I really believe there's some sort of "emperor's new clothes" phenomenon happening with Gen Z discoursers where they're too afraid to question the logic of some of the discourse being thrown at them for fear of appearing to be unwoke so they just blindly parrot it not to be excluded by their peers
not just a Gen Z thing, like that’s a valid criticism of tumblr few years back, and I’m not ashamed to admit it sucked me in too. people can say whatever shit they want as long as they use the right vocabulary and an agressive tone that just implies that disagreement is out of the question. it sinks in because you will get similar messages about legitimate issues and sometimes from the same people.
this is a huge reason why lesbians can go years just not figuring out that they aren’t attracted to men. when your whole understanding of attraction is “objectifying yourself to the point that you understand intimacy as a performance to be the perfect sexual object for a man” then the question of who and what you desire isn’t even being asked- let alone answered.
a few years back, i read “cinderella ate my daughter" by peggy orenstein (which is an interesting sort of crash course on the ways in which gender roles are really impressed on children through media, capitalism, toys, etc.). I read it like 5 years ago so if I get anything wrong, forgive me; I don’t own the book so I can’t consult it.
but one thing that really stuck with me was a part where the author speaks with (I believe) a child psychologist, and they talk about sexuality of teenage girls. one thing the psychologist mentions is that, when talking about sex, sexual attraction, etc, girls will frame it in terms of how they look, rather than how they feel when asked about their feelings (emotional and physical): “I feel like I look sexy, I look hot, etc,”. from the onset of experiencing sexuality, etc (which really means, going back to childhood, because girls are really bombarded by objectification from the time they’re tiny), girls are already alienated from their own bodies and sense of what feels good, right, or okay.
no wonder the process of realizing you’re a lesbian can be so difficult; it’s also no wonder that we have so many women who look back and say it took them years to realize that what happened to them was sexual assault, or who look back and say that they weren’t happy or satisfied in relationships but stayed in them anyway, or that women are so constantly critical of their appearances in everything they do. all of it comes down to the fact that women are so alienated from their own bodies, feelings, and experiences. monitoring how you look constantly really creates such a distance between you and your actual life, it takes you out of the moment, it makes it difficult to judge your actual feelings, or create boundaries, or bond genuinely with others, or have positive experiences free of self-criticism.
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