If you happen to be too ugly or too outside of social norms for one reason or another, most other women will treat you like you’re an alien. (For context: I think I may be neurodivergent, I’m not pretty by American standards, and I live in a predominantly white area as an Asian) I’m lucky I have good female friends that accept me now, but my experience has been pretty negative. The meanness of women is so subtle. Maybe it’s because we’re socialized to communicate that way.
They’ll talk to you and then give each other that look. Maybe hint at there being a “problem” with your body. Text each other about how weird and ugly you are behind your back. Exclude you in a way that’s in your face. It’ll make you feel like you’re crazy for feeling bad until you step back and realize it’s all on purpose.
And then it escalates when they think you’re a punching bag that won’t stand up for yourself. Groping you and calling you flat in front of the guy they know you like. Jokingly using your shirt as a napkin. “Accidentally” shoving you into the street.
I came out of that friendship (after 3 years) feeling like I was worthless and stupid. All of these things put together sound so awful but spaced out among good times, it was hard not to be somewhat attached. I finally stopped talking to them when I turned 20. I sort of cut them out of my life before but then they’d be really friendly and I’d hang out with them again. But since then, I’ve blocked them.
I consider myself a feminist and I love the other women in my life, so it hasn’t really caused any larger resentment towards my gender. Unfortunately, deep down, I still feel distrustful of women who remind me of my ex friends. Those conventionally attractive, outgoing types who are well liked and socialize with ease. Hopefully that goes away with time.
Comments
Yes if you don’t look and act like them they will hurt you. Experience speaking.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. Don’t know what kind of people you were hanging with but they sound really messed up. I’m not conventionally attractive myself.
Things have experienced is more along the lines of hold my drink I’m going to go dance with this guy. I was always the drink holder never the dancer.
I hope you find people that accept you as you are. We all deserve that.
As a lifelong introvert who was never socially adept I’ve experienced this so many times for other woman, as much as I hate to say it. Many times I’ve gone to a gathering there’s always going to be one woman who has to be a jerk for no reason.
Also at work! A lot of women really hate it when their female coworker is quiet and minds their own business. I’m so happy I’ve worked from home since 2020.
Is this a thing that happens frequently to people? Wow, that sucks, I’m sorry.
I’ve never been popular and feel like kind of a weirdo, but I never was bullied by other women. We either vibe or they ignore me or give me a cold shoulder. Being invisible sucks too but it’s a different thing I’d imagine.
Oh dear. I’m 42. No longer conventionally beautiful, but I used to be. It doesn’t matter your age though. You find your ppl by recognizing that person likes you regardless of what you look like. There are so, so many women who aren’t judgmental. I learned that I just have a few close friends instead of hundreds of “acquaintances. Bc I myself am, “strange and unusual “. -Lydia deetz
I’m a neurodivergent woman. I know this feeling all too well.
These people you described are shitty people regardless of your looks and personality. Lets pretend you re not “weird” or too “ugly”
You re pleasant and attractive. Now they get to hate you for that and be jealous of u
U see what im saying?
They are irrelevant
Women are like that to me too as a pretty white girl not saying you don’t get worse treatment but women can be awful
Women can be really mean. I have cptsd from sexual abuse from men but women started my disorder by the horrific bullying I experienced as a child. They went out of their way to terrorize me all day for months, then justify why I deserved it. Women also can victim blame just as bad as men but it’s worse as they are marginalized as well. I think dealing with narcissistic behaviour from women is worse, with men it’s usually obvious, they push boundaries so much and do physical and sexual assaults, with women it’s more subtle, so subtle they can easily turn things around on you and deem you as the abuser, they are usually more covert which makes you feel crazy and insane.
Find better friends. The minute someone starts that shit, walk away. You teach people how to treat you.
Seriously, the rhetoric of “women are so mean” like it’s some flat declaration of fact needs to stop. Some women, yes. People suck in a lot of ways, and some of those people are women. And?
If you need to vent about your boss, coworker, friend, sister, mom, etc, go for it, we all have toxic people in our lives, but I’m tired of the pick-me “women are so mean to me, because I’m not like them” schtick.
