Also this sounds like dysphoria to me tbh

Because it is. People always think of dysphoria as this physical thing and forget how much of being perceived as a woman is entirely social. Same goes for passing, HRT and surgery won't get you very far if you never find a way to act like a woman that fits you.

It doesn't have to be a classic, traditional way of doing girlyness, or not exclusively, my way of being a woman frequently boils down to being a genderstalinist death harpy eating the hearts of reactionaries for breakfast while being the sweetest cuddle monster imaginable to her found family and that just works for me. I can recommend to everybody struggling with this stuff to get more into feminism and to look at the ugly, monstrous women of mythology and fantasy, the gorgons, the furies, the hags cackling out in the bog because that's where the true self acceptance is, that's how you learn to feel valid on days where you just look like shit and can't be arsed to do all the bs routines that society pressures women into to make us harmless and obedient trophy wifes. Fuck that noise, i want to be Salome demanding a man's head on a silver platter.