Quote from: FA on April 17, 2014, 05:26:32 PM
I'm sorry you went through that FA. I can only relate from the other end of the scale (having to man up and pretend to be masculine, and never fitting in regardless, but at least not sticking out anymore). Unfortunately you can't do much about your past, but you can work on the now. I'll never have grown up as anything but a 'male' but at least I can do something now, you know?
Quote from: Carrie Liz on April 17, 2014, 06:17:38 PM
Here's my parallel story, just so you can know that I'm coming from a point where I could be equally as bitter about the male experience.
Through my entire childhood, I was picked on and teased and made to feel like an outsider because I was weak, and emotional, and actually cared about women rather than being nothing but a walking sex-drive. (Yes, I actually did get teased for that.)
In 7th and 8th grade, those were the last years that I was openly myself. My voice hadn't changed, I had barely even started going through puberty, and I didn't want to. I loved singing soprano, I loved wearing short shorts, I was still watching cartoons and having 'secret clubs' with friends, I was shaving my legs as the hair started growing in, and you better believe I got teased a million times that year for being "gay" and a "->-bleeped-<-got" and wearing "daisy-dukes." Even my own friends teased me about that. And I was bullied like there was no tomorrow... people intentionally blocked me from getting into my locker every single day, stole my stuff and played "keep-away" with it, I got beaten up, and had to endure near-constant nasty treatment from people.
And when I asked my own therapist and my own Mom about it, how to end the teasing, the response was always something along the lines of "man up." So I was basically taught that the only way to stop people making fun of me, was to stop being different, and to become just as mean, uncaring, masculine, and tough as them.
And, well, unfortunately, I reached a point where I felt like I had no options but to listen. In high school, I stifled myself. I stopped wearing the clothes that I wanted. My voice changed, and I was devastated. I had to stop shaving my legs to avoid teasing, stop being open about my love of Pokemon and Sailor Moon to avoid teasing, hide any and every sign of gender conflict in my head, hide my true emotions, and basically just willfully stopped showing any signs of my internal gender conflict even though by this point I was absolutely screaming on the inside, to the point where I was failing classes because I felt so horrible about myself.
And every single day, I had to look at all of the guys around me playing this macho game, and I just HATED them. I hated how they acted tough, I hated how they used stupid stunts as some kind of proof of their manliness, I hated how they had to act completely emotionless, I HATED HATED HATED how they treated women like s*** and treated them like objects to be screwed and then dumped. I wanted to freaking strangle every single one of them and be like "you're a complete and total A**HOLE!!! I'm embarrassed to be considered a member of the same gender as you, you inconsiderate jerk!" And I was so bitter about how men had no right to express themselves, and niceness in them wasn't even rewarded, it was jerkiness that was rewarded, while girls could at least be tomboys in addition to being a stereotypical girl, while there was no male equivalent whatsoever. I seriously thought, how could ANYONE want to be a man? How the hell do they live with themselves?"
Basically, I was the equivalent of a man-hating radical feminist at that point.
And am I still bitter about this? Yes! Do I still seriously not understand how people could actually enjoy being male? To some degree, yes. I still have a bit of a hard time looking at the FtM "Before and After" thread, because I see people turning from a gender I admire into a gender I'm still bitter about. And every single damned time I heard my male co-workers at the Horseshoe bragging about their Vegas sex-escapades last year, I just wanted to scream.
The thing is, though, over time, I have mostly learned to get over it. I learned to filter out comments from people who I realized I hated anyway. Why was I letting these opinions and these expectations get to me if I didn't want to? I finally learned that I had the freedom to define my own self worth, and that I should quit letting others' expectations get to me so much. I started hanging out with my own kind... nerdy tomboyish girls who didn't care about society's standards of beauty and defined themselves by their talents and ideas, and guys who still enjoyed "childish" things and really didn't care about living up to some dudebro standard of masculinity. They do exist. And although I still remained in denial about my gender identity for years after that, getting in with that more neutral nerdy crowd who don't give two s***s about their popularity really helped me.
So again. We've both been hurt and disenfranchised by the societal expectations of our birth genders. I just feel a very strong activist-like sense of "It doesn't have to be this way. We can change this. I learned to define my own self-worth, so surely I can help others do the same."
I know I'm not completely over this either, though. I have so many emotional breakdowns in my blog it's ridiculous. And you've seen it.
Wow Carrie, it was like reading my own school life, right down to the Sailor Moon :3 I'm sorry that you went through it as well. I admit I'm also bitter about masculinity as well, my head is screaming when going through the ftm threads 'whyyyyyyyyyy'. I obviously have issues to work out as well, but thanks for posting your story.
My response, which probably fits better in this thread, but was more a reverse reaction to always hearing that we shouldn't put any value into appearances was this:
Asking about ones physical appearance does not automatically suggest that their world revolves around it. I am respected in my field, have multiple creative outlets, and absolutely love myself and my work immensely. Having people constantly bemoan the fact that I also own mirrors and would like to look good in them is frustrating to the point of ridiculousness. My appearance doesn't define me, sure, but it does add to my definition. Maybe this is because I am a materialist, so don't really buy into the whole magical pixie spirit currently trapped in a vehicle mentality that spiritual people adhere to, but I care how I look as a woman, and I don't think I should be made to feel vain, selfish, or egotistical for it. I think that the reason why men don't care as much isn't necessarily a gender 'construct' used to make women feel like objects and men treat them as that, I think deep down there is a biological mindset difference, in which women want to be valued for their appearance, not necessarily exclusively, but partly. Even in denial, as a male, I was very different in how I valued my appearance over my friends, and it was always pretty obvious, but just ignored.
I know it's tangential, but it's odd how often you hear the 'appearance is so superficial' thing on here. Is it? If it's so irrelevant then why do we have dysphoria?
That being said, I know women that put farrrr too much value in their appearance, as was mentioned here, so really it's a fine line. You can't get lost in it, but I do think it's important to us in deeper ways than gender construct. And it isn't necessarily 'for men' either, I have no interest in men sexually, I just want to be beautiful for me.
