Maybe we need to make some space to have conversations about the way that rigid gender expectations can hurt people. I'm not talking about trans people, exclusively (in fact the trans people I know are among the most sophisticated when it comes to processing these kinds of events and emotions)
No, where I see a lot of unprocessed trauma flailing around putting everyone in a bad way is from cis people who have unexamined psychological harm due to their failure to conform to some gender norm. 1/
@futurebird It's crazy how deep assigned birth roles go. I'm cis male, but didn't sufficiently fit the expected norms so ended up dreading every single day of school from something like third grade or so up until I escaped high school. I wasn't big or buff and preferred books to cars or guns or sportsball or whatever, so I had to learn to pretend to be normal enough to get by.
@futurebird I had so many feelings about this when I read it this morning. From birth my parents and their parents warred with each other over me and what I "should" be like. Mom would part my hair on one side and Grandma would reverse. schoolmates knew if I won the fight with my mom if I wasn't in a dress. Aunts would insist I needed to be more femme and stop trying to play with the boys or talk about important things with the men. I'm cis vanilla and I just wanted to be comfortable!
@futurebird Zach and Donald touched on this in their podcast (they played JD and Turk in the TV show Scrubs). A lot of folks identify with JD; he’s not a “manly man”, doesn’t drink traditionally “manly” drinks, etc. Turk was more of a “jock” type but not hugely, and both say they love the other aloud and in person.
It’s lovely to hear fans citing the show as a moment of realisation in their own emotional maturity.
@futurebird
Lol, that's kind of funny. I just bought a hoody that is very "non-macho". Pastel Terry cloth, and was all "Can I pull this off?". But then I looked in the mirror and saw this old Cuban guy and thought "Fuck it".
UM has an excellent workshop called 'Creating Climates Resistant to Sexual Harassment.' Gender expectations was one of the topics we discussed. It was framed from a business/productivity viewpoint, basically the argument being that people who are at the receiving end of rigid gender expectations are constantly having to waste their valuable mental capacity on avoiding/deflecting/withstanding criticism on their non-conformity.
@futurebird odd I should see this almost immediately after my mother and I had a conversation regarding the little girl dress styles we’re seeing so often on newscasters lately. My mother believes it a subconscious response to what may well be an enormous change in power, ‘see I’m girly I’m harmless’.
@futurebird
While I am cis het woman who looks unremarkable, my unwillingness to work at my femininity like a job was so offensive to my mother that it was a barrier between us for many years.
I'm speaking from some experience. Failing to be feminine correctly used to freak me out.
Just as an example: like most humans I have hairs on my chin, discovering these hairs as a teen filled me with fear and revulsion that had little to do with anything rational. That was because I'd experienced the way that kids could isolate and jeer at someone who didn't do gender correctly.
And I had no idea what might trigger that kind of bullying and ostracization. 2/
I fully expected one of the more extroverted and popular girls to notice these tiny little hairs on my chin, and whip up her followers into a chorus of jeering that would never end.
I assumed that such an event would have no recourse from adults. No, it'd be deserved.
So, I spent hours with tweezers fighting the hairs.
It's almost funny... but really it's not something that should have happened, it was a sign of greater things that are broken.
For one thing: bullying isn't a "normal healthy part of growing up" It's not normal to get bullied, it's not normal to be a bully. It's not something that ought NOT to be common, it's preventable, avoidable nearly always.
And there is no value, nothing learned in kids bullying each other. It's just a failure to teach and support mutual respect.
But when many people feel like they could be ostracized, rejected from the tribe, unpersoned over any random little thing that failure is massive. 4/
And there are a lot of adults with a kind of buried terror of having their gender questioned.
Obviously such fearful people are also vulnerable to being made into bullies themselves.
Without reflection we assume our secret fears are universal. No one cares about the little hairs on your chin. And even if they did? It doesn't really matter. 5/5
@futurebird This resonates with me so very much. I was bullied for all sorts of things as a kid/teen. I was called a “tomboy” for not being super feminine. Girls ridiculed me, and boys physically harassed me.
