Man, You Do Not Feel Like A Woman

As a woman, I will never know
what it is to be a man.  How it feels to grow through
puberty as a boy, experience male teenage hormones; how their bodies change;
what it feels like to deal with all of that.   

Likewise, men will never know what
it is to be a woman.  To experience our lives and live as we do.

How it feels when our periods begin
and we start to grow breasts.  How it
feels when the world starts treating you differently because of it.  How our emotions run riot.

The experience of being a man or
woman can be described to you, but you will never truly know or understand,
because it was not your experience.  You
have not felt it.  Lived it.  So how can you truly know?

This is why I can talk about how
it feels to be a woman.   Because I am one. 

Yet now in 2019 we are told that
men can now be “actual born women”. 
Because they feel like or identify as a woman, they are now women.  How can you feel like something you have
never experienced?  That you have no true
knowledge of?

When a transgender woman gets breast augmentation, they see it as way to express their femininity.
Quite frankly though, it is nothing but fakery and bullshit.  Breasts have nothing to do with how feminine you are or feel.

The way that transgender women think about breasts, is how men see and think about breasts.  As sex objects.  They make them feel sexy.  They slap them on their bodies and pretend that this makes them a woman.  They have no idea.



Trans women will never know how it feels to grow breasts at twelve years old and suddenly men are ogling you in the street.  How growing breasts changed you to become something is now regarded as “available”.  On the market.  An object.  Except on the inside, you are still a child who doesn't understand why grown men are whistling and catcalling you in the street.



Trans women can never know or experience what it is like to be told "boys will be boys"when you are sexually assaulted.  In school. Daily.  At fifteen years old.



Trans women are nothing but parodies of what they think women are.  Fake breasts and clothes that look like they are living in a 1980s bordello. 



If trans women actually knew the way that women think, had lived our experiences and had had our bodies, they would not be waltzing into our bathrooms, our changing rooms, our hospital wards and our refuges.  They would understand the fear.  They would understand how unsafe this makes us feel.  Not just how unsafe we feel, but how unsafe we are when put in that situation.



But they don't.    Because they think like men.  They cannot understand that fear.  Because they have never lived it in the same way that women have.



What they are is narcassistic men, who only see what they want and trample over everyone and everything to get it.  All the while sporting a pair of plastic tits and calling themselves a "real woman".



Don't make me laugh.

The Snowflake Generation

What is a snowflake?

A snowflake is a unique.  No snowflake is ever alike.   Depending on the temperature it can either melt on impact; or join other snowflakes and create snow.   Snow that can be moved and coerced into a different shape, or frozen so hard that it can sink the Titanic. 

Why am I talking about snowflakes today?  Someone posed a question recently that has been whirling around in my head.  

Why is this generation called "Generation Snowflake" when in fact, it is the older generations that just can't handle confrontation and question of their thoughts?  

But the thing is, it isn't just the older generation that uses the term.

Where is the age line drawn and is it an age line at all?  I am 39 and am regularly called a snowflake; usually for calling out a behaviour or rhetoric that I didn't believe in or found offensive.  Yet I have been called a snowflake by both people in their 50s and 60s and by people in their early 20s.

So the line isn't an age thing.  It is a believe system, borne as a result of how and what you educate yourself in, the family you are born into and what they believe, the circles you move in and your own moral code and beliefs.

For me, it comes down to fear and insecurity.  

In terms of misogyny and sexism, it also comes down to entitlement.  In the 50s and 60s you could get away with slapping the bottom of your secretary or paying women less than men for the same job.  Men grew up for centuries believing that women were (in decreasing terms over the years, slowly) property, second class citizens, objects.   The fact that women now can demand the same wages, control of their own bodies and the right to touch them is something that generations of men are not used to, whether in lived experience or what they have grown up to expect.

I see many articles now after the #metoo movement of men saying that you cannot brush past a woman without being accused of sexual assault and that rape accusations are mostly "regret of actions".  Yet we have rape trials in 2018 where what type of underwear a woman was wearing is called into question.  Where her past sexual experiences is somehow relevant.   Where a man can be given 90 days house arrest for the rape of a child, yet a woman killing someone she was "given to" at 16 to rape at will, in order to escape, is given a 51 year sentence.

If you are truly scared that a woman is going to accuse you of sexual assault for brushing past her, then I am truly scared of you, because it reveals what you truly think you are entitled to.

When it comes to racism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia; this is when it turns to fear and insecurity.  

Not that long ago you could listen to that man, or woman, in the pub spouting off about how they thought that being gay should still be illegal, that black people were (somehow, I don't understand it, will never understand it) worth less than white people, how transgender people were "looking for attention".  

People would nod, smile and agree with this person in public, while at home, completely disagree with their views.  No one would question the rhetoric.  Thinking that their views are disgusting but showing support/compliance in public but disagreeing in private.  So who is scared exactly?

The so called "Generation Snowflake", which actually compromises all ages, is not afraid to call people out on antiquated beliefs and thoughts.  They question, argue, reason, debate.  Yet we are called the weak generation for daring to rock the boat that believes that Christian straight, white men (and the women who follow them) should and do rule the world.

I truly believe that people should be able to say what they want, with the exception of inciting violence.  Let them stand on their pulpits and shout their views to the world, let us see just how small, how scared and insecure they really are.

If I call you out for something that you have said, asking you to defend your statement and all you retort back is "snowflake" and "are you triggered?" then you have no platform based on anything other than lack of education, hate and bigotry.  

If you are so scared of being argued with, are you the true snowflake?

Lets Talk About #MeToo

I wish I could stay that I was surprised at the allegations that have come to light in relation to Harvey Weinstein.  Disgusted yes, but shocked no.

