I feel like a lot of the times, in the discourse, there's this desire to make reality conform to a calcified, simple to understand model of How Things Work, rather than adapting one's model of reality with new information... a model that holds gender as the Main axis of power and oppression will fail to account for the ways that there is no "sisterhood" when you are a woman (or a person assumed to be a woman) who is in the "outgroup" relative to the women around you - an ethnic minority, in a lower social class, disabled physically or mentally, etc. Or how in (using an American example as an American) white women have historically gotten black men (often framed within antiblack racism as hypermasculine, beastly agressors) lynched by playing on the presumption that men (especially marginalized, "othered" men) are inherently predatory.
If anything, from my experiences, it's peer-aged people I have had the hardest time trusting for most of my life. Teachers were cruel to me, but I learned early on that both boys and girls my age were fundamentally, as a whole unsafe to confide in, compared to adults - because at least some of my teachers would stick up for me and be nice, but that wasn't true for kids. It's only in my thirties that I've developed any degree of... not being afraid? Talking to people my own age IRL. In my teens and through my twenties, people significantly younger or older than me just felt less likely to be cruel to me, so I avoided talking to classmates and the like almost entirely.
Even with my closest friends I often feel scared I'll say something wrong that will make them despise me - not because I have reason to believe that they'd turn on me that quickly, but because I feel in constant danger of being deserving of scorn, and like life is a constant game of hiding that I'm actually a bad or unpleasant person. No amount of being proven otherwise ever really makes that feeling go away.
I'm glad you feel safe with friends.
IDK, I hope I haven't said anything awful or tasteless.
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Date: 2025-03-21 08:09 pm (UTC)I feel like a lot of the times, in the discourse, there's this desire to make reality conform to a calcified, simple to understand model of How Things Work, rather than adapting one's model of reality with new information... a model that holds gender as the Main axis of power and oppression will fail to account for the ways that there is no "sisterhood" when you are a woman (or a person assumed to be a woman) who is in the "outgroup" relative to the women around you - an ethnic minority, in a lower social class, disabled physically or mentally, etc. Or how in (using an American example as an American) white women have historically gotten black men (often framed within antiblack racism as hypermasculine, beastly agressors) lynched by playing on the presumption that men (especially marginalized, "othered" men) are inherently predatory.
If anything, from my experiences, it's peer-aged people I have had the hardest time trusting for most of my life. Teachers were cruel to me, but I learned early on that both boys and girls my age were fundamentally, as a whole unsafe to confide in, compared to adults - because at least some of my teachers would stick up for me and be nice, but that wasn't true for kids. It's only in my thirties that I've developed any degree of... not being afraid? Talking to people my own age IRL. In my teens and through my twenties, people significantly younger or older than me just felt less likely to be cruel to me, so I avoided talking to classmates and the like almost entirely.
Even with my closest friends I often feel scared I'll say something wrong that will make them despise me - not because I have reason to believe that they'd turn on me that quickly, but because I feel in constant danger of being deserving of scorn, and like life is a constant game of hiding that I'm actually a bad or unpleasant person. No amount of being proven otherwise ever really makes that feeling go away.
I'm glad you feel safe with friends.
IDK, I hope I haven't said anything awful or tasteless.