Janice Turner nails it again - girls and their breasts

[JellySaurus]

I had an almost visceral reaction to this article. It resonated so strongly with my experiences as a physically developing teenager, that I started second-guessing myself: am I projecting my emotions into others? But then I realised that, no, my feelings about the way the trans train destroys girls are not projections, not prejudices. They are based on the realities of developing into a woman in a society with a toxic view of what being a woman entails. A lived experience shared with so many other girls. 'Shared'..maybe 'survived' would be more appropriate.

[[https://archive.ph/mWoLx Time to change the world, not girls’ bodies
Rather than a charity that pushes insecure teens towards breast surgery we need a movement celebrating young women]]

Powerful article.

Astonishing how much power is in a breast. Maybe not, given that we're mammals ...

Janice Turner getting to the crux of it as usual. She is brilliant.

Yes, I think that’s very true.

Allsorts have this 'you hate your breasts' language in their resources too. It's not just Mermaids. And they get a lot of funding.
But anyway.
Where are the people saying bodies are wonderful and beautiful? I always tell my kids that they're lucky to have a healthy body and they should never take it for granted.

As far as I can see this is just an extension of eating disorders, teen mental health and problems with puberty. It makes me sick to think of Neurodiverse girls or girls living in difficult circumstances being groomed online into a way of life that there's no going back from. Its like taking a really regretful tattoo and raising it by x100. And I'm afraid to say that in my direct experience quite a few of the parents (ok mothers) don't want a lesbian for a daughter, or they've got a struggling Autistic teen and they're trying to make life just a bit easier.

I don't think it's all about the response to others.

Though absolutely many young women are conflicted about wanting to be sexually attractive and not, at the same time. And I think that is quite normal and not always a sign of an over-sexualized culture. It's normal to have mixed feelings about entering a more complicated adult world.

But there is also the fact that having radical changes in your body, to the point where you almost look like a totally different person, is very weird, and I would argue, destabilizing. You lok into the mirror and all of a sudden you do not see the person you know looking back at you. It's a bit like an out of body experience.

And whereas before you could project yourself into people you admire without much regard to sex - I as a young girl could see myself as a James Dean with a leather jacket and motorcycle - it becomes very clear though once puberty has set in that while you might wear those clothes, they will give quite a different effect. And that might be at war, a little bit, with your emerging desire to look sexually attractive.

I suspect that this kind of normal experience, which mainly takes time to integrate, is now being interpreted as sex dysphoria.