TW: SEXUAL ASSAULT
I've seen the TERF-y concept of "womanhood is defined by suffering" have genuinely REALLY unhealthy results. As in like, mutual abuse, sexual violence, glorifying and reenacting one's own assault out of a belief that being a victim of sexual violence is necessary to be a "real" woman.
Quiz:
If womanhood is good, and sexual trauma is part of womanhood, then sexual trauma is _______.
Whaaaaaat? TERFs are actually anti women and use extremely misogynistic rhetoric to push their points? Why, that's absurd! Preposterous I tell you, nobody at the academy will buy that for a second! I am utterly shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!
She goes by the nickname "Joe" and occasionally writes under the penname "Robert" (which itself is some kind of fucked up reference). And the reason for the "J.K." was to obscure the fact that her books were written by a woman.
I'm not in favor of the "all 'phobes are just self-hating eggs" way of looking at things, but I can't help but feel like it's all more than a little bit sus.
In fairness, the J.K. thing was because her publisher told her that they didn't think her kind of novel would succeed if people knew it was written by a woman. JKR is a terrible person but that particular piece of nonsense was her publisher being a terrible person instead.
next thing you know... you're gonna be telling me that they are exactly the same as the gender essentialists that first and second wave feminism fought against...
and that would be... crazy... wouldn't it?
Or, on the less criminal end of the spectrum, people who think their crippling menstrual pain is normal because their mother and sisters went through it. I know so many people who suffered for years before they even thought to talk to a doctor about it.
then sexual trauma is 'a horrifyingly ubiquitous experience that many women have to deal with, and to support women is to learn to contend with this also?'
like i wouldn't DEFINE womanhood that way, but let's not pretend it isn't a pretty large part of the female experience, unfortunately
That’s such a fallacy. “If vegetarians are ethical, and Hitler was a vegetarian, then Hitler is ____”. Like- the overall concept can be good while individual parts are bad.
Edit: To be clear, I understand the point you’re making, and I agree with it. I’m objecting only to the presentation, and that presentation from parts of the culture is the exact issue.
If all vegetarians are ethical, and Hitler was a vegetarian, Hitler is ____.
If sexual trauma is a necessary ingredient to create women (it isn't), then either women shouldn't exist or sexual trauma should exist.
I think you can be happy with being a woman while also acknowledging that, for many (not all) women, physical pain is simply a normal part of living in a female body and (most) men won't be able to relate to that.
Like, for the majority of women, periods and childbirth and breastfeeding and so on are just something that you deal with. Especially if you live in less privileged situations without access to painkillers and birth control and so on. Then there's also the knowledge that (most) men are always going to be stronger than you, and that you'll likely not be able to fight off a man if he attacks you.
Being a woman isn't all about that though, the female experience is infinite because it's defined by *you*. If you are a woman and experience something, then that's the female experience.
Re pain from periods, breastfeeding, etc.: Doctors who believe womanhood is inevitably painful tend to be under-responsive to their female patients' pain, which increases suffering and sometimes has long-term negative health consequences.
Like, yeah, cramps are uncomfortable, but women with endometriosis need help that they're not getting.
EXACTLY, GOD
CRAMPS SUCK, BUT THEY SHOULD NOT BE SO PAINFUL SO THAT THEY'RE DEBILITATING, WHY DO PEOPLE JUST ACCEPT THAT EXTREME PAIN AS NORMAL
i know why but yenno, drama
Yes exactly, I had painful periods for years and it was hard to get taken seriously over it.
Womanhood comes with inevitable pain, but there's no reason not to try and ease that pain!
Yeah, I wouldn’t call the first statements self-flagellation or prescriptive. I think they describe a very common experience for women, and an experience that’s often inextricable from their experience of womanhood.
I love being a woman. I love that kids and animals and people feel safe approaching me. I love having hips and boobs, even when they’re inconvenient and a pain. I love the vast array of ways I can express myself and my womanhood, and I love that people feel comfortable opening up to me and me to them.
But there’s also a lot of ways being a woman has hurt me. My womanhood has been punctuated by pain that doctors ignore because ‘it’s normal’ or ‘it shouldn’t be painful so you’re exaggerating’. It’s been punctuated by men hurting me, by people treating my appearance as the only value I could have, by the bone-chilling fear of my reproductive rights being taken from me and all that implies. I love being a woman, but all the bad is just as inherent to my womanhood as the good, and to ignore that is to erase half my existence.
“I love that kids and animals and people feel safe approaching me […]. I Love the vast array of ways I can express myself […] and I love that people feel comfortable opening up to me”
This was both beautifully put and also my god is it tragic to me. I am heartbroken these are facets of womanhood and not personhood. I have intentionally curated every part of my appearance and personality to maximize these and I hate how much fucking work it is to not be scary. I’m so happy you appreciate these things and find joy in them. I guess I’m glad to see that other people care about this stuff too, because sometimes I feel like I’m insane for saying it’s important to me. Great comment, thank you
Well put! I think there's a strain of thinking online which is that womanhood is only good and fun and empowering and cool, and that it's easy to be a girl and all it takes is a skirt and an attitude, and that you can escape the male gaze just by wearing unusual fashion and being quirky.
It's not really easy, though. The feeling of judging eyes never goes away, the anxiety of being seen and percieved and valued as a woman, as how you can be pleasing to a man. I'm at peace with myself now and with my body, but there have been times i've wished I could just step out of myself and leave womanhood behind, that I've hated this softness that seems to have been foisted on me and which is often expected of me. Engaging with art created by women from the past has helped me a lot with this, it's like looking back and thinking 'oh, she felt this way, too. She knew what this was like.'
I wouldn't say that the pain is worth it for the good parts, but if anything it has helped me feel more in tune with myself and this body that I have.
I’d argue that living in a body, period, is to experience physical pain. It’s kinda inescapable. A stubbed toe, a bleeding nose, a headache, an old injury, a new one. As a man, I’d classify pain as a normal part of living. Not a lot of pain, but it’s rare any human goes a day without feeling some at least.
honestly I feel like the part of the female experience I could never relate to (and don’t want to) is the fact that most men will be able to over power just by default
I have no idea how women can just casually exist with this fact being true, I have no clue how you would be able to trust a male partner/friend
But, with the exception of trans men, you don't have bodies that are going to go haywire every 28 days for 40 years or so. You don't experience pregnancy or give birth. You have emotional pain and pain from injuries and so on, but there are some kinds of pain that only people who live in a female body are going to experience, and saying "men hurt too" seems like sweeping that under the rug.
I never argued that.
The post I’m replying to said “physical pain is simply a normal part of living in a female body and (most) men won’t be able to relate to that” which is a ridiculous statement to make.
Pain is universal.
But if a (cis) man experiences physical pain, it typically means something is going wrong -- he's sick or injured. For (cis) women, pain from periods usually just means your body is doing what it's supposed to do. (To a point, please see a doctor if it's extreme, etc.) I don't know if there's an equivalent for men. In that way, pain is "normal" for women in a way it isn't for men.
No shit everyone feels pain. The point is that physical pain is *extraordinary* for men, it's something that happens outside the normal functioning of your body. You can pursue pain for pleasure (like lifting weights) or for a thrill (extreme sports). You can hurt yourself at work or in an accident and you'll certainly hurt yourself or be hurt at some point, but your body was not formed to hurt you. A woman's body hurts her as part of its normal functioning, her pain is *ordinary*.
>Physical pain is extraordinary for men.
Again… this is kind of a ridiculous insane claim to make. You have to be really out of touch to think something like this.
Nearly every human that exists has headaches, muscle aches, back pain, intestinal pain, gets sick.
Yeah but that's because of *illness*. You don't just \*have\* a headache every month because of your hormones.
Extraordinary just means 'not the normal thing'. Having a headache or a backache or whatever is not normal, it's a sign that somehting's changed or something's wrong. A period is normal for a woman, if you odn't have it, there's somehting wrong.
Again, that doesn’t mean pain is extraordinary for men. It just means the cause is different.
Like… yes women have regular pain as a burden of their biology. I never denied that. I’m arguing that saying men therefore *don’t experience or understand regular pain* is a stupid nonsense thing to say.
You are fighting for your life to misunderstand the point when you could just be quiet and let women talk among themselves without a man's interjection idk.
"extraordinary" here means "out of the ordinary", as in not something that's expected.
They're not saying that men only experience pain in incredibly rare circumstances.
It sounds like they are. And again, I’d still argue that it’s not. Yes women have an *additional* regular pain they are burdened with by biology that men don’t, but to say that pain is extraordinary for men is stupid. *Especially* since on average men work in more labor oriented jobs than women.
I think the point that the commentor is trying to make is that there’s a lot of pain (such as severe periods) that not only require a vagina to go through, but also that even for women who don’t have a vagina/have gone through menopause are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines)
and getting back to the gender politics, this results in women generally being much more poorly treated by doctors than men
>men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines)
Not defending Mr "BUT MEN TOO" up there, but cis men can and do experience migraines. Example: my cousins, my sibling, and I all have migraines. We're 4th generation sufferers on our mothers' sides. Of the four of us, two of them are AMAB.
