Kiwi Farms

These two posts were in the Jazz Jennings thread, which I didn't want to derail with my Deep Thoughts™.

Letora said:

I agree with you. It goes even beyond toddler age, and into puberty especially.

Bit of a power level here, but I fucking hated puberty. I hated the changes that were happening to my body. I felt fat and ugly. I didn't want hips, I didn't want thigh fat, I didn't want body odor, I didn't want a period, I didn't want boobs. I fucking HATED wearing a bra, it felt so restrictive and awful, and I wanted to go back to being a skinny, nondescript kid, running around in just a t-shirt. I even flirted with thoughts like "I wish I was a boy so I didn't have to wear a bra." Hating bras and women's clothing is also common in autistic women because of the way they itch, squeeze, pinch, and scratch. I wore men's shirts for a period of time, but didn't really want to be a man. I was at least intelligent enough to understand that my problem was not with being female, but that I didn't like the human experience in general. Having a wiener wouldn't have improved anything.

Turns out, the way I felt in puberty was really goddamned common. Many women I meet felt the same way. You get over it. Most tomboy women embrace femininity later in life. At least, you do if you don't have insane fucking parents. Thank goodness this was far before this trans-debacle, and my mother would have thumped me good and shamed the hell out of me if I ever said I was a "man in a woman's body."

RIP to the uncomfortable, weird, and autistic kids with weak-ass parents growing up now, who are too stupid to conclude that their sex isn't the issue they are having, and then have to deal with a disfigured body for the rest of their life as a result. Jaron might have been a weird fucking kid, but he didn't deserve to be transed for having quirks.

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NoReturn said:

You absolutely are not alone. It's mind-blowing to see so many young women on social media transitioning, and how many of them believe what their going through is something special and unique and indicative of "dysphoria" rather than just the fact that female puberty sucks.
And shit, man, even I didn't end up liking the color pink until I was an adult just because it got shoved on me so much as a kid.

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These got me thinking… do you guys think all the “love your body” and “don’t be ashamed” shit that gets pushed on teenagers and young women these days is actually making this worse?

I don’t know about you guys, but one of the major contributing factors of my discomfort at that age was the sheer amount of sources that wanted to talk at you about puberty and sex. The people who did this believed they were being nothing but helpful and educational since it’s what they wished others would have done for them as a teenager, but I didn’t want that so to me, it just felt extremely uncomfortable and almost borderline violating. (Namely because you were a captive audience to this shit about 99% of the time.)

I say that because lot of the people who are drawn to that “body positive” mentality seem to have that same motivation — they believe they’re being helpful because it’s what they want somebody to tell them, so they assume everyone else must be the same way. They fully believe that people only feel uncomfortable with their bodies because somebody else told them to feel that way, and they're very open with stating this "fact".

But that isn't the case at all. Even just from reading personal anecdotes here at the Farms, it seems like there’s a great many people who felt uncomfortable at puberty and even for years after, because puberty is just an inherently uncomfortable and awkward time.

What I’m getting at is that it’s already bad enough to be feeling miserable because of some bodily thing you have no control over, but then to be constantly bombarded with well-meaning-but-tone-deaf messages that you should enjoy it and be proud of it and show yourself off and talk openly about your bodily functions… well, it's no wonder that some of these teenagers end up feeling like something's wrong with them for being uncomfortable in the first place.

I used to be surprised that there wasn't more animosity between the body-positive types and the trans community (like there is between the trans community and feminists) because their ideals seem completely opposed: Being openly proud of your body completely as-is versus using medication and surgery to change your body so you like it more. But after thinking about it, it's a very quick step from "everyone should love their body" to "if you don't love your body, you need to change it into something you DO love".

Anyway, thoughts?