used by the right wing, and how many people are clearly desperate for "don't worry, i'm a nice girly straight girl now!" stories instead of "i'm a butch dyke and i'm proud" ones. It feels like detransitioned women have no place anywhere. My lefty friends in my lefty towns (who don't know my history) insist my experiences could not have happened. The right-wing gc crowd wants to use this to slime all gay people and slam women back in the kitchen. I'm exhausted.