I, personally, was never ashamed of who and what I was/still am (a cis-het woman who doesn’t ooze with feminine charm). But dammit, the entire school sure as hell tried their best to humiliate me.
The problem with having gender norm induced trauma being so common (some people try to suggest it's "just part of growing up" ... bullshit.) is there is a desire to minimize it, to not listen to people when they say "no, that's not who I am THIS is who I am"
Our reaction should be "Oh, sorry, OK." but instead you see people getting caught up in their own BS and pain "get over it." (Because I had to get over it, what makes YOU so special?) it can become fuel for contempt.
@futurebird@InayaShujaat This one feels connected to yesterday's thread, particularly strains of "Your experience doesn't match my experience, so your experience must be wrong" or "I literally can't relate to someone who has or wants a different experience than I had." We end up just paying forward any and all trauma we suffered, instead of thinking about ways to make that cycle stop.
@futurebird I’m of the opinion that if you’ve lived through the trauma, you should be MORE sympathetic, not less. Being made to “get over it” should teach one how horrible that is. We should NEVER force someone else to suffer the way we did.
I’ll never understand this great human need to make others suffer.
For my husband it's ordering drinks. He told me about the sheer terror of:
Not being able to tell what gender drinks were.
Being attracted to drinks that were "for women"
Ordering whisky on ice because that was the one thing he knew wouldn't be "incorrect" and hating it.
Now he drinks boba and laughs about it.
But why did this world have to stress out this kind wonderful man over something so ... pointless? He was afraid to sip my martini. Why do we do this to each other??
@futurebird I remember whenever visiting the toy store or toy section, being concerned about being seen in or showing interest to "the pink aisle" that had the barbie dolls and other girl toys.
I didn't even have any interest in them that I was ashamed of, just a knowledge that anyone who thought I had an interest would see that as inappropriate and judge me badly for it. even though I don't remember that ever actually happening.
@justafrog@daisy@futurebird US take: in my gen even girly girls avoided pink; under patriarchy its image exists only counterpoint an adult man. Women were formerly eternal legal minors; it's remembered in breathy baby tones & baby pink, infantile, devoidof agency at any age. A babydoll can refer to a child's toy, or lingerie; the owner belongs to someone else.
A child trying to be seen as a person, girl OR boy, oft stands as far from that as possible.
@futurebird My 5 y'old boy, after a few months of school, developed a brand-new set of strong opinions about gender. Like performative "I HATE pink" non-sequiturs, just in case someone thought he might like something girlish.
I've had to fight tooth and nail to counteract this mind poison he's learned at school. "Look, my favourite bath towel is pink! I love gardening! Smell this nice flower!" I don't know how successful I've been, but it feels like trying to sweep the tide out sometimes.
When you and other men in his life model that you don't care, that you think that kind of fear of "not being a man right" is a bit silly, or that it comes from fear no one really deserves but people can work themselves up into thinking they deserve.
It's very hard.
I can remember the way little boys would say the word "pink" and lace it with disgust to this day. It sort of makes my hairs stand on end, "ew it's PINK"
@futurebird@tj Our kids come back with these notions at times, but then our boy also likes his fingernails painted, and we totally support that..
It's a constant fight. I've given up trying to explain too deeply, though, and just say things like "they don't understand what they're missing" or "maybe they're jealous and afraid to ask their own parents".
One thing I realized is that the peer pressure doesn't go away, so pressuring in the opposite direction, as it were, doesn't help. Rather,...
@futurebird@tj I have read a number of times that before the 1940’s the colour code was the other way round ie pink for a boy. Whether this is true I don’t know but the statement seems to consistently appear.
@futurebird People have been tellling me my whole life that I "girl" wrong. It's nice to be old enough now to feel more comfortable in my skin. Work boots and sparkly nails? Hell yes!
@futurebird@tj I went through a phase around age 9 or so when I reacted violently to anything pink. Even red was suspect. I have no idea where this came from.