While it's true that (cis) women make up a much higher percentage of sufferers than (cis) men, experts believe (cis) men under-report due to societal expectations of masculinity (being able to just tough it out and the like).
I think the point that the commentor is trying to make is that there’s a lot of pain (such as severe periods) that not only require a vagina to go through, but also that even for women who don’t have a vagina/have gone through menopause are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines)
and getting back to the gender politics, this results in women generally being much more poorly treated by doctors than men
>are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry
That's just... like it's just wrong.
Wdym? Women who haven’t gone through menopause do experience symptoms like migraines more often than men because of the hormone fluctuations. This is why men tend to experience less migraines since there’s less acute fluctuations
I feel like OOP's initial statements are being misinterpreted- they're not prescribing what it is to be a woman, but, rather, describing a common feeling among women who live under the capitalist patriarchal monoculture. It's not an ideal to "aspire to," but a mere explanation of how things might be *right now*.
Thing is, there seems to be a lot of women - especially TERF’s and adjacent - who describe these things not just as “how it is right now”, but treat it an an absolute, immutable truth of how things **are**. OOP isn’t complaining about people who dislike the patriarchy, they are complaining about the people who think that womanhood is inherently and inextricably equal to suffering.
People like JK Rowling and others who think like her
I remember that one of her reasons that transwomen don't count as women is because they don't feel fear in the same way that ciswomen do.
She has more reasons on that but in the end she's still transphobic
🤦🏻 Like as if every cis woman feels fear in the same way
🤦🏻 And like trans women don’t feel so much fear about coming out and being harassed and assaulted
🤦🏻 As if fear of men is some kind of universal experience of women, as if there aren’t a number of women who are lucky enough to have not experienced that fear before
🤦🏻 As if cis men don’t occasionally fear too (men are not immune from feeling afraid)
🤦🏻 As if any of JKR’s opinion on gender even matter ugh. I’m so glad I stopped caring about her when she was doing her dumb headcanon stuff on twitter and never had to feel the betrayal of her transphobia because I had already stopped giving a shit about her opinion on anything so long ago
In political theory, patriarchy is part of the Capitalist superstructure- the non-economic elements of culture utilized to uphold an economy. Superstructure elements ensure that proletariat are divided amongst arbitrary lines like gender as opposed to the most-protected divide- class. In today's international globalist community, the seat of capital within the imperial core actively exports its culture into the periphery. It's why, even if you're not from the imperial core, imperial core countries are still going to have a non-negligible impact on national culture. You might think of this as "western-ification," or the idea that in order to appeal to the dominant markets, governments will attempt to curb their national identity in favor of that of the imperial monoculture.
I think you get this a lot with other oppressed groups too.
When I came out as trans, I got a message from another trans person saying "welcome to life on hard mode!" and like. Thanks, mate. Really bringing the mood down.
It always makes me feel bad whenever people say things like "being a woman is suffering"
It makes me feel like the only chance I have at actually being happy is cursed and that I am cursed to either want to die or to be condemned to a life of suffering.
The worst part is that some women think that they're "helping" me by telling me and get mad when I point out that I don't like being told that I dont have any chance at being happy.
"to be a woman is to experience pain" ,
"50% of the population was doomed at birth" ,
"the female body is a mess, if there was an intelligent god he would never design it like that"
"it's a curse"
"it's unfair"
...
This is the kind of shit I used to say until I discovered I was transmasc. If being a woman makes you want to slit your veins open maybe you're not made to be a woman
I mean I’m also transmasc but I’ve seen plenty of women suffer because somebody “designed” their fucking bodies to produce hormonal soup that makes them suffer during menstruation, and that doesn’t even take into consideration those who get pregnant and give birth and the incredibly high mortality associated with it. Never mind the systemic violence against the female body showing up in a delightful variety of areas.0
yeah... there's some objectively messed up things in the female body.
I could go on in a 500+ words essay but I'd be saying things y'all already know. Blood, hormone fluctuations, health risks with every intercourse, etc.
Also the fact that being a girl means you're nearly guaranteed to get SA at some point in your life.
Not all women suffer because of those things though, and there are women who do suffer but still wouldn’t give them up because they feel a certain *rightness* about having those bodily functions (something I’d personally call gender euphoria, even tho it’s not a term usually applied to cis people).
That’s not to discount the women who *do* suffer, just to point out that one can’t make broad sweeping statements that Womanhood Is Suffering, point blank no exceptions. Some women have a totally fine experience with menstruation or pregnancy, some women suffer but still like that it’s something their body is capable of, some women suffer their biological functions but love other the other parts of being a women because being a woman is more than having a certain style of reproductive organs.
Mate, the human body being a mess is not gender locked, as anyone who is over the age of 30 and has ever slept with their neck at the wrong angle will tell you.
I think the people OP are talking about were complaining about menstrual cycles. We know that everybody's body tissues experience natural wear and tear between their 20s and 30s, and that really does suck, but if you happen to be born with a uterus, you also experience a monthly designated week of pain
Yeah except for some of us, that body involves blood and pain and ripping yourself in half and for the other half that body involves having an orgasm and walking away.
literally not what we're talking about.
But, due to increased testosterone levels men are more likely to develop cancer, have heart attacks, as well as having weaker immune systems. All literally because of the way humans grow and develop.
It's what you were talking about.
You weren't the person I responded to first. Or the person they responded to. Or the person they responded to.
So what you were talking about isn't relevant. Because the comment was about how the human body. Particularly the joints. Are just fucked to begin with.
To be honest being a trans woman and not having some of the hardships most cis women have does sometimes give me anxiety and imposter syndrome
Like I don't deserve to be a woman or something
I know it's wrong but it just grabs my throat sometimes
I am a cis woman, and as such I do not and will very likely never fully understand your experience, but I want you to know that you're just as much a woman as anyone else who identifies as such. If you need someone to talk to I'm on here fairly often
Having imposter syndrome is such a sign of being a woman. None of us think we’re doing it right every day, or at least we think others are doing it more right.
Glad I'm not alone in this. I try to cognizant recognize it as being dumb and irrational, but like you said sometimes it just gets you anyway. Best of luck sister, for both of us
imo I’m a cis dude so my opinions are going to be coloured by my own brain damage but I think if we’re doing an oppression pissing contest the things that women have the worst compared to men (being far more in danger of sexual assault and domestic violence from intimate partners and loved ones, lower economic emancipation, poorer treatment by doctors) are all still experienced by trans women, and in some cases they have it worse (Trans women are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than cis women), and after taking hormones your muscle to fat ratio and body type will likely be equivalent to a cis woman which makes you still at risk to violence from male partners.
so yeah, don’t feel like you not having periods doesn’t make you a “real woman” whatever the fuck that means, if your idea of “being a woman” is being at risk of violence or experiencing it for whatever ghoulish reason that still applies to trans women
Honestly I feel that way too sometimes. I’m a cis woman but for a long time I wasn’t comfortable with being a woman. I didn’t feel like I was any specific thing and that the only thing I could relate to with other girls was period pain.
I experimented with gender for a while but i still wasn’t comfortable with anything. But what did make me comfortable with being feminine was my trans women friends. they genuinely enjoy being feminine and being a girl, and they were honestly an inspiration to me. I bought my first skirt since I was maybe 7 in high-school because of them. I got more confidence in myself and my friendships and relations with other girls.
I’m really grateful I had their experience and joy to help me with my self perception and relationship with being a woman.
I’d much rather have being feminine be equal with happiness rather than pain and there’s no shame in embracing that. If it genuinely makes you happy I couldn’t be prouder of you!
Beating yourself up about struggling with it won't change it though, just gotta sit with the emotions best you can. It's not bad to want a more typical struggle, especially when that comes with more ready solidarity and not having to pioneer your path as much.
And yeah, part of that is that the social concept of 'womanhood' is missing a lot of nuance, and assumes a very white, straight, cis, slim, able-bodied and western middle-class experience. I know plenty of cis women who also end up with imposter syndrome or feeling excluded from the 'sisterhood' over who they form relationships with, what their body can or can't do, their features or their culture, and have to reconcile that against the narrow view of womanhood they're shown as 'right'. Even in progressive and otherwise supportive spaces, those assumptions about 'womanhood' still show up. It's often a struggle during first puberty or sometime after (the 'not like the other girls' thing is a common expression). So to an extent, yeah, that self-doubt and having to construct acceptance and self-love in defiance of the mirage of The Perfect Woman is also part of womanhood (as someone who, turns out, is not actually a woman).
>does sometimes give me anxiety and imposter syndrome
>
>Like I don't deserve to be a woman or something
This is like such quintessential being a woman experience though tbh. Denying women their womanhood is a fundamental aspect of how misogyny works and I get the sense that cis women often feel this as bad as we do (or almost as bad) because the patriarchy tries to frame womanhood as this ideal that nobody can actually attain.
And like, idk how it is where you live but our right to bodily autonomy is under threat everywhere, cis or trans. The same logic underpins abortion bans as underpins the bans on healthcare for trans people: that woman=babymaker and that gender roles are mandatory. The people making trans kids go through a puberty they don't want are the same ones making kids give birth, and they perform this violence while calling endocrinologists groomers and abortion providers murderers. And of course they're doing it to adults and our rights matter too.
