Patriarchy usually works with double binds. Femininity, whether in its infantilized form or not, isn’t just forced on women, it is at the same time ridiculed and seen as lesser.

That means that feminism has to take a two-pronged approach, both liberating women and other not-men from the pressure to perform femininity and removing the stigma from that performance.

Trans women in particular find themselves in a drastically worsened double bind, being forced to constantly prove our femininity while being under perpetual over-scrutinizing of whether we express it in the correct, respectable way.