All I knew was that women were denigrated in this cultural space, which led me to conclude that being visibly female could be a hindrance. I wasn’t sure exactly why this was the case, but my intuition told me that the poor treatment of women was warranted — women simply must have been inferior in some way. For some reason, this conclusion didn’t negatively impact my own self-esteem. Rather than seeing it as a repudiation of myself, I instead saw it as an indictment of those who shared my gender. I didn’t have to be like them; I could transcend the physical impediment of being part of the
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