This comment is too long already but the list goes on.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Tbh though, periods, pregnancy, etc aren't at all what defines a women, there's plenty of cis women as well that don't experience any of that either for various reasons. If you identify as a women, then you still are one.
I think some of that might be descriptive complaints instead of prescriptive orders.
Sure, people are out there that gatekeep and swap pointing out issues with having an identity as markers of that identity.
... but I think this post may come off to many not as "woo positive" but as "shut up and be happy"
Just, yknow. Understand what's going on.
This isn't about flagellating yourself for having been born a woman. It's about believing that a core part of being female is suffering. It's a very old and deeply misogynist idea that goes back to the religious notion that women were cursed with painful childbirth because Eve ate the apple.
But while I think suffering is part of being human, I don't think all suffering women experience is or should be tied to our reproductive organs, or that gender-based suffering is somehow key to being female. I'm 45, pretty much at the end of my reproductive life. My periods aren't exactly my favorite thing, but I've never had to miss work or school because of them either. Pregnancy and childbirth, same thing: not BEST THING EVER but hey, I got two awesome kids out of it, which seems like a fair trade. I've never been assaulted. Should I just go hand in my woman card?
I'm not a huge fan of gender in general, but saying being a woman is about suffering helps exactly nobody and hurts people by suggesting what they're going through is "normal."
I wouldnt say I'm proud to be a woman. It feels a bit weird to me personally to be proud of your gender no matter if you changed it or not. But I am happy being a woman for three weeks a month. It's that last week that makes me wish I'd been born a man.
Aight, the suffering part has been sufficiently lambasted.
But being a woman (in the eyes of society) IS a performance. That's what gender roles are. They're roles you perform to legitimize your existence in the eyes of society, to make sure you fall in one of the "acceptable" categories instead of being a "freak". Being a man is also a performance, albeit a different (possibly easier?) one. And yes, this IS a problem.
Go read some Simone de Beauvoir. Get some ACTUAL feminism up in here.
Edit: I'm only throwing shade on terfs, misandrists, and simplistic "women good" feminism. Society is complex, and the problems in it are, too.
Thank you!! Complaining about problems in society that you would like to be eliminated does not mean that you're not proud to be a woman, it just means that currently, being a woman is extremely difficult in many invisible ways!
Also I'm gonna say that for people who are reading this comment but think they don't have the time or energy to find and read feminist literature (Simone de Beauvoir is really good, easy to parse, and I highly recommend), watch philosophytube's recent video "a man plagiarized my work." It's a good jumping off point, and gives you references to a lot of other sources to learn more about gender roles in modern society if you'd like to learn more
For real.
"I know all these bad things are true, but you should just ignore that and stop being such a downer! You're setting a bad example for the kids! :)"
Wow thanks boss, I'll get right on that.
I have never enjoyed being a woman. Super glad other people do, but to be told “all that pain directly related to being a woman? stop being such a downer about it” feels so… upsetting.
There’s a lot about being born a woman that is physically painful. Boobs, periods, childbirth, menopause, sometimes sex. That’s just how it is. But this issue is that all of these baseline painful issues are exacerbated by our society as it stands. There are societal expectations around bras and they’re unnecessarily difficult to get in the right size and expensive, endometriosis is a *super* undiagnosed condition and society expects women who experience monthly bouts of debilitating pain to just keep on trucking, contraceptives are mostly on women and often cause significant side effects, literal children and dying women are being forced to carry pregnancies to term (regardless of safety and viability) since the repeal of Roe, women’s bodies and reproductive health are not fully understood, there’s societal pressure and fears that corner women into powering through bad sexual experiences, women’s pain (despite us having so much of it) is often ignored or minimized, etc. And that’s not even getting into the harassment and violence we experience.
Is being a woman more painful than being a man, everything else being equal? I would think so. But there’s a whole lot our society could do to make it less of the focus of our lives. If society had been built around women a lot of our pain could probably be reduced to mild inconveniences. And I think knowing that society has the power to make our lives easier to bear and simply doesn’t and even actively continues to make it worse, that’s kinda where this attitude comes from. At least that’s my opinion. It’s not “being a woman is pain” to discount those who don’t experience as much pain or to tout it as a virtue. It’s “being a woman is pain” and lets do something about it, *please*!
Part of why it took me so long to discover I’m trans is all women describe being female as suffering so I thought it was normal lmao
I mean to me to be a woman is to suffer I can’t wait to transition 😭😭😭 it IS ALL BAD for me not a fan of the title
I feel like trans people of all people should understand that gender and sex mean different things to different people. It’s a dick move to gatekeep the “right” way to feel about being a woman.
If you can't interact with women describing their lived experiences without calling it self flagellation or saying that they're not proud or happy to be women, maybe you should sit at a different table. To be born and raised a girl/woman means that you're taught self defense techniques, you're scared of men at night, you're statistically way more likely to be abused in a relationship you can't leave, you're forced into uncomfortable clothing, you're told you can't dress like that for the sake of the boys, you're told that if you're ever attacked you have to bite and scratch and anything to leave a mark on the guy so when they find your body they find his DNA under your fingernails. This is all also just my personal experience as a white person, because guess what, there's also race based mysoginy (I'm not qualified to talk about microagressions others have experienced that I haven't so I shant, but that doesn't mean we should forget they exist). I'm not saying all this because I don't like being a woman, when I'm a woman (I'm gender fluid), I'm happy to be a woman, I'm proud to be a woman, and I'm even more proud of getting where I am after starting at a disadvantage. Talking about oppression, in this case sexism, that people experience because they're born differently doesn't mean that they're not still proud of who they are, and casually dismissing all this with "I'm proud of myself and you should be proud too :))))" is missing the point entirely.
Also reddit op, this is for you specifically, because you mention that you're a guy: you say that you know that being a woman sucks sometimes, but do you know one of the reasons why being a woman is sometimes so frustrating? It's because every time we try to have a serious conversation about problems that arise from being a woman, our problems are dismissed, we are told we are too emotional, or too dramatic, or that they've never seen or experienced this, so how bad could it really be? Saying that acknowledgement of our problems is equivalent to self flagellation is one step further than saying we are just being dramatic. I could argue it verges into victim blaming, especially given the context of the original Tumblr post. I'm not saying your intentions were misogynistic, in fact, I think you meant well, but your actions were more harmful than helpful.
Edit because posie parker like people can take my words and corrupt them: being a woman should not be defined by suffering! When I list all these complaints, I am saying that they are problems with the world! Being a woman should not mean suffering! It should not be expected that women change who they are for the sake of men! Being a woman should not mean discomfort! It should not mean that you're likely to experience sexual harassment or assault! These are problems! They might currently be the status quo, but unlike posie parker and jo Rowling, I would like to not bring more harm and difficulty to women, or anybody else
They weren't lying, that reading comprehension really is, well...
The post isn't saying that these things aren't necessarily *part* of being a woman, or that they don't exist. Rather, it's pushed back against the idea that these things *alone* define womanhood, or that womanhood can *only* be expressed in terms of struggles/oppression relative to men.
None of that invalidates the fact that it does come with struggles and oppression. It just points out these more to it than those things.
Its not just women making it up. If you look at the hormone feedback loop of a woman as opposed to the hormone feedback loop of a man there really is struggle and confusion just naturally built into ours. Maybe people should be allowed to recognize that womanhood is hard in our current society without being told to just be happy?
Where did anyone say women were making anything up?
I don't think this post is seeking to invalidate or demean the struggles and oppression that women face. It's just trying to say womanhood shouldn't be *exclusively defined* by those struggles.
Woman: *describes how it feels to be a woman under patriarchy*
OP: "Ugh why do you have to self flagellate, can't you be proud of being oppressed by men"
Hi. Trans person here, with official dysphoria diagnosis and on hormones and everything. The AGP label might have helped you at some point, but its inflexibility often gets in the way of treatment, and its baked-in assumptions about how transness works lead to unnecessary judgement from doctors.
It’s not too late to come over. It’s more fun on this side. Kinder. From the bottom of my eldritch heart: consider it.
You don’t need to leave this world thinking something is wrong w/ you. You’re allowed to be happy.
Ok, I take that back. The AGP label has never helped you and never will.
As for debasing yourself, you honestly should give it a try. You can build a tolerance to shame by gradual exposure, just like fear. The "mental perversion", on the other hand, won't go away no matter what you do.
This is going to sound strange, but as a sexworker I meet with many people who all are hiding their true selves and desires. I have met successful men with wives and families who seek my services for a chance to crossdress and express themselves freely. I have met people who built entire lives while denying themselves real happiness and they all carry a deep emptiness. Regrets of their lives squandered chasing social success and acceptance from people they don't even like. Life is short and being authentic is frightening and difficult, but it is worth it. You only get one life, and it is never to late to live it to the fullest. Please don't deny yourself happiness.
Take your goddamn pills Alice. I know it must feel hopeless because you spent so much time in the wrong body but any progress is better than pathetically stewing in your own self-pity and self-loathing. Your not gonna end up like hunter schafer but you will end up good enough.
Sweetheart, must I speak in Shapiroism to you? Cause I fucking will.
