Looking up to women

[Alana Ashleigh]

I saw a reel on Instagram yesterday from a transgender woman saying how she always looked up to and admired women. I felt like this way before I ever realized I was transgender. I always felt weird for feeling that way. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

[Pema]

I've always admired women, too, and even thought of them as role models. But I never felt weird about it. It just seemed sort of...clear to me.

[CosmicJoke]

I saw a reel on Instagram yesterday from a transgender woman saying how she always looked up to and admired women. I felt like this way before I ever realized I was transgender. I always felt weird for feeling that way. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

I don't know if it's so much "admiration" for me but more of an envy. I always felt that way very strongly and it only got worse to be honest.

[Lori Dee ✅]

I have always felt this way.

I respect their caring, nurturing demeanor. When I finally started seeing women doctors, they just seemed to be more understanding. I could explain something, and they got it right away, because they listened. In arguments with women, including my mother, they had a way of calmly explaining why they felt the way they did, and it made sense to me.

They were better at communication than the guys were, and I think I was jealous of that. But even their bodies just seemed to be a better design, with their "plumbing" internal and out of sight. They seem to be more emotionally mature in general, although there are many men who are on par in that respect.

[Rochelle]

Looking back, most of the supervisors I've had over the years have been women.  More thoughtful when making their decisions, never rushing to react, but taking the time to listen and understand before acting.

[Charlotte_Ringwood]

In all honesty I look up to almost anyone, as I've found most people  offer some inspiration or perspective in this life that I can use to grow.

Really the people I most admire have strong emotional sensitivity, appreciation and exist in all genders.

However I have always found women to be more approachable for me personally and feels so safe. I try to project a similar approachable and safe expression and willingness to accept anyone in need of comfort or genuine advice.

[Sephirah]

I saw a reel on Instagram yesterday from a transgender woman saying how she always looked up to and admired women. I felt like this way before I ever realized I was transgender. I always felt weird for feeling that way. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

Honestly, no. I had a lot of really bad experiences when I was a kid with girls around me. I was very passive and a lot of the bullying I got came about through the young women around me. A few were quite possibly psychopathic. But I don't think that was due to them being female. More that they were just unhinged. I hope they grew out of it.

It sounds aspirational, what you're talking about, Alana. Which is entirely understandable. When you look up to and admire someone, a part of you aspires to be like them. They're role models, so to speak. So I get that entirely. And for trans people it's entirely understandable to feel that way.

I just kind of... didn't. I found myself in spite of it, not because of it. I have never been what you'd call conventional. Which is a good or bad thing depending how you look at it.

You certainly shouldn't feel weird for feeling that way. I would venture a great many people also do.

[Jillian-TG]

I very much respect and admire women - they have a beautiful balance between strength and softness. On the surface it's easy to think that it's impossible to be feminine and strong yet women do it all the time. It's to be admired.

[Camille58S]

I have always had more respect for women than men. That may sound a little harsh, but it's the truth. Women are more interesting, more in touch with their emotions. More open to in-depth conversations. They actually listen to each other. Men seem to have their responses taken from a playbook! They have too many rules about what they can talk about. I know that is changing some, but men still have a long way to go.
 I saw a stand up comedian once, I forget his name, but he put it well when he said " you go to any dinner party, and it's always the same thing... the men are talking chainsaws, and the women are talking orgasims!"

[Lori Dee ✅]

I have always had more respect for women than men. That may sound a little harsh, but it's the truth. Women are more interesting, more in touch with their emotions. More open to in-depth conversations. They actually listen to each other. Men seem to have their responses taken from a playbook! They have too many rules about what they can talk about. I know that is changing some, but men still have a long way to go.
 I saw a stand up comedian once, I forget his name, but he put it well when he said " you go to any dinner party, and it's always the same thing... the men are talking chainsaws, and the women are talking orgasims!"

Reminds me of the TV show Tool Time.
Tim Taylor: <grunt, grunt, grunt > "More power!" <grunt, grunt>

😆

[Alana Ashleigh]

I have always had more respect for women than men. That may sound a little harsh, but it's the truth. Women are more interesting, more in touch with their emotions. More open to in-depth conversations. They actually listen to each other. Men seem to have their responses taken from a playbook! They have too many rules about what they can talk about. I know that is changing some, but men still have a long way to go.
 I saw a stand up comedian once, I forget his name, but he put it well when he said " you go to any dinner party, and it's always the same thing... the men are talking chainsaws, and the women are talking orgasims!"

I have to agree with you on women being in tune with their emotions. When I had my first breakup, I took it VERY hard. I couldn't put one foot in front of the other. Nothing could get me over it. I called my cousin who I've always been very close with. She was the only person that understood what I was feeling.

