Yeah. I look at all that and shudder. So glad the trans fad wasn't around when I was in my teens and twenties-- just old enough to have missed it. I was a dorky teenage girl, some autistic traits, wore comfortable clothes because sensory issues. Bookish. Emotionally immature. And until age 24 or so, absolutely not ready to deal with the biosocial fact of being, you know, a girl. I had horrific periods and I wasn't interested in dating. I only got along with boys (girls were mean), so it was really upsetting when they started looking at me and seeing *boobs* instead of someone to swap books and talk about archaeology with. At 19, I shaved my head and adopted a masculine wardrobe. And it was one of my better youthful decisions: men stopped noticing me at all (it was like a gender-targeted cloak of invisibility). I never thought of myself as male, and never wanted to be male. But it took me a long time to embrace the idea of being female, and "presenting masculine" bought me some breathing room and a few years to figure it out, without having to navigate the fraught landscape of being an object of sexual interest to men.
I'm middle-aged, happy, settled, married mom of 3 now. Still not stereotypically feminine. Nothing wrong with that. Life's good. And I wouldn't have any of that if the genderfreaks had gotten hold of me, back when I was a confused, insecure, impressionable adolescent struggling with social ostracism and severe dysmenorrhea, and it looked like the whole "being female" thing was a sh*tty deal that wasn't ever going to get any better.
Thank you for your story. It so brilliantly describes what many of us grown ups can relate to, and the kind of a childhood that is increasingly in danger. I feel this and I have two teenagers.
How can it be in our enlightened times that women are losing ground? We once had more freedom to express ourselves, to explore a broader range of ideas and experiences, without the dogma of the gender cult breathing down our necks. Maybe the answer is telling the story of puberty. I know, it sounds incredibly awkward ;) But maybe women aren’t taking enough?
I’m just one more parent incredibly saddened by the evil of this situation and continue to hope for solutions.
Hi Shannon, I don't have solutions either but share your hope that talking (and writing) can help educate people and challenge them to question received dogma they might have accepted in the name of progressiveness or kindness or peer pressure.
There are also numerous legal battles underway, including by detransitioners whose bodies have been irrevocably harmed; that may make a difference.
This year's Cass Review in the UK did shut down so-called gender affirming care (genital and breast surgeries) for minors in many northern European countries, so that's big. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons reversed course and put a halt to such surgeries, too - the first US med society to do it.
And I've heard that some teens are pushing back too. We do have some momentum, lots of facts, and all the science on our side. Plus decades of feminism, as you note!
So glad you're on this team. Hope you can keep your teenagers safe, thinking for themselves, and standing strong.
Hi AJ, Yes. That does seem to be the case. They don't want to be men, but they're trying to opt out of what society tells them being a woman means. You may have seen this, but ICYMI, I I explore that here:
I rejected feminine trappings until my late teens, and at thirteen (1977) I was still trying not to "like boys" because a lot of boys at school were not nice to girls. I was barely aware how much I looked like a boy because of my clothes and hair, and I wasn't "confused." I just needed to keep growing and feel more comfortable among my peers. I've been thinking about the same thing you write about: If I were eleven-twelve-thirteen now, I'd think I was nonbinary, or someone would possibly suggest that I was. THAT would be confusing. "Maybe I'm not a girl": the thought of how insecure that would have made me in myself, makes my blood run cold.
Exactly. And I know from lots of reading, video-viewing, and research that this is indeed happening to many gender-non-conforming (athletic, lesbian, just plain active and not naturally inclined toward traditionally feminine stuff) girls. Horrifying. Thanks for writing.
I spotted this because your name is so familiar from work on the International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports (Berkshire). Good call, and much appreciated.. I was never a tomboy or athlete, but fit more with male communication style and always have had more male friends, so I've pondered this too.
As a middle school teacher for 33 years, I too have become very interested in this topic. Thank you for your insight. I’ve shared your articles with my fellow teachers and guidance counselors.
Not related but is Chloe the dog a Manchester terrier? They are rare in the US but awesome dogs. I have one.
Hi Bertha, Glad you're sharing my stories with others. Thank you! As for Chloe, she was a daschund - the runt of the litter, as I recall. Maybe 8 pounds. Great family pet for years but now, 50+ years later... I hope she's happily eating all day every day in her version of doggie heaven. :-)
I am absolutely heartbroken too. I'm very depressed about it, as well as outraged and disgusted. But mainly heartbroken.
