for men to wish to be a woman
Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
Oh plenty of things:
having respect for others
being honest
helping the needy
fair pay for fair work
honestly considering others’ perspectives
loyalty
Basically every virtue I was ever told was worthy to embody has been used against me as a weapon or a tool
And of the hundreds of people I know IRL less than 10% give any of these internal value or even attempted to put into practice
And here I’ve been a sucker all my life doing the proper social contract thing because I don’t like the way the world is shaping up and getting CONSTANTLY bent over for it
Child abuse. I thought it was normal to threaten children with violence for noncompliance. I thought it was normal to be afraid to misbehave or be suboptimal in school at the threat of violence.
When I was much younger: that normal people could see much further than me.
One of my oldest memories is going into a McDonald’s for the first time with glasses; I stopped and read the entire menu, because I couldn’t believe normal people could read it as soon as you walked in. I always had to get up to the counter to make it out.
I got a lot better in school after that!
Nobody “dresscoded” me at home. As soon as I was old enough to pick my own clothing, I could. What skirts or jeans or dresses I wore was my choice completely. My school also didn’t care much.
Blew my mind when I realized how many other girls had to sneak out with their clothes because the parents had a rule against tight jeans or whatever.
I still think my parents were right with this one. The kids with the strictest rules were always those with the craziest outfits. Can’t blame them, I’d have done the same.
Having a constant noise in your head/ears. It was so normal to me I didnt question it for many years. I randomly asked my friends about it one day and found out most people actually dont have an old crt tv like noise in their ears (and that its the disorder tinnitus).
In my case its not very severe thankfully, I dont notice it unless Im in a silent room or Im actively thinking about it.
Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Dude tells you he’s gay, immediately turns you trans. The danger is real, people! 😭
if my grandma were to be believed my dad’s babysitter when he was 4 years old infected him with homosexuality then he passed it onto his children because one (me) is trans and the other is bisexual
She’s not very harmful about it but is just really damn confused lol
So if I get this right, your dad turned homosexual from his babysitter… Then proceeded to have two, presumably biologic, kids?
Nah the dad was too strong to be brainwashed by the babysitter’s sexual deviance. But those poor baby sperm overhead everything and became infected with the gay.
presumably biologic kids
Yeah, my dad fell for the “get a woman to protect you from same sex attraction” propaganda. Over the years he changed his mind and learned that it’s not something to be ashamed of, but he was in a relationship with kids now.
when I came out and my mom was very verbally abusive he kinda had the realization that the relationship wasn’t benefiting the children either. Also my mom was very very controlling over who he could talk to/make friends with.
He is currently in the process of a divorce after 22 years and is coming to terms with how he let fear control his life for that long.
It’s kinda sad.
These must be the so called trans reading bed time stories turning kids gay i keep hearing so much about. /s
Small towns are terrible for this. And racism
There’s a reason cities are more liberal. Turns out being surrounded by different cultures, races, sexualities, and beliefs shows you that maybe they’re not so different. In a town of 15k middle American white folks, it’s hard to see another culture equally, let alone at all.
Same thing with college. There’s no such thing as a liberal or democratic college. It’s just that people are simply surrounded by other people. You learn all of those weird rules and things you were taught don’t actually hold up, and that everyone is kind of the same
Grew up semi-rural south and same thing but my parents took me to see The Birdhouse for some reason (I was 14) and I was like “OH!”
Not gay myself, but thankfully I did not grow up to be the bigoted person my parents wanted me to be.
it was semi-common in the early 2000s in cities, but not anymore after 2010.
Also: aphantasia
You have no idea how pissed I was to find out all of you had a fucking superpower, would have been nice to learn this before I wasted 3 years at graphic design
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
I think my family was the same but I turned out cuddly, maybe the difference was the cats?
Heh that was my experience too. But I grew up with a single parent who spent all his time working, so most people’s childhoods weren’t spent climbing 5 floors of scaffolding for fun
Met my partner and was astounded by her loving family
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Having basic empathy for other living beings, actually make it through hard work alone. Having enough time for a hobby.
