u/Gloomberrypie

I hear a lot of talk about “pretty privilege” and while I agree it’s real I think it’s actually wayyyyy more complicated than that, especially for people perceived as women.

I just made the mistake of trying to reach out to a family member (I had a very abusive family growing up) and they responded to my reaching out in an extremely entitled way that kind of sent me reeling. It’s been making me think back to how people used to treat me when I was younger, and I realized that because I was a pretty girl who took decent care of my appearance (I didn’t even wear makeup or anything, I mean I just did the bare minimum of showering daily and putting on well-fitting but basic clothes), people projected all sorts of shit onto me. When I was a kid I had all sorts of psychological issues from being abused including extreme anxiety and depression and OCD tendencies. But not only was I not allowed to express that I needed help with these things, as people would often get angry at me if I even alluded to suffering, they also actively tried to get me to mentally help them. This is exactly how my relative reacted. They shamed me for not reaching out to them previously, and then shamed me for not going to another relative’s birthday party that I didn’t even know about? At first I thought this was just a toxic family thing, but the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve remembered other times that people in my life acted 1) strangely entitled to my time and affection and 2) extremely unwilling to believe I had any issues of my own. It’s like, if you’re attractive and fem, people just take one look at you and objectify you so completely, they’ve already decided for you your role in their life, your personality, and even your background.

Happened years ago, but I’ve never really talked about it because there’s no place to talk about it, really. I’ve bottled it up all this time.

I tried to tell some friends and at first they were supportive, but they called had a friend group meeting with my ex. She openly admitted to assaulting me, and apologized for assaults I didn’t even remember her perpetrating. After that, though, was when she came out as trans (she IDed as a man literally until we had a friend group meeting). Then, she told us all that I misgendered her because she was really a woman. Despite her openly admitting that she SAed me, the conversation then totally changed to shaming me for misgendering her (even though she wasn’t even out as trans at that point)

I figure this will be deleted but whatever. I just wanted to get this off my chest somewhere