Remember when folks had fuzzy-rug toilet lid covers? I remember not wanting to use a toilet that had a red cover when we were visiting my parents’ friends.
As a girl this was baffling. Since I knew that pink was "for me" ... did the boys hate ... me?
All of the gender things were just so alien & random to me. I didn't feel strongly about pink, or about being prim or tough, I didn't have any... natural sense of what I ought to be doing or feeling. Yet, here are all these people acting like they "just know" ... was there something missing in me since I didn't "just know" ? Since all I could do is follow along and hope no one noticed?
There isn't any big revelation at the end of this story. I am, it seems, a cis woman. I'm bisexual. Been married 18 years to wonderful cis guy. On paper we conform. You could even cross out the "bisexual" part since it wouldn't matter, except that I always notice when people are being homophobic in a more... intense way.
But both of us had so many experiences of gender being utter bullshit growing up. We laugh about it together and I wonder how many more people are like us?
I think one reason I end up with so many queer friends despite being straight and cis and fairly boring in that regard is because I was always doing boyhood wrong. Not particularly girly, just a bit too goofy or something. I got called gay so many times as a kid I started to wonder if they were right.
I think sometimes you can be male in a man’s body and still have gender dysphoria.
I wonder how much culture affects this. Some cultures may put more pressure to perform your gender than others.
Though I don't recall much external pressure to perform my gender, I was definitely aware of it. We had gendered bicycles in the NL (the frame was different) and I definitely would be embarrassed to ride a girl bicycle. But teens are easily embarrassed in general.
I always held people are human beings first. I only learned about the flaws of gender blindness later.
@faassen@futurebird@tj "gendered bicycles" is it about the thing when there are bicycles that are easy to mount and have somewhat more comfortable seats and do not smash any soft body parts when accidentally stopped; and then there are bicycles For Men?
Those features are definitely easier for a growing boy too! It's hard enough dealing with a bicycle that may be slightly too tall for you initially and then also have it be difficult to mount.
Skirt guards are called "coat guards" in Dutch and are standard here, never were gendered afaik.
Whoa, I did not know coat/skirt guards existed! I've been living in fear of my Ortlieb panniers since I caught a strap in my wheel once. A coat guard is exactly what I need.
@IngaLovinde@faassen@futurebird@tj My dad & I had a standoff over a "gendered" bike. I had a Strawberry Shortcake bike w/ training wheels when I was 6. Then we went overseas 1 yr & the bike was stored. When I came back I learned to ride & wanted a new bike for my bday - a red Huffy BMX, which had a "boy's" frame. We fought for 2 weeks til I sequestered myself in my room w/ a sign on the door: I WANT A BMX BOY'S BIKE! My brother brought me peanutbutter sandwiches. Dad gave in after 2 days. 🎉
@mmezabet@IngaLovinde@faassen@futurebird@tj gendering bike frames is a huge problem because step-through bikes are legitimately easier to deal with if you have mobility issues!!
When I sold electric bikes most of the customers were retired and it is a massive battle to get old men to get over their pride and try the step-through so they can ride at all.
@futurebird@tj Being in a monogamous relationship doesn't mean you're no longer bisexual. My wife and I have been together 27 years and she's still bi. It just only gets expressed during movies and baseball games.
@futurebird@tj I once used a pink Barbie lanyard for my ID badge at work. All of a sudden people started wondering if I was gay. People hold very rigid expectations about gender roles and any deviation very much confuses them.
@futurebird As a little kid, I was pretty girlie -- long hair, lots of pink, etc. Then suddenly when I hit adolescence, everything got weird. I felt like I missed getting a copy of the "Girl Handbook" because even though I wasn't a tomboy or genderfluid, I wasn't a girl the way all the other girls were. I didn't travel in a pack, I didn't like babies or fashion or makeup. I couldn't relate to other girls anymore, but I still felt like I was one! It made me question "traditional" roles, for sure.
@futurebird You should have him try a bahama mama. It has three kinds of rum in it and I don't even know what kinds of juice. It's tropical and fruity, and with as much alcohol as is in it, definitely not a drink for the weak of liver.
