My Fear of Women : Why It Existed, How I'm Letting Go
I'm not entirely sure I've ever talked about this publicly.
Brace yourself, I'm uncorking a big one.
Some of the individuals who have been my close friends long enough (including my female friends) know at the very least that I've expressed a lack of understanding most fellow females. Those that know me the best know that I've had huge guards up where women are concerned, due to rather longstanding trust issues. I was not only aware of those guards, I vociferously defended my rationale for keeping them strong and high.
Feeling Like The Odd One Out, But Why?
I know that a popular element of modern culture is for the men feel a need to have their "dude time" and for the women to need to run off and congregate to do "girl stuff". It's a major trend even into the stages of life that include children and marriage. Invariably, it seems the men need to escape to hang out with just the men, and the women want to go off to do "womanly" things.
For most of my adulthood though, I have not understood that at all, I did not enjoy it, desire it, or feel comfortable with it even though I often went along with it in order to try and have fun--I am not the sort to rain on a parade. However, if I go back far enough in my childhood memory, I can remember there once being a time where such "girl time" was enjoyed. I remember that as being fun then, and I remember loving it and feeling safe with my girlfriends.
Interestingly, the last time I remember feeling safe hanging out with mostly girls, I was pre-pubescent, or in early puberty. It's amazing how much we can forget our past, but herein I found a clue to where my fear of females first began.
Competition, Comparison & Destruction
I'm not exactly sure where this all started, but I know the schooling system doesn't do anything other than exacerbate the problem. What is the problem?
I remember have girlfriends who were my nearest and dearest friends. We could tell each other anything, we trusted each other with the deepest secrets, and we could always count on each other for a shoulder to lean on or just a friend to entertain ourselves with. I remember that the entry of BOYS is when that all changed.
Boys were not the problem, not at all.
However, I think a lot of us girls just had no real or decent guidance through the puberty crisis stage of life, and a lot of that is due to the fact that our mothers were just as ill-equipped as we were. I know I felt adrift and alone during this period of life, and for reasons not worth stating here, I didn't feel I could trust the older women in my life with my struggles and thoughts. I know a lot of my friends felt the same.
Between pop culture, media, and the surrounding schooling systems myself and my girlfriends were thrust into, there seemed to be a sudden immense amount of pressure on all of us. Certainly on me.
I'm not putting the blame on any one person or thing, because that just isn't fair to do. I was just a young girl, impressionable, and I had no idea what was going on inside me, not really. I felt an overwhelming sense of pressure, almost compulsion, to look a certain way and to try to get the boys. I had no malice or ill-intent in me, but I remember being terrified of what the boys might think, and I remember my fellow girl friends acting out of the same feelings a lot.
Perhaps in a multitude of subliminal communications from various inputs, I got the message that my validation as a worthy human and a beautiful woman came solely from male attention. In retrospect, it's obvious just how many of my girl friends internalized that same message.
This was the beginning of us turning on each other, and I remember the drama; I remember it was painful and disillusioning, too.
I remember that all the lying, the back-stabbing, and the betrayal started in Junior High (there's that puberty era popping up again). From my own perspective at the time, I was just the same as I had always been, and I didn't expect my girl friends to be anything other than what they presented themselves to be. I took them at face value as I always had.
See, many of us were not only terrified of school life and hugely insecure at this point, we were suddenly being thrust into some kind of competition ring-- where we were somehow supposed to compete for male attention.
Who thrust us into that ring? Was that intended by anyone? I am not really sure, and truly I don't blame anything or anyone in particular for that. That would be irresponsible.
I think it is partly the nature of the schooling system to create this unhealthy environment, and I think partly it was that a lot of us were just bringing our parents' issues with us to school and it was all colliding in the skewed social environment known as 'school.'
Us girls--affected by school, pop culture, and our parents' own shortcomings--were casualties the same as the boys were in their own ways. In order to validate ourselves in male attention, we made each other enemies and no longer felt safe being ourselves anymore.
Facades were born.