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
My wife went through something similar. Took until she was in her 30s and we were pursuing IVF for someone to take her seriously and actually do the investigation to realize she had crazy scarring from endometriosis causing all kinds of issues.
It’s insane to me how much the modern medical community seems to normalize or straight up ignore this shit, like you said.
I realize we could have pushed harder, but when multiple doctors tell you “yeah, some women just experience periods differently, here’s 500mg Naproxen to help you through” you tend to believe it.
I’m so sorry. I hope that the two of you are doing well.
It’s an actual tragedy how women’s health is dealt with. They get brushed off because “women have been giving birth for hundreds of thousands of years!”, ignoring that it’s the number one thing that kills women!! So our reproductive health and concerns are ignored while the ability to reproduce is put onto a pedestal.
I fucking hate it.
My pop history theory is that it’s a latent cultural memory of the Biblical tradition. Remember how Eve was cursed with the pain of childbirth after giving Adam the fruit? Western culture has a history of seeing women’s pain as a result of this ancient curse. Now, I imagine few doctors today are explicitly thinking about the Garden of Eden when diagnosing patients, but the cultural memory remains, if greatly diluted and distorted.
alot of doctors are jaded asf, even to the point of laughing you out of thier office. i think women are often ignored for symptoms of pain.
Poor you! It must have been terribly frustrating that the doctor wouldn’t take you seriously. Seems to be a frequent thing women go through in the medical world. Hope you’re okay now.
Thank you.
Birth control was my savior and actively allowed me enjoy life again. 💕
Amazing! I wish it worked for my GF but that gave her (we found out very late), terrible side effects.
Sucks when doctors just assume things, it can cost lives.
It’s barbaric. They assume that if you’re girl/woman, most problems are basically “female hysteria”!
Not even “it could be [blank], you might want to keep an eye on that and report back if it doesn’t go away.” Nope! Diagnosis: dramatic.
And women die from this shit. Or become disabled / handicapped. Or it affects their long-term future if they want children. It’s awful.
Some people did a thing with a specially configured tens machine where the woman would turn it the levels up and up until it was at the level of their normal period pain and then the man would go through the same levels stages and be gasping and writhing before it got there.
Turns out men have been massively underestimating period pain for centuries.
That said, some women experienced far, far higher levels than normal and were encouraged to take that data to a non-dismissive healthcare professional.
As a dude, I want to believe that it’s less than it is because that’s just wholly unreasonable that women have to put up with that.
They’re were a lot of men who insisted on immediate medical attention who got told that their partners had tried that and absolutely nothing would come of it.
Hey, I know this is random, but was the pain, like, in the lower abdomen and like… Not really a muscle cramp, but deeper?And did physical activty make it better or worse? Asking for a friend. 👀
Pain was deep, ye. Can’t answer the question about physical activity because it rendered me unable to do any! But, yes, exerting any kind of physical effort seemed to make it worse.
I would lie on the cold bathroom floor every month with a heating pad / hot water bottle on my stomach, but it gave little relief through the simultaneous hot flashes and cold sweats.
Two things that actually helped somewhat if I could catch it hours before it started were: eating bananas (I suspect potassium helped with cramping), and, weirdly… drinking pickle juice. Idk what that was about, but it worked.
But have “your friend” get checked for endometriosis and PCOS!!! That shit can actually escape your uterus and scar up / destroy your other organs!!! No joke!!!
She might just do that because your experience sounds very similar to her “stories.” She also can’t move when it happens and is left pretty hobbled until it passes, but moving makes it worse… So I’ve heard. 👀
Physical abuse as a child.
My family was super meat-centric for all holidays except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Any meal where it’s physically possible to barbecue, we would. And a family barbecue meant hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, pork steaks, and beef steaks – one of each per person, plus a couple of extras. Sides were German-style slaw and potato salad. Buns were not included, but my grandma would always put a stack of white bread on the table (she was the only person who ever ate it).
When I started dating my husband and took him to a family holiday, he was shocked by the fact that my whole family was eating hamburgers and hot dogs with flatware instead of on buns. And he was actually sad at the lack of side dishes.
When I went to one of his family barbecues, I was sad that there was just one hamburger per person (already on a soggy bun) and a ton of weird casseroles.