I apologised (sort of) to a friend the other day, for banging on about it so much. He said "if it's something that you're interested in, I'll listen".
INTERESTED??? INTERESTED??? I'M NOT "INTERESTED" I'M ABSOLUTELY MIND F@#KED AND MORE OUTRAGED THAN I'VE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE!!!
Then I got an email from one of the MPs I wrote to, saying "thankyou for your interest". FFS!!!
I am so angry I'm constantly on the verge of passing out.
Germaine Greer was only half right when she said we fail to understand how much men hate us. I for one have certainly gotten the picture now! What I still fail to understand is how much many other women hate us. 😢
For anyone out there in the ether... Jordan Peterson just explained why women hate women. Because our society casts out post menopausal women due to the perception that we can no longer contribute to society the way a woman 'should', younger women hate us because they are fearful of becoming like us. Hehe... isn't the gift of 'Not Giving A Rats Arse what ANYONE thinks of us' the gift that keeps on giving when it's handed to us freely once we've run out of eggs?
Hi Lola, Just weighing in belatedly that I'm glad you're reading my column AND I disagree with Jordan Peterson. Do women hate women? What a sweeping statement. (And from a man? How did he become an expert on how women feel about other women?)
In my experience, we don't. Most of my best friends are women. Isn't that true for most women? I have detractors, but perceive no undercurrent of other women "hating" me.
And that's not what I hear from other women - friends, fans, teammates, writers, readers. I certainly agree that ageism and sexism are alive and well. And that disregarding criticism can be very freeing.
Just wanted to add this point of view. I love women and feel very loved by them. I bet a lot of female athletes, feminists, lesbians, and straight women with close women friends would agree.
Really glad you escaped the "undurcurrent of other women hating you" thing. Truly.
IMO the segment of the population where that phenomenon is most pronounced, and most painful, is among girls and women with at least some autistic traits (and probably also why they are overrepresented among young trans). In my experience-- and I've talked to others who say similar-- we tend to pick up one or two 'mother-hen' type women friends along the way, who either try to control us, or who simply are nice, sense that we need looking after, and appoint themselves to shepherd us through the social scene. This can go really well, or very poorly, depending on the woman. Otherwise, we mostly get along with boys/men. Men are more willing to judge/accept people based on competence and expertise (and often we have oodles of that). Women are more likely to judge based on things I can barely perceive, like *how I said it* or my level of eye contact, or whether I appropriately identified the dominant member of the social group and whether or not I interrupted her or corrected her at any point. They will judge me on my wardrobe and hairstyle. I'm never up to snuff on *any* of those things.
I can very often sit down and have a rewarding conversation with a dude I've just met, thanks to a broad knowledge of cars, and some experience working on them. It's much harder to find common ground with women, *and* once I've had a rollicking convo with a guy about... deep-sea diving, or comparing notes on worst oil-change mishaps or SF authors, I often as not find that I have inadvertently offended a wife or girlfriend by getting too chummy with their man. Icy stares ensue. Even though I wasn't interested, wasn't flirting, and was dressed like a nun. Fortunately that part's getting easier as I start to rack up visible signs of aging. I'm actually looking forward to my hair going gray.
The only consistent female friends I have are related to me.
Really interesting. Thanks for this story and analysis re: autistic traits. I had not thought of that.
I wonder if this might resonate: As you may know, Deborah Tannen writes about communication styles, and how (as an admittedly broad generalization) men tend to do "report-talk" (based on facts, figures, information; and can be in service of an attempt to establish who knows more or is dominant) and women tend to do "rapport talk" (based on seeking commonality among the dyad or group to establish an equal network of people, rather than hierarchy). Not true of everyone. Just something she's researched and concluded as a general observation.
Thus when a woman is more focused on report-talk, other women can find it unsettling (and men can welcome it). And when a man is focused on rapport-talk ("how do you feel about that?"), men might find that unsettling whereas women might be more likely to welcome it - b/c it's a language they speak and a feeling (rapport) they seek.
If autism-spectrum or -traited women are less likely to pick up on social cues, and more likely to be skillful at learning and sharing information... it could affect how women and men respond to her.
