Then they hit puberty and start growing breasts. Suddenly she needs to cover up because of these things on her chest. Now her male friends treat her differently and older men start getting weird around her, hitting on her, telling her things that were just fine when she was little are now 'unbecoming' and 'not ladylike'. She's not dumb. She knows it's because she's female.

Yes, all this happens.

But something else sometimes happens too. Fact is, little girls who are fortunate to grow up with close, supportive, doting fathers, uncles, brothers and other decent older males in their lives often feel profoundly and suddenly rejected by these male figures when they start visibly developing secondary sex characteristics.

Often the men in little girls' lives who truly love them are NOT sexually interested in the girls once the girls enter puberty; nor do they necessarily see the girls now as lesser or start imposing sex stereotyped behavior standards on the girls. It's that they see their beloved little girls now as budding "young women" with obvious sexual characteristics - and as "gentleman" who honestly have the girls' best interests at heart, these decent men and older boys back off almost instinctively and try to establish boundaries so as to insure they never seem inappropriate with, or disrespectful to, the girls.

So a girl who always/often sat in daddy's lap and enjoyed snuggling with him; loved wrestling and having tickle fights with her older brothers; and spent lots of private time hanging out alone with her favorite uncle (doing things like fishing, listening to his jazz records, and learning from him how to whittle, tie knots, spit tobacco, drive a stick shift and use power tools) suddenly finds herself cut off from all this positive male attention and affection.

Now Daddy stiffens involuntarily whenever she tries to sit in his lap and even brusquely pushes her off his knee, and now on weekends when the younger kids in the family all pile into the parents bed to snuggle with dad as they've done for years, she's told she's too old. Now the older brothers she adores won't wrestle or roughhouse with her, tickle her or let her hang out in their bedrooms anymore. Her fave uncle who was teaching her about fishing, the jazz greats, knots, wood carving, spittoons, manual transmissions and power tools suddenly is always too busy to spend any special alone with her any longer.

The males in these sorts of scenarios aren't rejecting or scorning the young girls in their lives, nor do they necessarily look down on them. These decent males are trying to protect and be respectful of the girls. But the girls themselves still perceive the changed behavior of the important male figures in their lives that come at/after puberty as a profound and deeply wounding and disorienting rejection. And in my experience, most girls who get what they see as the sudden "cold shoulder" from previously loving, doting, affectionate males in their lives at/after puberty often experience this change as a profound rejection and a great loss that's injurious to their sense of self and self-worth even when their dads, brothers, uncles etc try to explain why their behavior has changed.

And of course, at exactly the time in life that young girls experience a loss of attention and affection from older males in their lives who truly care about them, these girls now find themselves getting all sorts of new kinds of attention - some of it gross and pervy, some of it just insistent and invasive, overwhelming and perplexing - from tons of other males who now see the girls as dating prospects, dehumanized sex objects, wank fodder, breeding stock and social inferiors.