Psychic
Really and truly
- 387
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- Seen Apr 11, 2018
I was looking forward to a thread about the weird sexism/homophobia within the gay community, though this is quite an interesting topic.
It's interesting looking through these posts and seeing people address our assumptions about masculinity and femininity and start to consider them. Why do we consider certain attributes to be inherently "girly" or "boyish"?
I'm cis and have always identified as female, though how feminine I feel depends on the day. I was a tomboy as a kid, and felt very unfeminine throughout high school. In fact, I went through a phase of associating girly things with weakness and considering myself superior for mostly having guy friends and not caring about "dumb girl stuff." On reflection, that was a really toxic way of thinking, and I'm glad that I grew out of it before that attitude could do any long-term damage.
I've definitely embraced my femininity a lot more, but now that I'm aware of how I was socialized to act growing up, I try to put myself outside of my comfort zone by trying to embrace behaviours and attitudes that are considered more "masculine." It's crazy that women are less likely to do simple things, like being forthcoming about desires or taking credit for their work (or face more stigma for doing so), so I'm trying to break those cycles in my life. That isn't to say that a lot of "feminine" behaviour is bad - rather, I don't feel that I was encouraged to think or behave in ways that especially benefited me (very possibly because of my gender), and changing that requires a conscious effort.
~Psychic
It's interesting looking through these posts and seeing people address our assumptions about masculinity and femininity and start to consider them. Why do we consider certain attributes to be inherently "girly" or "boyish"?
I'm cis and have always identified as female, though how feminine I feel depends on the day. I was a tomboy as a kid, and felt very unfeminine throughout high school. In fact, I went through a phase of associating girly things with weakness and considering myself superior for mostly having guy friends and not caring about "dumb girl stuff." On reflection, that was a really toxic way of thinking, and I'm glad that I grew out of it before that attitude could do any long-term damage.
I've definitely embraced my femininity a lot more, but now that I'm aware of how I was socialized to act growing up, I try to put myself outside of my comfort zone by trying to embrace behaviours and attitudes that are considered more "masculine." It's crazy that women are less likely to do simple things, like being forthcoming about desires or taking credit for their work (or face more stigma for doing so), so I'm trying to break those cycles in my life. That isn't to say that a lot of "feminine" behaviour is bad - rather, I don't feel that I was encouraged to think or behave in ways that especially benefited me (very possibly because of my gender), and changing that requires a conscious effort.
~Psychic