I’m very new to Ovarit, and I’m not entirely sure if this is the right circle for this post, but I couldn’t find one that seemed to be a better fit so here goes…

I’m a 23 year old Rad fem bisexual women, but back when I was in high school, I kind of assumed that feminism was pro-sexuality pro-trans. I felt pressured by friends and society, that if I was truly interested in women, that I had to date TIMs too, because they are also “women” (that’s what I thought was true at the time). So anyway, I gave this TIM a chance thinking that it would show everyone that I am inclusive, but honestly I couldn’t have made a worse mistake for my mental health and well-being.

This dude was a few years older than me, and right from the get go, he gave me the heebie jeebies. At the the time, I chalked this up to “internalized transphobia”, but I now know that I should have listened to those feelings and trusted my gut that this felt wrong. Our first date was a movie, and right away, dude got “misgendered” by the person taking our tickets. He caused a whole scene and I felt so embarrassed but again, I thought his violent reaction was valid because I had been brainwashed to believe misgendering is the equivalent of a hate crime. This happened many times through the course of our 7 month situationship, and each time, I enabled his behavior by telling him he was right to respond to “hate” with such an aggressive behavior. The thing about dude was, even though he reacted so angrily, he made ZERO attempts to “pass” in public. He had long hair which he tied back into a low pony tail every day, and all he’d wear was jeans and a polo shirt. Like nothing about his looks screamed “transgender” or “trying to be feminine”. Despite this, he expected everyone to read his mind and know that although nothing about him looked like a woman, he was still considering himself one.

Sex was just as terrible. The way he tried to downplay the fact that he possessed male genitals by naming them feminine sounding words (ie: butthole was called “back vagina”, penis was called “outside vagina”) was not at ALL comforting to me. It was so confusing for me to think I was dating a woman, but intimacy was anything but that. Without going into too much detail, the point that I want to make is that he’d be just as aggressive in bed about feeling “invalidated” as he was in public. He also was into BDSM, and wanted me to do really degrading things as a “submissive”.

After putting up with this for months and months, I eventually acknowledged my own feelings…I was traumatized. I broke it off with him shortly after this realization.

I learned a lot from being with him that shaped my beliefs as a radical feminist today. I realized that he may have used his label as a “trans WOMAN” to manipulate a vulnerable woman interested in women like myself into being with him. He’s probably tried and failed in his past as a man to get women on board with his creepy fetishes, so he tried a different approach into weaseling his way into women’s pants by identify as a woman- and it worked! Because he suckered me into it. I also learned to trust my gut. If I’m uncomfortable, I’m uncomfortable. And I am NOT any kind of “phobic” for feeling that way. I was so busy trying to validate HIM, that I forgot to validate ME. And that’s beyond unhealthy. An additional important lesson was that aggression and violence is never acceptable. He had me convinced this was acceptable because he was misgendered even though he made no attempt to appear female. However, I can’t help but feel this only served as an excuse for him to take out his aggression and anger towards the world out on others who did nothing to deserve it. Trans people are in such denial. They think the world is against them, when in reality the world essentially caters to them. An example of that is the fact that only a thousand or so TIF’s give birth each year in the USA, compared to the millions of woman who give birth each year, yet we’re eliminating the word “mom” or “breastfeeding” to accommodate that 1 thousand and ignoring the millions of real woman. There’s many more lessons I learned from dating a TIF, but the most important is really that you shouldn’t compromise your own values and happiness in order to fit in with society and avoid being deemed “transphobic”. Nowadays, you can call me that all you want, but I know I still have my peace of mind and uphold values that are important to me. I will never sacrifice those things ever again.