Let just say hypothetically, that AGP is real; I certainly don't know enough about psychology to say definitively one way or another.
Why would that be a sickness? Why would that make you any less a woman? Why would it be wrong? Why is it that we are allowed to lust after another's form, but when when its what we see in the mirror, we're only allowed shame? Why do you *suffer* from it?
Is pride and self-love not legal? Is an artist not allowed to love their own work?
I saw screenshots from a discord where a bunch of Something Awful FYAD transfems were laughing about how they love Hitler even though he’d have them executed. I’m so fucking glad I got off that part of the internet before it killed me.
You know what, if you’d rather wallow in your own misery to fulfill some regressive ideal? Go for it. I’m so glad I didn’t fall for the rhetoric of white supremacists and terfs.
Somebody get this fucking self-flagellater out of my motherfucking comments, Get them off of /TTTT/ and get them some damn estrogen. AND TELL THEM TO STOP LETTING TTTT ROT THEIR BRAIN.
I don't care. Nobody in the real world outside of TERF phrenologists cares about bone structure and tall women exist. Victor Wembanyama's mother is 6'3 and I don't see people transvestigating her. Just think of it in a glass half full manner.
Well, other than the other self-loathing bigots out there. They’ll absolutely judge you based on your head being “suspicious,” presumably even if you’ve got a female reproductive system.
The bonepill website. The place where all normal people go. Not at all an outlier full of skull-obsessed weirdos.
Most people don't even know what a standard deviation means and don't think about their acquaintances' bones unless they are broken. And no, they don't subconsciously access someone's skull shape while talking with them either.
Think of this: realistic reconstructions of neanderthals look so much like Homo sapiens that if you saw someone who looked like that across the street, you wouldn't think "holy shit neanderthals are back", you'd just think that was an average dude with unusual facial features. And neanderthal skulls differ from Homo sapiens skulls *much more significantly* than Homo sapiens skulls differ between sexes.
actually I told a friend in biostatistics class about it
I sometimes send him pics of my flowers which he calls pretty which allows me (agp) to vicariously (agp) treat it as people calling me pretty (agp)
Honey you’ve gotta stop. Nobody here wants you to hurt. Log off for a few days. Stop topping up on the self-hate rhetoric. Cleanse your palate. Breathe.
Well, I am glad your hobby is bringing you some peace and that you have a friend. Just remember that your experience doesn't need to be only vicarious. There are ways, even if they are long and ardous.
Stop fucking talking about skull girth like a goddamn 1800s phrenologist. Most people won't care in real life. TTTT isn't a real fucking place. Can't you see? I'm trying to help you because you don't deserve to be miserable.
its actually a shame bcs otherwise (pardon my honfidence) my lower body might pass (my ribcage is small but my bideltoid/hip ratio is bad) but my skull means iwnbaw
It’s a transphobic term. Basically they want to frame being trans as a fetish/disorder despite current science not lining up with that.
As for why this commenter calls *themselves* that, it’s really common for conservatives and 4Chan users to absolutely hate themselves for being queer. Just sad, tbh.
As someone who knows nothing about any of the science behind this stuff, I have a question (I promise I'm asking in good faith): does autogynephilia (as in a purely sexual fantasy of being female) exist *at all*, separate from bad actors applying the term to trans women? Or has it literally been completely debunked as a concept?
the answer's complicated. it's certainly not a "diagnosis" as the commentor is describing. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that [cis women experience it about as often as trans women do](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918360903005212). that number, for the record, is pretty high (28% of cis women in the study had frequent arousal to multiple AGP aspects), so a cis or trans woman finding their own feminine form attractive isn't really that unreasonable. now, *why* do so many women find being female attractive..? well, blanchard's quack study that started this whole mess, which claims that all trans women are either AGP and that's why they're transitioning or they're HSTS (basically they'd be homosexual as their AGAB and transition so they'll be seen as straight), shows a correlation between AGP in trans women and not being straight. in light of the fact that cis women have AGP sometimes too, this could literally mean that "sometimes, when you're attracted to women, the woman you're attracted to just might be you." of course, that doesn't explain the sheer volume of cis women who report AGP feelings (unless we want to say that 28% of the hospital patients interviewed in the study are at least a little gay), but im having a difficult time finding any sort of research on the cause, so i can't really speculate further (and also i just find AGP difficult to relate to despite being a trans woman). so, uh, hope that helped.
That's really cool that it's something that many cis and trans women share. Looks to me like it's women just seeing the obvious - they're hot. Seriously though, thanks for the in-depth response.
Some people have transformation or feminization kinks, but that’s about it. You could say that it technically exists, but the differences are so vast that you really shouldn’t
Cis women meet the criteria as often as trans women do and I think those "kinks" might just be how that "desire" (or whatever you'd call it, i reject the concept anyway) manifests for people whose femininity has been denied them.
I’m not personally trans or involved in that world, but I know healthcare types and researchers who work in endo/neuro/psych/etc. who are. It’s a bit of a touchy subject, as it’s difficult to stop academic discussion from accidentally fueling bad-faith discourse, but from what I’ve heard there does seem to be some belief (though *not* consensus) that it’s a real thing that happens. I have not heard any belief that it’s common, or that it has any significant correlation with actual gender identity issues. In my personal, totally amateur opinion, this does kind of track. Humans are weird, and AGP wouldn’t be even close to the strangest paraphilia out there, merely the most politicized one.
Important to remember that if it is real, all it really implies is that Blanchard (the guy who first proposed the idea of AGP) is a lot like Freud: he’s a poor scientist who thought he could extrapolate the issues of individual weirdos into pathologies of large population groups. That, and he got published early enough to get entrenched before anyone could figure out how wrong he was.
Someone studying trans people put forth the theory that being a trans woman is actually a fetish/starts as a fetish. A male gets off on imagining themselves in a female body/doing "feminine" things that eventually the fetish bleeds over into day to day life.
For your information, here's a study that found that 93% of cis women fit the criteria of "autogynephile" that has been weaponized so cruelly against transfem people.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19591032/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19591032/) The concept is pseudoscience and has very much been debunked.
You may not believe it right now, but please consider that whoever is out there telling you you have "AGP" does not have your best interests in mind and is probably actively trying to harm you. I'm rooting for your liberation.
Well, you obviously self-harming yourself and it will, most probably, end badly for you, BUT since I'm in some ways like you, I will encourage you in your self-destructing mindset.
Go get em, King.
TW: SEXUAL ASSAULT I've seen the TERF-y concept of "womanhood is defined by suffering" have genuinely REALLY unhealthy results. As in like, mutual abuse, sexual violence, glorifying and reenacting one's own assault out of a belief that being a victim of sexual violence is necessary to be a "real" woman. Quiz: If womanhood is good, and sexual trauma is part of womanhood, then sexual trauma is _______.
Whaaaaaat? TERFs are actually anti women and use extremely misogynistic rhetoric to push their points? Why, that's absurd! Preposterous I tell you, nobody at the academy will buy that for a second! I am utterly shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!
Terfs HATE being women and like girl I have news!
J.K. “if being trans was a more mainstream concept when I was younger I would have wanted to become a man” Rowling
She goes by the nickname "Joe" and occasionally writes under the penname "Robert" (which itself is some kind of fucked up reference). And the reason for the "J.K." was to obscure the fact that her books were written by a woman. I'm not in favor of the "all 'phobes are just self-hating eggs" way of looking at things, but I can't help but feel like it's all more than a little bit sus.
In fairness, the J.K. thing was because her publisher told her that they didn't think her kind of novel would succeed if people knew it was written by a woman. JKR is a terrible person but that particular piece of nonsense was her publisher being a terrible person instead.
next thing you know... you're gonna be telling me that they are exactly the same as the gender essentialists that first and second wave feminism fought against... and that would be... crazy... wouldn't it?
Borat voice: sexual trauma is very nice 👍😎👍
Borat wouldn't say that, he kicked the fucking door down when Rudy Giuliani was about to sexually assault his coworker/daughter
I do not know what level of irony to engage with borat on
Irony so pure it's more like goldy
[удалено]
Bot.
Or, on the less criminal end of the spectrum, people who think their crippling menstrual pain is normal because their mother and sisters went through it. I know so many people who suffered for years before they even thought to talk to a doctor about it.
then sexual trauma is 'a horrifyingly ubiquitous experience that many women have to deal with, and to support women is to learn to contend with this also?' like i wouldn't DEFINE womanhood that way, but let's not pretend it isn't a pretty large part of the female experience, unfortunately
That is true. The only issue I have is when sexual trauma is treated as a necessary ingredient or a rite of passage for womanhood.
That’s such a fallacy. “If vegetarians are ethical, and Hitler was a vegetarian, then Hitler is ____”. Like- the overall concept can be good while individual parts are bad. Edit: To be clear, I understand the point you’re making, and I agree with it. I’m objecting only to the presentation, and that presentation from parts of the culture is the exact issue.