That is a pretty good fit, tallies extremely well with personal experience.
Autistic women often register socially as androgynous (regardless of sexual orientation). For whatever reason, this offends other women, but does not offend men. Certainly I am much more comfortable discussing *facts*, *information*, and *things* than I am discussing *people* and *feelings*.
I would take issue, though, with the idea that women's communication style is based on seeking commonality rather than hierarchy. This is blatantly false. Women have very rigid and ruthlessly-enforced social hierarchies, but at least in US culture, it is taboo to explicitly acknowledge the hierarchy... which makes everything 1000x more confusing than it needs to be, for those of us on the spectrum. We're terrible at figuring out unstated social rules. We would do way better if somebody'd just give us a chart, with all the women in the group listed in hierarchy order, and a basic set of rules for each rung of hierarchy: top level, must not interrupt or correct ever, no matter how wrong she is (identify by watching which direction everybody's feet and shoulders are facing in a conversation: queen bee is the focus of everyone else's body direction signals); mid level, ??? but use extreme caution because they are in competition with each other for top slot with the queen bee, and will not hesitate to chop you down and step over your corpse to get there; low level, OK to correct, interrupt, or even be casually rude to (these ladies apologize for things they didn't do, laugh at jokes that are not funny, and defer to everyone else's opinions).
But: the first rule of women's social hierarchy is, don't talk about women's social hierarchy. Second rule of women's social hierarchy is, don't talk about women's social hierarchy... I mean, shoot, maybe women who are *in* the hierarchy don't even notice it, the way fish don't notice water. For those of us excluded from its ranks, it's quite obvious there is one, and ridiculous that so many smart women seem determined not to notice it.
Hi Mariah, nice to hear from you... from the ether.
I don't agree with all of what JP says...and yes, he is a man making a lot of statements about women.... as they tend to do. But last March's report from the Human Development Programme estimated that 90% of the world are biased against women....that's a lot of women there. And I see it. And maybe it's not actual Hate, but I would like to see far more support.
Far more.
But I would argue with him on this point... that it's not so much menopausal women that cop it (hasn't been my experience at all) but single women. As a 56 year old who's been single most of my life (never married, no kids) the animosity aimed at me from women has been huge. It's almost as if they're jealous, that I can thrive without a man. In some countries I have been absolutely shunned, and massively pitied too. But mostly the negative attitude has been fear or dislike, and they've been outspoken about it too. It's only been in the last few years that people, both men and women, have started telling me they wish they had have done the same. It's very interesting, and you know, patriarchy has confused a lot of us, but there are still a lot of women who really do put some effort into taking down the women they seem to view as having dodged the bulllets.
I admire women massively, and love them too, and am loved and I think admired too, and understand by women more than men. But I will be sticking to my guns for now... there are too many women who do not like other women simply because they're women.
I would like to see a turn around before I die. xxx
You have a unique perspective and just added a lot of context. Helped me listen better once you took JP out of it. 😀 Glad you’re thriving as a single traveling woman! No wonder some who made different choices, and maybe more compromises, are envious. Thanks for sharing.
Indeed. We did have it figured out! That's what's so discouraging, infuriating, and worrisome. Gender identity is all about the exact same antiquated sex stereotypes we second-wave feminists identified and called out and worked hard to get rid of. Otherwise - if it weren't all based on stereotypes, but some "true inner feeling" unrelated to stereotypes, then we'd have girls who wear pink and love princesses declaring that they're born in the wrong body and really should be boys. Or vice versa - macho boys who claim they're "really" girls. Yet that never happens. Thanks for commenting, PhDBiologistMom!
Yeah. I look at all that and shudder. So glad the trans fad wasn't around when I was in my teens and twenties-- just old enough to have missed it. I was a dorky teenage girl, some autistic traits, wore comfortable clothes because sensory issues. Bookish. Emotionally immature. And until age 24 or so, absolutely not ready to deal with the biosocial fact of being, you know, a girl. I had horrific periods and I wasn't interested in dating. I only got along with boys (girls were mean), so it was really upsetting when they started looking at me and seeing *boobs* instead of someone to swap books and talk about archaeology with. At 19, I shaved my head and adopted a masculine wardrobe. And it was one of my better youthful decisions: men stopped noticing me at all (it was like a gender-targeted cloak of invisibility). I never thought of myself as male, and never wanted to be male. But it took me a long time to embrace the idea of being female, and "presenting masculine" bought me some breathing room and a few years to figure it out, without having to navigate the fraught landscape of being an object of sexual interest to men.