[NancyDrew1930]

I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s being surrounded by a lot of men and women who really pushed the "black and white" envelope and with my neurodiversity, I gravitated to the girls and women.  I still remember being in kindergarten and wishing that I could wear the colorful clothes and scrunchies and finding that I wanted to dress like they did and wear the scrunchies and all that, because that was the way my brain at 4 or 5 years old was designed.  It wasn't a sexual thing, to me it was the girls got to wear the fun clothes and even when I talked with them, I bonded with them better more than the boys.  And I was never interested in playing like war or a lot of sports like the other boys were or as I got older into my teens, taking woodworking classes or small engine repair, did not appeal to me like it did to the other boys, and I enjoyed doing more the stuff that the girls were doing like home economics (of course in the 90's they had started to teach the boys how to sew and cook and do all those things that in decades past had been considered "for girls and women only" in order to train them to be the best housewife they could be to their future husband and kids.)  I remember and looking back now, I can see how my grandfather, who was born in the 1930's and was raised where the men were to be the "warriors" and train the next generation of men to not show emotion and that as a husband and father you were the head of the household and you were to rule your wife and kids with an iron hand, and you needed to know how to do repairs around the house and with your car, so that your wife and kids wouldn't have to worry, he was disappointed that I was not following what he was trying to get my grandmother and mother to do to steer me (as his oldest grandchild---and he was already disappointed by his son, my uncle, because my uncle and aunt did not have any boys and my grandfather came from an era where you kept having kids until you had a boy to carry on the family name)  in the "correct" male way to where I would eventually marry a woman and have kids and "be the" stereotypical 1940's/50's "man" that he was expecting me to be.    And yet I fought and did things that he saw as "girly" (like take music and drama instead of wood shop and small engine repair), because to me I was not interested in those masculine things and even looking back now, if I had the chance to change history, I would have probably taken the hairstyling course that my high school offered, even if it made me look really girly.

Even now I'm seeing how I'm putting into practice all these things I observed from girls and women over the years to let me come out as the woman that I was already meant to be.

[Alana Ashleigh]

I still remember being in kindergarten and wishing that I could wear the colorful clothes and scrunchies and finding that I wanted to dress like they did and wear the scrunchies and all that, because that was the way my brain at 4 or 5 years old was designed.  It wasn't a sexual thing, to me it was the girls got to wear the fun clothes and even when I talked with them.

I felt this same way. I first started feeling this way in high school. I was envious of the ways the girls were allowed to express themselves with makeup, clothing, their feelings etc. I was envious of the way they got to be themselves, and express themselves however they wished.

[Susan ✅]

What you are describing is something I have heard from a lot of trans women over the years, and it feels very familiar.

When you are a trans girl who does not know she is trans yet, the world hands you a script that does not fit. You get grouped with the boys, expected to bond with them, expected to see girls and women as "other." But something does not line up. You find yourself drawn to women—not in the way everyone says boys are supposed to be, but in a softer, sideways way. You are watching, learning, feeling pulled toward them, and because you do not have words for it yet, it feels "weird."

For some of us, that pull shows up as admiration; for others, it feels more like envy. I had a lot of that over the years. It wasn't "I want to be with them." It was "I want what they have. I want to live like that." At the time I would have said I wanted to be them. Looking back, I think it was really that I wanted to be me and I did not yet know how. From the outside, it seemed so easy for them—they simply got to be.

Now I know that this oversimplifies other women's experiences, and that no two women — cisgender or trans — walk the same path through womanhood. But all of those paths are equally valid.

As a younger trans girl with no language for myself, that is just how it looked: they were allowed to grow into themselves without needing to explain every step. I felt like I was standing just outside the doorway of my own life, trying to figure out how to step through.

Underneath all of that is a kind of recognition. You see something of yourself in women long before you know why. Their spaces and conversations feel more like home. The way women relate, listen, and share emotions often matches how we move through the world inside, even when everyone around us insists we are supposed to feel and act like "one of the boys."

None of that is weird. It is your mind and heart trying to tell you something true about yourself in the only language they had at the time. The uncomfortable part is not the admiration itself—it is the gap between what you were told you were "supposed" to feel and what you actually felt.

Once you start to understand who you are, that gap starts to close. All those feelings that once seemed confusing begin to make sense, and you can look back at them with a lot more kindness for the younger you who was just trying to find her way.

With love,
— Susan 💜

[NancyDrew1930]

I felt this same way. I first started feeling this way in high school. I was envious of the ways the girls were allowed to express themselves with makeup, clothing, their feelings etc. I was envious of the way they got to be themselves, and express themselves however they wished.

That's right.  I remember in kindergarten the girls dressing like the girls were dressed on this album cover (https://www.discogs.com/release/5294629-Prism-Yellow/image/SW1hZ2U6MTkwMDIxMDA= 🔗) and that's how I wanted to dress, but my mom would dress me like two boys on the front cover. 

My grandparents gave me the cassette of this album for Christmas 92, and I still have it as well as having found the LP & CD, and even now, when I say I think the way I do my hair with the scrunchies, I think my love of the satin/silk scrunchies come from having seen this album cover for so many years and wishing I could have my hair like that.