Do you ever wonder if maybe we do kind of have gender identities, or at least experience “gender” of some kind?

Newt

10 hours ago

#22

(Apr 20 2025, 11:15 AM)Chernobog This subject has avoided my ire for too long. Being a woman is NOT important to me. I do NOT like being a woman. I don't even think female-only intellectual spaces like this are intrinsically valuable, but rather a condition of extreme, ubiquitous repression of female humanity. Female-only intellectual spaces exist not because men are inherently incapable of participating in them, but because thousands of years of patriarchal systems have discouraged them from choosing to think, to choose to see reality as it is rather than what they want it to be.

I have a hard time politely humouring these sentiments, especially in alleged feminist spaces. Their prevalence creates difficulties in letting, as an example, formerly trans-identified women have a voice; when "proud" women are the majority, anything less than shining positivity towards womanhood itself is branded "internalised misogyny". There is often an implicit expectation that those of us who might still have more cons than pros perform plenty of penance and self-flagellation for our blasphemous rejection of the grand yoni. Acceptance of our femaleness is not enough and our criticisms must be kept to a minimum, if they're allowed at all. We must aspire to be HAPPY to be female, and if we are not, it is somehow a signal of our allegiance with males, or at the very least a clear indicator something is deeply wrong with us and we are some sort of pitiable liability to the movement.

Saying there's something "special and different" about female homosexual behaviour in and of itself is a bit of a reach, too. We have no concept of loving women as a man. We cannot experience it. We may have a very detailed understanding of the hollow trappings of how men "love" us in a dehumanized, patriarchal sense, but that is reading the screenplay in its entirety to contextualise the character you have been cast to portray, which is NOT the same as fundamentally feeling love for a woman, as a man. It's not "special and different" because we're women and women are special and different, it's "special and different" because it's already so off-script that you might as well forget about the movie altogether.

The feeling of camaraderie among women (or any marginalised group) isn't simply because we're women, it's a recognition of another being's intimate familiarity with the same adversity as you, and our adversity is extreme and unnatural; even other mammals that form hierarchical social systems do not do so as rigidly, and with as much control over their environments. Men live in reality, too. They live in the exact same reality as you and I. If you don't believe in reality, then I guess there isn't anything to talk about, but the value in being among women is in our increased likelihood to recognise and value reality where men choose to ignore or deny reality. I'm not at all saying this isn't quite profound, but it's still ultimately circumstantial.

I don't really have anything to add except that you have perfectly worded exactly how I have always felt and the weird disconnect I can feel in feminist/female only spaces when people are saying how proud they are to be a woman and embracing their womanhood or whatever. Sometimes I have gotten called out for using female versus woman when I honestly have just never even felt offended at the use of female in place of woman.

While I care so much about 'women's issues', I also feel frustration that this is what we are calling addressing reality and major societal concerns like reproduction and childrearing. That the reality of this is ignored by the people who can ignore it and it can get labeled 'women's issues' like they're niche or womanly hobbies when we are literally talking about topics related to the future and survival of humans as a species. The worst things that have happened to me have almost exclusively been because I was a woman. I would not be here nor seek anything like this out were I born a man because there's very little chance I would be able to believe in reality like this without any first hand experience. It is the shared adversity but not the way the fetishists seem to think it works.

if I read this and knew that other women felt like this when I was younger, I would not have been swayed by TiFs around me who kept saying that I felt this way because I wasn't a woman. That a woman is someone who would be born into the same situation and be thrilled that they were born female. That the reason that being a woman is not important to me is that I am not a woman, but a different gender. That there's really two genders: the woman crowd and the default main characters. They aren't men, they are just people who don't have to concern themselves with the idea of gender whatsoever. Which is how I feel. And this utter lack of attachment to being a woman was high lighted as evidence that I must be a man then. Idk, I am rambling but your words really spoke to me. I hope future girls can see similar sentiments rather than pushed towards the only conclusions allowed by choice feminism and/or gender ideology on this.

Lemonade

Newt