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).

Being female is rubbish. I can understand how people want to opt out of it.

What little girl, finding out she has to bleed from her generals for the next 40+ years, and that's if she's healthy, thinks she got a good deal with the genetics lottery?
Which little girl, finding out about childbirth and labour or rape or the physical control men can have over women simply due to the luck of genetics that you happen to have been born female, thinks this is grand, fantastic, how great to be vulnerable in so many ways.

It's like when you first find out as a child that death exists. It's absolutely heartbreaking. It's no wonder to me lord of people want to opt out of it.

That doesn't mean you actually can. No amount of testosterone injections will mean that you can have a child with your DNA by simply having an orgasm with the right partner. You're female, so it's never going to be this easy for you no matter how much you might want that to happen.

How many young girls suffer sexual harassment or abuse and think I don't want this, I wish I wasn't female.

I can see how all this could easily contribute to someone wishing for a way out, and gender transition seeming like the way.

But the physical effects of transition seem so obviously harmful, increasing long term chances of so many diseases like cancers, changing your hormonal makeup in ways that cause basic functions in your body not to work properly, people having surgery that alters their bodies in ways that reduces their life expectancy. And then there's the issues of how it will affect your chances of forming happy relationships and reaching any aspirations you have around starting a family.

It just seems so sad that children are being almost coached into thinking irreversible damaging surgery and hormone therapy is a way out, when the long term consequences mean they might regret it for the rest of their lives.

Or think of it this way, if when I found out as a child that all people die, someone told me "it's ok, you don't have to, you can identify as immortal" then I would have identified as being immortal and not had to worry about dying.

Perhaps if I'd been offered the chance to identify out of being female when I was first taught about periods, I would have done the same.

The problem is, you can't. Saying you're immortal or not female doesn't actually make you immortal or not female.

@JoodyBlue -- I'm glad you posted: I've been thinking about this recently.

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.

Premarin is produced in ways that are pretty horrifying. I find this very problematic for the whole juggernaut of what I'm going to call the trans-industrial complex -- but, quite seriously, there is a huge amount of ignorance about the ethical ramifications of synthetic hormone production. The vegan woke brigade haven't quite realised this yet; I don't know if they ever will. (I used to get fed up years ago with being lectured about ethical consumption by the alternative vegan types, who were taking drugs like the clappers without any seeming awareness of the exploitation involved in illegal drug production.)

Very on-brand that the teen UwU gender brigade are happy to depend on animal exploitation for hormone production, and then lecture others about "ethical" choices.

I also don't know if newer, bioidentical hormones are less ethically problematic in production? I keep reading they are "plant based", but there is not much info on exactly what that means.

Coming up to being menopausal, so I'd really like to do some more digging into this.

I have a family member who was a tomboy as a child, and she feels that she might have been pushed down the trans/non-binary path, had that been a big thing at the time, and is glad it wasn't. So it can definitely work the other way too.

Stella O'Malley talks about this a lot in her excellent documentary "Trans Kids - It's Time to Talk". She was a tomboy as a kid and went around with the boys and pretty much thought of herself as a boy. She said if she'd heard of being trans (which she luckily didn't in 80s Ireland) she's pretty sure she would have gone all-in for it. When it came to puberty she hated it at first but then accepted it and is now happy as a woman and married (to a man) and has kids.

There were tears in her eyes at the end of the documentary when she says she thought she might find that the young people she spoke to who identify as trans were different to how she had felt, and more genuinely trans - but instead they all reminded her of herself as a kid (the implication being, if left alone, many of them would likely have accepted their bodies and their biological sex).

SeasonOeufMistes

“It's shit being a woman“.

At 58, entirely disagree 🤷‍♀️

@foxgoosefinch of course women have different experiences with menopause and the often long run up to it. My own experience was that it was a process in the way that the onset on menses and pubescent development was a process. So life cycle related. It was really tough at times, but out the other side, life feels pretty good. It is kind of what I mean, in that these periods (forgive pun) are perhaps important rites of passage, that our over sophisticated culture has forgotten or overlooked and keen to medicalise away.

So the issues, to me are mainly the lack of understanding and support in society and culture at large, rather than the need for more medicalisation. The medicalisation of menopause is fairly recent I think.

I only have personal experience to go on here, by no means any sort of expert. But best of luck. For me coming in to autumn has been incredibly liberating and I "feel" younger than I did ten years old :) and plenty of fight left for the important stuff.

ago not old! :)

@JoodyBlue that sounds really positive! (And I could really do with feeling ten years younger than I do now !)

@MrsSkylerWhite

SeasonOeufMistes

“It's shit being a woman“.

At 58, entirely disagree 🤷‍♀️

Agree. It isn't "shit" being a woman. That's a ridiculous comment.

As is the comment ," Being female is rubbish"

Why is it a ridiculous comment?

Periods, childbirth, rape, physical weakness and vulnerability. These are all pretty crap from where I'm standing.

What's ridiculous about saying so?

There's plenty of shit bits about being a woman, but personally I find the childbirth thing absolutely incredible. I'm probably biased as I'm currently feeding my son and I think, wow I grew him entirely myself and then fed him entirely myself and it's the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen. It's no wonder that some cultures regarded women as godlike due to our ability to create life. I'm so glad this oddbod tomboy grew up before I could discover the trans ideology - I'd have signed up instantly and never realised what I was missing.

Periods, childbirth, rape, physical weakness and vulnerability. These are all pretty crap from where I'm standing

Re: it's shit being a woman... being a woman is different for different women. Hence the fact that when men say they 'feel like a woman', lots of women quite rightly say 'There is no such thing as feeling like a woman'. We can only know what it feels like to be our own individual self. Which might be shit for some women, great for others and somewhere in between for most of us.

It's not ridiculous to say that being a woman has been shit (or largely shit) for you. It is ridiculous to claim that your experience is universal for all women.

I've experienced periods and childbirth (a bit shit, and very shit with wonderful results respectively). I've never experienced rape or sexual assault (thank goodness) or knowingly suffered any obvious disadvantage from being physically weaker than most men.