I won't talk about the allegations made against him here given that there are potential criminal charges against him.  But I will speak about the culture that we have in society that enables, encourages and protects men like him.

A culture where women who speak out are called liars, whores; attention seekers and those that don't are blamed more than the perpetrator.  A culture where men who report abuse "Aren't supposed to talk about it, man up!" and those that don't, live in misery.

I'm a woman and as this predominantly happens to many more women than men, I am focusing on the women's side in this blog.  If you are a man who has experienced sexual assault or rape or wants to talk about the effects of what happens, write about it, I would read it, but your story isn't for this post.

The thing is, women do experience harassment, sexual  assault and rape at a far larger scale than men.  There are things that women are just supposed to accept, behaviours, actions and consequences.

We are supposed to keep silent.  

Reactions to reporting that you have been harassed or assaulted many times ends up with "It isn't such a big deal, why you making such a fuss!", "He is a lovely guy, are you sure? Maybe you misunderstood?" and the favourite of the MRA/MGTOW section of the internet: "Prove it or it didn't happen".

I'm sorry, but I do not carry a bodycam on me and cannot prove that the man last year fake tripped and fell into me, conveniently grabbing on to my breasts to "lever himself".  My life is not lived on CCTV.

When I was fifteen and two boys at school decided to wrestle me down at the bus stop after school every day for months grabbing at my breasts, my reporting it to a teacher received a look at my chest and a suggestion to wear a baggy shirt.

I stopped it myself.  How? I paid them.  I cannot remember the figure now, enough probably for them to buy a pack of cigarettes.  The thing that kills me now is that I stayed friends with them.  Society had already taught me that my large breasts were public property.  It was not their fault, it was "their hormones".

23 years later it only now strikes me that no one stopped to help me. Ever.  No one in the dozens of cars passing the grassy knoll next to bus stop on that busy road ever stopped.  People must have seen.  I guess they thought that I was "asking for it".

The hashtag #HowWillIChange was started today and whilst a few good and on the point comments were made, it was quickly overrun with angry men who missed the point completely and of course, as usual, those there just to throw vitriol at women.  Their daily game.

I have seen so many tweets saying "I have never assaulted a woman so I don't need to change".  Well done.  Have a cookie for never assaulting a woman.  But let me ask you this.

Have you ever had a friend or a family member hurl sexist slurs at a woman?  Have you been in a car and your friend has shouted out something sexual at a woman in the street?  Have you been there in a bar when a friend has grabbed at a woman's breasts for "a gag".  Have you been speaking to a male friend after a night out when he tells you that "she was totally passed out but I went for it anyway".  Have you?

If you have experienced any of these things and not said anything, not called out your friend or relative, let me tell you, you are complicit.  You are enabling the behaviour to continue.

Your silence is deafening.

 I was an early developer.  I remember being around 12 and going to a local playground.  I was on the roundabout when a group of older boys approached me.  The leader of the pack starting making sexual comments about my breasts and asking if he could "feel me up".  The other boys, whom I looked to in the hope that they would pull him up on his behaviour, looked uncomfortable, but ultimately, said nothing.

Would they have let him says those things about their sister?  I doubt it.  But whether teenage boys or older men, it still seems that a value has to be placed on a woman before she is seen as a human being.  If you have to think of a woman as someone you can relate to in order to see that someone's actions against them are wrong, you are also part of the problem.

So how do we ask men to help change this culture we live in?  Listen to us.  Take responsibility for your actions and own up to those people around you who behave in that way.  Just because he is your friend, your relative does not excuse him from common decent behaviour.

Women should not have to share their stories, like the couple of examples I have shared today in order to highlight that we have a big issue in society. 

We are not Hansel and Gretel, dropping the crumbs of our experiences on the floor until you find enlightenment.  

We have been silent.  We will not be silent any more.  You make not like it, it may make you uncomfortable.  It may make you question yourself, your actions and those of people who you know.  But we are not going away and the wall of shame that women feel about what happens to them is coming down.

Don't be that guy.  Be better.  We can all be better.

Why I'm Sick Of Rules For Women

So I saw this today about women preventing rape and my brain exploded with rage.  I am so sick of women being blamed for their rapes, not being believed, treated abominably in Court by defence barristers and most of all, the rules that we are apparently supposed to follow in order to avoid being raped.

The thing is, these rules seem to change by the day and completely contradict each other.  Examples:

1. Wear nail polish and stick our fingers in drinks to make sure we don't get spiked.
2. Wear chastity belts, oh no sorry they are calling them anti rape underwear.
3. Don't wear "provocative clothing". Leave something to the imagination they tell us.  What do you think we have hiding under our clothes, the bridge to Terabithia?
4. Don't wear headphones in public. 
5. Walk in pairs (if you don't have a friend handy, grab the hand of the nearest woman)
6. Don't get drunk, even in your own home.

However, 

1. Talk back to the fella following you on the street. Poor fella just wants a date, why are you being so rude?
2. Say thanks when a man catcalls you.  He probably spent at least a second thinking up such an original compliment as "Hey sugar tits".  Be grateful!
3. Don't walk down the street with your keys in your fingers. Don't you trust us? Not all men!
4. Do have a relationship with a guy friend because he fancies you. He put kindness coins in after all! He's a nice guy, you're not allowed a type!

No sweetie, he isn't dangerous, he is wearing face fashion!

Most importantly, do not under any circumstrances suggest that rapists are the ones responsible for rape because you will then drown in a sea of "not all men"! This also completely ignores that men get raped too.

Have I got it all?  Because I am sick of women being blamed for crimes committed against them.