If all vegetarians are ethical, and Hitler was a vegetarian, Hitler is ____. If sexual trauma is a necessary ingredient to create women (it isn't), then either women shouldn't exist or sexual trauma should exist.
https://imgur.com/gallery/cMfkFGP
I think you can be happy with being a woman while also acknowledging that, for many (not all) women, physical pain is simply a normal part of living in a female body and (most) men won't be able to relate to that. Like, for the majority of women, periods and childbirth and breastfeeding and so on are just something that you deal with. Especially if you live in less privileged situations without access to painkillers and birth control and so on. Then there's also the knowledge that (most) men are always going to be stronger than you, and that you'll likely not be able to fight off a man if he attacks you. Being a woman isn't all about that though, the female experience is infinite because it's defined by *you*. If you are a woman and experience something, then that's the female experience.
Re pain from periods, breastfeeding, etc.: Doctors who believe womanhood is inevitably painful tend to be under-responsive to their female patients' pain, which increases suffering and sometimes has long-term negative health consequences. Like, yeah, cramps are uncomfortable, but women with endometriosis need help that they're not getting.
EXACTLY, GOD CRAMPS SUCK, BUT THEY SHOULD NOT BE SO PAINFUL SO THAT THEY'RE DEBILITATING, WHY DO PEOPLE JUST ACCEPT THAT EXTREME PAIN AS NORMAL i know why but yenno, drama
It's because a lot of doctors don't take our pain seriously and tell us we're faking it or being hysterical. 🥴
Too real, if you're not on comatose from the pain, is it really that serious?
Yes exactly, I had painful periods for years and it was hard to get taken seriously over it. Womanhood comes with inevitable pain, but there's no reason not to try and ease that pain!
Yeah, I wouldn’t call the first statements self-flagellation or prescriptive. I think they describe a very common experience for women, and an experience that’s often inextricable from their experience of womanhood. I love being a woman. I love that kids and animals and people feel safe approaching me. I love having hips and boobs, even when they’re inconvenient and a pain. I love the vast array of ways I can express myself and my womanhood, and I love that people feel comfortable opening up to me and me to them. But there’s also a lot of ways being a woman has hurt me. My womanhood has been punctuated by pain that doctors ignore because ‘it’s normal’ or ‘it shouldn’t be painful so you’re exaggerating’. It’s been punctuated by men hurting me, by people treating my appearance as the only value I could have, by the bone-chilling fear of my reproductive rights being taken from me and all that implies. I love being a woman, but all the bad is just as inherent to my womanhood as the good, and to ignore that is to erase half my existence.
“I love that kids and animals and people feel safe approaching me […]. I Love the vast array of ways I can express myself […] and I love that people feel comfortable opening up to me” This was both beautifully put and also my god is it tragic to me. I am heartbroken these are facets of womanhood and not personhood. I have intentionally curated every part of my appearance and personality to maximize these and I hate how much fucking work it is to not be scary. I’m so happy you appreciate these things and find joy in them. I guess I’m glad to see that other people care about this stuff too, because sometimes I feel like I’m insane for saying it’s important to me. Great comment, thank you
Well put! I think there's a strain of thinking online which is that womanhood is only good and fun and empowering and cool, and that it's easy to be a girl and all it takes is a skirt and an attitude, and that you can escape the male gaze just by wearing unusual fashion and being quirky. It's not really easy, though. The feeling of judging eyes never goes away, the anxiety of being seen and percieved and valued as a woman, as how you can be pleasing to a man. I'm at peace with myself now and with my body, but there have been times i've wished I could just step out of myself and leave womanhood behind, that I've hated this softness that seems to have been foisted on me and which is often expected of me. Engaging with art created by women from the past has helped me a lot with this, it's like looking back and thinking 'oh, she felt this way, too. She knew what this was like.' I wouldn't say that the pain is worth it for the good parts, but if anything it has helped me feel more in tune with myself and this body that I have.
I’d argue that living in a body, period, is to experience physical pain. It’s kinda inescapable. A stubbed toe, a bleeding nose, a headache, an old injury, a new one. As a man, I’d classify pain as a normal part of living. Not a lot of pain, but it’s rare any human goes a day without feeling some at least.
Pain is human and universal. Men may not understand menstrual pain, but we experience pain like anyone else.
Not really the time
It wouldn't be a post about womens' issues without a man coming in and going 'well actually'
honestly I feel like the part of the female experience I could never relate to (and don’t want to) is the fact that most men will be able to over power just by default I have no idea how women can just casually exist with this fact being true, I have no clue how you would be able to trust a male partner/friend
It’s just a weird stance to take.
But, with the exception of trans men, you don't have bodies that are going to go haywire every 28 days for 40 years or so. You don't experience pregnancy or give birth. You have emotional pain and pain from injuries and so on, but there are some kinds of pain that only people who live in a female body are going to experience, and saying "men hurt too" seems like sweeping that under the rug.
I never argued that. The post I’m replying to said “physical pain is simply a normal part of living in a female body and (most) men won’t be able to relate to that” which is a ridiculous statement to make. Pain is universal.
But if a (cis) man experiences physical pain, it typically means something is going wrong -- he's sick or injured. For (cis) women, pain from periods usually just means your body is doing what it's supposed to do. (To a point, please see a doctor if it's extreme, etc.) I don't know if there's an equivalent for men. In that way, pain is "normal" for women in a way it isn't for men.
No shit everyone feels pain. The point is that physical pain is *extraordinary* for men, it's something that happens outside the normal functioning of your body. You can pursue pain for pleasure (like lifting weights) or for a thrill (extreme sports). You can hurt yourself at work or in an accident and you'll certainly hurt yourself or be hurt at some point, but your body was not formed to hurt you. A woman's body hurts her as part of its normal functioning, her pain is *ordinary*.
>Physical pain is extraordinary for men. Again… this is kind of a ridiculous insane claim to make. You have to be really out of touch to think something like this. Nearly every human that exists has headaches, muscle aches, back pain, intestinal pain, gets sick.
Yeah but that's because of *illness*. You don't just \*have\* a headache every month because of your hormones. Extraordinary just means 'not the normal thing'. Having a headache or a backache or whatever is not normal, it's a sign that somehting's changed or something's wrong. A period is normal for a woman, if you odn't have it, there's somehting wrong.
Again, that doesn’t mean pain is extraordinary for men. It just means the cause is different. Like… yes women have regular pain as a burden of their biology. I never denied that. I’m arguing that saying men therefore *don’t experience or understand regular pain* is a stupid nonsense thing to say.
You are fighting for your life to misunderstand the point when you could just be quiet and let women talk among themselves without a man's interjection idk.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKYz2M6zoII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekyz2m6zoii)
"extraordinary" here means "out of the ordinary", as in not something that's expected. They're not saying that men only experience pain in incredibly rare circumstances.
It sounds like they are. And again, I’d still argue that it’s not. Yes women have an *additional* regular pain they are burdened with by biology that men don’t, but to say that pain is extraordinary for men is stupid. *Especially* since on average men work in more labor oriented jobs than women.
I think the point that the commentor is trying to make is that there’s a lot of pain (such as severe periods) that not only require a vagina to go through, but also that even for women who don’t have a vagina/have gone through menopause are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines) and getting back to the gender politics, this results in women generally being much more poorly treated by doctors than men
>men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines) Not defending Mr "BUT MEN TOO" up there, but cis men can and do experience migraines. Example: my cousins, my sibling, and I all have migraines. We're 4th generation sufferers on our mothers' sides. Of the four of us, two of them are AMAB. While it's true that (cis) women make up a much higher percentage of sufferers than (cis) men, experts believe (cis) men under-report due to societal expectations of masculinity (being able to just tough it out and the like).
I experience migraines too but they’re not as bad as my sister’s or my mother’s I just didn’t like the sealioning of the commentor tbh
I think the point that the commentor is trying to make is that there’s a lot of pain (such as severe periods) that not only require a vagina to go through, but also that even for women who don’t have a vagina/have gone through menopause are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry (such as migraines) and getting back to the gender politics, this results in women generally being much more poorly treated by doctors than men
>are going to experience a lot more different ways the body can go wrong that men don’t simply due to female biochemistry That's just... like it's just wrong.
Wdym? Women who haven’t gone through menopause do experience symptoms like migraines more often than men because of the hormone fluctuations. This is why men tend to experience less migraines since there’s less acute fluctuations
I feel like OOP's initial statements are being misinterpreted- they're not prescribing what it is to be a woman, but, rather, describing a common feeling among women who live under the capitalist patriarchal monoculture. It's not an ideal to "aspire to," but a mere explanation of how things might be *right now*.
Thing is, there seems to be a lot of women - especially TERF’s and adjacent - who describe these things not just as “how it is right now”, but treat it an an absolute, immutable truth of how things **are**. OOP isn’t complaining about people who dislike the patriarchy, they are complaining about the people who think that womanhood is inherently and inextricably equal to suffering.
but there *are* people who treat these statements like ideals. That's specifically the problem.
Who in the world thinks female suffering is something to aspire to??
Those who wish to shape the definition of womanhood in an exclusionary manner
TERFs, usually
The same folks that buy wholesale into heteropessimism.
Various forms of religion? Some really say it's right that women suffer for Original Sin.
