Okay here me out.
-
@june_thalia_michael uhm... when I reached age 11 i was not allowed to have any "boy friendships" anymore and i think the majority of the alienation started with 12 years so...
Well.
I was good at befriending cis boys before I hit puberty (which was also before I hit age 11) and after that I was denied by my parents.@singingWolf that's absolutely horrible
. I'm sorry your parents did that to you.I was allowed to be friends with everyone and I was so upset and felt utterly betrayed when I found out that the relationships were only platonic from my side while I was being hit on without realising. That was gutting. (I was seventeen and I've known the guys since we were all 14-16. One essentially since I was seven.)
-
@Zahlenzauberin for me, one way to separate the two is asking in what way I am unlike.
Is it about likes and dislikes (pink, math, dresses, beer, reading romantasy, watching football,...)? These have no gender and people of all and no genders share them.
Is it about how I want to be addressed, seen, how I think about myself? Now these are about gender or lack thereof.
@quidcumque @singingWolf I just never knew how to meaningfully interact with the other girls. I had some girls as friends but to this day throw me in a mixed group and I always will end up with the guys.
-
@singingWolf that's absolutely horrible
. I'm sorry your parents did that to you.I was allowed to be friends with everyone and I was so upset and felt utterly betrayed when I found out that the relationships were only platonic from my side while I was being hit on without realising. That was gutting. (I was seventeen and I've known the guys since we were all 14-16. One essentially since I was seven.)
@june_thalia_michael that also sounds gutting. I feel sorry you went through that betrayal.
-
@quidcumque @singingWolf I just never knew how to meaningfully interact with the other girls. I had some girls as friends but to this day throw me in a mixed group and I always will end up with the guys.
@Zahlenzauberin @quidcumque for me it definitely depends on queerness / how conventional people are or rather how they are not.
When I am in a group of men who solely do smalltalk about cars and tools and beer, I am not able to talk.
If the group is more artsy /queer, thats when I can do better talks.
But even then.
I think that I havent quite learned yet how to effectively communicate with the majority of men yet regardles of their orientation / queerness. -
@faithisleaping i think its a really important thing to share because I used to think "I'm not like other girls" and here comes my autistic side as well that I didn't even understand that other girls who used to say that were saying it from a place of "horny"
While I was simply also bullied and cast out from other girls, so honestly no wonder I genuinely just believed in the "I'm not like other girls" (and in the end it made sense because in the end I turned out to be not a girl at all, but back then I simply lacked the necessary insight to even pick up that the "im not like other girls" thing from others was just a mating tactic and not coming from a place of alienation).@singingWolf I spent about a decade thinking that I was just one of the "good guys" in engineering. You know. The ones that are actually kind to women and not sexist assholes.
In fact, about 8 years ago now, I had a weird experience with a transmasc non-binary coworker who also wasn't out yet. They were joining my team and I was so excited to have a "woman" on the team. I tried to be all supportive and helpful and they sort of held me at arms length.
Given their professional experience at that company, they were absolutely right to hold any man shaped person at arms length. But also, now that we're both out and I know what the actual gender dynamics are, I kind of have to laugh about it.
-
@june_thalia_michael that also sounds gutting. I feel sorry you went through that betrayal.
@singingWolf this genuinely helps healing a bit, to read from another person that yes, my feelings about this are valid and understandable. Thank you, I appreciate it!
-
Okay here me out.
There is a distinction and a huge difference between a pick me girl who says she is not like other girls to appease boys.
And
A transmasc person who hasn't realised yet that they are trans and still think "i'm not like other girls" but in an honest raw way that has actually nothing to do with trying to get hook ups with boys but rather comes from a place of honestly felt alienation with the wrongly assumed gender.
The origins are complete different galaxies.@singingWolf
️ this -
@quidcumque @singingWolf I just never knew how to meaningfully interact with the other girls. I had some girls as friends but to this day throw me in a mixed group and I always will end up with the guys.