I'm middle-aged, happy, settled, married mom of 3 now. Still not stereotypically feminine. Nothing wrong with that. Life's good. And I wouldn't have any of that if the genderfreaks had gotten hold of me, back when I was a confused, insecure, impressionable adolescent struggling with social ostracism and severe dysmenorrhea, and it looked like the whole "being female" thing was a sh*tty deal that wasn't ever going to get any better.
Thank you for your story. It so brilliantly describes what many of us grown ups can relate to, and the kind of a childhood that is increasingly in danger. I feel this and I have two teenagers.
How can it be in our enlightened times that women are losing ground? We once had more freedom to express ourselves, to explore a broader range of ideas and experiences, without the dogma of the gender cult breathing down our necks. Maybe the answer is telling the story of puberty. I know, it sounds incredibly awkward ;) But maybe women aren’t taking enough?
I’m just one more parent incredibly saddened by the evil of this situation and continue to hope for solutions.
Hi Shannon, I don't have solutions either but share your hope that talking (and writing) can help educate people and challenge them to question received dogma they might have accepted in the name of progressiveness or kindness or peer pressure.
There are also numerous legal battles underway, including by detransitioners whose bodies have been irrevocably harmed; that may make a difference.
This year's Cass Review in the UK did shut down so-called gender affirming care (genital and breast surgeries) for minors in many northern European countries, so that's big. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons reversed course and put a halt to such surgeries, too - the first US med society to do it.
And I've heard that some teens are pushing back too. We do have some momentum, lots of facts, and all the science on our side. Plus decades of feminism, as you note!
So glad you're on this team. Hope you can keep your teenagers safe, thinking for themselves, and standing strong.
Yes, I wonder if many girls are declaring themselves "non-binary" just to get away from all the bullshit expectations put on girls.
Hi AJ, Yes. That does seem to be the case. They don't want to be men, but they're trying to opt out of what society tells them being a woman means. You may have seen this, but ICYMI, I I explore that here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/strongerwomen/p/what-does-non-binary-mean?r=1p665w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I rejected feminine trappings until my late teens, and at thirteen (1977) I was still trying not to "like boys" because a lot of boys at school were not nice to girls. I was barely aware how much I looked like a boy because of my clothes and hair, and I wasn't "confused." I just needed to keep growing and feel more comfortable among my peers. I've been thinking about the same thing you write about: If I were eleven-twelve-thirteen now, I'd think I was nonbinary, or someone would possibly suggest that I was. THAT would be confusing. "Maybe I'm not a girl": the thought of how insecure that would have made me in myself, makes my blood run cold.
Exactly. And I know from lots of reading, video-viewing, and research that this is indeed happening to many gender-non-conforming (athletic, lesbian, just plain active and not naturally inclined toward traditionally feminine stuff) girls. Horrifying. Thanks for writing.
The new Me Too! You nailed it. I am a member of this glorious Sisterhood. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Great! Delighted to meet another Sister. Thanks so much for your supportive comments, Martha.
Where can you buy male gender fluid? And can you water your plants with it to get erect stems ?
I spotted this because your name is so familiar from work on the International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports (Berkshire). Good call, and much appreciated.. I was never a tomboy or athlete, but fit more with male communication style and always have had more male friends, so I've pondered this too.
Interesting. Glad you found me here. And vice versa. Thanks Karen!
As a middle school teacher for 33 years, I too have become very interested in this topic. Thank you for your insight. I’ve shared your articles with my fellow teachers and guidance counselors.
Not related but is Chloe the dog a Manchester terrier? They are rare in the US but awesome dogs. I have one.
And yes, I bet you're getting an earful/eyeful there in Transgender Central: middle school.
Hi Bertha, Glad you're sharing my stories with others. Thank you! As for Chloe, she was a daschund - the runt of the litter, as I recall. Maybe 8 pounds. Great family pet for years but now, 50+ years later... I hope she's happily eating all day every day in her version of doggie heaven. :-)
I am absolutely heartbroken too. I'm very depressed about it, as well as outraged and disgusted. But mainly heartbroken.
