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Okay, I'm still shaving off my armpit hair.
I don't care how natural it is. That shit nasty.
Do what you want yourself though.
Thanks. I'm fine with most of my body hair but armpit hair grosses me out for myself.
I shaved my stomach once as an experiment and I hated it.
males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in
it's not nasty. it's fine not to like it, but saying it's nasty is just contributing to sexist status quo. your self hatred is what's nasty.
but saying it’s nasty is just contributing to sexist status quo
no it isnt, thats her personal opinion about her own body
your self hatred is what’s nasty
Its cool to judge people when its in the name of feminism
I just think it's spindly and gross.
I'm fine with the rest of the body hair I have. Idk, it's just the way it looks on me.
I don't think it's reinforcing a status quo for a dude to want to shave body hair while being accepting of anyone else choosing to keep it though. It's only armpit hair too. Idk, just don't like what it looks like. Not even clean shaved honestly, just trimmed short.
I was thinking about this the other night as I was going to sleep. How long before we evolve to not have body hair... how long before head hair goes too?
I had to wait until I was 21 for my head hair to go.
I'll spread those genes far and wide.
A GF of mine was shocked when I told her, when asked, that I have no preference for her pubic hair, and she should do what makes her the most comfortable with... her own pubic hair.
I can't understand how people could dictate how their partners handle things like body hair or pubic hair. It's fucking hair. I'm hairy as shit and I don't shave/wax for myself, why would I for someone else?
The notion that gender roles dictate where and what hair should be kept is trash.
Solidarity comrades.
I've asked partners the same or how much chest hair is preferred but it's cause I'm genuinely indifferent and don't mind aiming to please. Less hair can be easier for going down on and what have you. Amy expectation on a partners end to do so is bad and no good.
See that's funny until it actually happens. Have caught a pube in my teeth and garroted my tongue before. It really kills the mood.
I love being a non-passing trans woman and having to shave my face literally every morning to even get occasional recognition as being a woman, only to have visible stubble by like 3pm.
Love having to worry about if tiny, almost uncontrollable hairs on my face are completely discrediting my femininity to others and giving me dysphoria. Love how even when I have just shaved there's still a pervasive dark/grey discoloration shadow on my face/jaw, that requires excessive foundation to even attempt to hide. Love how the only true option to ever be free from facial hair completely is incredibly painful, slow, and expensive electric removal.
We had a politician in my provincial elections who gave no fucks about her facial hair. She had to address it multiple times during the election and eventually went with "If you have to keep attacking my moustache and my appearance, you must have nothing to attack on my platform". She was leading the furthest left wing party. They got third but she was, and still is great.
"Love how the only true option to ever be free from facial hair completely is incredibly painful, slow, and expensive electric removal."
Yeah, being a woman with body hair sucks, but try being a woman with noticeable facial hair, its a whole fucking thing. You can avoid everything else, like I just haven't worn anything shorter than full jeans in public since i was 15 and that works (sucks in the summer, but it works), but until very recently you couldn't avoid people seeing your face, and everybody on earth thinks its their fucking business. I remember that towards the end of school I was the only girl there that wasn't blonde and didn't wax/shave my face. It was fucking mental, other literal children were asking me why i didn't put in hours of work to toe the line of sexist beauty standards.
other literal children were asking me
It’s crazy how early kids start to pick up on gender role shit.
When I was in first grade in the mid 90s, i liked to cook with my mom and grandmother so my mom bought me an ez bake oven bc she thought it would be a simple fun thing for me at that age.
Anyway I was talking about it to my friend and at 5 or 6 i already felt the pressure to denounce it to my male friend and was like “haha yeah my mom bought me a girl toy.”
My mom over heard me and felt like she messed up and was probably embarrassed so she said we could take it back no worries, but the tragic thing is I was genuinely super excited to play with that toy with my mom. It still breaks my heart thinking about it and how insensitive I was about it.
Hopefully this thread's an alright place to ask - what is the significance/meaning of hy/hym pronouns?
Comrade, i hope you're prepared for a wall of text that might be better as its own post, because i don't really know where i stand with pronouns either, and i might be typing this more for me than anyone else, sorry lmao. Also, it could be a little bit hard to explain given that my experience of gender is entitely wound up in lesbianism.
Lesbians and gender have a long history together, hell, the fundamental lesbian text Stone Butch Blues and one of the fundamental historical trans books Beyond Pink Or Blue are written by the same person, Leslie Feinberg, an icon of both communities simultaneously. Zie put a coherent voice on something that was pretty common in the community at the time, the idea that being gay (especially as a woman) inherently comes with an element of gender nonconformity.
We live in a misogynistic society that almost entirely defined women around the concept of men, and, more importantly, around facilitating hetrosexual relationships (and the exploitation of free domestic and reproductive labour within those relationships) with men - look up any definition of feminity/womanhood, and you'll see: nuturing will be on there, something about being naturally cleanly or caring or empathetic, quiet, invested in physical appearance - almost every trait listed will be "useful" to men in some way. This type of shit. As much as people might be trying to change that idea now, it was absolutely the norm for fucking centuries.