@Zahlenzauberin I think that's about preference too: for communication styles, for communication topics.
(I don't know how to interact with anyone, really; I *am* autistic, after all. A conversation style based around information exchange works best for me.)
FWIW, my partner, a cis man, always ends up with the women in a group!
-
@Zahlenzauberin I think that's about preference too: for communication styles, for communication topics.
(I don't know how to interact with anyone, really; I *am* autistic, after all. A conversation style based around information exchange works best for me.)
FWIW, my partner, a cis man, always ends up with the women in a group!
@quidcumque @singingWolf yeah I think you're right. During my youth being non binary wasn't something that existed in my framework of gender. So I tried to explain my awkwardness around girls away with it being their fault. Being all giggly and not interested in real stuff like maths, science or videogames. Later I became a politically active feminist and learned to question the assumptions I made about feminine behaviour, and the only category I fit in then was I had been one of the "pick me girls" which was seen as a kind of traitor to womens liberation and in my own mind my own gender. Today I know what was "wrong" with me and I know most of it wasn't my fault as this was one of the few ways people like me could exist in this world. As the weird one who talked videogames, went dancing with the guys when they wanted to pick up girls, their ear when said girls broke their hearts and also never being their girlfriend
(1/2)
-
@quidcumque @singingWolf yeah I think you're right. During my youth being non binary wasn't something that existed in my framework of gender. So I tried to explain my awkwardness around girls away with it being their fault. Being all giggly and not interested in real stuff like maths, science or videogames. Later I became a politically active feminist and learned to question the assumptions I made about feminine behaviour, and the only category I fit in then was I had been one of the "pick me girls" which was seen as a kind of traitor to womens liberation and in my own mind my own gender. Today I know what was "wrong" with me and I know most of it wasn't my fault as this was one of the few ways people like me could exist in this world. As the weird one who talked videogames, went dancing with the guys when they wanted to pick up girls, their ear when said girls broke their hearts and also never being their girlfriend
(1/2)
@quidcumque @singingWolf
Knitting like a grandma, singing a really high soprano and having breasts bigger than all my peers. I existed in a liminal space between genders.But to this day the I struggle with the way I see myself when I think about this time, rationally it all makes sense now but there is still an underlying sense of shame about the way I talked and thought about girls back then.
BTW My husband also always ends up with the girls
(2/2)
-
@quidcumque @singingWolf
Knitting like a grandma, singing a really high soprano and having breasts bigger than all my peers. I existed in a liminal space between genders.But to this day the I struggle with the way I see myself when I think about this time, rationally it all makes sense now but there is still an underlying sense of shame about the way I talked and thought about girls back then.
BTW My husband also always ends up with the girls
(2/2)
@Zahlenzauberin I think the difference between "pick me" and "just not a femme" is precisely that derision. It's perfectly possible, and okay, to dislike things without making fun of people who like them!
But that's not something most teenagers can do, and it's extra hard if it's about things that the sexist culture around you *also* belittles and makes fun of.
(I am guilty of the same thing!)
-
@quidcumque @singingWolf yeah I think you're right. During my youth being non binary wasn't something that existed in my framework of gender. So I tried to explain my awkwardness around girls away with it being their fault. Being all giggly and not interested in real stuff like maths, science or videogames. Later I became a politically active feminist and learned to question the assumptions I made about feminine behaviour, and the only category I fit in then was I had been one of the "pick me girls" which was seen as a kind of traitor to womens liberation and in my own mind my own gender. Today I know what was "wrong" with me and I know most of it wasn't my fault as this was one of the few ways people like me could exist in this world. As the weird one who talked videogames, went dancing with the guys when they wanted to pick up girls, their ear when said girls broke their hearts and also never being their girlfriend
(1/2)
@Zahlenzauberin I identified as a lesbian* as a teenager and young adult; I think that helped me process how I'm mostly like an average nerdy dude without being a dude (I am so stereotypical in my interests that friends asked whether I was a trans man!).
*I now know I'm bisexual
-
R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