A Painful Betrayal That Started Everything
I remember the shock and pain the first time a friend lied to me about how she felt about something, and later used painful words to cut into me for something she thought I'd done -- she thought I had been flirting with her boyfriend.
I remember that even though she'd known me far longer and even though I'd never given her cause to think I'd have ill-intent, no amount of pleading or explaining could assuage her fear and anger. I was the enemy to her, and it was very painful for me to experience her cutting me off. She even pretended I didn't exist when I sat down in my chair in front of her, and cried, and asked her to just talk to me. I'd never seen my friend act so cold, and I remember it breaking me down.
Our friendship recovered later on, but she never apologized for how she treated me. Meanwhile, I had apologized for unintentionally hurting her feelings, over and over. Years later, just out of high school, she suddenly brought it all up again out of nowhere to someone else, and did so publicly. It had long been behind us and she had supposedly come to understand my true intent. Yet here I found her in a public forum bringing up something I'd nearly forgotten, and was using it to smear me. My sister actually came to my aid when I was not present and scolded her, pointing out that I'd never done her any wrong.
I have since forgiven her and let go of that, because I also now understand that her reactions were out of her own defenses, her huge walls that were put up out of fear and insecurity--the same fear and insecurity we were all struggling against. She could not trust me anymore than I felt I could trust women for most of my adulthood.
I believe that when we are younger and less self-aware, we sometimes throw up protective walls that shape who we become, that shape our interests and desires and comforts. We don't know we've done that, and it fucks us up in the long-term if we never become aware of it.
Once Again, Fear Is Giving Way To Knowledge
I understand something now. I had decided something back then in the midst of my adolescent pain, somewhere deep in my subconscious and without rational thought. I decided that women were not to be trusted. What she did was so baffling to me, I decided most women were some other sort of bizarre creature that I would never understand fully, and therefore would never trust.
Whatever my gender, I didn't see my fellow women as the same sort of creature as me. This began to shape the kind of adult I became.
I befriended men easily and effortlessly, and I still do. I was never looking for sexual attention, I just wanted male friendship rather than female friendship because I felt safer with men. With them I felt I was often getting the real deal, no facade.
As a young adult I was watching all the women in the work place and coming out of high school, and I saw their facades which were born out of insecurity and fear. I didn't have sympathy for them then because I didn't see why they were now so two-faced, I only saw that they were and it drove me away from them.
Fear and ignorance in me poisoned my mind in this area, removing logic.
I began to engage in irrational collectivistic thought: I began to shut off from being open to female friendship at all, deciding they were all going to be the same. Think about that for a moment. I had experienced perhaps a handful of painful betrayals, and in female encounters over a lifetime I'd probably known less than a couple hundred.
There are seven billion + people on planet earth, and I just knew that most women were all one way. That's the furthest from rational, and it created judgment in me towards them... the same kind I feared getting from them.
I only kept a trusted 2 or 3 girl friends around, but even those girls shared my same distrust of other women and also felt safer with male friends. What I see most clearly now too, is that I then built up my own facade towards other women, to present to them, in order to protect myself. I did precisely the same thing out of fear, that I was reacting to in them.
This level of self-awareness on this topic is recent, it has been coming about for the last two years, and I have some very good women to thank for it. It has been their love, kindness, and openness to me that has broken down the mile-high walls brick by brick and revealed that irrational belief for what it was--fear and ignorance.
Me & my Best Girl Friend of 16 years. Taken 12 years ago at age 17.
Today, I am happy to say I do not feel the tension or fear about women I did for years, and the disdain is nearly dissolved. It's not that women can't still be two-faced, or dishonest... it's that anyone can be, because humans can be, and it is never rational to assume I know what kind of person a total stranger is just because of their gender. I was shutting myself off from good relationships because of the walls in the way, and now they've come crumbling down.
Great post! Thanks for sharing!