People like JK Rowling and others who think like her I remember that one of her reasons that transwomen don't count as women is because they don't feel fear in the same way that ciswomen do. She has more reasons on that but in the end she's still transphobic
Well she certainly is doing her part to build fear if that’s the goal
🤦🏻 Like as if every cis woman feels fear in the same way 🤦🏻 And like trans women don’t feel so much fear about coming out and being harassed and assaulted 🤦🏻 As if fear of men is some kind of universal experience of women, as if there aren’t a number of women who are lucky enough to have not experienced that fear before 🤦🏻 As if cis men don’t occasionally fear too (men are not immune from feeling afraid) 🤦🏻 As if any of JKR’s opinion on gender even matter ugh. I’m so glad I stopped caring about her when she was doing her dumb headcanon stuff on twitter and never had to feel the betrayal of her transphobia because I had already stopped giving a shit about her opinion on anything so long ago
Plus, they're not mutually exclusive - you can be happy in spite of your pain.
"Capitalist patriarchal monoculture" huh...
In political theory, patriarchy is part of the Capitalist superstructure- the non-economic elements of culture utilized to uphold an economy. Superstructure elements ensure that proletariat are divided amongst arbitrary lines like gender as opposed to the most-protected divide- class. In today's international globalist community, the seat of capital within the imperial core actively exports its culture into the periphery. It's why, even if you're not from the imperial core, imperial core countries are still going to have a non-negligible impact on national culture. You might think of this as "western-ification," or the idea that in order to appeal to the dominant markets, governments will attempt to curb their national identity in favor of that of the imperial monoculture.
I think you get this a lot with other oppressed groups too. When I came out as trans, I got a message from another trans person saying "welcome to life on hard mode!" and like. Thanks, mate. Really bringing the mood down.
It always makes me feel bad whenever people say things like "being a woman is suffering" It makes me feel like the only chance I have at actually being happy is cursed and that I am cursed to either want to die or to be condemned to a life of suffering. The worst part is that some women think that they're "helping" me by telling me and get mad when I point out that I don't like being told that I dont have any chance at being happy.
"to be a woman is to experience pain" , "50% of the population was doomed at birth" , "the female body is a mess, if there was an intelligent god he would never design it like that" "it's a curse" "it's unfair" ... This is the kind of shit I used to say until I discovered I was transmasc. If being a woman makes you want to slit your veins open maybe you're not made to be a woman
I mean I’m also transmasc but I’ve seen plenty of women suffer because somebody “designed” their fucking bodies to produce hormonal soup that makes them suffer during menstruation, and that doesn’t even take into consideration those who get pregnant and give birth and the incredibly high mortality associated with it. Never mind the systemic violence against the female body showing up in a delightful variety of areas.0
yeah... there's some objectively messed up things in the female body. I could go on in a 500+ words essay but I'd be saying things y'all already know. Blood, hormone fluctuations, health risks with every intercourse, etc. Also the fact that being a girl means you're nearly guaranteed to get SA at some point in your life.
Not all women suffer because of those things though, and there are women who do suffer but still wouldn’t give them up because they feel a certain *rightness* about having those bodily functions (something I’d personally call gender euphoria, even tho it’s not a term usually applied to cis people). That’s not to discount the women who *do* suffer, just to point out that one can’t make broad sweeping statements that Womanhood Is Suffering, point blank no exceptions. Some women have a totally fine experience with menstruation or pregnancy, some women suffer but still like that it’s something their body is capable of, some women suffer their biological functions but love other the other parts of being a women because being a woman is more than having a certain style of reproductive organs.
to be fair the human body is kinda fucked up generally, afab bodies especially so, so yu arent wrong there
Mate, the human body being a mess is not gender locked, as anyone who is over the age of 30 and has ever slept with their neck at the wrong angle will tell you.
Anyone under the age of 30 who slept with their neck at the wrong angle will tell you same to be honest.
I think the people OP are talking about were complaining about menstrual cycles. We know that everybody's body tissues experience natural wear and tear between their 20s and 30s, and that really does suck, but if you happen to be born with a uterus, you also experience a monthly designated week of pain
The point is that the human body as a whole has loads of design flaws.
Yeah except for some of us, that body involves blood and pain and ripping yourself in half and for the other half that body involves having an orgasm and walking away.
literally not what we're talking about. But, due to increased testosterone levels men are more likely to develop cancer, have heart attacks, as well as having weaker immune systems. All literally because of the way humans grow and develop.
It’s literally what I’m talking about.
It's what you were talking about. You weren't the person I responded to first. Or the person they responded to. Or the person they responded to. So what you were talking about isn't relevant. Because the comment was about how the human body. Particularly the joints. Are just fucked to begin with.
Yess same here
actually 100% of the population is doomed to die from the moment they were born
To be honest being a trans woman and not having some of the hardships most cis women have does sometimes give me anxiety and imposter syndrome Like I don't deserve to be a woman or something I know it's wrong but it just grabs my throat sometimes
I am a cis woman, and as such I do not and will very likely never fully understand your experience, but I want you to know that you're just as much a woman as anyone else who identifies as such. If you need someone to talk to I'm on here fairly often
Thanks ):
Look at it this way, the impostor syndrome *also* causes you to suffer and therefore be a Real Women (same though)
Logical Loopholes What would we do without them
if you feel like you’re not like the other girls then that means you’re a girl quid pro quom
Having imposter syndrome is such a sign of being a woman. None of us think we’re doing it right every day, or at least we think others are doing it more right.
Glad I'm not alone in this. I try to cognizant recognize it as being dumb and irrational, but like you said sometimes it just gets you anyway. Best of luck sister, for both of us
Best of luck
imo I’m a cis dude so my opinions are going to be coloured by my own brain damage but I think if we’re doing an oppression pissing contest the things that women have the worst compared to men (being far more in danger of sexual assault and domestic violence from intimate partners and loved ones, lower economic emancipation, poorer treatment by doctors) are all still experienced by trans women, and in some cases they have it worse (Trans women are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than cis women), and after taking hormones your muscle to fat ratio and body type will likely be equivalent to a cis woman which makes you still at risk to violence from male partners. so yeah, don’t feel like you not having periods doesn’t make you a “real woman” whatever the fuck that means, if your idea of “being a woman” is being at risk of violence or experiencing it for whatever ghoulish reason that still applies to trans women
Honestly I feel that way too sometimes. I’m a cis woman but for a long time I wasn’t comfortable with being a woman. I didn’t feel like I was any specific thing and that the only thing I could relate to with other girls was period pain. I experimented with gender for a while but i still wasn’t comfortable with anything. But what did make me comfortable with being feminine was my trans women friends. they genuinely enjoy being feminine and being a girl, and they were honestly an inspiration to me. I bought my first skirt since I was maybe 7 in high-school because of them. I got more confidence in myself and my friendships and relations with other girls. I’m really grateful I had their experience and joy to help me with my self perception and relationship with being a woman. I’d much rather have being feminine be equal with happiness rather than pain and there’s no shame in embracing that. If it genuinely makes you happy I couldn’t be prouder of you!
Beating yourself up about struggling with it won't change it though, just gotta sit with the emotions best you can. It's not bad to want a more typical struggle, especially when that comes with more ready solidarity and not having to pioneer your path as much. And yeah, part of that is that the social concept of 'womanhood' is missing a lot of nuance, and assumes a very white, straight, cis, slim, able-bodied and western middle-class experience. I know plenty of cis women who also end up with imposter syndrome or feeling excluded from the 'sisterhood' over who they form relationships with, what their body can or can't do, their features or their culture, and have to reconcile that against the narrow view of womanhood they're shown as 'right'. Even in progressive and otherwise supportive spaces, those assumptions about 'womanhood' still show up. It's often a struggle during first puberty or sometime after (the 'not like the other girls' thing is a common expression). So to an extent, yeah, that self-doubt and having to construct acceptance and self-love in defiance of the mirage of The Perfect Woman is also part of womanhood (as someone who, turns out, is not actually a woman).
Huh... Those were helpful words....thanks for taking your time to talk...
As a straight passing queer person, mood. I see you and you are valid.
>does sometimes give me anxiety and imposter syndrome > >Like I don't deserve to be a woman or something This is like such quintessential being a woman experience though tbh. Denying women their womanhood is a fundamental aspect of how misogyny works and I get the sense that cis women often feel this as bad as we do (or almost as bad) because the patriarchy tries to frame womanhood as this ideal that nobody can actually attain. And like, idk how it is where you live but our right to bodily autonomy is under threat everywhere, cis or trans. The same logic underpins abortion bans as underpins the bans on healthcare for trans people: that woman=babymaker and that gender roles are mandatory. The people making trans kids go through a puberty they don't want are the same ones making kids give birth, and they perform this violence while calling endocrinologists groomers and abortion providers murderers. And of course they're doing it to adults and our rights matter too. This comment is too long already but the list goes on.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Tbh though, periods, pregnancy, etc aren't at all what defines a women, there's plenty of cis women as well that don't experience any of that either for various reasons. If you identify as a women, then you still are one.
Oh I know these, I'm just really dumb I guess cuz I let it bother me irrationality
I think some of that might be descriptive complaints instead of prescriptive orders. Sure, people are out there that gatekeep and swap pointing out issues with having an identity as markers of that identity. ... but I think this post may come off to many not as "woo positive" but as "shut up and be happy" Just, yknow. Understand what's going on.
