You've been stereotyped and reduced to an assumption
People meet you already assuming they know what you are — reducing you to a stereotype, a set of expectations about your kind, before you have said a word. You are constantly flattened into an assumption, responded to as a type rather than a person, and it is exhausting and diminishing to be perpetually mistaken for a projection instead of seen as yourself.
To be reduced to an assumption is a particular erasure, and I know it — my world could see only "woman" and never me. They meet the assumption, not you — people respond to a prefabricated image and mistake it for the person, so they are not seeing you and getting you wrong, they are not seeing you at all; the assumption is theirs, not yours, and says nothing true about the person before them. Do not become the stereotype to make it easier — worn down, you may begin to conform to the assumption because resisting is exhausting, so guard against that quiet capitulation and remain stubbornly your particular self. And your particularity is the refutation — every time you are unmistakably, specifically you, with your own complexities and surprises, you refute the flat assumption by being a full person it cannot contain, so let your individuality be the argument. The more fully you are yourself, the more thoroughly you refute the image. What are you most often reduced to?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see they meet an assumption, not you
- You refuse to become the stereotype
- You stay stubbornly your particular self
- You let your particularity refute the image