I don't appear to have the typical female experience I'd be interested in what some of you have to say

[hathorinareddress69]

Not a thread about a thread but on another thread I realised that I don't seem to have had the typical female experience, and I just wondered what you thought (since LRD suggested this was not a scary place)

I don't seem to have had the experiences that some of the feminists have - I don't feel the need to share with females, I never had a man leer or wolf whistle or try to look up my skirt.

My best friend is a man and I can (and do) discuss anything with him and he does with me.

Am I that abnormal?

Because one of my very few female friends is on MN and knows who I am

Not really sure what you're trying to say tbh. We all have different experiences and different ways of interacting with the world. Lots of women don't have intimately close friends or talk about periods with their colleagues.

I don't know samandi just I was on another thread and those things were pointed out as the typical female experience that women would want to share with other women - I haven't had them and I don't feel the need to share with other women, so I was just wondering was I odd.

Really it was just a musing.

Hathor - I don't feel like a particularly 'typical' female and i think that i've shunned the more typical female experience in terms of passtimes and friends in favour of my physical sports where i find myself among men mostly with a few other hetro "tomboy" women like me and more than a few lesbian women.

I have thought long and hard about statements i've read here on mn and in other feminist writing about 'suppressing' natural femininity and 'behaving like a man' to get ahead and i honestly don't feel that is true in my case, i really do think i am being true to myself. Obviously we all operate within our culture and society but i really don't think, even after reflection, that i'm behaving in a more male way to 'survive in a patriarchy'. So i do struggle with feminist writing that makes those statements.

Maybenow - that's it that's how I feel. I do sports with mostly men, and it's not done to "catch" a bloke (as I've been accused of by another woman). I'm just more comfortable in those environments. I'm not sure how I feel about it all - I've been thinking a lot about it over the last few days.

I suppose I'll just have to keep thinking it all through.

hathor I think you completely misunderstood what I was talking about on the other thread.

I was trying to explain that a lot of women do feel that there are things they only want to discuss with other women. One of them being sexual harrassment / assault. Of course people who have not had those experiences, or are happy talking about them with mixed groups do not have anything wrong with them. But nor do the women who only want to discuss certain issues / experiences with other women.

Hey there, op,

Well three bloody cheers for you and your dontfuckwithmevibe. if you could turn just a tiny smidge of empathy toward the many many many women who have been sexually assaulted you might perhaps see that it had fuck all to do with their attitude and everthing to do with there being a rapist/sexual assaulter in the vicinity

or do you reckon women in DRC just need assertiveness training? Way to go. do you have any idea how dismissive and crap your comment sounded?

fwiw men and transpeople can be sexually assaulted too, it also doesn't depend on whether they have a can do attitude or not

i sure hope that clarifies it for you, please do work on not posting hateful bullshit in future where vulnerable people will see it. it creates a hostile fucking environment which is truly antithetical to what i imagine mn is trying to be as a parenting support site

Hth

I understood Hathor to be ruminating on why it could be that she had not been sexually assaulted, rather than congratulating herself as you imply.

I didn't read that she intended to be dismissive to those people who had, or suggest that it was in any way their fault.

You must have read a different thread to me, Chibi... I distinctly remember the op saying that a don't fuck with me attitude wouldn't negate a sexual assault and it was more to do with luck and context.

Unless I dreamt that, obv,

oh. right. so directly linking never having been sexually assaulted with her 'vibe' and then adding a smirky little wink wasn't meant to be dismissive? i am probably oversensitive since i clearly gave out a dofuckingviolateme vibe at one point in my life

but hey, tooooootally the subject for jokey winks on a chatboard, eh.

The sports with men thing is interesting though. I ran and trained a lot with men and have frequently had disbelieving comments or accusations of cheating because as a woman I couldn't possibly have achieved x, y or z without some sort of subterfuge.... I didn't give a monkeys but a number of the men found it disconcerting and I guess a bit emasculating.

