Is this normal for a woman or is it gender dysphoria?

[cockBlocker]

Forgive me the following description is stating the obvious for some of you, but I wanted to post this to encourage a discussion about how women experience their own bodies. Like other women here, one of the numerous objections I have to the term ‘cis’ is that I have never felt comfortable with gender norms or my own body and have no innate sense of being female.

Even as a small child I hated being cooed over simply because I had long blonde hair. I felt reduced to little more than a doll and always wondered why my hair should matter, it was so trivial. I asked to get my hair cut off but my mother wouldn’t let me. I hated that I had to be a bridesmaid, being paraded around in a ridiculous dress – even though I was only around eleven, I still felt dehumanised, being shown off as a thing rather than a person. Similar was having to wear a skirt for Sunday School, I didn’t see why God would care if I had a skirt on or not. I hated it in Brownies too, I wanted to be active and not worry about whether I was showing my pants or not. I hated that I wasn’t allowed to have ‘boys toys’ like a chemistry set because I was told it was dangerous.

I’ve never been overweight, but as soon as my body started to develop I felt fat. When I was a teenager I developed bulimia and it’s something I’ve struggled with on and off ever since. I hate when my stomach bloats up to three times it’s normal size when I’m due to get my period so I can grab handfuls of flesh around my middle. I have a fairly slim but curvy body, and I feel that it attracts the kind of men I don’t want to attract, it somehow makes them assume that I’m stereotypically feminine in my interests or a bimbo, inferior in every possible way. I hate it when I find men staring at my tits rather than listening to me. I also hate it when you get looked up and down by women, as happens often when you’re walking down the street minding your own business. The sad thing is I’m sure I do it too, we get programmed to monitor each other and make sure no woman steps out of place with what she’s wearing or how she’s behaving – not too confident in her own body, covered up enough etc. I try to dismantle this and smile at women I pass on the street now (when I’m not being a miserable git), I want things to change.

I feel like I had to learn how to like heterosexual sex. The thought of a man’s ejaculate to be honest still does make me feel a bit sick. I do enjoy sex, but the submissive nature of it for a woman and the way it reduces me to just a body at times repulses me.

I hate the way that relatives and friends’ parents feel it their place to comment on my body – my weight, the straightness of my legs, my posture. One of my ex-boyfriend’s mothers seemed to size me up like a prize cow, assessing my health as a potential breeder. I realise this might be a bold thing to say on Mumsnet, but I’ve never wanted to have children. I have a recurring nightmare that I am pregnant, I wake up in a cold sweat. It’s the thought of feeling trapped by my body, as much as the way I feel society would view me as a purely physical being existing only to bring other life into the world rather than in my own right (please note that this isn’t how I see mothers myself).

I hate when I go to the gym that the idiot men in there look at me lifting the heaviest weights I can with a smarmy look, as if they’re comparing themselves to me and getting an ego boost, thinking how pathetic I am. I hate being grabbed around my waist as though I’m a man’s f*ing property and sexualised as a ‘thing’ before they’ve even spoken to me.

I was wondering how many other women feel the way I do? When a young teen I wondered if I was gay, even though that’s never been my orientation. I said many times whilst growing up that I wanted to be a boy, but being transgender wasn’t on the radar back then. I have no idea how I would feel about it if I was growing up now, it seems like it would be ten times worse.

I hope no-one minds me posting this. I’ve never really talked about just how uncomfortable I feel in my own body with anyone before, so I honestly don’t know if what I’m describing is extreme or very common. I feel genuinely deeply distressed how women are being redefined by transgender ideology as supposedly comfortable in their own bodies, as it is something I have struggled with my entire life and it continues daily. As a reaction to this, I’m currently rethinking how to present myself as more androgynous by cutting my hair off and wearing more masculine clothes. I can’t stand the idea of gender norms being reinforced any more than they already are, I feel trapped.

