The ramblings of a middle aged hag

Periods, childbirth, rape, physical weakness and vulnerability. These are all pretty crap from where I'm standing

Re: it's shit being a woman... being a woman is different for different women. Hence the fact that when men say they 'feel like a woman', lots of women quite rightly say 'There is no such thing as feeling like a woman'. We can only know what it feels like to be our own individual self. Which might be shit for some women, great for others and somewhere in between for most of us.

It's not ridiculous to say that being a woman has been shit (or largely shit) for you. It is ridiculous to claim that your experience is universal for all women.

I've experienced periods and childbirth (a bit shit, and very shit with wonderful results respectively). I've never experienced rape or sexual assault (thank goodness) or knowingly suffered any obvious disadvantage from being physically weaker than most men.

There's plenty of shit bits about being a woman, but personally I find the childbirth thing absolutely incredible. I'm probably biased as I'm currently feeding my son and I think, wow I grew him entirely myself and then fed him entirely myself and it's the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen. It's no wonder that some cultures regarded women as godlike due to our ability to create life. I'm so glad this oddbod tomboy grew up before I could discover the trans ideology - I'd have signed up instantly and never realised what I was missing.

Why is it a ridiculous comment?

Periods, childbirth, rape, physical weakness and vulnerability. These are all pretty crap from where I'm standing.

What's ridiculous about saying so?

As is the comment ," Being female is rubbish"

@JoodyBlue that sounds really positive! (And I could really do with feeling ten years younger than I do now !)

ago not old! :)

@foxgoosefinch of course women have different experiences with menopause and the often long run up to it. My own experience was that it was a process in the way that the onset on menses and pubescent development was a process. So life cycle related. It was really tough at times, but out the other side, life feels pretty good. It is kind of what I mean, in that these periods (forgive pun) are perhaps important rites of passage, that our over sophisticated culture has forgotten or overlooked and keen to medicalise away.

So the issues, to me are mainly the lack of understanding and support in society and culture at large, rather than the need for more medicalisation. The medicalisation of menopause is fairly recent I think.

I only have personal experience to go on here, by no means any sort of expert. But best of luck. For me coming in to autumn has been incredibly liberating and I "feel" younger than I did ten years old :) and plenty of fight left for the important stuff.

SeasonOeufMistes

“It's shit being a woman“.

At 58, entirely disagree 🤷‍♀️

Stella O'Malley talks about this a lot in her excellent documentary "Trans Kids - It's Time to Talk". She was a tomboy as a kid and went around with the boys and pretty much thought of herself as a boy. She said if she'd heard of being trans (which she luckily didn't in 80s Ireland) she's pretty sure she would have gone all-in for it. When it came to puberty she hated it at first but then accepted it and is now happy as a woman and married (to a man) and has kids.

There were tears in her eyes at the end of the documentary when she says she thought she might find that the young people she spoke to who identify as trans were different to how she had felt, and more genuinely trans - but instead they all reminded her of herself as a kid (the implication being, if left alone, many of them would likely have accepted their bodies and their biological sex).

I have a family member who was a tomboy as a child, and she feels that she might have been pushed down the trans/non-binary path, had that been a big thing at the time, and is glad it wasn't. So it can definitely work the other way too.

@JoodyBlue -- I'm glad you posted: I've been thinking about this recently.

I think one of the costs of this attitude that is never reflected in the "be kind" mantra is the cruelty of the cost of producing the hormones that people take to change themselves. Other sentient beings suffer greatly for that to happen. It is something un-necessary, the hormonal changing of an otherwise healthy body. I have never really seen this raised among the young desperately telling everyone to be kind. They probably don't know.

Premarin is produced in ways that are pretty horrifying. I find this very problematic for the whole juggernaut of what I'm going to call the trans-industrial complex -- but, quite seriously, there is a huge amount of ignorance about the ethical ramifications of synthetic hormone production. The vegan woke brigade haven't quite realised this yet; I don't know if they ever will. (I used to get fed up years ago with being lectured about ethical consumption by the alternative vegan types, who were taking drugs like the clappers without any seeming awareness of the exploitation involved in illegal drug production.)

Very on-brand that the teen UwU gender brigade are happy to depend on animal exploitation for hormone production, and then lecture others about "ethical" choices.

I also don't know if newer, bioidentical hormones are less ethically problematic in production? I keep reading they are "plant based", but there is not much info on exactly what that means.

Coming up to being menopausal, so I'd really like to do some more digging into this.

Or think of it this way, if when I found out as a child that all people die, someone told me "it's ok, you don't have to, you can identify as immortal" then I would have identified as being immortal and not had to worry about dying.

Perhaps if I'd been offered the chance to identify out of being female when I was first taught about periods, I would have done the same.

The problem is, you can't. Saying you're immortal or not female doesn't actually make you immortal or not female.

Being female is rubbish. I can understand how people want to opt out of it.

What little girl, finding out she has to bleed from her generals for the next 40+ years, and that's if she's healthy, thinks she got a good deal with the genetics lottery?
Which little girl, finding out about childbirth and labour or rape or the physical control men can have over women simply due to the luck of genetics that you happen to have been born female, thinks this is grand, fantastic, how great to be vulnerable in so many ways.

It's like when you first find out as a child that death exists. It's absolutely heartbreaking. It's no wonder to me lord of people want to opt out of it.

That doesn't mean you actually can. No amount of testosterone injections will mean that you can have a child with your DNA by simply having an orgasm with the right partner. You're female, so it's never going to be this easy for you no matter how much you might want that to happen.

