Right? I feel like this is so obviously not about sex & my life is a clear example to that.

For context, I’m a trans woman who works in tech.

Five and a half years ago I was miserable as hell from relying on external validation. I’d never been happy with my birth sex, but I’d stuck it out for years, duct-taping my happiness together with academic or career achievements, working myself to the bone just to achieve some degree of stability at the cost of my mental health, relationships, happiness, sex life, etc.

For all intents and purposes, I was treated by society as male during that era of my life… albeit of the gay sort of feminine and very depressed variety. I also had a laundry list of accomplishments each year and could not fathom being happy with myself unless I collected them all like pokemon.

Sex changes are like the world’s most opposite thing to external validation. I went from being a white cis male to… well look at what society thinks of trans women. There have been many many times in the past half-decade in which I felt like I’d jumped off a cliff, that I might lose my career, that I’d struggle harder to get ahead, that I wouldn’t be taken seriously anymore.

And some of that was true—I definitely deal with misogyny and transphobia now in a way I never would’ve before. I do feel I have to perform 2x better than before in order to achieve the same sorts of recognition… and I have to now for some reason look good doing it (whereas before I could basically ignore my body, wallow in dysphoria/depression, and still be given credit).

But… what have I done career-wise during the past 5 years? I’ve flatlined. Honestly? I “met expectations” for a half-decade straight. No awards, no accolades, just “did that thing and went home.” I was too busy both emotionally and practically with a whole freaking sex change outside of work. And nobody has come to eat me, even though at this phase of my life most coworkers don’t even know I was once male. Heck, if anything, I look at a lot of my cis female peers and they’re having kids which (unfortunately/unfairly) amounts to practically the same thing.

Before my sex change this would have been unthinkable to me. My entire happiness and sense of identity was pinned to my career. And that was was literally THE duct tape on the joke that was my life. The thing I only way I could manage to keep myself male. Literally the biggest lesson career-wise that my sex change has taught me is that it’s okay to have eras in your life where your career just vibes for a bit while you short your shit out.

So… I just don’t think this is a male vs. female thing. It’s a running away from oneself and trying to cope with your misery via external validation thing. It IS true that when you’re read as female you DO have to push ahead. Chances are, similar to how I felt I had to alienate myself for my career in order to get to a place where I could afford a sex change, this woman felt she had to do the same in order to establish herself as a woman in tech. The barrier to entry is higher.

But once you’re there and established it’s like, girl you can chill now, it’s gonna be fine if you’re fine, maybe with a bit more stability and a bit less pay.

That’s the kind of people who constantly change positions, switch projects, get promoted etc. The success of the projects depends on stable people like her husband.

Or she grew up in a society where women have to overachieve in order to get the same recognition as men and now she struggles with a need for external validation like many other women.