The ramblings of a middle aged hag

[MadameKali]

Just been having one of those imaginary conversations with my woke DSis. You know, the ones where you say all the right things, backed up with stats and you don't lose your temper and call someone a cunt?

Anyway I had a bit of a lightbulb moment during this entirely fictional conversation and I realised that she buys into gender stuff because she was never "girly" herself. She was always our dad's favourite and encouraged to climb trees etc, a kind of substitute son (for reference my other sisters are both prettier and have always been more traditionally feminine and socialised in those roles)

It got me wondering if the reason so many women/girls are cheerleaders of the ideology - despite the harm it does to us - is because they don't "feel" like women/girls. They know what it's like to feel that your body isn't your own and be uncomfortable in it. From the second girls start to physically mature their bodies seemingly are no longer their own. So they can totally sympathise with the whole "born in the wrong body" thing - which I think a majority of supporters believe is the basis of gender issues.

I don't have any internal feelings of womanliness, nor does my DD. I interpret that as "well I just am a woman" DD interprets it as "I am not a woman".

I'm sure someone more articulate can come along and make a better stab at it than me (or tell me I'm talking bollocks).

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but when i was a child it was always seen as a bit "cool" to be a tomboy. In my 20s, it was "cooler" to be "one of the lads at work, drink pints and smoke instead of hiding in the corner with the few women from the office crossing their legs in the high heels and short skirts sipping rose...

So although I don't buy into it the same way your sister does, I do understand the kind of dissonance between me and "girly girls". That doesn't make me any less of a woman though.

Now I'm a few years older the whole "cool" thing if you act more like a bloke rather than a woman just pisses me off. But then that's a whole other can of worms.

Sorry thats not very articulate but hopefully you know what I mean!

It might be true for some, although the same experience seems to drive a rejection of gender identity ideology from others.

I think the idea that a person can feel "born in the wrong body" relates to many things. It is to a particular time in one's life, when bodies are changing, such as growing, puberty, child bearing, menopause. The truth is a body isn't a static entity, but always changing, and doing so from birth to death. It is a natural life cycle (if we are lucky). There are times when I feel intensely at home in my body and times when I feel intensely out of it - carrying extra weight etc.

With regard to this question, there are many things we can do to change our bodies with attitude, diet, exercise etc. That may sound trite and dismissive. But I really don't think it is - in any case, an holistic approach should be a first resort surely. I am really saddened at the tendency of so many to look for outside aid in making changes via pharmaceuticals and medicalisation.

I think one of the costs of this attitude that is never reflected in the "be kind" mantra is the cruelty of the cost of producing the hormones that people take to change themselves. Other sentient beings suffer greatly for that to happen. It is something un-necessary, the hormonal changing of an otherwise healthy body. I have never really seen this raised among the young desperately telling everyone to be kind. They probably don't know.

To be clear, I am not making a case not to take medicine when it is necessary for quality of life to continue. I just think our attitude is to demand change on request without regard to the consequences for others (other people, but also other species). There is a relevance here to the climate change discussions. It is a wider view perhaps. But at what cost, all of this human centreing to the health of the planet?

It's a valid theory.

One of the reasons I am GC is because I believe if I was a teen girl nowadays I would be caught up in thinking I was a trans man and it would solve all my problems. (As did JKR in her blog, I believe)

It's possible it works the other way around too?

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

It might be true for some, although the same experience seems to drive a rejection of gender identity ideology from others.

This

It's shit being a woman. There are different ways to respond to that, depending on a number of factors at play in one's social background.

Gender identity ideology offers some false hopes I suppose.

The real answers lie in stopping it being shit being a woman, because no-one can change their sex. We need to improve and change the social conditions of girls' lives, not their bodies.

Also, I think a lot of girls and young women just like feeling a bit 'edgy' and think they've invented 'gender non conforming', something that was around big style in the 1980s with a different vocabulary and doing far, far less harm. And without the young women doing so much pandering.

I’d say that I grew up like your sister. Tomboy with short hair. Did science at school and ended up in computers, so never felt like a girl. However, as I’ve grown up, I am happy to be a woman.

That experience strengthens my GC views. Probably because I have a lot of sympathy for people that don’t fit in. I just figure that I’m lucky that the message when I was growing up, 80’s/90’s, was that women can do anything they want. I would struggle more with the emphasis on image now.