How many young girls suffer sexual harassment or abuse and think I don't want this, I wish I wasn't female.

I can see how all this could easily contribute to someone wishing for a way out, and gender transition seeming like the way.

But the physical effects of transition seem so obviously harmful, increasing long term chances of so many diseases like cancers, changing your hormonal makeup in ways that cause basic functions in your body not to work properly, people having surgery that alters their bodies in ways that reduces their life expectancy. And then there's the issues of how it will affect your chances of forming happy relationships and reaching any aspirations you have around starting a family.

It just seems so sad that children are being almost coached into thinking irreversible damaging surgery and hormone therapy is a way out, when the long term consequences mean they might regret it for the rest of their lives.

The thing is it was always quite common for girls to be called 'tomboys' by their families and peers but it didn't mean they weren't still biological girls. Far from it. They were just girls who preferred boys' stuff. That's a much healthier approach.

Not convinced.

Was very much a tomboy, pursued a career in a male dominated field, don't do make up or impractical clothing, think gender norms are a load of oppressive bollocks... Including the idea that someone may have been "born in the wrong body". To me that's as oppressive and bollocky as it gets!

Sounds to me more like you sister may have internalised these gender norms. She may have defined herself "against", but she didn't reject them (sees herself "outside of the box", instead of asserting "there's no box")

From where I stand, when someone notices an apparent "mismatch" between their sexed body and their personality (based on the stereotypes attached to that sex), they face 3 choices:

• try to change their personality to match their sex (urgh)
• try to change their body to match their personality (double urgh - not progressive at all!)
• resolve the apparent mismatch by rejecting oppressive social norms (yay)

I stand firmly in the third group... And I reckon that (according to usual sexist stereotypes) this actually makes me more "masculine" (= assertive, self confident, etc.) than someone who feels like they have to alter their own body in order to fit in. Go figure...

I read all the Famous Five. I wanted to be George - much more fun, plus she had a dog. Did anyone want to be Anne?

The article Joody posted was interesting, I agree that in many cases, feelings of despair and depression etc are caused by hormonal imbalances in the body.

They had already medication everything else, now they have made puberty a medical condition that can be 'cured' rather than a perfectly natural, normal process that everyone needs to go through to become an adult, and that the uncomfortable feelings caused by the sudden rush and mix of hormones as the body is learning to balance itself during puberty are also normal and not a sign of being 'in the wrong body'

As someone who is in the midst of peri menopause, the thought of the damage being done to adolescent bodies, by pumping them full of incorrect hormones, just because of an ideology is horrific.

I suspect that the physical transistion element , wanting that masculine /default neutral look is something that the average teenage girl may feel quite strongly about , body hatred is not unusual at that age

And if some people say you can have it, and others have doubts , well who would you believe and trust ?

If men who believe they are transgender simply have to declare their belief - no surgery, hormones etc needed, just a change of name on their gas bill - in order to be accepted as such, why do teenage girls get lined up for mastectomies?
Surely the girls just need to claim they are boys? There seems a disconnect here, very much to women’s detriment.

Yes definitely true OP.

I think many young people think rejection of feminine stereotypes = being non-binary or having a non-female gender identity

Whereas gender critical people think rejection of feminine stereotypes = still being a woman but dressing/acting how you like

In a way both groups are experiencing the same feelings but just seeing it through a different lens and thereby misunderstanding each other. I wonder if there's a better way of crosstalk between the groups and seeing the areas where we actually agree, just have different terminology?

For me the main sticking point is physical transition. So if someone else talks positively about identifying as trans or non-binary, I will say, if you mean rejecting gender stereotypes, I agree this is a good thing, and it doesn't matter what we call it! I just worry about this group of young people making physical changes to their body which they may later regret.

I was/am a tomboy. I had short hair climbed tree, hated frills, all that stuff.

I don’t buy into the ideology as I just feel like me. I don’t feel like a woman or a man. I have a woman’s body but do what. It’s me, I don’t know what it’s like to have a different one.

Interestingly lots of my friends growing up were also tomboys. We all did well career wise while coming from a working class background. Many of our more ‘feminine’ sisters didn’t.
My own theory on this is as tomboys we were less likely to be compliant & more likely to ask why?

I'm not sure as my 16yr old DD has always been a "tomboy" and is v GC. In her experience many of the girls at school who are now non-binary are the ones who were quite "girly" when they were growing up.

Not sure why this is though. Maybe because DD was always determined to be herself and not be interested in traditional "girls" activities and ways of dressing etc, she is more able to see that all those gender conforming ideas are stereotypes with no basis in individual likes or dislikes.
She is happy to be a young woman, but doesn't think that she has to conform to stereotypical societal expectations of "womanhood" IFSWIM. She is v into football and her role models are largely female footballers and other sports women. She doesn't view woman = weak in that respect.

Im a woman.
I have empathy with people who feel they are in the wrong body and want to live their lives differently. Had a colleague who did this in her 50s. Not an easy path to choose.
Struggle with young girls, often autistic, who are unhappy with their body developing so take drugs/have surgery. Happened in my family.

I think it’s a rejection of the feminine.

Women are weak, therefore men who exhibit qualities deemed feminine will be ridiculed. Don’t be such a fucking girl, etc. Women who exhibit qualities deemed masculine are praised. She’s a little tomboy (said proudly), etc.

Declaring oneself a tomboy or trans is distancing oneself from feminist and the weakness of womanhood.

Taking it further, in my opinion, men crave femininity despite being taught to fear it. I think that’s why some get so upset when women don’t show enough of it. They need us to perform femininity for them, because they can’t show weakness by performing it themselves.