Uh friends you realize when you say asshole men are aiming for a girlfriend out of their league and you do that gotcha like "you never see those guys asking out fat women" you're implicitly saying fat women are a lower league than thin women right

You aren't helping if you're not rejecting the hierarchy

People don't have leagues or numbers or grades like pieces of meat

When I was in the closet and everyone just saw me as an ugly fat woman, I had a crush on this guy but I knew he was "out of my league" so I just really obviously pined for him thinking I was keeping my crush secret. Let's call him Tom because that was his name.

Everyone knew I was hopelessly infatuated with Tom. So when random dude Alan showed some interest in me, everyone jumped on it and encouraged me to pair off with him. We were both a lesser "league" to them so...

I don't think anyone cared to know anything about him, our ugliness was just visually compatible to the skinny trendy assholes I thought were my friends

There was order in the world for my friends again. Finally, the ugly weirdo had found an ugly weirdo to be weird with. Who cares that we had little in common?

I wanted a partner who made me laugh and was kind and didn't use me. The people around me didn't really care if Alan was any of those things. He was attracted to me so I was expected to settle. I did for a while

I mattered less to the people around me because I wasn't "pretty". I was expected to settle for lower wages, poorer treatment from co-workers, abuse from doctors, abuse from "friends". Settle settle settle.

So when I see people throw women who aren't conventionally attractive around like some sort of sick gotcha against assholes who objectify women, all I see is people... Objectifying more women

Only the women you've made into objects are the ones you see as being in a "lower league"

It's revealing behavior and it makes me very grossed out to see people do it

Ugliness is real. Being ugly isn't a moral failing. Being ugly doesn't mean you should have to settle for anyone who hurts you or sees you as less of a person.

I say this to you as someone with acne, a double chin, no sense of style, as someone who's saggy tits have been publicly mocked since middle school, as someone who is not just fat but who is physically ugly: we don't have to settle for people who hurt us.

Oh and I know I keep coming back and adding to this but let me tell you some weird shit about being ugly and having a conventionally attractive spouse

I was hesitant to date a conventionally attractive person because I had swallowed so much garbage about being not in people's leagues or whatever that I figured he'd just leave me or cheat on me or something. He didn't! It took some time for me to actually trust him. He's patient

Now that I'm actually aware of this hierarchy of beauty shit and we've been together for a while I definitely notice privileges I have because of my proximity to his conventional good looks

I take David with me when I'm meeting a new doctor. This is so the doctor sees that even though I am a fat, ugly transgender man, I have an attractive, thin cisgender man who cares about me. It literally gets me better treatment

People don't yell abuse at me from their car windows as often when I'm with him

People are friendlier towards me, from store clerks to acquaintances to family friends, since we got together

Like people who know me but didn't know him and met him at our wedding, family and family friends, acted like I pulled off some impressive stunt getting together with him. They didn't know anything about him beyond what he looked like and that I was marrying him

They weren't like "he's lucky to have you" they were like "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU PULLED OFF GETTING SUCH A HANDSOME HUSBAND" like it was an unbelievable heist or a clever sleight of hand I'd done

And to be clear, I'm lucky to have David, not because he looks good in selfies but because when we met my self esteem was pretty fucked up and he built up my confidence and trust patiently because he's a wonderful man who loves me and treats me well.

But yeah, everyone's reaction to our aesthetics, whether my ugliness or his handsomeness, was so dehumanizing in both directions

And it is straight up night and day the worth strangers assign to my ugly ass depending on my proximity to David's good looks

Big this, I had internalized this kind of toxic idea so much it took a long time for me to accept that David finds me funny, smart, and, yes, attractive even if I'm not conventionally attractive https://twitter.com/seeegriffin/status/1249620996203728896

Oh, and I suppose I should explain this next part. Ugly and Beauty are both materially real AND both social constructs. So David can be physically attracted to me and that doesn't negate the reality of the way I am treated for not being conventionally attractive.

I have the urge when people tell me they are ugly to push back against that, and my friend Sofie mentioned wanting to do that for me in this thread too

This is because the social constructs of "beautiful" and "ugly" are used as signifiers of ones morality and worth in this very weird hierarchy

So when I say I am ugly, people who care about me have been trained to understand me saying that as me saying I have less value, and they want to push back against that

There's also a gendered component to it often. This idea of "fat talk" among girls (the "I'm so fat" call and "you're not fat, I'm fat" response) can actually function as a subtle way groups of girls establish the social structures and hierarchy of their peer groups

Which girls are allowed to participate in "fat talk" and the act itself forms social bonds and establishes social hierarchy

So for a lot of people, we push back against what we see as negative self talk because it's a way to signal our friendship and camaraderie. I totally get it. But!

(and I am guilty of doing this too, so don't beat yourselves up) when we do that, we can make it difficult to fully engage with critical discussions of how beauty and morality are conflated and what prejudices shape our construction of what beauty is

We make it difficult to discuss how beautiful and ugly are used as labels, how they're used in disciplinary ways

And we can make it hard for our friends to feel actually heard when they share their painful experiences

Again I'm sorry I keep adding more but remember when I told you my proximity to David's good looks affords me privilege? David's proximity to my bad looks actually opens him up for harassment. (He never complains, I'm just, y'know, aware of shit)

Part of performing masculinity "properly" is "owning" a "hot" girl, not being in a supportive marriage with the aforementioned fat trans man lol.

This isn't some kind of "poor David he's so good for doing this" thing, this is just to illustrate the complicated ways people visually process and judge strangers