There's a fascinating dynamic where any question about why females are so overrepresented among youth seeking transition gets turned from “what’s going on with [girls]?” to “never mind the [girls]—what about the missing [boys]?”
This is such an important point -- we don't SEE girls. When you think of the various epidemics that have spread among girls over the years, a lot of them seem to play out the ambivalence many of us feel about being seen: eating disorders (the struggle to be smaller), self-harm (scars may draw attention to the fact we're in pain), transition (attempts to erase our femaleness). Even older "ailments" like conversion disorder (where a certain part of your body may become paralyzed or numb) or hysterical neuroses in which a girl might display very bizarre behavior seem to have the effect of making us seen but also not seen.
Perhaps we're seen as ill but not seen as oppressed. This is similar to what happens in cases of abuse -- a girl might start wetting the bed or display overly sexualized behavior which brings her attention but if we focus on the behavior or symptom and blame her for it, we don't see that she's being abused. Girls have been begging us for centuries to look deeper.
I agree and see this as the extreme. Even when there is no Illness, physical or mental, girls and women are and have always been overlooked and disappeared while being healthy, capable, intelligent, and talented. The only time girls and women have not been overlooked is when they are objectified for use by others, mostly male.
Sadly, my internal misogynist has told me that women are becoming too present in society 🙄 - too many females in the male-dominated society (how about that?); that so many women in public positions sometimes makes me uncomfortable 😅. And I've been working on excising that asshole from my thinking the last couple of years but it is a stubborn way of thinking borne by constant training from childhood by parents, community, and society.
When RGB was asked how many women on the SCOTUS is enough and she answered "When there are nine" and I inwardly cringed until she expanded on the thought with the fact that until Sandra Day O'Connor there were no women on the SCOTUS so it's perfectly logical to expect there to be nine female justices at some point in the future. Yay, equity.
But, yeah, bc of that training for everyone it's very easy to disregard females, esp. when we can so easily disappear them with faux diagnoses.
Indeed. I was thinking about how in the US, in order to balance things out in terms of the presidency, we'd have to have nothing but female presidents for something like 230 years.
We’re not girls. Stop acting like we’re too dumb and stupid to understand our identities just because we were born with vaginas. Your sexism is appalling.
Facts are inconvenient things, and the fact is if you were born with a vagina, you are, in fact, a girl, with everything that entails both good and bad. It is inescapable.
"Scotland’s gender clinic for children doesn’t even track patients’ sex. Elective double mastectomies on teenage girls become ‘chest reconstruction’ on ‘boys.’ See how the moral calculus shifts?"
This is such an important point -- we don't SEE girls. When you think of the various epidemics that have spread among girls over the years, a lot of them seem to play out the ambivalence many of us feel about being seen: eating disorders (the struggle to be smaller), self-harm (scars may draw attention to the fact we're in pain), transition (attempts to erase our femaleness). Even older "ailments" like conversion disorder (where a certain part of your body may become paralyzed or numb) or hysterical neuroses in which a girl might display very bizarre behavior seem to have the effect of making us seen but also not seen.
Perhaps we're seen as ill but not seen as oppressed. This is similar to what happens in cases of abuse -- a girl might start wetting the bed or display overly sexualized behavior which brings her attention but if we focus on the behavior or symptom and blame her for it, we don't see that she's being abused. Girls have been begging us for centuries to look deeper.
I agree and see this as the extreme. Even when there is no Illness, physical or mental, girls and women are and have always been overlooked and disappeared while being healthy, capable, intelligent, and talented. The only time girls and women have not been overlooked is when they are objectified for use by others, mostly male.
Sadly, my internal misogynist has told me that women are becoming too present in society 🙄 - too many females in the male-dominated society (how about that?); that so many women in public positions sometimes makes me uncomfortable 😅. And I've been working on excising that asshole from my thinking the last couple of years but it is a stubborn way of thinking borne by constant training from childhood by parents, community, and society.
When RGB was asked how many women on the SCOTUS is enough and she answered "When there are nine" and I inwardly cringed until she expanded on the thought with the fact that until Sandra Day O'Connor there were no women on the SCOTUS so it's perfectly logical to expect there to be nine female justices at some point in the future. Yay, equity.
But, yeah, bc of that training for everyone it's very easy to disregard females, esp. when we can so easily disappear them with faux diagnoses.
Indeed. I was thinking about how in the US, in order to balance things out in terms of the presidency, we'd have to have nothing but female presidents for something like 230 years.
We’re not girls. Stop acting like we’re too dumb and stupid to understand our identities just because we were born with vaginas. Your sexism is appalling.
I don't think you're dumb or stupid. I think if I were 15 years younger, I'd be seeking the same way out.
Facts are inconvenient things, and the fact is if you were born with a vagina, you are, in fact, a girl, with everything that entails both good and bad. It is inescapable.
"Scotland’s gender clinic for children doesn’t even track patients’ sex. Elective double mastectomies on teenage girls become ‘chest reconstruction’ on ‘boys.’ See how the moral calculus shifts?"
Have they no shame? No decency?