This quote made me cry so bad I just had to share it somewhere, so here it is, from Whipping Girl by Julia Serano

I replied that it is almost always [trans womens’] eyes. When I look into them, I see both endless strength and inconsolable sadness. I see someone who has overcome humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person. I see a woman who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue them anyway. I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood, who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible.

When I look into trans women’s eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as victims rather than instigators. In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman’s eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that’s seemingly fueled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one’s femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness, or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are “fabulous,” but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!

It was at that point in the conversation that I realized that perhaps I find trans women attractive because I see a little bit of myself in them. In their eyes, I see a part of myself that nobody else ever seems to see, the part that those who haven’t had a trans female experience never seem to understand. And perhaps it’s narcissistic to be attracted to someone who reminds me a bit of myself. But after spending most of my life feeling ashamed of who I was and what I desired, I’d like to think that maybe my attraction to trans women is a sign that I am finally beginning to learn to love myself.