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Original poster

I don't appear to have the typical female experience I'd be interested in what some of you have to say

269 replies

hathorinareddress69 · 16/04/2012 14:19

Not a thread about a thread but on another thread I realised that I don't seem to have had the typical female experience, and I just wondered what you thought (since LRD suggested this was not a scary place)

I don't seem to have had the experiences that some of the feminists have - I don't feel the need to share with females, I never had a man leer or wolf whistle or try to look up my skirt.

My best friend is a man and I can (and do) discuss anything with him and he does with me.

Am I that abnormal?

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 21:02

And the women in his family are horrible. Just vile. I could tell you stories about them that would shock you all to the core.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 21:01

He has belittled and put men down and been horrible to them. Which he also did to me.

He has been racist.

He raped me, which he could not have done if I had not been a woman, but I am quite sure if he had been living in a house with a man who wasn't toeing the line, he would have humiliated them. What he did to me he did as a consequence of biology.

So it's not just that he did it because I am a woman - or at least that's what I think. But I don't know. Am I wrong?

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swallowedAfly · 17/04/2012 20:59

i am very sorry for your experiences.

you say that you wanted to explore the feminist side of it - you keep saying it wasn't because you were a women but because he could and he would have done it regardless of your gender.

but the only reason he could was because of your gender and the position that put him in by being your husband and being able to abuse you and conceal it and have the back up of his family and have certain power over you.

did he ever do this kind of thing to a man? did he ever do it to anyone other than a woman? would he have done to this to a man and expected to get away with it impunity? would he have felt such rights and power over men or just over 'his' woman?

his understanding of what he had the right to do to 'his' wife if she didn't do what he wanted is going to have been informed by patriarchal beliefs that are still very fresh in our history as perfectly acceptable but now illegal and taken mroe seriously.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 20:47

They are awful. Go look on the letters I will not write thread.

And actually that's an excellent way to put it "wider cultural experience" - they are culturally conditioned to be nasty and horrible.

Or at least that's how I see it.

They think they're perfect and everyone else is wrong. Any one who doesn't think as they do is wrong. Like me.

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madwomanintheattic · 17/04/2012 20:43

You are making sense.

I don't think there is a hierarchy with this sort of violence/ intimidation.

Some things are just wrong.

Some things are complicated in context because the perpetrator has internalised superiority and the need to control as part of a wider cultural experience, but some people (men and women) are just nasty pieces of work. Your ex's family sound hideous.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 20:34

But then that's making my experience more in some way than anyone else's and I don't see it like that.

it's always wrong. Always.

I don't think I'm making any sense.

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helpyourself · 17/04/2012 20:28

hathor I think that your experience has been so extreme that it defies a feminist anaysis, and any attempt to package it as a such would be offensive.

I sparked at your vibe phrasing because my experiences were very much to do with being female- but they were minor.

Ironically I stay away from the feminist boards because of the binary nature of many of the arguments and only came across this one because it was on most active.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 20:06

And what I meant with the "sarcy wink" that caused such offence was, is it me, is it because I'm not seeing something that's there? Am I being blind to it? Am I out of kilter?

Not that anyone else was.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 20:04

I know that Aye - as I said, that's sort of what the thread was about - how does it square with being a feminist issue when they are all a shower of fuckwits?

And because I don't have female friends particularly, I don't get the "sisterhood" element (and if that has offended anyone I apologise in advance).

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madwomanintheattic · 17/04/2012 20:03

But you have every right to be angry. And every right to explore your feelings surrounding being a woman/ performing femininity/ pondering whether you were missing something, some intrinsic part that everyone else had or understood

It might be messy now, but maybe cathartic later?

AyeRobot · 17/04/2012 20:02

I am so sorry to hear that they did those things to you, hathor. And that you received no justice. I hope that you have found/ can find some peace and that they are not in a position to hurt you mentally or physically again.

Just a small answer to your op -feminists would be able to suggest a political analysis for all of the situations that you describe, although I appreciate that this would be unwelcome and unwanted on this thread.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:58

Actually the hardest thing has been getting the ex out of my head.

The physical stuff - it heals.

