Over the last few weeks I’ve been attempting to increase the visibility of how my hormone therapy affected my fat distribution. I’ve gotten some DMs that make me think some people may have the wrong impression about why I’m doing this, so I want to spell it out.

Trans activism has failed fat trans people. We are constantly excluded from mainstream visibility boosts, or only presented in ways that downplay our fatness. When you scroll through trans hashtags all you find are thin bodies, especially thin white bodies, because those bodies get the most likes. When activists do shoutouts, fat bodies often get left out. This isn’t out of malice, it’s simply the same biases that are inherent in our culture.

I created the CurvyAndTrans identity entirely because I could not find other trans women like me, and every single time I put forward effort to increase my visibility on social networks, I get messages from fat transfemmes thanking me for being visible, because they don’t see enough people like them and they didn’t know they could have what I’ve had.

I spent most of my life believing that I was too overweight to be able to transition because my fat made me look far too male. I didn’t know just how much HRT could do for me, and it held me back a lot. The people who message me have the exact same fears I had, because there just isn’t enough fat visibility in trans culture.

Yes, this is just a symptom of a much larger problem, but that’s not a problem we can solve today. This is, and it starts here.

I will be continuing to talk about how much my body changed. I will continue to talk about the struggles I face as a fat trans person. I am very aware that these conversations can tread on trauma points for some, and I’m doing my best to avoid the worst of it, but they are things that need to be said and I cannot say them without describing my own experiences and emotions.