Have you ever doom-scrolled TikTok looking for a bit of trans joy and instead been smacked in the face by yet another #TransGlowUp reel?
You know the drill: a grainy “before” selfie dissolves into a gorgeously lit “after,” cheekbones newly carved, hairline lowered, comments flooding in: “You look like a real woman now!” The clip clocks two million likes before you can even double-tap, and for a split second you’re happy for her. Then that heaviness settles in: Wish I had forty grand lying around. Wish I could pass that hard. Wish people called me a real woman.
I’ve had fifteen years of those moments. My own timeline was once passed around trans Reddit as something to “aspire” to, and I can’t count how many strangers have DM’d me asking which surgeon “fixed” my face or how I “feminized” my voice. Their questions point to a single, toxic idea: that our worth as women is measured by how convincingly we can mimic a cis, patriarchal beauty ideal.
That mindset has a name, trans assimilationism, and it’s choking our community.
What I Mean When I Say “Trans Assimilationism”
In plain English, it’s the pressure on trans people, especially trans women, to win cis society’s approval by copying its narrowest rules about femininity. Think:
- surgical checklists (facial feminization, tracheal shave, voice surgery)
- rigid dress codes (don’t you dare leave the house without contour)
- heterosexual performance (be tiny, be demure, date men, thank the patriarchy on your way out)
The unspoken slogan is pass or perish. And while the glossy glow-ups might look empowering, the fine print says only those with the right money, body, race, and ability get to “succeed.”
How We Got Stuck With This Mess
Real-Life Experience: the original assimilation test
When I started transitioning in 2011, the WPATH Standards of Care still demanded a “Real-Life Experience” year. Translation: live full-time as a woman, convince a gatekeeping therapist you’re indistinguishable from a cis woman, and then maybe, maybe, get an HRT letter.
My therapist sat across from me after month twelve, pen poised, and said, “You’re not straight enough, and honestly you’re not feminine enough.” In other words, fail. I did what a lot of us did back then: ordered grey-market hormones and hoped my liver kept up. That hoop-jumping baked patriarchal beauty rules straight into the medical system, and the echoes are still with us even though the newest WPATH guidelines finally killed the requirement.
“Passing keeps you safe,” they said
We were also sold the safety myth: pass impeccably and you’ll dodge violence. Reality check? Ask the family of any Black trans woman lost to hate; many of them “passed” just fine. The real threats are racism, misogyny, and poverty, not a jawline that isn’t quite Kate Moss-sharp.
Trans-misogyny turns the screws
Julia Serano coined trans-misogyny for the special hatred aimed at anyone assigned male at birth who embraces femininity. Cis women already drown in beauty culture; for us the tide is twice as high and full of piranhas.
Assimilationism, 2025 Edition
Hop onto Twitter, and your feed is wall-to-wall “glow-up” grids, filtered, Face-Tuned, and overwhelmingly white, thin, and Euro-featured. Likes become a public scoreboard: the closer you land to the patriarchal template, the higher your score.
Dollars, cents, and Republican veto pens
Want the jawline that earns 100K followers? The average cost of a FFS in the United States is $38k. Bottom surgery? $45k if your state just gutted insurance protections again. Trump and the GOP are busy rolling back Section 1557 nondiscrimination rules, so we’re lurching back to my 2014 nightmare when exactly two American surgeons would even bill insurance for GRS (shout-out to Dr. Marci Bowers for taking mine).
We’re a community that’s statistically one of the poorest in the country, yet the buy-in cost of “acceptable femininity” keeps climbing.
Who’s missing from the magazine cover?
These beauty templates center white, able-bodied, size-two twenty-somethings. Black, brown, fat, disabled, and older trans women rarely make the highlight reel, unless it’s for a tragic obituary. In 2024, over half the trans people murdered in the U.S. were Black women, the very folks least able to afford the surgeries we’re told are lifesaving.
The Body Count Nobody Talks About
- Psychological shrapnel: When every mirror check feels like a citizenship test for womanhood, dysmorphia digs in deep.
- Community splintering: Respectability politics whispers that non-surgical girls are “unfinished.” Friend groups fracture along income lines.
- Feminist backslide: Each time we reinforce the ladder of “good” vs. “bad” femininity, we hand patriarchy new nails to keep every woman, cis or trans, pinned down.
So What Do We Do Instead?
- Start with the mantra: I’m a woman because I say I am. No qualifiers.
- Flood the timeline with every kind of trans body. Fat, Black, disabled, gray-haired, wrinkled, stubbly, yes, stubbly. The algorithm can learn some new shapes of joy.
- Fight like hell for universal coverage. Voice therapy, electrolysis, puberty blockers, surgeries, either we cover all of it or we admit healthcare is a luxury good.
- Link arms with fat-liberation and disability-justice movements. They’ve been dismantling beauty hierarchies longer than TikTok has existed.
Your Homework (Yes, Cis Folks, That Means You Too)
- Check your compliments. If “You pass so well” is your go-to praise, ask yourself why.
- Donate to community surgery funds before you drop $6 on a pumpkin-spice oat milk.
- Blow up your state rep’s phone demanding they protect Section 1557 and Medicaid gender-affirming care.
- Share trans joy that’s not a makeover montage. Post us laughing in baggy hoodies, sweating at the gym, aging, existing.
The Bottom Line
Trans liberation isn’t a makeover show finale. It’s the ordinary, radical act of living in a body that doesn’t owe anybody “passability.” When we tear down the tollbooth that says only certain women get to cross, we do more than free trans girls on the margins; we loosen patriarchy’s chokehold on every woman out there.
Smash the hierarchy, keep your forty grand, and pass on something better: a world where womanhood isn’t a costume you have to buy.
Jenna Taylor holds degrees in Women’s Studies and Political Science and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration (MPA). As an intersectional trans feminist, Jenna’s work focuses on dismantling systemic barriers and advocating for gender justice. With a background as a political strategist and a sexual assault victim advocate, she brings a unique perspective to issues affecting marginalized communities.