I always joke that it's my sobriety test. If I can pronounce it, I'm still sober. :blobfoxsip: :blobfoxsipglare: :blobfoxsipowo: :blobfoxwhoaa:
@futurebird
This is something that actually led to a fight between an ex and I. She was mortified that I'd ordered a "girl drink" (a Long Island Iced Tea) while we were out one day, and got verbally abusive over it.
I just don't order drinks anymore. No one's ever attacked me over water.
@Kichae
Not attacked over water? Oh, let me know of this magical place, where it's okay to "just have a water" without going into the details of why @futurebird
@futurebird The easy solution is to demand that all bars serve Apple Jack and coke in regular Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero varieties. Everyone knows this is the best drink ever so he will no longer need to choose.
@futurebird By the way, if you are a cis male, taking a sip of you wife's drink is not only the manly thing to do, but also the safe thing to do. Remember gentlemen, you sleep with that woman and she can do you in with a pillow at any time.
I was told by a rather feminine boy, who most assumed was gay, that I must have been exposed to extra testosterone in the womb because I was so aggressive. As far as I know he identifies as cis and hetero.
It’s was particularly weird because he didn’t fit gender norms yet he medicalized me being both aggressive and a girl.
Someone close to me told his buddy that he was thinking about taking a pottery class. He'd always been fascinated by it but now, with kids grown and his career at a kind of cruising altitude in his 50s, he had time.
The friend, also in his 50s, said "Isn't pottery for girls?"
@kingkaufman@futurebird Reminds me of the time I saw a boy in the stationery shop whose mum told him the pencil case he wanted to get was "for girls." It had owls on it. Not even pink owls, just owl coloured owls. Owls are for girls. 🤨🦉
@futurebird Once again I am very grateful my mum was very open in this area (for her age). Most of the gender "differences" I still don't understand today. The only time she ever stopped me to explain something to me, was when I wanted to go to school in a dress and she told me that this will give me unwanted attention, so I need to be aware of that when making that choice. I decided against it then, but until she stopped me at the door, I didn't even consider that. So while I certainly had to deal with gender expectations some times, I am very happy that my mum didn't teach me all those expectations other people have. It did cause trouble at times of course, but mostly with positive endings in the long term. The hardest learning experience was understanding that some people care about their gender role, since I didn't really understand, why that could be important to people at first.
Now ignoring my rambling above, I totally agree. I have seen so many people struggle with "behaving correctly" and it is very depressing to see. I hope the world becomes more queer, so that everyone can see we don't have to fit into particular roles and how liberating that can be.
@futurebird One thing that's worried me is that I get the feeling that examining the experience of gender has declined among cis people, as if it's just an issue of interest for LGBTQ folks.
@futurebird It's the late 1960s and my dad is buying me a lunch box for first grade. We were at a rural five and dime, and the selection was small, behind the counter.
My father fought in WWII. Yet he picked a soft-sided lunchbox because it seemed less likely to hurt someone than the metal ones. It was a Barbie lunch box.
I burst into tears—the absolute ridicule I would face! When I finally was able speak, I let him know the problem, and he chose something else.
@futurebird@justafrog Huh, really? I didn't know that! I guess not being able to see musicians in orchestras and such never let me be aware of this. Is there some pattern to it?
@futurebird One of the superpowers I have gained as I have got older is not giving a shit anymore about what people think about the way I sound, look and dress. Given the choice though, I'd have preferred this progression to have been the other way around - start that way when I was younger and get more paranoid as I got older. Partly because greater experience means I am now much better placed to cope with the fear and stress of always being a square peg than I was back then.
@futurebird if you allow me to add a bit of my experience 😊 growing up in Portugal (90s & 00s) as a thin geek male that had emotional issues is not "fun": people expected me to like football, to talk a lot about women, to watch sports games (nothing wrong with it but I don't like it), not be emotional, not care about people too much, etc. This does "wonders" to emotional development, and many of my peer males sadly ended up being depressed, anxious, jerks, or worse due to all these pressures.