Sounds like a perfectly normal and healthy response to toxic misogyny in the patriarchy to me, but wouldn't it be lovely to think that if you just took some magic hormones and went around calling yourself Simon, it would all magically evaporate? I can see the attraction. "Cis" women = vile fat loud bitchy scum, hitting female puberty and becoming a cis woman = traumatizing, so become a man, yay, problem solved.

Ugh.

Feelings of loathing towards our bodies has been pretty widespread among the girls & women I've known in the long course of my life, no matter our sexual orientation. It's a common response to the experiences of being female in the misogynist world we live in. Back in the 1970s & 1980s, we called it "negative body image" & saw it as a manifestation of learned low self-esteem.

Funny thing is, I suffered worst from body-loathing when I was at my slimmest & most beautiful. As I got older, I outgrew a lot of it. But now that I'm getting really old, I find I'm vulnerable to new manifestations of it in new forms. But I also have perspective & a lot of good life experience, so it's not nearly as distressing or overwhelming as in my youth. A lot rolls off my back.

Talk to other women about this & keep talking to them. Sharing helps. As do activities that make you focus on & feel good about all the marvelous things your body can do, rather than reinforce concerns about your weight & looks. Wear what you want. Screw sex role stereotypes. Express yourself however you want. Also, remember "dysphoria" simply means "a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. The opposite of euphoria." It's just a code word for unhappiness.

And go to the library & see if you can find books from the 70s, 80s & 90s like "Fat Is A Feminist Issue" by Susie Orbach, "The Obsession" by Kim Chernin, "Women & Self-Esteem" by Linda Sanford & Mary Ellen Donovan & "Revolution From Within" by Gloria Steinem. I'm sure there are many more recent books that can also be of help, but this isn't an area I've looked into for a long time, as you can tell.

You are in good company, definitely not alone. Good luck!

TooMuchTVTooYoung?

lass maybe, but hopefully just my poor phrasing. I meant I was more aware of being appraised (generally by men) and found it uncomfortable. We're expected (by some) to spring back to our previous size after giving birth and I certainly didn't

Are we? I do sometimes think feminists make far more out of this idea of the "male gaze" "society expects" and the like than non- feminist women who don't particularly care or even notice it beyond thinking , sod that, I don't care, I'm having the last biscuit and getting on with their lives.

I do think it's a bit self-obsessed to go back to work and think all eyes are on whether or not you have lost the baby weight.

Feminism bangs on a lot about the unrealistic expectations of what women are supposed to look like and how these can't be achieved but seems to ignore the fact that looking around any high street, shop or office there are millions of women happily ignoring this.

I do have reservations about the level of self-loathing of one's bodies being posted on here being "normal" or "healthy"

I relate a lot to your childhood experience and only a little as an adult.

From a toddler I absolutely despised people calling me pretty/beautiful/commenting on my hair. I would cry and get upset about it. They didn't say that about my brothers. I refused or wear dresses from aged 2. I remember one occasion, a wedding I think, where I was forced to. I barricaded myself in my room and screamed until I was sick. I was still made to wear it. I hated pink or pretty things, and I definitely felt feminine girls were inferior and didn't socialise with them. I remember being gifted floral bedsheets, and crying and feeling physically sick whenever they were on. I still remember how ridiculously upset I was when sleeping at a family members house with my boy cousins, she bought a multi pack of toothbrushes, and I had to have the pink one. I cried all day. I still remember the Christmas when all my cousins had superhero figures and I had a fairy. Then the one when all my cousins had remote control cars and I had flower shaped soaps. The Christmas morning I opened my stocking to an amazing tub of green bubble bath with plastic frogs in and how my mum snatched it from me and said oh dear, you must have the wrong one, and swapped my stocking with a brothers and found pink bath salts instead. These probably sound all very minor, but prove that as a girl, my individuality wasn't important. I hated how some family members would say 'she should have been a boy' 'she'll be a lesbian this one'. How I asked everyone to call me a boys name, how I had all my hair cut off short. I hated swimming because I felt uncomfortable in my body and wanted to wear trunks. I could go on and on.