So what is a woman when they can't fulfil that societally designated function? For a while, it was an idea amongst homophobes that lesbians, especially butches, weren't real women. Or that we were women 'wrong'. They didn't like it at all when we were like "yeah sure maybe lmao" (although, of course, for slightly different reasons). Hence non-binary, transmasc, and they/them/he/him/neopronoun lesbians being suprisingly common.
To steal a blogpost that always Hit for me:
I’m very uncomfortable with being called non-binary because my standard answer to “what’s your gender” is lesbian/butch and my pronouns are he/him. I respect NB lesbians but I’m not NB. I’m not trans. I’m not cis either. I inhabit a bizarre space, a corner into which I was backed by the heteropatriarchy, and ideally this space should not exist at all. Naming it legitimizes it. It’s not normal that so many lesbians feel alienated from womanhood and feel that they can’t exist as women because of who they are. I know that if breasts weren’t considered almost only as loci of male pleasure in our culture I probably wouldn’t be dysphoric about them. I know that the reasons I can’t call myself “woman” without flinching are all linked to the violence the heteropatriarchy has enacted upon me since I was born and to the trauma of growing up as a butch in a world that hated me. I was psychologically mutilated; why would I want a name for this? Most importantly, why would I insult NB lesbians by acting like their identity is in any way comparable to the way I feel about womanhood? A non-binary lesbian has a concrete gender identity that they can usually name or at least describe; I just have a gaping hole where people reached in and tore out something I will never get back. It’s immensely different.
Feeling alienated from your (supposed) gender when that gender has been/is used as a vehicle for oppression, objectification, and demands of hetrosexuality is pretty normal, regardless of whether or not you actually are that gender (ngl it makes it pretty hard to tell if you're a different gender, or just reasonably uncomfortable with uncomfortable shit).
When a friend refers to me with he/him irl, they do it in the full knowledge that i'm not a man, and i'm fairly sure that anyone else in real life who overhears or assumes those pronouns does so knowing that, whatever the fuck i may be, i'm certainly not cishet, which is enough for me. Large swathes of my life only make sense given the context of being a butch/gnc lesbian; being noticeably non-cishet is important to me because, for better or for worse, it has informed so much of who i am and where i wound up - i don't think i'd be the same person (and i absolutely wouldn't be in the same situation in life) otherwise. In real life, no matter what i do, i could never be seen like that, but online its extremely easy for people to assume you're a cishet man (pronouns or no pronouns) which robs some of what i say of context, as well as just feeling incorrect on my end; irl i am transgressive of people's ideas of gender just by existing, and that, at this point, is something i've come to like, its a solid 'fuck you' as far as i'm concerned, whereas online i fly under the radar in that regard in a way that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Hy/hym sees to that. It sounds the way i like, but with a caveat of being obviously and unavoidably lgbt.
TL;DR
There's no pronoun for "Lesbian, But Honestly At This Point My Relationship With Women Is The Only Reason I Might Ever Class Myself As A Woman", or "I Don't Know, But I've Dealt With Enough Misogynistic Bullshit That 'She/her' Grates On The Ears Now". Hy/hym, to me, essentially means he/him* where that asterix leads to "*but not a binary man". And that'll do for now.
Basically, i know i'm not a man because i'm a lesbian - i have no idea if i'm non-binary or maybe somewhat trans-masc, i don't know, and quite honestly i don't fucking care. I know i like he/him, but don't want to step on the toes of transmen or non-binary people, nor do i want to be mistaken for a cis man because so much of my life experience and who i am is wrapped up in removedry, homophobia, and/or being afab and gnc. (If you were asking what those pronouns mean in a more general sense, like to other people, i have no idea, but i've mainly seen them being used by other butch lesbians and/or masculine nonbinary people, so i would guess its something similar; "male" pronouns, but not a man.)
edit: this website won't let me call myself a d*ke :angery:
Wow, thank you! That's putting yourself out there a lot. But it makes total sense. I've never heard of the idea of lesbian as gender but I get it when you explain it like that.
just wanted to butt in to say that your perspective is a fascinating window into your lived experiences, thank you for sharing it
i fucking hate when someone sees my body hair as a conversation piece. as in, they are going to tell me the reasons they shave. some are rude as hell like 'i just think it's nasty' and some are sad as hell like 'my boyfriend/husband wouldn't let me'
My wife used to freak out about this thin, imperceptible, invisible leg hair and tiny, light eyebrows because her aunts and cousins were all hairy obsessive primpers who shamed her about body hair and bought her hair wax because they couldn't stand the idea of themselves supposedly needing to do it when she did not
Feel motivated so maybe I can finish it in a few days. Preface so far seems good.
It is always fun when people think I am either depressed or gay because I am both a man and discuss my emotions. I also love that the same people who don't want me growing out my head of hair also want me growing out facial hair and won't let their girlfriends have pubic hair like any of that is their business. I know this post is more for women's liberation and I very strongly believe in that, but that paragraph just really strikes a chord with me. People have tried to kill of my emotionality for as long as I have lived, and I will never let them.