Your sister probably has different views from you because of friends and media exposure, not because of how gender-conforming she is.

I am one of the former tomboys who is now GC, mainly because my niece - who seems a lot like me as an adolescent - is on testosterone and awaiting surgery to cut off her breasts. I find this horrifying and the opposite of progressive.

Other friends are more accepting as there are loads of teen girls who now say they are non-binary, and what’s the harm? It is like today’s version of goths and emo, except that we say they are actually vampires. This does seem superficially harmless, as long as no medication is involved.

It is easy to say ‘be kind’ but there is nothing ‘kind’ in giving masetomies to teenagers.

I know I have gone off-topic here and apologise. Still I think this is relevant to the overall discussion of this topic. Taking hormones to feel at ease in one's body. I have been considering this since reading this Jeanette Winterson article from 2014. In the course of 7 years the description of how Premarin is produced has never left me.

www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/jeanette-winterson-can-you-stop-the-menopause

I think this is a common experience for many young women.

When you add into the mix other issues such as sexuality, problems processing it, what other people might do to you because you are growing up, the availability of porn, the mass of uncorroborated (mis)information available on the internet, other people's interpretations, issues with socialising etc etc, it is tough these days.

It's estradiol that's manufactured and precsribed these days, Joody.

Thanks @SeasonOeufMistes - I will try to do a bit more research when I have time and I appreciate that update.

I think my general feeling, though is still the escaping of a body that is doing its natrual cycle thing, is something worth considering. It is seen as the domain of the new agers and the vegans. But I think perhaps it is due a consideration in the main stream as part of the mix.

I am throwing in curve balls. Not deliberately. Mind just does that. So will bow out now. But still follow discussion with interest.

My own experience has been learning to live and accept my body. I still don't always love it but I am much less critical of it than I was when younger. In my teens I self harmed in several ways and was deeply unhappy. My perception of my physical self was way off and I fixated on the problems as I saw them and that 'problem' was the reason I was unhappy.
I didn't have gender dysphoria but I didn't have an accurate or balanced view of myself. I think this experience is not uncommon.
Age, experience and hopefully a small degree of wisdom has altered this for me. I'm not unhappy any more. I can see better the reasons for my feelings and am more at home in myself. I don't think this is uncommon either!
Self knowledge is a long journey. I think the reason why so many older women in particular are resistant to the idea that you need to modify your outside to fit your inside perception of yourself, is because we have experienced how that changes over time. Previous generations have had more limited ways to express those conflicts but young men and women now have options that are life changing and not reversible. For some these changes will be right for them and not regretted. But what about the ones who do regret but can't go back? I would not want to be living now according to choices I made as a teenager.

I think it’s a rejection of the feminine.

Women are weak, therefore men who exhibit qualities deemed feminine will be ridiculed. Don’t be such a fucking girl, etc. Women who exhibit qualities deemed masculine are praised. She’s a little tomboy (said proudly), etc.

Declaring oneself a tomboy or trans is distancing oneself from feminist and the weakness of womanhood.

Taking it further, in my opinion, men crave femininity despite being taught to fear it. I think that’s why some get so upset when women don’t show enough of it. They need us to perform femininity for them, because they can’t show weakness by performing it themselves.

Im a woman.
I have empathy with people who feel they are in the wrong body and want to live their lives differently. Had a colleague who did this in her 50s. Not an easy path to choose.
Struggle with young girls, often autistic, who are unhappy with their body developing so take drugs/have surgery. Happened in my family.

I'm not sure as my 16yr old DD has always been a "tomboy" and is v GC. In her experience many of the girls at school who are now non-binary are the ones who were quite "girly" when they were growing up.

Not sure why this is though. Maybe because DD was always determined to be herself and not be interested in traditional "girls" activities and ways of dressing etc, she is more able to see that all those gender conforming ideas are stereotypes with no basis in individual likes or dislikes.
She is happy to be a young woman, but doesn't think that she has to conform to stereotypical societal expectations of "womanhood" IFSWIM. She is v into football and her role models are largely female footballers and other sports women. She doesn't view woman = weak in that respect.

I was/am a tomboy. I had short hair climbed tree, hated frills, all that stuff.

I don’t buy into the ideology as I just feel like me. I don’t feel like a woman or a man. I have a woman’s body but do what. It’s me, I don’t know what it’s like to have a different one.