However, unlike you I always was obsessed with babies and had them young, felt more comfortable with my body after puberty, became slightly more feminine, or at least slightly more comfortable doing some feminine things like wear skirts and make up but probably just to avoid unwanted attention from standing out. I really hate it when people compliment my looks, especially my partner. If people compliment me for wearing make up I think they are shallow. I still think marriage is a hideous idea, still dislike pink, don't like to wear bright colours, don't wear dresses or heels, but I feel confidentially female and not dysphoric. I'm happy in my body.
If I'd been born today I've no doubt I would have been encouraged to transition by the same family that used to force femininity on me.

LassWiADelicateAir - I have the feeling that this is a class-based thing. I expect there is an over-emphasis on valuing a girl for her looks in the working classes. That was certainly what I experienced, when I compare with other girls similar to me and to my more middle class friends who seemed a lot more confident in themselves and caring less about how others judged them. Working class men can be a lot more forthright when 'appraising' you too.

I feel more comfortable as I get older but I’d be a man if it were so easy as to say I am one - my dh hasn’t had to put up with a tenth of the shit I’ve had and we’ve lived very similar lives.

I hate the male gaze. Perhaps lass you are oblivious to it but having been on the receiving end far too many times of what happens when the male gaze turns into the male hands or worse, I’m attuned to when it happens to me. And I’m an overweight mum of two who makes an effort about twice a week these days

The concept that one can simply identify out of one’s oppression really upsets me and is plainly not true.

Hope you feel better

I relate to that class difference. I was somewhere in the middle, so know both working class and middle.class scenarios as "mine".

I was often misgendered as a kid/teen and do think I would have been pushed or pulled into the trans community if that were me today.

There is another thread about somebodies kid experiencing peer pressure to be trans because they are nonconforming.

Thus morning a funny comic my Mum had from the 60's popped into my head, a cartoon of a young couple with an older onlooker commenting that you cannot tell who the girl is nowadays! As the girl had shorter hair, the boy had longer and wore a flowery, blousy shirt.

I think if this transtrend were happening at any time from the 60's on, you would have people who were push/pulled into it due to not being what was gender expected by society at the time.

I'm very glad 13 year old me doesn't live in the UK today!

I’m finding the class idea interesting. I am/was working class but I went to university and have been middle class/professional since then I suppose. I’d say I’ve experienced far more sexual assault and inappropriateness from middle class/ professional men. This may be perhaps because I am around those men more or because those type of men see working class women as fair game compared to other classes of women. Or perhaps I’m just unlucky.

My working class stereotype was ‘don’t think your summat when you’re nowt’ so my understanding of clothes and make up and stuff was to use them to cover up or distract from my natural hideousness. I remember feeling very sad reading Dawn French’s autobiography where she talked about her dad saying how beautiful she was when she was a teenager trying out fashion and how it gave her confidence in herself. I think if more people had the confidence to dress etc as they want rather than worrying about what everyone else might think people might generally be a lot happier about their bodies.

Anyone else getting banner ads for ‘modest’ women’s fashion on this thread? I’d love to know the keywords making that happen.

Obv that language is fairly culturally specific, so it’s uncomfortable to take issue with it, but it feels so loaded and I don’t care for the implied antonym. Especially in light of the discussion.

I think there is a class element to men being sexist, leering, perverted and abusive arseholes with an entitled male gaze.

Someone's user name on another thread reminded me of Bianca and Ricky in Eastenders. I remember an article where the actors had been asked about what it was like working together. The bloke playing Ricky is such a wanker saying she only gets annoyed with him when he takes the mick out of her looks, calling her ugly and saying her breasts are flat like spaniels ears. I was flabbergasted that an adult man could think that kind of 'banter' was acceptable with his female work colleagues, and even tell a journalist about it in an interview.