@futurebird when I was a child I had some rather weird associations which gender did which. Probably this was partly because of me being ND and not understanding things. For example I believed women always drank their coffee without sugar while men used sugar (sample size my parents and a handful other adults).
@futurebird I don’t care what gender drinks are, but it still gets in the way. I ordered a lavender Prosecco (delicious!). The waiter delivered it to the woman at the table. I didn’t know that drink wasn’t allowed for me.
@futurebird
My parents didn't like the fact that I watched Jem and the Holograms, Clarissa Explains It All (before Melissa Joan Hart started telling jesus tales), and Sailor Moon. They were relieved when I started dating women but then got back on me when the women I was dsting weren't white (my mom explicitly said, not quoting, she didn't want me dating "ners" and "cks").
1/2
@futurebird reminded of one of my favorite kids in the hall skits, Girl Drink Drunk, which I think holds up because the joke isn't that he likes feminine drinks, it's that he's trying to be a secret alcoholic but only drinks things that require elaborate preparation https://youtu.be/8C4TGGtPzBU?si=tBiD9j14HGcQQPpi
Because many people only feel that they're doing something "right" if they're in some kind of position to tell someone that they're doing it "wrong". The consequences to other people's mental health don't matter as much as massaging someone's own sense of correctness and righteousness.
@futurebird
At a boys school in the 60s being labelled queer was the worst possible thing do everyone tried to appear as manly as possible. I thought I'd left all that behind until in 1982 I was teaching in a very conservative church school. One Monday staffroom talk turned to weekend activities which for most was Church, wash car and mow lawn (men) cook Sunday dinner (women). The looks I got when I revealed my wife did the lawn while I cooked dinner 🥺 Neither of us did Church or washed the car!
@futurebird growing up in South Carolina I had a good friend explain that she thought I was gay because I used lots of words and didn’t care about sports.
@futurebird@mattk I got this kind of grief through my whole youth and it eventually contributed to me deciding I supported LGBTQ liberation on "enemy of my enemy" grounds: the same people who caused trouble for them predictably caused trouble for me. And a world in which bystanders weren't so concerned if I was gay or straight would be a better one for me.
@futurebird It's probably part of the reason I always stuck to beer. I mean, I do generally prefer beer to mixed drinks, but also beer has a safely masculine image.
Then again, I was never fussed about ordering diet soda, which for most of my life was marketed as ineluctibly feminine (while Coke Zero does have a very slightly different formula from Diet Coke, the main distinction is that its advertising is more male- or at least less gender-targeted).
@Wendy This is Identical to asking how I know what my name is. It’s the one people have always called me and I like it because I’m used to it. There is nothing else there. That’s why the really strident opinions on the matter are so alien.
@futurebird
Years ago, my wife shaved her head for a Saint Baldricks Day event. She was one of four women among a bunch of men to fully shave. When people commented, her response was always "You know, little girls get cancer too." She would adjust her tone along the earnest/passive-agressive scale according to her interlocutor's tone.
@futurebird My total lack of interest in cars, sports shaped my youth. In later years, switching to a vegetarian diet still causes comments.
People (of all ages and gender) freak out over my bag with a pink unicorn on it.
Or when looking to buy new glasses, I'm not allowed to look at the shelves with "feminine" frames.
I try to be an ass about it and respond along the lines of: "That's a nasty insecurity you have there. You should get that looked at by a trained professional."
"But when many people feel like they could be ostracized, rejected from the tribe, unpersoned over any random little thing that failure is massive. "
But that's the crux of so many NT social groups, from religion to politics? From a ND point of view, that is the glue that holds NT subcultures - even transient, momentary ones of two people - together.
@futurebird
In my case it was being "too tall" and skinny. However, I think that if it wasn't that it would have been something else due to my general social ineptitude and inability to stand up for myself (and turning down the boy who bullied me).
I'm not trivialising it, or victim blaming, it set me back years in self confidence and ability to get on with stuff, but bullies prey on the weak and if it's not gender norms it will be something else.
