'How does it feel to be a girl?'

[isurvived3under2]

DS asked this over breakfast. He's 5.

I'd be interested in your answers!

Exactly like a boy with the burden of expectation to be kinder, more compliant and quieter.

No idea.

I know how I felt when I was a girl, but have absolutely no way to know if that’s how other girls felt too. So I can’t really tell you how it feels to be “a girl”, only to be me.

Ask your 5 year old how it feels to be a boy ? Then ask him, but is that how all boys feel? How can he be sure?

Perfect answer from minipie, everyone is different and each person can only say how it feels to be THEM.

It doesn't feel like anything, some people just are one.

Would be what I would say.

Does he mean matters scatological, like what it's like to wee & poo?

At 5 no difference from being a boy.

At 13 rubbish; having to deal with periods and puberty, sexual harassment, social pressure to look a certain way and behave a certain way.

As an adult generally OK. Pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding are all interesting experiences but the sexual harassment continues, albeit you are better able to deal with it. Pay is worse than being a man.

@FourTeaFallOut

Exactly like a boy with the burden of expectation to be kinder, more compliant and quieter.

👏

I think it’s a good point that boys likely feel different from each other and probably girls experiences also differ from other girls too.

Maybe I’d say that having their baby sister (we have a 6 week old) is a different experience for me and DH - because I have a womb and breast feed but their daddy doesn’t.

He can probably try to imagine what a male friend feels, and what a female friend feels, but it's just imagination unless he asks them at the time. In the same way they don't fully know how he feels.

Has he heard that boys can turn into girls through a feeling and is concerned, or just curiosity?

@JaninaDuszejko

At 5 no difference from being a boy.

At 13 rubbish; having to deal with periods and puberty, sexual harassment, social pressure to look a certain way and behave a certain way.

As an adult generally OK. Pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding are all interesting experiences but the sexual harassment continues, albeit you are better able to deal with it. Pay is worse than being a man.

I think it's important to remember it's not just girls who struggle with puberty. It happens to boys as well. Weird squeaky breaking voice , acne, strong body odour, hair suddenly sprouting on the face and other places. Pretty sure it makes them feel as uncomfortable as us girls!!

I would be interested to hear what he is being taught in school on this topic.

I agree that all children feel like themselves and no two are exactly the same, however I am certain that as a group girls and boys of 5 will be experiencing the world differently. I wish it weren't the case but girls and boys aren't treated the same, even by each other, don't have the same expectations placed on them and don't have the same expectations for the future.

@JaninaDuszejko

At 5 no difference from being a boy.

At 13 rubbish; having to deal with periods and puberty, sexual harassment, social pressure to look a certain way and behave a certain way.

As an adult generally OK. Pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding are all interesting experiences but the sexual harassment continues, albeit you are better able to deal with it. Pay is worse than being a man.

Sadly I think the social pressure and harassment begin a lot sooner than 13, but otherwise I'd agree with you.

It isn’t a feeling. It’s a state of biological reality,

Every person experiences being the one person they are. Just.
So none of us can 'feel like a girl' or 'feel like a boy'. We 'feel' like living beings, we learn that we are people and our bodies tell us our sex, which is immutable, a biological fact. We learn about living as a girl or living as a boy. No-one can ever be born in the 'wrong'' body - we are at one with the body we have and if we don't feel that, there's a problem and we should seek psychological help to adjust. The answer is not to change the body, which is a fact, but to address the matter of understanding, which is flexible.

“It is all I’ve ever known so nothing to compare it with… but pretty good! It has its up and downs, just like being a boy will have it’s ups and downs - some we share, others we don’t”

Constantly aware of personal safety. From what I’ve been told, men don’t feel like that. They feel safe to walk in the dark and park where they like and leave their drinks on the table unattended. Women are constantly aware of predators and potential rapists.

The other thing I feel is scared. Scared of pregnancy which for me has resulted in permanent injury. Scared of losing my career opportunities because childcare is dumped all on me. Scared because I know my body will decline at about 50 and I’ll need to take pills like HRT for the rest of my life just to be able to function normally. Meanwhile my husband gets to be a parent with no pain, no damage to his body, no impact on his career, and he can feel normal and be fit and healthy to 70-80 and beyond. Being a woman is absolutely the shitty end of the stick.

Superior.

Exactly like a boy with the burden of expectation to be kinder, more compliant and quieter.

And always criticised for things a boy would get away with! I remember I used to take Dd swimming as a toddler in a blue swim nappy sometimes and she got away with so much compared to when she was in a pink one (nothing terrible but we’d always get pulled up on her climbing out and jumping in when she wore the pink one!)

At 5 it was fine. By 9 I hated it (yay for bring raised on military bases). If I could choose, I'd have picked "male" in a heartbeat.

@Alayalaya

Constantly aware of personal safety. From what I’ve been told, men don’t feel like that. They feel safe to walk in the dark and park where they like and leave their drinks on the table unattended. Women are constantly aware of predators and potential rapists.

The other thing I feel is scared. Scared of pregnancy which for me has resulted in permanent injury. Scared of losing my career opportunities because childcare is dumped all on me. Scared because I know my body will decline at about 50 and I’ll need to take pills like HRT for the rest of my life just to be able to function normally. Meanwhile my husband gets to be a parent with no pain, no damage to his body, no impact on his career, and he can feel normal and be fit and healthy to 70-80 and beyond. Being a woman is absolutely the shitty end of the stick.

Probably not quite the register one would use to answer a 5 year old boy!

@FourTeaFallOut

Exactly like a boy with the burden of expectation to be kinder, more compliant and quieter.

This.

@FourTeaFallOut

Exactly like a boy with the burden of expectation to be kinder, more compliant and quieter.

And the knowledge that your body's biology will fuck you about at every stage of life and society will often oppress you because of it.

A lot like being a boy except you can wear a huge variety of clothes and colours without people thinking you're weird, you can study any subject at school without mockery, no one will laugh at your teddy collection, no one will assume you're a perv if you like childcare, you get bullied less and almost no one will ever care if you're useless at sport ... and you'll probably live much longer and have much better health for a longer time.

@lljkk girls are still often discouraged from STEM, particularly engineering. Even the ones that do well initially are outnumbered higher up the professional pathways. Girls are discouraged from sport by boys and men (through their negative behaviour), we live longer yes, but better health...not necessarily when you look into reproductive system impacts like menopause.