I wrote this after responding to a self castration story, and a suicide storie.
This deals with those of us that are born with a small extra amount of flesh between our legs, that stamps us as male, and set us on a fixed course in life.
I often wonder. If men and women were treated the same, dressed the same, played the same roles in society. Would those that hate their bodies feel the need to end it, or remove the offending parts?
Is it really you extra bits, or the fact that having them forces a lifestyle on you. Having extra flesh between your legs at birth means society decides you must live in a certain way.
If you think about it, a handful of flesh between your legs, and that handful decides an entire different life plan for you. (I know there are more internal differences). At birth, if your genitals look a certain way and this maps out how you will be dressed, what jobs you will do, how people will relate to you etc.
It's bazaar when you think about it, some flesh that weighs less than a pack of sausages has that much power!
I'm not blaming anyone that's they way most societies have worked for thousands of years.
Many men are emotionally crippled, because society needed/needs big strong men that don't cry to go off and die in a war some day.
Men often don't get the emotional support that women/girls do. They get, "shut up, don't act like a girl". Must not coddle boys, in case they turn into "softies" . Boys are taught to bottle it up,and shut up.
We wonder why male suicides are twice that of women, and some men explode and commit mass murder because they can't talk through how they feel, for fear of being labeled weak.
Take away the odd pound of flesh, the fact that we love people with or without the same sexual bits as us and our skin pigmentation. We are all just human.
There should be no need for women's rights, gay rights, black rights. There should just be human rights. Until that day there will never be equality.
Some of us only hate their bodies because society says that that body means you have to live and act in a certain way.
When I was 5, I used to prey I would wake up a girl. I thought the only difference between boys and girls were clothes. I put on my mothers underwear thinking that this would make me a girl. All it got me was a sore backside and threats of more. I would often daydream of accidents where I lost my extra bits. I never considered suicide.
I am fairly lucky as I have always been told I had a "baby face", I'm only 5ft 9', so when I get the makeup right I don't look to bad as a woman.
I'm not in a position to know what a 6ft 6' person with a ""rugged" looking face feels when they try to pass.
What I'm saying it's not our bodies, it's what society decides how that body shape/type should live.
Bless you all that are in pain. As REM sang Everybody hurts, Hold on, Hold on.
Comments
The Feminist View
What you are talking about is the point made by TERFs Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. There would no such thing as "transgender" is it were not for gender which is a male construct designed to suppress women. But as you point out, the irony is that gender roles are even tougher on men than they are on women. So would say that is why we crave the easier passive role that has been created (by us, the biological males?).
Maryanne
True feminism
of which I am a supporter, is that we are all equal, irrespective of anything.
Angharad
Thanks Maryanne, I fly very
Thanks Maryanne, I fly very much "under the radar" only recently heard the expression TERFs. Not sure if it is a male construct or a natural one. In nature the physically strongest are usually the more dominant. Strong aggressive males breed strong aggressive children. That was necessary for survival. The most successful method usually wins
"Of the 76 non-human mammal species that exhibit leadership, only seven have females that take charge." Lifted from a website.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180434-the-7-non-human...
Feminist often go to one of the 7 and say, "Look, this proves it."
Human's have negated many aspects of natural selection now. Diseases that would kill of people before they reproduce and were passed on, are treatable now. The defective genes are therefore passed on.
What was once necessary for survival has ceased being so for a long while now. Those methods are harmful to our species now. The system that suppress women, also suppress men. It leads to aggressive, emotionally inept men running the world. If you go back 50 years, a boy that was interested in clothing design, or ballet, would have been labeled , "a queer", by his peers. Many women would have thought the same way.
We are all prisoners of an age old survival strategy, that is no longer necessary. I wonder how far we could go if we allowed people to be who they are, rather than keep them on rails.
Sorry, I went a bit off subject. The western world if massively better than it was. When I was young, LGBTQ was looked upon with disgust, it is a lot more acceptable today. I am happy women are allowed to be almost anything. For centuries, we have only been using 50% of our potential brainpower.
If the system gradually changes we will possibly be able to save our planet. Who knows?