That said, I now live in possibly the fittest town in the world and I see little or no gender based sporting ructions. Everyone is equally congratulatory about individual prowess and effort, and encouraging to fat lardy middle aged women like me.

So I guess context is all.

Just shitty, and anyone who is defending needs yo take a good long look at themselve. this site is meant yo be about making parents' lives easier- exactly how does saying people who have the right vibe about them don't get raped, and then WINKING support that?

shame on you.

I read the wink as a joke about having a don't fuck with me vibe. Not as a 'ha ha ha, isn't abuse hilarious'.

I think it's a bog standard tinternet tone thang.

Nope. Still feel exactly the same about violence against women. Not a lighting matter. And the op wasn't laughing about it, nor attributing causation to lack of 'don't fuck with me' vibery.

Laughing. Fecking iPad.

I don't know any feminist writing that says behave more like a man . Most feminist text would like men's behaviour to change so that would be a kind of oxymoron.

I am also with chibi. Sexual assault isn't a joking matter and that post made me distinctly uncomfortable.

I don't see how you could possibly know what the op meant, unless you are the op? The damage is done. people who have been assaulted sexually are jokes, and their assaults a laughing matter. i know i don't feel welcome here now

Chibi you have completely misunderstood what I was tyro g to say. The thread was in response to a comment SQ made on another thread about sharing the female experience of talking about childbirth, periods and boys looking up skirts. That gas never happened to me, so I was wondering if that excluded me from being a feminist.

And LD had said feminism wasn't scary and there was no reason not to post here.

Seems she was wrong. And I was naive.

The wink was a dog at myself for being so scary and giving off the negative vibe. It was in no way a reflection on anyone else. And I have already made that point.

it totally read as 'well i havent been assaulted but that's cos i'm so strong, not like those LOSERS'. the rest of her postings are her attempts to distance herself from women, she's not like us, doesn't have experiences like us, hell, even says she isn't really friends with us

pretty clear how she feels about women in general . fair enough, plenty of people hate women and there is certainly a lot of support in our culture for it, but i really found that wink gratuitously hurtful

you bet this section is scary, your stupid winking triggered the hell out of me, my heart is pounding.

so easy to say well that's not what i meant. i got your message, all right. i don't think i'll post again, at least until the voices of weak, assaulted, loser women so unlike you are welcome here

Chibi calm down, I very much doubt the OP was laughing at people who have been assaulted.

maybe badly worded.

calm down i very much doubt etc. did you mean to sound quite so dismissive and patronising

Did you mean to sound so aggressive to the OP ?

you seem to be taking her entirely out of context.

"sharing the female experience of talking about childbirth, periods and boys looking up skirts"

But that wasn't me!!!

Chibi - You have completely misunderstood where I was coming from and if I have upset you I apologise. That was not my intention.

I said already :

hathorinareddress69 Mon 16-Apr-12 17:06:56
No I don't for one second think that it's anything to do with me that I haven't been assaulted that I'm better than anyone who has - please don't think that.

I don't for one second think anyone who has been is over-sensitive.

I was just commenting that the female experiences referred to on the other thread were not my personal experience.

I did not and would not judge anyone or think I was better than anyone else (and if you've been on threads I've been on in the last few days I think I've demonstrated that but if I haven't I'm happy to be corrected)

So I think that made my position clear?

SQ - I am sorry. I said it was you who had made the comment on the other thread - it wasn't. The comment which started me thinking was by firstlasteverything and it said :

"But hathor, your friend would be unable to, for instance, join in with stories of boys trying to lift her skirt up in the school playground, or how they told their Mum about their first period, or the horror of the two week wait. These are shared women's experiences which transactivists are trying to stop women talking about."

(I have a transgendered friend)

And my point is that I would not be able to join in with those discussions either, because they aren't something I have experienced.

Ok everyone, bland statements only about group hugs in the fem section, okay? No one is allowed to question the essential nature of femininity