All this needs to be said; it needs shouting from the rooftops.

I was forcibly masculinised, so I didn't really "enjoy" all the alleged 'benefits' of male privilege, but I had enough of them to realise the distinct disjuncture between how men and women are treated in this society. When I was teen-aged, I got unwanted attention from grown, adult men in certain situations, but I can count on the fingers of two hands how often that happened. For girls and young women, it would have been an everyday occurrence, so it doesn't quite compare in many ways.

Something that I feel ashamed and embarrassed about, is the way in which misogyny and disparagement of women was seen as the de facto default in male-dominated spaces (which, let's be honest, is most spaces).

I was a begrudgingly-accepted member of that social class, but I never truly belonged. I just hope that I didn't do too much to perpetuate this ugly, deforming and morally bankrupt suppression of women and the collateral damage of pervasive, destructive dominance that all this entails.

I am, kind of, scared of strange men myself, even though I ostensibly fit into their social milieu. If I were to properly socially transition, I'd soon find myself on the outside looking in and this is evidenced by my sometimes having attributes that hint at something that is other than conventionally masculine (it can be something simple like earrings in both ears, nail polish, the "wrong" kind of jeans / t-shirt or whatever), but it is striking just how normative and coercive the conventions of masculinity can be.

I'm so looking forward to wearing something overtly non-masculine out one day, but I'm also so scared - it will give me a taste of what non-transgender women have to face every single day of their lives.