When my kids were in elementary school, we had a lot of conversations about bullying. I don't like bullies and I wanted them to know how to handle it when someone tries it (because they inevitably will) and they all knew very early that I wouldn't tolerate them doing it to anyone else.
Their teachers eventually told me that they were the first ones to go over there and stick up for other kids whenever someone was being bullied. I was very proud of them for that.
@futurebird
Yup. The radical feminist analysis is that gender roles and expectations are a system of putting people into boxes and saying any part of you that doesn't fit the box, means there is something wrong with you.
The radical approach is to do away with the boxes, let everyone express their full selves.
@futurebird I've been watching my kid grown up without as much of that gender rigidity. Perplexing as an adult relative outsider sometimes, but amazing to watch.
Middle school in San Francisco is a different world. Especially at a school for neurodiversity.
@sewblue@futurebird Saw many young males walking hand-in-hand in down town Addis, which would never work in Europe or America. As my world-wise host pointed out.
You understand that it's actually why many third-world people are against gay normalization¹, right ?
Same-sex intimate friendship and displays of affection is made possible there because of the taboo against homosexuality, since there's no ambiguity in such behaviors.
¹ the propaganda from US evangelicals make that opposition violent and hateful, but that's another problem
"Why can't two men just be best friends without it being gay???"
"Why does it matter if it's gay?"
Yeah. It's an issue. I worry this issue is used to try to tell people pushing for LGBTQ rights to "slow down" as if that matters, as if anyone is "going fast" ... I worry it's just another roadblock.
Of course men should be able to hold hands & hug and it not be "gay" as is "gay and BAD"
"What if people think you are gay?"
"Maybe I am! Who cares!"
As a teenager, the ever-recurring debate in group chats (usually organized by adults) was "is true friendship possible between a boy and a girl ?".
And the answer was largely no, because of the ambiguity inherent in such relations (cue the term "friendzoned").
So I'm not saying that problem is unsolvable, but at least it's a huge disruption, and people cannot be expected to adjust immediately.
@futurebird@lienrag@martinvermeer@sewblue this is similar to the idea that bisexuals are naturally cheaters. Do straight people automatically try to have sex with everyone they’re attracted to if they’re in a monogamous relationship? I don’t think so
@futurebird@lienrag@martinvermeer@sewblue yeah you're absolutely right I'm friends with many girls some of whom I find attractive but I'm happy being single. There's something very wrong with the mentality that we can't be friends.
@futurebird@lienrag@martinvermeer@sewblue as a lesbian who didn't understand she wasn't a boy, this made me so confused and isolated!
"I can be friends with no one" exactly, because boys are awful (because many of them are and because of the pressure on me to be a boy), and I'm not allowed to be beast girls either.
@futurebird@lienrag@martinvermeer@sewblue I once walked through a large sidewalk BBQ party that was having this discussion and I had to tell them that bisexuals are just friends with anyone who's cool.
Also "gender norms are dumb" seems to be a very bisexual opinion
When I've looked at it as an adult I find the "is true friendship possible between a boy and a girl ?" conversation to more often be about control in particular men who want to control women. Because the people who said such friendships were "impossible" would also insist that a "true" girlfriend, a good and chaste girlfriend (or wife) would never speak to men alone unless it was unavoidable.
It seemed odd to me that this ideal true, loyal woman could not be trusted to be around men alone. I have a great deal of trust for my partner. And that is exactly why I don't worry about who he's alone with. In particular I feel he has enough respect for me that he wouldn't hide something that he knew might matter or hurt me from me like that. I trust him, and it feels good to be able to trust someone.
But these guys who didn't want to think about "their girl" talking to other guys couldn't seem to conceive of giving that kind of trust to a woman. Which frankly made me wonder if they thought of women as entire people, as complex, human enough to be trusted rather than... herded ... like an animal you must keep separate from the opposite sex lest it breed.
There are some ugly ideas under the "is true friendship possible between a boy and a girl ?" question.