Which reminded me of the class element. IME working class (could be regional SE England) men have generally been more comfortable overtly being sexist, judgemental and lecherous about women, but middle and upper class men have exactly the same shit going on in their minds but they feel inhibited about expressing it because it would be coarse, un-PC and not how they were brought up.

The whole phenomenon of 'lads mags' in the 1990s was all about that.

A group of upper middle-class men who longed to be openly oafish, sexist, lecherous, judgemental and disparaging of women created 'Loaded' first, then other titles followed. Retrosexism rose up at the same time with Jonathan Ross taking the lion's share of our TV licence fees to spout appalling abuse at women. I remember him telling Zoe Ball that her husband is ugly and her looks were 'really ordinary' without make up when she was a guest on hus show. Such a rude sexist prick.

It created a cultural shift where men really thought they got a free pass to be utter dickheads towards women and no comedy routine was complete without a rape or child abuse 'joke'.

But feminism has been on the rise again since and don't know if anyone remembers the inappropriate tweets Toby Young got in deep shit for when they were dug out?

Anyway. I am not saying all working class or middle class men are rude sexist pigs - either beneath the surface or upfront - but all the decent men who don't say/think/support that shit will be less memorable because bad memories tend to be more sticky than good. However IME there is definitely a class element to sexist 'banter' where middle class men keep their sexism more hidden from women again now that they are supposed to be 'woke' post me too etc.

slappinthebass - you've just brought back a memory of when my older sister made me a floral dress in her sewing class. The idea of wearing it made me feel sick (I would have only been around 8 years old) so I hid it at the bottom of my wardrobe and pretended that I didn't know where it had gone, because I felt bad for her that I hated it. I also hate when women try to make chit-chat by saying 'I like your dress' or the like. Obviously I take it in good spirits, but I do feel that it's often more to do with monitoring each other in terms of our looks, I'd much rather be complimented on something I've said.

sod that, I don't care, I'm having the last biscuit

at LasswiADelicateAir

I also hate when women try to make chit-chat by saying 'I like your dress' or the like. Obviously I take it in good spirits, but I do feel that it's often more to do with monitoring each other in terms of our looks, I'd much rather be complimented on something I've said

I do think feminism as practiced on here has some very skewed ways of looking at the world.

I was once told on here If a woman I didn't know walked up to me on the street, while I was walking home from work say, and stopped me, to tell me I had a nice dress, I'd think she was very very very peculiar indeed and it never happens. Well , sorry but it does happen.

It seems very odd to assume such a negative and prickly attitude to a compliment. If someone has spent time, money and effort on a new outfit or hairdo what is wrong with a compliment to acknowledge that?

Likewise this "male gaze" and "monitoring" It seems to me a very peculiar , negative and self- obsessed way to live one's life- assuming that your male colleagues are eyeing you up lasciviously and female colleagues are monitoring you.

If I say to a woman, 'you have a nice dress' I'm saying she has good taste not suggesting she's arm candy. Maybe I should say, 'I like that dress, good taste' or just shutup I spose.... ?

Hell, even that isn't really right, it sounds like I have some right to monitor other people's taste, what I mean is I like the dress, it is also to my taste, and that's about it really

I recognise a great deal of your OP.

to you.

Counselling helped me process the many grim experiences I'd had, and feel more integrated with my body. So did starting jogging, interestingly.

LassWiADelicateAir - you sound like you're being judgemental. Women do monitor each other, why do you think the Daily Fail and glossies rips women to shreds online and women lap it up? I don't read those things, but plenty of other women I interact with do.For some reason you seem to be in denial. You've stated you don't experience the things I've mentioned and I accept that, good for you. I have suggested it's perhaps class based - may I assume you are from a middle class background? Women of course compliment each other for more genuine reasons, that's fine, but I have experienced it time and time again from gossipy judgemental type women, who might also ask you how much it cost etc then go off and gossip about you to others. I'm glad if you can't believe that happens, as it's not pleasant, but I assure you it does. I can only assume that we have led very different lives.

