Living as a woman

It's trivial compared to many of your stories, but I remember as a teenager camping half way up a mountain with friends and getting my period in the night. I had no sanitary protection with me, why would I, my periods were every 6 weeks and it was 2 weeks since my last one! One of the girls had a spare sanitary towel or I suppose I'd have been stuffing a t-shirt in my knickers. And when we came down from the mountain it wasn't easy to get more, on a Sunday in Wales in the 80s.

A few years later, traveling round Asia, having to show a sanitary towel at roadside kiosks crowded with men, in order to ask for what I needed. I'm not easily embarrassed, but I could have done without all the spectators.

I had a handbag searched at the entry to the British Council in Greece - they found a (new) tampon and obviously had no idea what it was.

If I'd had a mooncup back then, it would have saved a lot of trouble, except maybe at the British Council...

Being followed by a wanking flasher in a park in Rome on my honeymoon. I’d had an argument with my new husband and had gone off on my own and this pervert started following me. My husband didn’t believe me.

Being asked, at an interview, in 2003/4ish if I was planning on having any more children.

At 18, being asked if I had a boyfriend at a job interview. ( Government dept job)
Realising at the age of 12 that periods would be every month until you are 'old'. I thought you had one..🙈 and that the associated symptoms would be every month too.
Suffering menopausal brain fog and all other crap while being pushed out at a workplace that has 'menopausal support policy' posters on the walls in the canteen.
Being ignored by men while working in a shop selling hardware and asked if there's a man who knows about '......'.

Omg 😲
It all starts at the toys store aisles. Still nowadays toys are cleqely defined in the shops by girls and boys. That's where the conditioning starts.

Oh, the episiotomy...where the male SHO stomps in to stitch up your cut and second degree tear, without local anaesthetic or anything, gets seriously annoyed and vexed, saying loudly 'can't you just lie still?'
No. No I could not.

Being told by my own daughter, "No, Mummy, you're a NURSE. Boys are doctors." Not only was I a doctor, but my husband was a nurse. She was obviously getting sexist messages from outside the home that had more impact on her than we did.

Absolutely this

When I was a child I answered our house phone and an unknown man said "Suck my dick". Didn't really know what it meant but it was extremely disturbing.

Being asked “will you continue working after you get married?” (1990s!)

Not being allowed to study engineering science at school “we can’t run the course this year because there are only three students and one of them’s a girl!”

45 (& counting) years of periods. 20 (& counting) years of abattoir ones that dominate at least a third of each month.

Having our team coach at uni respond to me having opinions by saying that I just needed a good fucking and many of my (male) team mates sniggering. Never mind that my opinions were both reasonable and turned out to be right.

Having my voice drowned out in meetings by lower-pitched male colleagues.

Being expected to be feminine, when I am very much not. And being mocked when I fought against stereotypes.

Being passed over in favour of male colleagues - or more fitting feminine ones.

Fibroids of various sizes, equating to a substantial fruit bowl and making me look pregnant but being told “they might go away naturally so we will just leave them for a few years and see if they do” (no matter that they were making a serious negative impact on my life). All part of a wider theme of pain dismissed.

Stupidly big norks that I hate and that require complex engineering in the bra department.

The humiliation (NB not validation) of having my breast bud groped by a random passer by while walking along the street with my parents. Age 10.

🌺🌺🌼🌼 to everyone for sharing their stories on this thread, and thank you Miss Scarlett for starting it.

It's almost like a weird sisterhood where by tacit agreement you don't give women all the gory details before they give birth for the first time because you don't want to make them worry unnecessarily, but after they've given birth you want to reassure them that it rarely goes completely according to plan and they're not the only one to feel a little traumatised after the event.

this is very true.

24 hours in labour and nearly dying when I had my son.

Doubled over with pain and sometimes passing out every single month with my period.

A lifetime of subconsciously wondering whether the man walking behind me, or sitting in the same rail carriage, or the stranger at the door is going to rape and/or kill me.

Being belittled, humiliated and treated as a lesser entity by men on some level my entire life.

Being catcalled with vile, sexualised comments even as an 11 year old in school uniform. At the age of 12 a builder screaming from a rooftop that what I needed was "thirteen inches of throbbing wet dick".

The list is endless. No, men cannot be women.

Having stretchmarks which I 'wear' with pride as a mark of my two pregnancies.
Being asked in a job interview (didn't get job) what would happen if either of my children were ill. What would I do about work?!
Bet the men didn't get asked that. I kick myself even now for not replying that my husband would just as likely take the day off as me.

You poor love x

Being screamed at and pushed around and sexually assaulted by men, in the street and at work. All the time.

Men are not and never can be women. Fuck off.

Miscarrying a much wanted pregnancy and having my male GP tell me that I shouldn’t worry as it was ’very common’.

At a second round interview when I was 31 back in 1998, hearing the interviewer and company boss say, ‘I shouldn’t really ask you this but you’re not planning on getting married or having children in the next couple of years are you?’ I had no plans for marriage and children so I said, ‘I’ve no idea’ but my vagueness was enough to ensure they played safe and gave the job to a less qualified male who, I later found out, was due to get married to his pregnant girlfriend in a few week’s time.

I've been such a young woman in a slightly different situation (crazy man calling me a whore and all sorts of things but not touching me... Yet). And indeed a couple of 40 something women grabbed me at some point just before the sub doors closed and hauled me onto the platform. Bless them.

Having cervical exams during labour and being amazed by how painful they were - worse than the strongest contractions.

After the birth, letting different maternity nurses painfully squeeze my nipples to extract tiny amounts of colostrum and wondering where my dignity had gone.

Spidey feelings knowing when something is not quite right

Feeling bloated and then finding out I had ovarian cancer. And it’s a cancer that a woman dies from every 2 hours in the UK and unlike prostate cancer there is NO FUCKING TEST for ovarian cancer so most women only find out they have it when it has frolicked all around.

Comparing funding for cancers that only affect men (like prostate and testicular cancer) with those that only affect women (like ovarian, cervical, uterine, vulval, and vaginal cancers), there is a clear gap.
–Male specific cancers: Average survival rate of 79% and £1,450 per case in funding.
-female specific cancers: Average survival rate of 58% and £1,203 per case in funding.

Specifically Prostate cancer, with a 78% survival rate, receives £1,288 per case but ovarian cancer, where survival is just 35%, only gets £1,132 per case.

A similar thing happened to my Mum on the tube when she was young. A man got on her empty carriage and sat next to her. She said she was scared but turned and stared at him until he got up and moved to another carriage.

I’ve been on the end of that stare so know why he moved!

@ChangedBeing

Nomononomoniated this for Classics. I can't think of a thread that's more relevant to Mumsnet, really.

I can death stare for England and have even startled myself when catching my reflection 😅