We really are scared sometimes
5d 6h ago by piefed.blahaj.zone/u/LadyButterfly in womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone from piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone
CONTENT NOTICE: This comment will contains mention of: misogyny ; transmisogyny ; violence targeted at women, as well as specifically trans women ; psychophobic comments.
Y u p. All the fucking time.
Men just can't understand this. I'm sorry my cis bros, but you simply can't. When society still viewed me as a guy before I transitioned, no matter how empathetic I tried to be to other women, it took actually living as one to actually understand that. Hell, cis women grow their whole lives facing that crap so they internalize it and talking to them, I'm often realizing that they just don't notice how often it's happening to them because of how much of an instinct it's become to them. Multiple women have openly doubted the frequency of my experiences because of that, and it hurts, but I also understand why.
Plus, I invite you to look at the statistics around trans women specifically, they're fucking terrifying. But yeah, every time a dude comes to me, I become an entirely different person for the duration of the interaction. I take my most feminine voice that I can muster, I always keep a smile, I always try to be nice even the face of the most disgusting shit being thrown at me, and it's not because I stand by some principles of being the bigger the person or whatever, no, it's because in the back of my head, I keep thinking: "I don't want to become a statistic".
And when some guy tells me: "Oh, If I were you, I would just tell them to fuck off or pretend to be crazy" or whatever to scare them off, first off, fuck you and your psychophobia, and second: "If I were you", well that's the thing isn't it? You're not me, you're him. Don't tell me what to do or what to feel.
IF YOU ARE A MAN READING THIS AND YOU WANT TO RESPOND TO ME: First off, read my last sentence. And second, read Rule 1.
It’s fight, flight, freeze, and fawn for a reason. They’re all ways of trying to escape a dangerous situation.
My ex husband got angry with me once for this. I commuted via bus early in the mornings and I stupidly picked a window seat one day. A man sat next to me, blocking me in between him and the window, and then proceeded to push his thigh against mine and put his hand on my knee through the commute. Because it was a morning bus, the drivers keep the lights off for people to snooze. I froze, completely froze. And then I got yelled at by my partner for supposedly welcoming this man’s advances.
I’m sorry you’ve experienced this as well. Many warm thoughts and positivity being sent your way 💕
I want to scream reading this. I fucking hate them both but I can't say which one I hate more. Glad that piece of shit is your ex-husband.
I get fawn from cptsd and it fucking sucks. It comes with people pleasing and saying yes to things you don't want to do. It's really hard to break if formed as a coping mechanism in childhood. Like I'll literally be trying to say no and I just say yes instead.
Oh I could cut a bitch. Never let your partner speak to you this way. I hope he apologized at least.
Oh it's ok, I divorced his ass :)
Good to hear
Good call
<3
sorry, what is fawn? i've not heard of that one before.
Being agreeable and sweet in response to potentially lessen an attack.
This is largely why I don’t talk to any men I’m not already close friends with.
Jesus lady, you nailed it.
you realize the majority of major assaults and the like happen from within the circle of trust
father, uncle, priest boss etc
That seems more like an issue with what you call a "circle of trust". You can't choose your father or uncle. You can't choose your priest until you're an adult unless your parents let you, and even then the community can apply a lot of pressure. And being able to choose your boss is a privilege that many people don't have.
So how are those supposed to be "positions of trust" if you can't fire them if they aren't trustworthy?
Close friends that you picked and vetted yourself are far more trustworthy than any family member or authority figure who haven't made it through the same vetting process.
I do.
I generally don’t associate with men, with rare, rare exception.
Only with my husband with me for me
I’m so glad we had a man here to let us know which men are dangerous.
Thank you for your unasked opinion. We were simply unaware that our fathers and uncles and priests rape us.
We should all totally trust strangers now, you’re totally right.
Us women are just so fucking stupid, y’know?
Yeeeeep.
Men can't understand. I am shocked how much of woman's experiences were invisible to me when I looked like a man. I can say from experience, men are literally blind to what we go through.
Whether or not I count as a man reading this depends on your point of view I guess; I'm trans feminine but I haven't socially transitioned anywhere except the internet.
I think I at least partially understood this even before I realised I was trans, but that probably came from having had the shit kicked out of me a few times before, for unrelated reasons.
It's the main reason I'm too scared to socially transition, and quite frankly I'm considering detransitioning because I'm not sure I can deal with the fear.