I apologised (sort of) to a friend the other day, for banging on about it so much. He said "if it's something that you're interested in, I'll listen".
INTERESTED??? INTERESTED??? I'M NOT "INTERESTED" I'M ABSOLUTELY MIND F@#KED AND MORE OUTRAGED THAN I'VE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE!!!
Then I got an email from one of the MPs I wrote to, saying "thankyou for your interest". FFS!!!
I am so angry I'm constantly on the verge of passing out.
Germaine Greer was only half right when she said we fail to understand how much men hate us. I for one have certainly gotten the picture now! What I still fail to understand is how much many other women hate us. 😢
For anyone out there in the ether... Jordan Peterson just explained why women hate women. Because our society casts out post menopausal women due to the perception that we can no longer contribute to society the way a woman 'should', younger women hate us because they are fearful of becoming like us. Hehe... isn't the gift of 'Not Giving A Rats Arse what ANYONE thinks of us' the gift that keeps on giving when it's handed to us freely once we've run out of eggs?
Hi Lola, Just weighing in belatedly that I'm glad you're reading my column AND I disagree with Jordan Peterson. Do women hate women? What a sweeping statement. (And from a man? How did he become an expert on how women feel about other women?)
In my experience, we don't. Most of my best friends are women. Isn't that true for most women? I have detractors, but perceive no undercurrent of other women "hating" me.
And that's not what I hear from other women - friends, fans, teammates, writers, readers. I certainly agree that ageism and sexism are alive and well. And that disregarding criticism can be very freeing.
Just wanted to add this point of view. I love women and feel very loved by them. I bet a lot of female athletes, feminists, lesbians, and straight women with close women friends would agree.
Really glad you escaped the "undurcurrent of other women hating you" thing. Truly.
IMO the segment of the population where that phenomenon is most pronounced, and most painful, is among girls and women with at least some autistic traits (and probably also why they are overrepresented among young trans). In my experience-- and I've talked to others who say similar-- we tend to pick up one or two 'mother-hen' type women friends along the way, who either try to control us, or who simply are nice, sense that we need looking after, and appoint themselves to shepherd us through the social scene. This can go really well, or very poorly, depending on the woman. Otherwise, we mostly get along with boys/men. Men are more willing to judge/accept people based on competence and expertise (and often we have oodles of that). Women are more likely to judge based on things I can barely perceive, like *how I said it* or my level of eye contact, or whether I appropriately identified the dominant member of the social group and whether or not I interrupted her or corrected her at any point. They will judge me on my wardrobe and hairstyle. I'm never up to snuff on *any* of those things.
I can very often sit down and have a rewarding conversation with a dude I've just met, thanks to a broad knowledge of cars, and some experience working on them. It's much harder to find common ground with women, *and* once I've had a rollicking convo with a guy about... deep-sea diving, or comparing notes on worst oil-change mishaps or SF authors, I often as not find that I have inadvertently offended a wife or girlfriend by getting too chummy with their man. Icy stares ensue. Even though I wasn't interested, wasn't flirting, and was dressed like a nun. Fortunately that part's getting easier as I start to rack up visible signs of aging. I'm actually looking forward to my hair going gray.
The only consistent female friends I have are related to me.
Really interesting. Thanks for this story and analysis re: autistic traits. I had not thought of that.
I wonder if this might resonate: As you may know, Deborah Tannen writes about communication styles, and how (as an admittedly broad generalization) men tend to do "report-talk" (based on facts, figures, information; and can be in service of an attempt to establish who knows more or is dominant) and women tend to do "rapport talk" (based on seeking commonality among the dyad or group to establish an equal network of people, rather than hierarchy). Not true of everyone. Just something she's researched and concluded as a general observation.
Thus when a woman is more focused on report-talk, other women can find it unsettling (and men can welcome it). And when a man is focused on rapport-talk ("how do you feel about that?"), men might find that unsettling whereas women might be more likely to welcome it - b/c it's a language they speak and a feeling (rapport) they seek.
If autism-spectrum or -traited women are less likely to pick up on social cues, and more likely to be skillful at learning and sharing information... it could affect how women and men respond to her.
