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[–]Literallyawoman 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It’s literally being not like the other girls except instead of stigmatizing makeup and “femme” clothes they now stigmatize being female. Like a lot of trends for women it’s rooted in internalized misogyny-women feel they can’t be gross, dirty, fat, thin and flat chested, masculine, fucking SMART or STRONG and still be a woman, so they redefine their label.

But that’s based on my experience and a total lack of any male enbys I know personally know or know of. And...it’s always really insecure overweight women. As someone who’s been overweight I feel comfortable pointing that out. Being fat isn’t considered feminine sure that’s a problem in society and ideal female bodies blah blah blah BUT it’s leading to overweight women feeling so unfeminine and undesirable/unsexualized they opt out of womanhood altogether, and just give up on their health completely in the name of “self-acceptance”.

[–]unexpectedly_local 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

they can’t be gross, dirty, fat, thin and flat chested, masculine, fucking SMART or STRONG and still be a woman

Woman = feminine beauty and fashionable. I'm not sure when, but at some point being beautiful and fashionable became a baseline for women. I feel like I grew up in a time where you didn't HAVE to be either and could rely on some other aspect that made you special. I'm still none of those things and it does kind of hit you like a brick when you walk into a Women's Group and all the other women there are beautiful and/or fashionable, or at least try to be. They talk about being a woman and womanhood and it's intertwined with their experiences in beauty and fashion and heterosexuality and if you're not into those things it's not really that relatable. But because it's called a women's group or based around womanhood, I can see how you might start to doubt even being a woman at all. I've been a gender abolitionist (in the traditional sense) since preteens, but even I sometimes feel like a muppet person compared to "real women".

[–]leaveandletleave 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I’ve had two children and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever feel like a “real woman”. Not that one needs to have children as validation (I certainly didn’t) but growing up that was the milestone my mother and other women used to weigh someone’s opinion.

Now those same people base their opinions on the speaker’s age. There’s no winning.

[–]Jekawi[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The singer Sam Smith has recently come out as NB with they/them pronouns (he was still using he/him for a while). Thing is he looks like a dude. Changed nothing about his appearance at all.

Also with the overweight thing I can't help but think of the Danish comedian I post about the other day, Sofie Hagen. She recently came out as NB and as I said in that post, I would think it's rooted in misogyny and her life long fight with it. It had to leave its mark somehow.

[–]denverkris 3 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

He occasionally wears lippy, a bit of nail polish. He sashay a wee bit.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

When I was growing up, we called those 'metrosexual'.