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Most of my education after the age of 6 was in an all female environment.Female classmates,largely female teachers,headmistresses,female dinner ladies etc. Apart from my dad&grandpa,&occasional male friends, most of my life was spent with women&girls.
I had negative experiences with men,still,like a man masturbating in an alleyway&being sexually assaulted at a concert.A 45 year old man pursued me as a young adolescent,&I saw the awful fallout from the sexual abuse of a friend.Those things and others like them were unavoidable.
We had few Male teachers& it is perhaps no coincidence that the very best of those was a gay man who saw all of us young girls as worth caring about in a way that helped us excel in his subject&under his care. No coincidence either that he became a lifelong friend to many of us.
Of the worst male teachers, one got visible erections during lessons when we got close to him,such as coming up to his desk to ask for help and another would pinch our bottoms so routinely that most of the lesson was spent trying to avoid any reason to get up from our chairs
Still, most of the hours in my day were free from that behaviour. I was as free from the behaviours that are consistently imposed on females as perhaps any of us can be in our society without separating ourselves entirely.
I was also free of always&only being framed in relation to male ppl.This is something both sexes perpetuate&is a constant chipping away at girls self esteem&their perceptions of even their own capability.From wht subjects they should be interested in to what they should look like
I got enough of a loading dose of the hypercriticism of women’s looks that I believed was a bridge troll by the time I was a teenager which,unless I really am one,shows how insidious these ideas are.They even reach places where they ought to have been automatically barred entry
It was fundamental to me to grow up like I did. It gave me a peace I didn’t fully understand until it was gone. Some of its leaving has to do with me having become ill, but regular society with the male/female dynamic that exists &the constant imposition on women is astonishing.
It’s a very different experience to growing up in a community mainly containing women. When you haven’t had to deal with the way the female sex are treated as constantly as other women the difference feels frankly insane. You know from experience it doesn’t *have* to be like that
You also know that female dynamics in mixed sex spaces are different,too, and less joyful. In the right company&in feminist spaces (except libfem spaces in which I find the penis remains king) there’s often a chance to enjoy similar dynamics to the ones I remember.
Female joy is one of the reasons things like Michfest&proper female spaces are important for women.They’re also the only place we get a consistent break from an exhausting set of societal norms&behaviours, &we can experience being the subject¬ the object of a social group.
Places that are ours alone can often give women a chance to feel safe for one of the first times, and to also not be leant on,trod on, imposed on and otherwise used as a sexual prop,community mother, emotional compass, moral maze&all round bag lady for some male people’s concerns
This is also what makes female spaces a challenge to the status quo, and is another reason why the infiltration of our spaces (including our online ones) by a set of exhausting, demeaning and entitled male behaviours and ideas is such a disaster for both women and feminism.
There is a relentless toxicity to the way women and girls are treated that is impossible to unsee once you’ve realised it is there. A lot of it is sexual, but a lot of it is just a total disregard for women as *people* who have equal value and deserve equal respect.
The reason I keep talking about what’s happening right now with transactivism is b/c the set of behaviours by male people that,as a woman&a feminist,I think need to be addressed are exactly the same set of behaviours we are now being compelled to accept in the name of inclusivity
It isn’t only sexual violation and sexual inappropriateness that women have a right to have space from, we also have a right to say, no, we aren’t going to accept being reduced to the object again in our own spaces. Or in our own political movement.
When a TW I know is telling me they angrily masturbate when their parents don’t validate them, or another is fetishising miscarriage almost daily and another is self indulgently raging about how they could dox women for the audacity of saying no to them,I recognise that behaviour
I recognise it as the kind of male behaviour that is destructive to women.The relationship of any male to their identity,which is a personal matter,is never more important than women’s right to refuse to accommodate damaging behaviour.
If you disagree, you do not respect women.
If you disagree, you do not respect women.