As far as I'm concerned, you're a woman. Plus I mean, look at you, you're already suffering and being crippled by misogyny. It's already preventing you from existing as you want to be. You're a woman.
As for the rest of what you said. I want to tell you something. I think you're making a mistake.
I'm part of a mutual aid network. I get to see and talk to a lot of trans people. Your story is a very common one, and I can tell you this: Every single person that I have met like you eventually eecided to go ahead and actually transition socially and all had the same thing to say: I wish I did it sooner.
Being trans comes with a lot of suffering sadly, but not just. Quite the contrary. It's so much more than this. And, in a lot of ways, it's not that it makes the pain worth it, it gives it meaning. It makes it makes sense. You're not just suffering in the void anymore. It won't fix any of your problems, but it will give you so many reasons to fix them.
There was never a good time to transition. And because of that, the best time to transition is always now. No matter how painful things can be, living through life and through these pains as yourself, your real self is always better. Even that pain at least can be real, but it's not just that. It is so much more than pain. It's community, it's living, it's freeing. It's so much joy that most people will never be able to understand.
If being transfeminine is who you are, you can try and run away from it, but it will chase you and it will find you eventually. You're trying to avoid something that can't be avoided. You can't change who you are. You can't wish it away. One day it will need to come out, and when you do that, no matter when it is, you will be filled with regret and bitterness about not having done it sooner. Might as well do it now.
You can do it.
You deserve it.
It's worth it.
Don't let anyone stop you.
Go be you, girl.
Nailed it. I think a large part of it is caused by the sheer amount of testosterone in men's bodies. When I was still forced on T, I was so much hornier, in a sense of, look around, want to talk, and so on. I didn't like being on all that T myself, -- it felt as if I had no control over my desires. I did control what I actually do, though. I never really spoke because I was a bit too shy.
But part of it, is also probably the toxic culture around masculinity that perpetuates around some of them. Like talking about us as if we're objects, being told to man up, not addressing each others' sexist remarks, and so on. And that culture is often put through top-down and between peers.
When I was on testosterone, my sexual drive was a problem. It doesn't help because I'm on the asexual spectrum, and it felt just like this primal instinct, this need that I had, and I hated it. However, I don't think it's a biological issue. I think a lot of that would have been helped if I wasn't taught some bullshit about it being just a natural way of things. That men have this primal desire for sex, and that women don't desire it as much or whatever.
No, we have different ways of handling our emotions and our brains, and what we need isn't just a blanket, "well, biology." No, it's a "how do we handle these things? How do we learn to live with a body that's under testosterone? With a body that's under estrogen?" That kind of things. We're never taught that. Never. And on top of that, men are taught that women are a completely different species, one that is inherently inferior.
In fact I know it's not a problem because trans men don't have that issue, trans men who are under testosterone face changes that are challenging to them and eventually they may get assimilated into society depending on if they want and achieve a certain level of passing which testosterone helps a ton with that, it depends on if you want or not. But if they do, yeah eventually they get kind of like blinded to the suffering of women around them, because they don't go through it anymore, they don't have to deal with it anymore and they start seeing it less.
However I have yet to see any trans men becoming these predatorial shits that cis men are around women. And I'm not trying to say that they can't be predatory with women, anyone can be. Trans men are not excluded from misogyny. First of all because no one is, and second, because at the end of the day, they are still men and the longer they spend their lives living as men, the bigger the issue become with them, because they forget more and more about what it was like before for them when they were still perceived as not the gender identity they actually are by society.
Yes, it's all men and that includes trans men. But I strongly believe that for the most part. They are at the top of that and not the bottom in a good way.
When I find out that a guy is trans, I get relieved instantly. I don't have to worry about my drink with him. I don't have to worry about what his intentions are in speaking to me. I don't have to worry about him following me home. I don't have to worry about what is going to happen to me after we have sex because I'm a trans woman. I don't have to worry about any of that with a trans guy. Ever!
And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that, contrary to cisgender men, trans men, no matter how testosterone-filled they are, don't tend to be haunted by this deeply-rooted fear of finding out that they're gay, controlling their entire fucking lives. I swear to god if we could take this away from men, if we could make them feel comfortable with the idea that maybe they're not heterosexual and that's completely okay, so many problems would be solved. It's fucking insane how so much of men's issues are dictated by this because it's why they can't show a affection to one another and it's why they're such lonely miserable motherfuckers all the fucking time because they're unable to get affection without feeling like it's emasculating them.