Leeanna
TERFs
Thank you for the reference to the 7 species where females dominate, but I am not sure if I agree with Chelsea Whyte based on my limited knowledge of biology. The problem for TERFs is that the dependent and passive role has not been created by males, but by the fact of pregnancy and childbirth. It simply removes for a significant period the ability to compete, or perhaps it is better put but saying that for mammals it shifts the priority from dominance to fostering the young. Which makes me think that without that burden are transwomen a natural group to take leadership?
Maryanne
Hi Maryann, I totally agree
Hi Maryann, I totally agree with your comment "the dependent and passive role has not been created by males,"
Biology makes men and women chose different things. We were hunter gatherers for almost all of human history. Around 200,000 years. In warmer climates pregnant females had a better chance of surviving alone, but as we migrated to colder climates it got harder to survive.
Women are vulnerable in the later stages of pregnancy, and after childbirth. So behavior is a survival strategy.
Lone pregnant women would find it difficult to survive a winter and raise children. Women look for traits in men that indicate they will "stick around".
If they did the chance is their offspring would survive to pass on this trait.
Even today women want men they can trust that will stick with them to help raise children. This is creates an almost a genetic dependence on men.
TERFS tend to want to blame everything on men. It's a comfortable place to be when everything that goes wrong for you is someone else's fault.
Possibly it is nurture rather than nature, but my mother and my wife always look to me to make decisions. It used to annoy me when i tried to get my wife to make a decision. I used to think she was doing it just so she could blame me if things went wrong. Now I realise she just doesn't want to make the big decisions, in case they go wrong. In a crisis she tends to panic, where I quickly decide what we should do.
This is all starting to sound 1950's slap her around the face and say "pull yourself together"
Leeanna
Equality
In many Fiction stories I have read, equality is the practice. I'm not optimistic about that happening in reality. Homo Sapiens is a mean spirited, very smart predator where the females seem to be seen as a method of procreation.
Even in a world without gender roles
I honestly feel that I would still want to have surgery to get rid of that bit of 'extra' flesh.
Why?
Because it's not me.
It doesn't matter if people judge me for having it. It doesn't matter if I can dress how I want, be who I want, WITH who I want, whether I have it or not.
That piece is incorrect. It is wrong. It is not something that I am comfortable having attached to my body.
That piece is part of the reason why i can never have my own children. That piece dictates that even with a partner I choose, my sexual role options are limited to ones that feel wrong to me.
It is more than gender. It's more than sex, even. It's about who I am, and what my body says about that person on a primal level.
And the person I am wants those bits gone.
I haven't self-harmed more because I know the dangers of it than any other reason, and ultimately I want as much function out of the correct parts, when I get them, as I can have, meaning I have to suffer the indignity of the parts I have now until such time as I can get things done properly.
But I will. Because I need to.
Melanie E.
I wish you all the luck in
I wish you all the luck in the world, Melanie. In the UK it is difficult, but can be done on the NHS for free, if you jump through enough hoops.
I know the states can be horrendously expensive.
It's your body and you have the right to shape it as you wish.
Leeanna
Sometimes It's Our Genetics
Not trying to blame anyone. It is what it is. While still in diapers, mom wanted a girl and I wore little dresses. I do not know if she was trying to make me a girl or if it was just to facilitate changing diapers. Later around 4 years old, while sitting around an overheated wood stove, I looked at my brothers and stepbrothers and felt I was not like them. Looking at my stepsister and mom, I felt like I was like them. My stepfather was always beating me and threatening to kill me if I did not act like a man. Those beatings were severe, and before I was 10 I had forgotten all about being a girl. Later, I met a girl who was being abused and molested. I knew that I had to get her out of there. She also provided a companion and a vent for my testosterone fueled drives. She always wanted me to be more masculine, but genetics and my hatred of males didn't allow that. After raising three children and seeing them off, I became a woman as much as surgery would allow. Will I burn in hell for that? I think it was just me being me. I doubt that many of us got the opportunity to do what I did, and at times I regret my actions. I can not freely travel, though I did travel lots from the safety of the inside of a car. Nearing the end of life, I can say that I'm grateful for the good and not bitter for the pain that came my way. For me, as with most of us, I was just being me.