As far as resteeming one of my posts... you can do this one I just put out: https://steemit.com/science/@jrcornel/why-i-only-breath-through-one-nostril-and-you-do-too
Thanks! :)
I've heard of this "gynophobia", and it is usually related to past traumatic experiences. Behavioral therapies may be helpful & worth a try, if it interferes too much with your daily life. =)
I had a similar distrust and dislike of women which originated with my sister's long-time abusive behavior toward me. Her jealousy and hatred was particularly hurtful at school and it is because of her that I developed a reputation as a loner and avoided female friendship until well into my thirties. I'm working on developing closer relationships with women but as one noted, I can come across as aloof and lacking a sense of humor. Still finding my way to come across as authentic and trusting but it isn't easy to make friends when you're in your forties.
Great intuitive piece. Thank you!
I once asked someone what advice she would give her teenage self and she profoundly replied “not everyone sucks”. We no longer live in a society where you have to find “best buds” in your own neighborhood, school or workplace. We live in the most connected era in history, able to seek out those with whom we share values and beliefs regardless of physical distance. The people I now feel closest to I have never met. I used to think I just wasn’t a people person. I now realise the truth is… well… best expressed in a meme…
Holy hell, can I relate. Yes, all of this. :)
Hello, I just joined. I can relate, in school I was too tall and awkwardly thin. I was a tom boy and didn't find my "girly" side until long after the "mean girls", had me frightened.
Later my success at sports made people like me more. (Isn't that bullshit?) Anyway, I have learned over time that both sexes make excellent friends, and both sexes can be a-holes. I enjoyed the way you wrote about your fear.
My favorite part:
Thank you for recognizing the struggle of men despite the post being about women. I've been subject to a lot of violence just for saying the experiences are very similar, being one of the few people who can actually tell the differences having experienced gender segregation, whether voluntary or not, from both sides.
I will be thinking of your post for some time because while I am certain school is a big part of it, it is a complex issue as I am sure you are aware by now.
I've met a lot of people who have issues with one specific gender over another, being that I am transgender, they often feel like they can tell me and I will somehow understand. Often these issues trace back to a few experiences, just like you said, and our tendency to look for trends automatically to make future predictions, for survival.
hey, i'm trans too! definitely lots to think about in this piece, and super mega thanks to @dragonanarchist for taking the time to share it.
i'm not sure how y'all feel about social theories about power and gender like feminism or patriarchy or cultural hegemony, but i spend a lot of time thinking about them, and it's apparent to me that school doesn't have to be this way, and neither does pop culture/media, like dragon mentions in the post. instead, these places become the sites where larger dynamics play out and are reproduced.
really fascinating to think about. thanks again for breaking it open, dragon!
No such thing as patriarchy, the world does not favor men over women and men did not create this world alone. The biggest mistake of feminism is thinking that the pressure to make money somehow equals power or sovereignty.
Feminism can exist without oppression but it can't exist without an oppressor. It makes people think in terms of abusers vs abused. At the core of feminism, it doesn't matter which wave, there's the belief that men keep women down to stay on top. This mentality not only causes resentment which makes conversation difficult between the parties, but it also couldn't be further from the truth.
Patriarchy is a lie and a dangerous one, don't fall for feminism.
I know where you are coming from. At age 44 I made my first female friend since high school. And my friend also has had no female friends since high school (again) either. There is a serious problem, my daughter has not had a proper female friend for her entire high school career.
I think school really has a lot to do with how teenagers act. Sometimes they say in corporate environments that "Shit runs downhill". The teachers belittle the students, and then the students find ways to belittle each other, lord things over others, play silly status games. When people are together in that environment and don't really have any choice about being there, there are sure to be conflicts.
I'm glad you managed to overcome your fear, and I hope the next generation (or the generation raised by anarchists) never has to go through this sort of thing, and just gets right to the good stuff in life.
Thanks for sharing your story
School is definitely a breeding ground for toxic feelings and unhealthy competition because, like you said, its very nature is a kind of meaningless propaganda box where a bunch of unique personalities are dumped and then made to believe they have to eat each other alive to survive.
Great post, and I'm glad that you are starting to feel safer. I have a hard time around men AND women. Haha. Haven't found any extra-terrestrials yet, so I had better become more self-aware.