Just a thought. Curious if this fits at all?
That is a pretty good fit, tallies extremely well with personal experience.
Autistic women often register socially as androgynous (regardless of sexual orientation). For whatever reason, this offends other women, but does not offend men. Certainly I am much more comfortable discussing *facts*, *information*, and *things* than I am discussing *people* and *feelings*.
I would take issue, though, with the idea that women's communication style is based on seeking commonality rather than hierarchy. This is blatantly false. Women have very rigid and ruthlessly-enforced social hierarchies, but at least in US culture, it is taboo to explicitly acknowledge the hierarchy... which makes everything 1000x more confusing than it needs to be, for those of us on the spectrum. We're terrible at figuring out unstated social rules. We would do way better if somebody'd just give us a chart, with all the women in the group listed in hierarchy order, and a basic set of rules for each rung of hierarchy: top level, must not interrupt or correct ever, no matter how wrong she is (identify by watching which direction everybody's feet and shoulders are facing in a conversation: queen bee is the focus of everyone else's body direction signals); mid level, ??? but use extreme caution because they are in competition with each other for top slot with the queen bee, and will not hesitate to chop you down and step over your corpse to get there; low level, OK to correct, interrupt, or even be casually rude to (these ladies apologize for things they didn't do, laugh at jokes that are not funny, and defer to everyone else's opinions).
But: the first rule of women's social hierarchy is, don't talk about women's social hierarchy. Second rule of women's social hierarchy is, don't talk about women's social hierarchy... I mean, shoot, maybe women who are *in* the hierarchy don't even notice it, the way fish don't notice water. For those of us excluded from its ranks, it's quite obvious there is one, and ridiculous that so many smart women seem determined not to notice it.
Wonderful article by the way
Thanks so much.
Hi Mariah, nice to hear from you... from the ether.
I don't agree with all of what JP says...and yes, he is a man making a lot of statements about women.... as they tend to do. But last March's report from the Human Development Programme estimated that 90% of the world are biased against women....that's a lot of women there. And I see it. And maybe it's not actual Hate, but I would like to see far more support.
Far more.
But I would argue with him on this point... that it's not so much menopausal women that cop it (hasn't been my experience at all) but single women. As a 56 year old who's been single most of my life (never married, no kids) the animosity aimed at me from women has been huge. It's almost as if they're jealous, that I can thrive without a man. In some countries I have been absolutely shunned, and massively pitied too. But mostly the negative attitude has been fear or dislike, and they've been outspoken about it too. It's only been in the last few years that people, both men and women, have started telling me they wish they had have done the same. It's very interesting, and you know, patriarchy has confused a lot of us, but there are still a lot of women who really do put some effort into taking down the women they seem to view as having dodged the bulllets.
I admire women massively, and love them too, and am loved and I think admired too, and understand by women more than men. But I will be sticking to my guns for now... there are too many women who do not like other women simply because they're women.
I would like to see a turn around before I die. xxx
You have a unique perspective and just added a lot of context. Helped me listen better once you took JP out of it. 😀 Glad you’re thriving as a single traveling woman! No wonder some who made different choices, and maybe more compromises, are envious. Thanks for sharing.
Nice chatting Mariah, have a lovely day 😊
Yep. Thought we had this figured out in the ‘70s with “Free to Be - You and Me.” Sad to see how much we’ve regressed since then.
We did. That's why it's been pirated and perverted. It's all a proxy to disrupt HOW we think, to be replaced with WHAT to think.
Indeed. We did have it figured out! That's what's so discouraging, infuriating, and worrisome. Gender identity is all about the exact same antiquated sex stereotypes we second-wave feminists identified and called out and worked hard to get rid of. Otherwise - if it weren't all based on stereotypes, but some "true inner feeling" unrelated to stereotypes, then we'd have girls who wear pink and love princesses declaring that they're born in the wrong body and really should be boys. Or vice versa - macho boys who claim they're "really" girls. Yet that never happens. Thanks for commenting, PhDBiologistMom!
And me! Sadly, spot on and so very well said, Mariah. My heart rages everyday for the tomboy of today. Great post, thank you!
Hi Mikalina, Same. Thanks so much for the kind words, and for commenting. Save the tomboys.