But the getting him out of my head has taken much much longer.

And DP is great. Really. He's one in a million. But then he thinks the same of me. Which took me an awful long time to get my head around.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:56

I lost my temper and i'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I never lose my temper Blush

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TheLastHairyBunnyHop · 17/04/2012 19:56

It does appear to be a group of people with strong ideas on how women should behave, and both women and men are upholding that.

But I have to be honest - I think that you need to concentrate on yourself as an individual right now, rather than trying to take on wider issues. For whatever wider reasons, you personally have been subjected to behaviour which is utterly repugnant. I'm glad that your own DP is a proper partner who treats you as any human being has the right to expect.

helpyourself · 17/04/2012 19:47

Well I was very rude...

I am really really glad you have found someone who treats you well, and you're right it's about power not gender.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:45

And I've outed myself.

And I don't give a fuck.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:44

What I'm trying to say is they are all a bunch of fuckwits. Every single one of them. Even the women.

Auntie X who told DD2 that I was going to hell because I don't go to church and I didn't stay married to her daddy.

Auntie Y who considered it a successful visit if she could get through a visit to my home where I had cooked for all of them, without speaking to me.

Ex-MIL who called me vile unpleasant names.

and the rest.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:43

Thelast - that's sort of why I started the thread.

I'd been viewing it as him being an arse, not as part of a group mentality - his whole family are like it, males and females in equal measure.

It is not an exaggeration to say I hate every single one of them to the bottom of my heart and if I ever had an opportunity to do them ill in some way which would not harm my children I would do so without a seconds thought.

But the thing is. The hurtful nasty things that were done to me by the women, the ignoring me, the never ever speaking to me, the belittling my dress sense, the behaviour of my kids, the laughing at me, the putting me down - it's just as bad.

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TheLastHairyBunnyHop · 17/04/2012 19:42

But an individual acts in context, hathor.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:40

Help - don't apologise to me I was wrong and my comment upset people on here and i never ever meant it to.

What set me thinking was the trans threads (sorry)

The problem isn't with the trans as a group and whether or not they have penii. The problem is always with the specific individual and what they choose to do with their own particular penis and how they choose to behave.

It cannot be generalised - I have a lovely DP who would no more hurt me than rise and fly to the moon.

It's about a specific individual - it's always about a specific individual. And if someone is a rude arrogant self centred unfeeling individual, then they can be male, female, transgendered or anything else they want to be, it's still about THEM in particular.

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TheLastHairyBunnyHop · 17/04/2012 19:39

Most certainly he is a dick, OP. I am sickened and shocked by what has happened to you.

I wonder why he felt that he, specifically, had the right to do that to you?

One realisation that I've had, reading these boards, is that very often we fail to see individual experiences as part of something bigger.

Your ex-partner did that. He's a dick.

The adult man who leered at my 12 year old daughter? Pervert.

My cousin assaulted me. He was a wanker.

Those countless men who grope and catcall women - are doing it right now, as we talk here tonight? Assholes, each individual one of them.

But all those individual incidents together - maybe they add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Why do they think they can do that? Why are they often RIGHT that they can do it?

helpyourself · 17/04/2012 19:36

hathor I hear you and I'm wrong and I apologise.

Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:36

I don't have enough evidence to restrict his contact.

Which is why I'm so upset and strident when women post things like (as another poster has) he's done xyz - well that won't be enough, unless you have EVIDENCE and can back up what you're saying.

And that isn't be unsympathetic.

It's realistic.

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Original poster
hathorinareddress69 · 17/04/2012 19:34

I'm sorry, I'm very upset and very angry but I don't get the misogynist thing.

He's just a dick. In general. It so happens I am a woman but I have watched him treat others with the same disdain and disrespect (although not the violence to be fair) but the disdain and disrespect is the wrost.

And that's not because I am a woman.

It's because he is a dick.

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helpyourself · 17/04/2012 19:33

But actually, having said that it sounded misogynistic to me, my interpretation is utterly irrelevant.

It happened to you and I can really understand that any attempt to package it as a shared female experience is spectacularly hurtful and wrong.