The problem is not testosterone. The problem is never being taught how to handle their emotions. The problem is living in a society that is dominated by men, aka patriarchy, and a society that is like that to such an extent, and that has been like that for such a long time, that most people are completely incapable of acknowledging it, let alone conceive it. That's the thing you see with misogyny and you see it with trans misogyny and you can also see it with transandrophobia, aka: bigotry against trans men, which is a real issue that we are often unaware of, and it's also why I am so insistent on their defense, especially in trans online spaces that are often dominated by trans feminine people and especially on the fediverse, for example. We have issues with transfeminine people hating transmasculine people. That is a big problem. But anyway, it often comes down to this:
Testosterone... is not magic.
We have a tendency to give it all sorts of properties that it simply doesn't have. It's the magic hormone. It's the reason why trans women can't participate in sports, and it's the reason why trans men can't participate in sports either. It's the reason why men behave the way that they do. It's the reason why women are inferior. It's all because testosterone and its magical properties. It somehow makes you more aggressive, more sexual, more prone to anger, more this, more that, stronger, better... But it doesn't do most of these things actually.
You can take the testosterone out of a cis guy and that won't fix him. In fact, I invite you to look into what happens to men that are chemically castrated, which is basically being put on the testosterone blocker with no substitute. It's barbaric. And it doesn't work. The results are often taking a damaged individual and essentially finishing what their fucked-up childhood or whatever happened to them started and breaking them.
Anyway, I could go on and on and on. We don't have a testosterone problem, we have a patriarchy problem.
I really appreciate your thoughtful and kind and interesting comments like this one. Thank you for sharing your voice!
Thank you. This means a lot.
Yeah. It's worse for young women. We have facts and statistics on it. We're talking about women's experiences because this is a women's community, one of the few places on the internet where we can talk about the shit we go through without someone saying "men have it bad too." We know, we hear men's opinions all the time.
What even is that sentence? I can see you're trying to make a point but have no idea what it is.
Did you check out rule 1? Does it apply to you?
i’ve not been disrespectful
Disobeying the rules of a group is by definition disrespect.
if you don’t want my opinion, don’t broadcast it out into public where i will read it
If we don't want your opinion, we put that in the group rules. Your decision to not bother with rules just means you're a sociopath.
this was literally two down from my top
Who cares? You're still against the rules. AND YOU'RE AGAINST THE RULES AGAIN. You just can't seem to comprehend the notion of rules.
ZDL you're being really unfair. Our rules were written by WOMEN and are therefore stupid, pointless rules that men can ignore. Now please sit quietly so men can talk at you.
I know, I know. I'm such a bitch, not just smiling and nodding at the wisdom of our masculine overlords.
Well I hope you've learned your lesson
I don't miss my teenage years. I don't miss cars passing real slow in the summertime when my arms and legs were bare, old men asking my name and where I lived, or just whistling as they passed. I memorized fake answers to the most common questions because they always got angry when I refused. I started carrying a knife in my boot just in case.
What's funny is I haven't had that sort of attention in a long long looong time. But in Asia, every time I pass a cafe where there's a group of men, I get an invitation to join them for a drink.
And I've fallen right back into old habits - give them a smile and wave, with apologetic body language, but carefully maintain a distance and carrying on walking.
If it wasn't so hot I could wear a baggy T-shirt and trousers, and I wouldn't get any of this.
In most places in Asia you're in a lot less physical danger than in North America, but it's still unnerving and off-putting as Hell when that happens, yes.
Yeah, I haven't felt in any real danger, even when walking around at night in places without any street lights ... but I was surprised that my old reactions came back automatically.
Absolutely this. And now be in one of the ethnic groups that is the most popular fetish among North American men… There's a reason Dad taught me how to use knives.
I can't even imagine, but you've got my knife, too.
And my axe?
Sure you can! Just watch any Japanimation fan! 😆
Oh, my naive innocence when I was in middle school and would ride my bike, cars would honk, and I'd think, "Am I too close to the road?" But it would happen even when I was on the sidewalk, and I was just confused...
I myself wear a ring (appearing to be married) and have a form of pepperspray with me.
In before "not all men"
I think they're staying away from this one lol. There's not enough ambiguity in the meme for them to bust in here and go "Ummm ACKSHUALLY..."
Not all men but always a man
I feel the lyrics of What it means to be a girl are pretty related to this post.
Cookie feminist checking in. And yes that is how I started my journey but it led me down the path of actually seeing and understanding the underlying systemic problem.
So my stance: any way you can get them into the boat.
That explains it