Likewise this "male gaze" and "monitoring" It seems to me a very peculiar , negative and self- obsessed way to live one's life- assuming that your male colleagues are eyeing you up lasciviously and female colleagues are monitoring you.
I've personally said nothing about male colleagues, for me it's more random encounters, street harassment and the like, being followed around the gym by men staring at my ass and beeping their horn when I'm out running - I suppose I'm being an egotist in acknowledging tat happens and saying I don't enjoy that? Strange attitude to have on a feminism board, but is that really what you are claiming, that women don't get harassed by men? Where do you live?!

What @JellySlice said. There's nothing wrong with you, OP. I can't imagine there's a woman alive who hasn't felt most of those things.

Try to be a bit easier on yourself, and meanwhile, here are some

Anlaf - thank-you, fitness does me a world of good too, particularly running and weight lifting as it's more about strength and goals than focusing on how you look.

StoatofDisarray - thank-you. I'm OK! I did want to know how other women felt though and glad I'm not alone.

LassWiADelicateAir - It sounds like you're gaslighting a lot of women on this thread. It's bad enough to deal with some of the things that have been mentioned, not very pleasant to then be told you are 'self-obsessed' for noticing and not enjoying being objectified from childhood. Perhaps accept that people have had different experiences to you and leave it at that?

OP, I can relate to some of what you have said, and have also had an upbringing maybe a bit like yours with a violent father.
Sorry if it sounds inappropriate but are you 100% sure you are heterosexual? I have recently started to wonder whether I actually am. It just never occurred to me that I wasn't. It sounds weird, I know, but I didn't question it when I was younger. What I am trying to say is that maybe it's not discomfort with being a woman, but being a heterosexual woman.

Funkyfunkybeat12 - I've never been attracted to women, or at least not in a sexual way or in a way I could imagine myself being in a relationship with someone female, so unless I'm incredibly repressed then no, but I can understand why you ask. I actually feel strongly heterosexual, but prefer men who are gender non-conforming.

I can relate to almost everything you've written about appearance, OP. I hated being treated like a doll when I was little (my brothers were never "dressed up" in the same way I was) and some comments about how I present myself will still get my hackles up (e.g. an older relative's comments about what she considers too "manly"). I just hate stereotyping and the idea of girliness. I'm also curvy and I hate it when men talk to my tits or beep the horn, and my style is far from feminine!
That said, I don't think that finding someone's appearance aesthetically pleasing is automatically about objectification or gender expectations. I love beautiful and interesting things - in art, nature, architecture, humans - and that includes individual styles. If I approach a woman to ask about her dress, I'm not congratulating her on her womanliness, I'm just admiring a nice piece of clothing!
I totally understand your revulsion towards the reductive imagery of women as feminine, sexy things, but I think you're being too hard on yourself. Your self-expression should be about you - try not to define yourself against something, you'll just end up imposing unnecessary boundaries on yourself. I have had similar body issues as you, and I remember exactly when they started (family members talking about my body when I hit puberty). I'm ok with my body now, although I still think cleavage is aesthetically akin to arse cracks.
Btw, I love what you said about trying to smile at other women. I think many of us automatically interpret a glance from another woman as a form of the male gaze, and it's not healthy.

ProfessoressWoland - absolutely! Nothing wrong with complimenting a woman and noticing she looks nice or has made an effort. It of course depends on who it's coming from and what the intentions are, like everything else. I don't personally enjoy making small talk about hair/outfits/jewellery/my weight as they are something I do not spend any of my time thinking about, I have nothing to say about them and don't think it should be given such importance in society in general, but I go along with it and take it in the spirit its intended if it's just the usual female bonding stuff, I wasn't suggesting it's always or even mainly coming from a negative place.