who only by moving can balance

[Disclaimer: as ever, I don't speak for everybody, and I most certainly don't speak for all trans* people. This one, though? This one is for me.]

I'm not female.

Nor is my body.

Describing me as "female-bodied" forces dissonance and incongruity: it forces me to dissociate, if only briefly, and there's no real way for it to do anything else.

"Microaggression" doesn't really do that sensation justice.

Of course, we can go more in-depth: we can talk about privileging "biology" over subconscious sex; we can talk about the wide range of characteristics lumped together under "biological sex", not all of which "agree"; we can argue over the primacy of chromosomes (and how very few people know theirs), or over genitalia (and how, unless you live on a nudist colony, you are likely to have first-hand experience of the genitalia of only a very small proportion of the people you regularly interact with), or over hormones (and how easy it is to alter an individual's endocrine system), or over reproductive tracts (and what this means for people who've had surgery); we can talk about the insinuation of the question "but what are you really?"

There is one rule, and it's very simple: use accurate language. If you need to talk about the fact that I have endometriosis, say "person with endometriosis". If you need to talk about the fact that I (currently) have a uterus and ovaries, you can describe me as "a person with ovaries", or a "uterus-owner".

Because that's what I am really.

I'm not female, and neither is my body.