Interestingly lots of my friends growing up were also tomboys. We all did well career wise while coming from a working class background. Many of our more ‘feminine’ sisters didn’t.
My own theory on this is as tomboys we were less likely to be compliant & more likely to ask why?

Yes definitely true OP.

I think many young people think rejection of feminine stereotypes = being non-binary or having a non-female gender identity

Whereas gender critical people think rejection of feminine stereotypes = still being a woman but dressing/acting how you like

In a way both groups are experiencing the same feelings but just seeing it through a different lens and thereby misunderstanding each other. I wonder if there's a better way of crosstalk between the groups and seeing the areas where we actually agree, just have different terminology?

For me the main sticking point is physical transition. So if someone else talks positively about identifying as trans or non-binary, I will say, if you mean rejecting gender stereotypes, I agree this is a good thing, and it doesn't matter what we call it! I just worry about this group of young people making physical changes to their body which they may later regret.

If men who believe they are transgender simply have to declare their belief - no surgery, hormones etc needed, just a change of name on their gas bill - in order to be accepted as such, why do teenage girls get lined up for mastectomies?
Surely the girls just need to claim they are boys? There seems a disconnect here, very much to women’s detriment.

I suspect that the physical transistion element , wanting that masculine /default neutral look is something that the average teenage girl may feel quite strongly about , body hatred is not unusual at that age

And if some people say you can have it, and others have doubts , well who would you believe and trust ?

The article Joody posted was interesting, I agree that in many cases, feelings of despair and depression etc are caused by hormonal imbalances in the body.

They had already medication everything else, now they have made puberty a medical condition that can be 'cured' rather than a perfectly natural, normal process that everyone needs to go through to become an adult, and that the uncomfortable feelings caused by the sudden rush and mix of hormones as the body is learning to balance itself during puberty are also normal and not a sign of being 'in the wrong body'

As someone who is in the midst of peri menopause, the thought of the damage being done to adolescent bodies, by pumping them full of incorrect hormones, just because of an ideology is horrific.

I read all the Famous Five. I wanted to be George - much more fun, plus she had a dog. Did anyone want to be Anne?

Not convinced.

Was very much a tomboy, pursued a career in a male dominated field, don't do make up or impractical clothing, think gender norms are a load of oppressive bollocks... Including the idea that someone may have been "born in the wrong body". To me that's as oppressive and bollocky as it gets!

Sounds to me more like you sister may have internalised these gender norms. She may have defined herself "against", but she didn't reject them (sees herself "outside of the box", instead of asserting "there's no box")

From where I stand, when someone notices an apparent "mismatch" between their sexed body and their personality (based on the stereotypes attached to that sex), they face 3 choices:

• try to change their personality to match their sex (urgh)
• try to change their body to match their personality (double urgh - not progressive at all!)
• resolve the apparent mismatch by rejecting oppressive social norms (yay)

I stand firmly in the third group... And I reckon that (according to usual sexist stereotypes) this actually makes me more "masculine" (= assertive, self confident, etc.) than someone who feels like they have to alter their own body in order to fit in. Go figure...

The thing is it was always quite common for girls to be called 'tomboys' by their families and peers but it didn't mean they weren't still biological girls. Far from it. They were just girls who preferred boys' stuff. That's a much healthier approach.

Thanks for your comments everyone. I suspect I didn't articulate my thoughts particularly well (there's a reason my title included the word "ramblings")

I wasn't really intending this to be about DSis I guess I was just pondering. I feel like we often question why - particularly younger - women support this ideology. I think we (general we) assume that "be kind" comes from a place of men telling women that they have no idea what it's like to feel that you're in the wrong body and women just agree with them because, well, men are the most important being. When actually maybe they feel like they do know what it's like to be in the wrong body because as soon as adolescence hits - their body almost becomes alien to them. Even those that don't suffer dysphoria know the discomfort of having a kid's body and then all of a sudden having a women's. So they do know what it's like to feel discomfort and they empathise with the notion of a being trapped in "the wrong" body. Because many of us are older, we grasp more that it's not about feelings. There's nothing like the indignity of being pregnant and giving birth or finding out that this may not be an option for you, to put womanhood into perspective.

I'm finding it hard to express my thoughts so I'll leave it there. Thinking is not for me, there are people far better qualified in the thinking department