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@GalacticTurtle @ChasingWaterfalls So much female attraction to men despite obvious drawbacks is due to hormonal imperatives. In my case, these ceased in menopause as my ovaries shut down. I consider my life 15-50 heavily shaped by hormone poisoning. I wasn’t stupid, I was just driven by biology. I had no desire to have children though, was never susceptible to that just as you aren’t susceptible to attraction to men. I don’t know why I was spared the urge to breed but not the urge to mate. I’m free of both now, not through any increase in consciousness but through the retreat of endogenous estrogens. Hormones are psychoactive.
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> Hormones are psychoactive.
Also true for males. (omitting autobiography here) But puberty was a difficult time. I'm not sure whether it's worse for one sex or the other. Probably harder for females.
I hate to think what it must be like to come of age now. When I was 15, it was square dancing classes; now, it is an inchoate blast of cultural gender-noise . . .
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@GalacticTurtle Yes, a relationship always feels like the death of my “self”. I hate the loss of autonomy and independence.
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@ChasingWaterfalls I do wonder how common that is. Because I have a lot of friends who are barreling towards marriage and the way they talk about their future now, in a lot of ways, is a complete 180 from anything they've ever said they wanted in the past.
Meanwhile, if I think about the people in my life who are super on my wavelength, being around them doesn't compromise who I am when I'm not with them. Maybe I'm too "immature," or whatever, to get it. But if it has taken my mom... over 30 years to be even slightly critical of her own marriage, that makes me wonder even more where my friends are at.
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@GalacticTurtle @ChasingWaterfalls So much of it is because of hormone poisoning.
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@ninapaley @ChasingWaterfalls eh?
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Many months ago I had... not an argument... but a lively conversation with my mom that started with a line of questioning that essentially boiled down to "Why aren't you working towards getting married?" A conversation I'm sure many here have had countless times. This one did get unusually heated though.
My general sentiment in response was, "To live like you would mean the death of my sense of self" which /I admit/ was a bit heavy-handed. But it quickly put her on the defensive talking about how meeting my dad was the best thing that ever happened to her and how because of him she could unlock the best version of herself and how together they made the best family and the thought of me not having any of that keeps her awake at night.
So I drop some facts and figures, talk about the relationships I do choose to engage in, pose the question about what her life could've been had she not done precisely what women are expected to do in a male society, and generally summarize what I'm aiming for and why she doesn't have to worry about it.
Recently she's been going on this "mindfulness and meditation journey" that no one in our family understands but today, out of the blue, a friend of hers came over and they talked for a good couple of hours. After she left, my mom sits down with me and starts going on an on about a few main points:
1. She's been thinking long and hard about our lively conversation and in doing so that inspired her to put real effort into reconnecting with her friends (all women) from the past. Those efforts are what resulted in today's visit.
2. She commented on how she was watching some old TV shows and movies noting the roles women tended to take up in each of them and how it was almost like by consuming all that media it is kind of like being spoonfed the "marriage and kids" narrative and made everything else look dull in comparison. She is now contemplating what other aspects of our culture reinforce the same thing.
3. She started detailing all the sorts of things she did have to give up to get married, have kids, support my dad launching his own company, etc. and how much it was expected that core aspects of her personality were to change the second she had a baby but it didn't so she really needed to mold herself into who she was now. Apparently, that realization is what triggered the whole "mindfulness and meditation" journey.
4. I guess when I was younger, I didn't go into all the gory details about my experiences with men, so when I casually brought up how I was treated in some of my early jobs recently and how I handled it all by myself it made her think about what she went through as well. In hearing it from me she was very angry so then she was wondering why she wasn't similarly angry when it happened to her. She reasoned it is because I stated what was happening very plainly while she had just edited her entire experience to justify what she was going through.
My dad walks in partway through this whole conversation and asks her if she's giving me permission to go out and start murdering men. She said "No but it's kind of a miracle Turtle or any of us haven't done it already."
Now he's grumbling about living with a bunch of radicals lol.
Nina Paley
Jolly Rancher
Better 🟥 Than ☠️
GalacticTurtle
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