Forgive me the following description is stating the obvious for some of you, but I wanted to post this to encourage a discussion about how women experience their own bodies. Like other women here, one of the numerous objections I have to the term ‘cis’ is that I have never felt comfortable with gender norms or my own body and have no innate sense of being female.
Even as a small child I hated being cooed over simply because I had long blonde hair. I felt reduced to little more than a doll and always wondered why my hair should matter, it was so trivial. I asked to get my hair cut off but my mother wouldn’t let me. I hated that I had to be a bridesmaid, being paraded around in a ridiculous dress – even though I was only around eleven, I still felt dehumanised, being shown off as a thing rather than a person. Similar was having to wear a skirt for Sunday School, I didn’t see why God would care if I had a skirt on or not. I hated it in Brownies too, I wanted to be active and not worry about whether I was showing my pants or not. I hated that I wasn’t allowed to have ‘boys toys’ like a chemistry set because I was told it was dangerous.
I’ve never been overweight, but as soon as my body started to develop I felt fat. When I was a teenager I developed bulimia and it’s something I’ve struggled with on and off ever since. I hate when my stomach bloats up to three times it’s normal size when I’m due to get my period so I can grab handfuls of flesh around my middle. I have a fairly slim but curvy body, and I feel that it attracts the kind of men I don’t want to attract, it somehow makes them assume that I’m stereotypically feminine in my interests or a bimbo, inferior in every possible way. I hate it when I find men staring at my tits rather than listening to me. I also hate it when you get looked up and down by women, as happens often when you’re walking down the street minding your own business. The sad thing is I’m sure I do it too, we get programmed to monitor each other and make sure no woman steps out of place with what she’s wearing or how she’s behaving – not too confident in her own body, covered up enough etc. I try to dismantle this and smile at women I pass on the street now (when I’m not being a miserable git), I want things to change.
I feel like I had to learn how to like heterosexual sex. The thought of a man’s ejaculate to be honest still does make me feel a bit sick. I do enjoy sex, but the submissive nature of it for a woman and the way it reduces me to just a body at times repulses me.
I hate the way that relatives and friends’ parents feel it their place to comment on my body – my weight, the straightness of my legs, my posture. One of my ex-boyfriend’s mothers seemed to size me up like a prize cow, assessing my health as a potential breeder. I realise this might be a bold thing to say on Mumsnet, but I’ve never wanted to have children. I have a recurring nightmare that I am pregnant, I wake up in a cold sweat. It’s the thought of feeling trapped by my body, as much as the way I feel society would view me as a purely physical being existing only to bring other life into the world rather than in my own right (please note that this isn’t how I see mothers myself).
I hate when I go to the gym that the idiot men in there look at me lifting the heaviest weights I can with a smarmy look, as if they’re comparing themselves to me and getting an ego boost, thinking how pathetic I am. I hate being grabbed around my waist as though I’m a man’s f*ing property and sexualised as a ‘thing’ before they’ve even spoken to me.
I was wondering how many other women feel the way I do? When a young teen I wondered if I was gay, even though that’s never been my orientation. I said many times whilst growing up that I wanted to be a boy, but being transgender wasn’t on the radar back then. I have no idea how I would feel about it if I was growing up now, it seems like it would be ten times worse.
I hope no-one minds me posting this. I’ve never really talked about just how uncomfortable I feel in my own body with anyone before, so I honestly don’t know if what I’m describing is extreme or very common. I feel genuinely deeply distressed how women are being redefined by transgender ideology as supposedly comfortable in their own bodies, as it is something I have struggled with my entire life and it continues daily. As a reaction to this, I’m currently rethinking how to present myself as more androgynous by cutting my hair off and wearing more masculine clothes. I can’t stand the idea of gender norms being reinforced any more than they already are, I feel trapped.