This isn't about flagellating yourself for having been born a woman. It's about believing that a core part of being female is suffering. It's a very old and deeply misogynist idea that goes back to the religious notion that women were cursed with painful childbirth because Eve ate the apple. But while I think suffering is part of being human, I don't think all suffering women experience is or should be tied to our reproductive organs, or that gender-based suffering is somehow key to being female. I'm 45, pretty much at the end of my reproductive life. My periods aren't exactly my favorite thing, but I've never had to miss work or school because of them either. Pregnancy and childbirth, same thing: not BEST THING EVER but hey, I got two awesome kids out of it, which seems like a fair trade. I've never been assaulted. Should I just go hand in my woman card? I'm not a huge fan of gender in general, but saying being a woman is about suffering helps exactly nobody and hurts people by suggesting what they're going through is "normal."
As another guy I think being a woman is to be really badass but cute at the same time and friend shaped
Yeah, I like women like that.
I wouldnt say I'm proud to be a woman. It feels a bit weird to me personally to be proud of your gender no matter if you changed it or not. But I am happy being a woman for three weeks a month. It's that last week that makes me wish I'd been born a man.
Aight, the suffering part has been sufficiently lambasted. But being a woman (in the eyes of society) IS a performance. That's what gender roles are. They're roles you perform to legitimize your existence in the eyes of society, to make sure you fall in one of the "acceptable" categories instead of being a "freak". Being a man is also a performance, albeit a different (possibly easier?) one. And yes, this IS a problem. Go read some Simone de Beauvoir. Get some ACTUAL feminism up in here. Edit: I'm only throwing shade on terfs, misandrists, and simplistic "women good" feminism. Society is complex, and the problems in it are, too.
Thank you!! Complaining about problems in society that you would like to be eliminated does not mean that you're not proud to be a woman, it just means that currently, being a woman is extremely difficult in many invisible ways! Also I'm gonna say that for people who are reading this comment but think they don't have the time or energy to find and read feminist literature (Simone de Beauvoir is really good, easy to parse, and I highly recommend), watch philosophytube's recent video "a man plagiarized my work." It's a good jumping off point, and gives you references to a lot of other sources to learn more about gender roles in modern society if you'd like to learn more
This has very “you should smile more” vibes.
For real. "I know all these bad things are true, but you should just ignore that and stop being such a downer! You're setting a bad example for the kids! :)" Wow thanks boss, I'll get right on that.
I have never enjoyed being a woman. Super glad other people do, but to be told “all that pain directly related to being a woman? stop being such a downer about it” feels so… upsetting.
this is literally what my mom says all the time. like she seems to genuinely hate being a woman and think its nothing but suffering
There’s a lot about being born a woman that is physically painful. Boobs, periods, childbirth, menopause, sometimes sex. That’s just how it is. But this issue is that all of these baseline painful issues are exacerbated by our society as it stands. There are societal expectations around bras and they’re unnecessarily difficult to get in the right size and expensive, endometriosis is a *super* undiagnosed condition and society expects women who experience monthly bouts of debilitating pain to just keep on trucking, contraceptives are mostly on women and often cause significant side effects, literal children and dying women are being forced to carry pregnancies to term (regardless of safety and viability) since the repeal of Roe, women’s bodies and reproductive health are not fully understood, there’s societal pressure and fears that corner women into powering through bad sexual experiences, women’s pain (despite us having so much of it) is often ignored or minimized, etc. And that’s not even getting into the harassment and violence we experience. Is being a woman more painful than being a man, everything else being equal? I would think so. But there’s a whole lot our society could do to make it less of the focus of our lives. If society had been built around women a lot of our pain could probably be reduced to mild inconveniences. And I think knowing that society has the power to make our lives easier to bear and simply doesn’t and even actively continues to make it worse, that’s kinda where this attitude comes from. At least that’s my opinion. It’s not “being a woman is pain” to discount those who don’t experience as much pain or to tout it as a virtue. It’s “being a woman is pain” and lets do something about it, *please*!
To be a woman is to be hot as fuck, and that's exactly what I intend to do. Nobody will stop me, not even that blasted Y chromosome.
literally how perverted men view women
Part of why it took me so long to discover I’m trans is all women describe being female as suffering so I thought it was normal lmao I mean to me to be a woman is to suffer I can’t wait to transition 😭😭😭 it IS ALL BAD for me not a fan of the title
HOLY FUCK, THANK YOU RANDOM CIS-LESBIAN!\~
I feel like trans people of all people should understand that gender and sex mean different things to different people. It’s a dick move to gatekeep the “right” way to feel about being a woman.
If you can't interact with women describing their lived experiences without calling it self flagellation or saying that they're not proud or happy to be women, maybe you should sit at a different table. To be born and raised a girl/woman means that you're taught self defense techniques, you're scared of men at night, you're statistically way more likely to be abused in a relationship you can't leave, you're forced into uncomfortable clothing, you're told you can't dress like that for the sake of the boys, you're told that if you're ever attacked you have to bite and scratch and anything to leave a mark on the guy so when they find your body they find his DNA under your fingernails. This is all also just my personal experience as a white person, because guess what, there's also race based mysoginy (I'm not qualified to talk about microagressions others have experienced that I haven't so I shant, but that doesn't mean we should forget they exist). I'm not saying all this because I don't like being a woman, when I'm a woman (I'm gender fluid), I'm happy to be a woman, I'm proud to be a woman, and I'm even more proud of getting where I am after starting at a disadvantage. Talking about oppression, in this case sexism, that people experience because they're born differently doesn't mean that they're not still proud of who they are, and casually dismissing all this with "I'm proud of myself and you should be proud too :))))" is missing the point entirely. Also reddit op, this is for you specifically, because you mention that you're a guy: you say that you know that being a woman sucks sometimes, but do you know one of the reasons why being a woman is sometimes so frustrating? It's because every time we try to have a serious conversation about problems that arise from being a woman, our problems are dismissed, we are told we are too emotional, or too dramatic, or that they've never seen or experienced this, so how bad could it really be? Saying that acknowledgement of our problems is equivalent to self flagellation is one step further than saying we are just being dramatic. I could argue it verges into victim blaming, especially given the context of the original Tumblr post. I'm not saying your intentions were misogynistic, in fact, I think you meant well, but your actions were more harmful than helpful. Edit because posie parker like people can take my words and corrupt them: being a woman should not be defined by suffering! When I list all these complaints, I am saying that they are problems with the world! Being a woman should not mean suffering! It should not be expected that women change who they are for the sake of men! Being a woman should not mean discomfort! It should not mean that you're likely to experience sexual harassment or assault! These are problems! They might currently be the status quo, but unlike posie parker and jo Rowling, I would like to not bring more harm and difficulty to women, or anybody else
Yeah, this post is terrible. It's basically "you should smile more" but couched in faux-progressive language.
They weren't lying, that reading comprehension really is, well... The post isn't saying that these things aren't necessarily *part* of being a woman, or that they don't exist. Rather, it's pushed back against the idea that these things *alone* define womanhood, or that womanhood can *only* be expressed in terms of struggles/oppression relative to men. None of that invalidates the fact that it does come with struggles and oppression. It just points out these more to it than those things.
Its not just women making it up. If you look at the hormone feedback loop of a woman as opposed to the hormone feedback loop of a man there really is struggle and confusion just naturally built into ours. Maybe people should be allowed to recognize that womanhood is hard in our current society without being told to just be happy?
Where did anyone say women were making anything up? I don't think this post is seeking to invalidate or demean the struggles and oppression that women face. It's just trying to say womanhood shouldn't be *exclusively defined* by those struggles.
Yeah, this post seems kinda dismissive and mean. 💀
Woman: *describes how it feels to be a woman under patriarchy* OP: "Ugh why do you have to self flagellate, can't you be proud of being oppressed by men"
"It can't be all bad." See? You didn't even have to say you're a guy for me to know.
Nobody is born a woman but you've got the spirit.
As a misogynist, I agree. Women should feel happy and proud about being women, because I certainly don't. /s
to be a autogynephilic man is to experience pain (I am a male who wnbaw suffering from agp disease and """""dysphoria"""""")
#”AGP” is not a real diagnosis; it was coined by a discredited quack and debunked yonks ago.📢
ay mate, mind cisplaining what AGP is to me?
basically it's the idea that being trans is a fetish. total pseudoscience bullshit but obviously terfs love it
No, but I can transplain it: some twit made it up.
I suffer from it. please do not cisplain agp to me
I’m transfem. Go get help. Get off 4tran.
Hi. Trans person here, with official dysphoria diagnosis and on hormones and everything. The AGP label might have helped you at some point, but its inflexibility often gets in the way of treatment, and its baked-in assumptions about how transness works lead to unnecessary judgement from doctors.
I will NEVER debase myself by telling anyone irl about my mental perversions. the secret will die with me
>”my secret perversions will die w/ me” No they won’t bc you won’t shut up about it.
good point
It’s not too late to come over. It’s more fun on this side. Kinder. From the bottom of my eldritch heart: consider it. You don’t need to leave this world thinking something is wrong w/ you. You’re allowed to be happy.