@futurebird@lienrag@martinvermeer@sewblue Growing up in the 1990s, the "you can't be Just Friends with the gender you like" thing really screwed me up for a while. Not only were most of the few friends I managed to make girls (because I was never boyish enough for the boys) but as I came to realize my own bisexuality I really struggled with the question of who I should be allowed to even have platonic friendships with.
Yes. Primarily I think it's someone you know well enough that you can personally trust them. A lot of people think it's someone you like or who is nice to you, but those are very surface-level things of less real value.
I once encountered a deeply unwell "red pilled" young man who calmly explained to me that "women can't be friends" ... friendship, you see, was something that could only occur between two red-blooded heterosexual men. He had a whole theory about women only seeking relationships for personal gain. And thus women were both not interested in sex OR in trust and friendship.
It was very disturbing to talk to someone face to face who was so open in his disdain for my humanity.
And I told him as much. Then he said I was being irrational and emotional (like a woman) which was so predictable of a response that I started laughing and really couldn't stop even though I wanted to.
Looking back I think my questioning and debunking of his ideas about relationships and women made him deeply uncomfortable and he was just doing his best to hurt my feelings... whereas I was trying to understand how his mind worked and fascinated in a kind of horrified way.
He'd been holding court until I showed up in that conversation. Those people never invited me to hang out again. (Thank god.)
These guys do so much harm but I can’t help but feel bad from them. They’re so intent on denying themselves the best parts of life. All to try to preserve a sense of patriarchal superiority .
The way they talk about "relationships" is so transactional and cynical. They are open about expecting next to nothing from others, but especially women in the way of trust or real respect. "She will leave your for an Alpha with more money as soon as one comes along." (She never cared about you and has no issue hurting you. She was literally just there for... free drinks and dinner I guess?)
And the things is: such cynical transactional women (and men, and people of all genders) do exist! And there is no faster way to find them than to approach relationships as these men suggest. Their tactics and "negging" weed out anyone capable of really loving them. Then they are shocked when every woman they encounter is a transactional creature without feelings like themselves.
I used to think this was more about young men who were just... well horny and who probably needed to learn how to have more casual relationships in a way that respects everyone, which I think is possible. There are, in fact, many horny women as well. Ya'll can find each other and use protection and be open about it not being a serious thing. This is something adult humans can do.
These young men are deeply, dangerously alone. And maybe that's why they sometimes talk about "male friendship" in these odd glowing terms. They know a woman will never be their friends and the chances with men aren't good either given all the cynicism, and contempt for other people.
I think part is a defensive reaction on part of these men; if you are attracted to women and you don't quite know what they will do and are dependent on their judgment, that can feel very dangerous and unsettling. A loss of control. So it's easier to just blame and defend your ego, to counter the dissonance.
Remembering that women are people is something that would likely make it easier
The irony of the least rational men calling all women irrational always gets to me. Rationality requires self awareness and an understanding of how bias affects your thoughts and perceptions. And these guys have none of that.
@futurebird I really appreciate this post. I grew up as a cis het boy with small feet. Absurdly, I took a lot of shit for this as a teenager, lots of subtle and not so subtle attacks on my perceived masculinity. Decades later, I'm still healing from it, still trying to bundle up all the internalized masculine norms and the shame, isolation and violence that grow from those norms, and throw them out of my psyche.
I do have some gratitude for my small feet now. I realize they forced me to approach masculinity from a different angle, and I think I'm a happier and healthier adult man because of it.
All that is to say, solidarity from an otherwise privileged cis het man who has felt the sting of bullshit gendering!
@futurebird
I was frequently subjected to violence all throughout my childhood, and the most frequent excuses, and the ones the adults respected the most, all revolved around not preforming gender correctly.
@futurebird I have always hated bras and continue to feel forced into wearing them by social expectations. The first time it was some bully girls in middle school locker rooms. Now it's just some sort of ... This is expected as part of professional wear. There's (large) men with at least the same size boobs as me working for the same organization and I bet we'd all be more comfortable if it was part of dressing comfortably rather than dressing gendered.