Janice Turner nails it again - girls and their breasts

I don't think it's all about the response to others.

Though absolutely many young women are conflicted about wanting to be sexually attractive and not, at the same time. And I think that is quite normal and not always a sign of an over-sexualized culture. It's normal to have mixed feelings about entering a more complicated adult world.

But there is also the fact that having radical changes in your body, to the point where you almost look like a totally different person, is very weird, and I would argue, destabilizing. You lok into the mirror and all of a sudden you do not see the person you know looking back at you. It's a bit like an out of body experience.

And whereas before you could project yourself into people you admire without much regard to sex - I as a young girl could see myself as a James Dean with a leather jacket and motorcycle - it becomes very clear though once puberty has set in that while you might wear those clothes, they will give quite a different effect. And that might be at war, a little bit, with your emerging desire to look sexually attractive.

I suspect that this kind of normal experience, which mainly takes time to integrate, is now being interpreted as sex dysphoria.

Allsorts have this 'you hate your breasts' language in their resources too. It's not just Mermaids. And they get a lot of funding.
But anyway.
Where are the people saying bodies are wonderful and beautiful? I always tell my kids that they're lucky to have a healthy body and they should never take it for granted.

As far as I can see this is just an extension of eating disorders, teen mental health and problems with puberty. It makes me sick to think of Neurodiverse girls or girls living in difficult circumstances being groomed online into a way of life that there's no going back from. Its like taking a really regretful tattoo and raising it by x100. And I'm afraid to say that in my direct experience quite a few of the parents (ok mothers) don't want a lesbian for a daughter, or they've got a struggling Autistic teen and they're trying to make life just a bit easier.

Yes, I think that’s very true.

Janice Turner getting to the crux of it as usual. She is brilliant.

Powerful article.

Astonishing how much power is in a breast. Maybe not, given that we're mammals ...

Yes, I think you're bang on there, Jelly

I guess what I'm saying is that a teenage girl can make a choice whether to wear clothes that are more or less "sexy", but the body she has is the body she has, and inhabiting that comfortably does not indicate a choice about how she presents herself to men. I think some men don't get that.

And there we are back to this idea of women's bodies as costumes...

Yes, Jelly. I guess for a lot of girls, you want to be thought of as sexually attractive, but not too attractive. You want attention, but not too much. And that's a really hard line to tread.

And my own experience was that as soon as you do anything or wear anything that remotely displays your womany body, there are men and boys who treat that as an invitation to harass you, as if you're asking for it simply by having the temerity to have big breasts. I definitely spent my teens in very baggy clothes.

That was another thing that struck me about the article - this idea that anyone can just get a boob job, and this will reflect how they feel about their body. If that notion grows it strengthens the mental link some men make between "woman/girl has big breasts" = "she's sexually up for it".

Brilliant writer.

She is a true champion of the cause.

I punch the air after every paragraph.

What sports can they play as " boys " with cracked ribs and scar tissue from the mastectomy inhibiting the ability to have full mobility in your arms I wonder.

What problem has been solved...

And yet (adult) women’s professional and amateur team sports culture (though underfunded, underpaid and overlooked relative to mens’ pro and amateur sports) has often been a place where openly lesbian women can flourish.
And regardless of who we fancy- all humans- including women obviously- need to keep ourselves exercised to be healthy. Deterring women and girls from team sports by social pressure is a disgusting thing to do. Yet it’s completely normalised. Making them feel that their bodies are wrong somehow when they exercise, is completely normalised. It’s so fucked up.

It's all part of the grooming pattern - isolate children from their families, their communities and their bodies. With no responsible adults to protect them with tough love, with no other community, especially sport and hobbies, you have an isolated child, online and vulnerable to the first predator who comes along.

Yes this really struck me too. We already know that so many young women and girls often don't participate in sport and games when they're on their period, this is just taking them even further from that freedom as you say, from feeling comfortable in their bodies.

That poor kid. That really makes me want to cry 😢

How is that remotely a better outcome?

Government (ha, yes, I know) has to start joining the dots between crazes like this and what adults are finally waking up to about the way social media sites are pushing coercive, harmful narratives about the self, mental health issues and the body at vulnerable teenagers.

That article actually brought tears to my eyes. Thank you Janice. Every word is right.

They are pathologising normal teenage girl development growing up in a porn soaked society which fetishes school girls and breasts

I posted this on another thread but I’m going to self-indulge and repost here.

How many companies make binders now compared to 20 years ago?

It comes down to this fundamental element of the whole thing: no one on the gender ideology side is remotely concerned as to WHY there are so many more girls these days wanting to bind. Why are so many girls seeking this out? Even if binding wasn’t harmful - and to be clear, it is - the lack of concern from gender ideologists about the fact thousands of girls across the western world are looking into binding shows at best a lack of intellectual curiosity and at worst, a gleeful declaration at the acquisition of more members into its ideology.

It’s sickening to me. Gender ideologists defend binding, facilitate binding, don’t care that so many more girls are binding, and don’t show any inclination to help girls stop binding apart from telling them mastectomy is the answer. They say they care about “trans” kids? Then why not help them not damage themselves? It’s like they want these girls to bind, to demonstrate the validity of the whole narrative.

The reaction to this story says it all. It’s a truly evil ideology.

Very good article.

Superb article. Janice Turner writes clearly and with hard logic about the abuse perpetrated under the guise of “being kind”.

Its all just more sabotage. Causing the very problems they can then sell you the solution too.

2 things that are vital for physical and mental health and easily and cheaply available or even free. Fresh air/sun and Exercise.

And 2 things advised against. Where will these girls be when their family goes to walk the dog by the lake.. inside online with all the other girls now home alone in their rooms as their families walk dogs or go for a picnic or take their toddlers to the park.

Its intentional. And if a boyfriend or girlfriend encouraged that kind of isolation and reclusivness we'd tell our girls to dump their controlling groomy arses.

Very insightful. This comment resonated:

Boob jobs and “top surgery” are both responses to the commodification of the female body: the former tries to win the game, the latter permanently opts out

A friend is going through this with her autistic daughter. Two years ago they fought to get their depressed trans-identified* child onto blockers only to see her significantly worsen on them. Her perfectly normal teen body has ballooned on the blockers increasing her shame to the point she no longer leaves the house. Her education has been destroyed. She has regular skin infections from her binder which she sleeps in because they cannot physically make her remove it. My initially very supportive friend has now come to the realisation that the blockers have worsened both her mental health and her dysphoria, but so long as she continues to say the right things at appointments, they cannot make her discontinue them.

*she identifies as 'trans' not as a boy/girl and uses she/they pronouns, I'm not being disrespectful

brilliant article