The people around me, who grew me up as a boy.
The sexism.
Always facing the expectation that you are automatically responsible for everyone else and are expected to perform with happy docile compliance.
Learning that all the subtle ways sexism impacted my life growing up, and I just thought there was something specifically wrong with me.
2 things:
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In a strict/ traditional household, being made to feel like you constantly have to hide what makes you a woman. Your period products, any contact with boys (even with my relatives and calling to order food I was accused of flirting!), your body parts.
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Being constantly denigrated for being into anything a teenage girl would be into. I couldn’t play my music in the car without complaints. Actors and singers with a primary teenage girl fanbase would be mocked and ridiculed relentlessly by the media and boys your age. Especially American male “heartthrobs” would ditch you as fans as soon as you lifted them up enough that they no longer needed you. I think this is why teenage girls gravitate to kpop so much. They at least seem to respect teenage girls as a fanbase (and yet are called gay for it, make that make sense).
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For both, boys and girls, the hardest part is becoming yourself against all expectations from family, friends and society.
For girls the expectations are extremely focused on everything outside, how you are perceived. You‘re supposed to be cute, pretty, soft, styled to the max. You learn that you’re not supposed to go outside without altering your appearance, you learn that your natural looks are ugly. You learn, that intelligence or success is not something desirable as you’re supposed to be „less than a man“, in everything.
You learn that you need to yearn for a husband and kids, that you are not complete without them. That you are mentally wrong if you want something different. That your achievements in life are worth nothing if you don’t meet the expectations.
You learn that you need to alter your voice as you’re supposed to be soft spoken, hyper empathetic and forgiving.
Your not supposed to lead, you‘re supposed to serve, and they tell you, that it’s in your genes to be like this.
And don’t get me started on the perverted expectation that women are responsible for the actions of a man which is thrown at you at a very young age.
For me it was really being the only girl in the neighborhood. I didn’t realize it at the time but it lead to be feeling like there was something wrong with being a girl. Especially when my parents would get mad at me for getting dirty and muddy but not my brother.
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Depends where you live.
