The True Meaning of Femininity as a Trans Woman

Trans women across the globe strive to attain femininity as they transform and transition. They want to inch closer towards learning, adopting, and embracing what is considered to be typically feminine.

This article explores what femininity means as a trans woman and how it can be attained. 

Unfortunately, the greatest misconception is that trans women must mimic or emulate cis women and their definitions of femininity when, in fact, femininity has been within them all the time.

Yet, people expect you to adopt feminine characteristics as you begin to transition, which you may have to do if you hope to be passable. 

However, how can you find the right balance between adopting conventionally femninine attributes and being your own authentic self?

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for many trans women to ditch their authenticity in order to emulate femininity.

Their attributes, actions, and movements resemble a charade due to the perfection with which they emulate others, at the risk of losing their own selves.

In fact, they become completely indistinguishable from other cis women. While this is not necessarily bad, it may have an emotional and mental impact on you.

You may not feel true to yourself when you are constantly emulating someone.

  

Typically, this does not seem to be an issue with people who transition when they are fairly young, since their gender schema is not innately ingrained yet. You are not rigorous about your perceptions of genders.

However, if you transition at a later stage of your life, your perceptions of genders may fit into a box.

As such, you do not strive to lean towards femininity within the gender spectrum and instead, operate under several hard-and-fast rules by stamping and cloning cis women’s behaviors.  

 

However, regardless of when you decide to transition, it is an opportunity for you to reinvent yourself and work on your ideas of what femininity entails.

If you mirror society’s definitions of femininity, you may continue to feel disconnected from your own self.

Instead, you must aim to define your own femininity and embrace those ideals to feel authentic and empowered. To embrace femininity that speaks to you, you must recognize it first.

Femininity and masculinity are social constructs so you are free to redefine them for yourself as required.

While you may feel temporarily content when someone else validates your femininity, you spend most of your time with yourself. Therefore, it is very important to define what femininity means to you.   

If you were to loosely define femininity and masculinity, the former is a more loose and fluid form of being, while the latter is more rigid with a substantial amount of form. 

When trying to define what femininity means to you, it is also important to remember that your perceptions are warped by your critical voice inside your head and thus, is usually vastly different from external perceptions.

You may not even recognize the intense femininity you are emanating until someone points it out. However, at the end of the day, you are inherently a woman and femininity already exists within you.

You must strive to bring that outside instead of seeking the definition of femininity based on society.   

 

There may be certain aspects of you that are considered innately masculine. Yet, ditching them would remove from your authenticity and make you less “you.”

There is obviously always scope for improvement when you are transitioning but it is important to set goals that align with who you are instead of trying to be whom society expects you to be. 

We hope this article has helped you understand the true meaning of femininity. Good luck!!

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