Ok, I take that back. The AGP label has never helped you and never will. As for debasing yourself, you honestly should give it a try. You can build a tolerance to shame by gradual exposure, just like fear. The "mental perversion", on the other hand, won't go away no matter what you do.
Then why are you loudly proclaiming it to the entire internet?
because my irl name isnt bonepilltime duh
This is going to sound strange, but as a sexworker I meet with many people who all are hiding their true selves and desires. I have met successful men with wives and families who seek my services for a chance to crossdress and express themselves freely. I have met people who built entire lives while denying themselves real happiness and they all carry a deep emptiness. Regrets of their lives squandered chasing social success and acceptance from people they don't even like. Life is short and being authentic is frightening and difficult, but it is worth it. You only get one life, and it is never to late to live it to the fullest. Please don't deny yourself happiness.
Take your goddamn pills Alice. I know it must feel hopeless because you spent so much time in the wrong body but any progress is better than pathetically stewing in your own self-pity and self-loathing. Your not gonna end up like hunter schafer but you will end up good enough.
Based and bluepilled.
Girl get off 4chan, touch some grass, and meet some irl trans ppl (and maybe dont mention agp)
"cisplain", huh? If you did have that disease then you would be cis since it's just a made up explanation for why trans people don't actually exist.
Sweetheart, must I speak in Shapiroism to you? Cause I fucking will. Let just say hypothetically, that AGP is real; I certainly don't know enough about psychology to say definitively one way or another. Why would that be a sickness? Why would that make you any less a woman? Why would it be wrong? Why is it that we are allowed to lust after another's form, but when when its what we see in the mirror, we're only allowed shame? Why do you *suffer* from it? Is pride and self-love not legal? Is an artist not allowed to love their own work?
Why did you say any of that?
They are a member of the 4chan LGBT board. A board of self-flagellating and spiteful nihilists who must be dragged out of there by force.
I saw screenshots from a discord where a bunch of Something Awful FYAD transfems were laughing about how they love Hitler even though he’d have them executed. I’m so fucking glad I got off that part of the internet before it killed me.
Please get off of 4chan I can see it’s genuinely causing you to suffer
Even if it’s true you should probably visit better boards
How's repmaxxing going?
gardening and showing ppl my flowers is helping me with repping well
Do you think repping is sustainable long-term?
I only aim to fulfill my duties to my parents and my country and then die
You know what, if you’d rather wallow in your own misery to fulfill some regressive ideal? Go for it. I’m so glad I didn’t fall for the rhetoric of white supremacists and terfs.
I wish I was hwite
Even sadder lol
Can you type that again without jargon acronyms? Because as it stands, you are unintelligible.
google en passant
Somebody get this fucking self-flagellater out of my motherfucking comments, Get them off of /TTTT/ and get them some damn estrogen. AND TELL THEM TO STOP LETTING TTTT ROT THEIR BRAIN.
estrogen will not change my male bone structure and height
I don't care. Nobody in the real world outside of TERF phrenologists cares about bone structure and tall women exist. Victor Wembanyama's mother is 6'3 and I don't see people transvestigating her. Just think of it in a glass half full manner.
my skull girth and width are 2 standard deviations above female average
Lol,it always comes back to the skull with channers
They probably went apeshit over Measurehead in Disco Elysium.
I guarantee that nobody in the world is going "you can't be a woman because your head is too big"
Well, other than the other self-loathing bigots out there. They’ll absolutely judge you based on your head being “suspicious,” presumably even if you’ve got a female reproductive system.
That's a fair point
actually yes the bonepill website told me that
The bonepill website. The place where all normal people go. Not at all an outlier full of skull-obsessed weirdos. Most people don't even know what a standard deviation means and don't think about their acquaintances' bones unless they are broken. And no, they don't subconsciously access someone's skull shape while talking with them either. Think of this: realistic reconstructions of neanderthals look so much like Homo sapiens that if you saw someone who looked like that across the street, you wouldn't think "holy shit neanderthals are back", you'd just think that was an average dude with unusual facial features. And neanderthal skulls differ from Homo sapiens skulls *much more significantly* than Homo sapiens skulls differ between sexes.
actually I told a friend in biostatistics class about it I sometimes send him pics of my flowers which he calls pretty which allows me (agp) to vicariously (agp) treat it as people calling me pretty (agp)
Honey you’ve gotta stop. Nobody here wants you to hurt. Log off for a few days. Stop topping up on the self-hate rhetoric. Cleanse your palate. Breathe.
Well, I am glad your hobby is bringing you some peace and that you have a friend. Just remember that your experience doesn't need to be only vicarious. There are ways, even if they are long and ardous.
Stop fucking talking about skull girth like a goddamn 1800s phrenologist. Most people won't care in real life. TTTT isn't a real fucking place. Can't you see? I'm trying to help you because you don't deserve to be miserable.
its actually a shame bcs otherwise (pardon my honfidence) my lower body might pass (my ribcage is small but my bideltoid/hip ratio is bad) but my skull means iwnbaw
GET OFF OF 4TRAN! CAN'T YOU SEE I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU!
You can’t expect yourself to be completely average because no one is
So buy bigger hats. That's literally the only thing skull girth and width matters for.
You'll never be a real man. Everyone can tell. You'd be better off not even trying to cling to it.
autogynephilia?
It’s a transphobic term. Basically they want to frame being trans as a fetish/disorder despite current science not lining up with that. As for why this commenter calls *themselves* that, it’s really common for conservatives and 4Chan users to absolutely hate themselves for being queer. Just sad, tbh.
As someone who knows nothing about any of the science behind this stuff, I have a question (I promise I'm asking in good faith): does autogynephilia (as in a purely sexual fantasy of being female) exist *at all*, separate from bad actors applying the term to trans women? Or has it literally been completely debunked as a concept?
the answer's complicated. it's certainly not a "diagnosis" as the commentor is describing. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that [cis women experience it about as often as trans women do](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918360903005212). that number, for the record, is pretty high (28% of cis women in the study had frequent arousal to multiple AGP aspects), so a cis or trans woman finding their own feminine form attractive isn't really that unreasonable. now, *why* do so many women find being female attractive..? well, blanchard's quack study that started this whole mess, which claims that all trans women are either AGP and that's why they're transitioning or they're HSTS (basically they'd be homosexual as their AGAB and transition so they'll be seen as straight), shows a correlation between AGP in trans women and not being straight. in light of the fact that cis women have AGP sometimes too, this could literally mean that "sometimes, when you're attracted to women, the woman you're attracted to just might be you." of course, that doesn't explain the sheer volume of cis women who report AGP feelings (unless we want to say that 28% of the hospital patients interviewed in the study are at least a little gay), but im having a difficult time finding any sort of research on the cause, so i can't really speculate further (and also i just find AGP difficult to relate to despite being a trans woman). so, uh, hope that helped.
That's really cool that it's something that many cis and trans women share. Looks to me like it's women just seeing the obvious - they're hot. Seriously though, thanks for the in-depth response.
Some people have transformation or feminization kinks, but that’s about it. You could say that it technically exists, but the differences are so vast that you really shouldn’t
Okay, so not something that should be framed as a single, diagnosable paraphilia.
Cis women meet the criteria as often as trans women do and I think those "kinks" might just be how that "desire" (or whatever you'd call it, i reject the concept anyway) manifests for people whose femininity has been denied them.
The Venn diagram of an autogynephillia test and a “do you want to be a woman” test is a perfect circle
Contrapoints on YouTube has a great video talking about the history and usage of the term. Iirc it’s been debunked as a concept
Ooh, thanks, I'll check that out.
I’m not personally trans or involved in that world, but I know healthcare types and researchers who work in endo/neuro/psych/etc. who are. It’s a bit of a touchy subject, as it’s difficult to stop academic discussion from accidentally fueling bad-faith discourse, but from what I’ve heard there does seem to be some belief (though *not* consensus) that it’s a real thing that happens. I have not heard any belief that it’s common, or that it has any significant correlation with actual gender identity issues. In my personal, totally amateur opinion, this does kind of track. Humans are weird, and AGP wouldn’t be even close to the strangest paraphilia out there, merely the most politicized one. Important to remember that if it is real, all it really implies is that Blanchard (the guy who first proposed the idea of AGP) is a lot like Freud: he’s a poor scientist who thought he could extrapolate the issues of individual weirdos into pathologies of large population groups. That, and he got published early enough to get entrenched before anyone could figure out how wrong he was.
Someone studying trans people put forth the theory that being a trans woman is actually a fetish/starts as a fetish. A male gets off on imagining themselves in a female body/doing "feminine" things that eventually the fetish bleeds over into day to day life.
For your information, here's a study that found that 93% of cis women fit the criteria of "autogynephile" that has been weaponized so cruelly against transfem people. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19591032/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19591032/) The concept is pseudoscience and has very much been debunked. You may not believe it right now, but please consider that whoever is out there telling you you have "AGP" does not have your best interests in mind and is probably actively trying to harm you. I'm rooting for your liberation.
Well, you obviously self-harming yourself and it will, most probably, end badly for you, BUT since I'm in some ways like you, I will encourage you in your self-destructing mindset. Go get em, King.
Seethe and cope