Because you know what? I’m weird. I’m fat and single and child free. I’m loud and obnoxious. I don’t wear makeup or heels or push up bras. And the minute someone tries to shame me for any of that, I tell them all about themselves and walk away. I don’t suffer like a good girl and then whine that women are mean.
Edit – fine, let me make it easy to understand.
She’s an asshole because she’s an asshole, not because she’s a woman. Stop doing the patriarchy’s work for them.
been happening to me since grade school, still a thing at nearly 40.
I never understood why. I have ASD and struggle with social dynamics in general, but female “friendships” have been one of the biggest minefields for me and have left me so hurt and confused. my most ruthless bullies throughout life have been female peers who I had considered friendly at one point – sadly this has made me generally suspicious of “normal” women. it takes me a very long time to trust them or share anything really personal because it has been weaponized against me so many times at this point.
I consider myself a feminist too, and I hate feeling this way towards other women but you are definitely not alone. I’m sorry you’ve had that type of experience.
I’m possibly ND as well. Women and girls are definitely exclusionnary. I sensed the shift in elementary where the boys would scream at me and beat me whereas the girls would just shun me and talk behind my back.
Humans gotta human.
Find yourself some authentically goofy autistic girl pals to parralel play with. I’ll knit or scribble away while you play video games. I make good salsa. 😉
Not to say that grown women never do this stuff, but those weren’t women you were describing, those were girls. Grown women can certainly be catty and cliquey and passive aggressive and terrible, but the stuff you’re describing is flat out bullying. And oftentimes, I think it comes from their own insecurities. If they can put down someone else that they feel doesn’t measure up to them in a physical way, they feel better, which is so dumb, because obviously, physical isn’t the only thing that matters. I feel like girls, and the immature, shitty women who never grow up, who are like that are just so lacking in anything but surface level emotional intelligence and maturity in general that they’re just not living the full human experience. I know it’s so trite, but I feel like they must be miserable, or are just so caught up in the trivialities of physical appearance and keeping themselves perfect, that they miss other things in their lives. Think of all of the adult children of parents who focused on their physical appearance vs their feelings and relationships and connections and how much damage that did. How many things there are to enjoy in this life that absolutely don’t have anything to do with how someone looks physically. I just feel like they’re missing out on a whole different level of life, because they don’t leave room in their lives for other stuff beyond their own appearance and that of other people around them
i’m autistic and this has been a big issue for me too. I’m still not able to have like a group of female friends and anytimes i’ve come close to it I always become deeply ostracized to where i’ve given up on friendships all together
I’ve always had a hard time making and keeping female friends. I hate this because when I say I have a hard time being friends with other women it makes me sound like a pick me that hates other women but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I feel like men are more willing to engage with someone who is for lack of a better word, weird, whereas women pick up and immediately clock any neurodivergence, it’s very hard to mask with women. They can spot someone being fake or awkward quicker than men can and it makes them far more uncomfortable.
My theory on this is that women have evolved to be more aware of anyone who might be a danger than men, so they can easily pick up neurodivergence in people and become uncomfortable around it even if they don’t know why. I also think because women tend to have such high emotional IQs and social awareness they immediately spot any weirdness in other people.
Add to that if you don’t have kids and you’re trying to bond with women who happen to be mothers and it can become impossible to make female friends.
Aww I can relate, I’m Asian and went to a predominantly white secondary school in an middle class area. I was diagnosed with autism at 14, but looking back at my childhood it seemed super obvious and I have no idea why non of the adults around me had picked up on it before.
I wasn’t bullied to the point it got physical, but a lot of the ‘popular girls’ were very psychologically abusive, such as pretending to be my friend and I then later found out they were posting our interactions and messages online to make fun of and laugh at me, sniggering at each other whenever I tried to talk to them or make conversation etc.
Even in adulthood, when I finally thought I found my friend group, they started leaving me out of meet-ups or whispering among themselves when we met up, eventually I just gave up. And it’s a pattern, whenever I think I’ve made a friend, it end up I’m always the one putting on the effort to message or suggest meet-ups. I’ve given up tbh.
As a girl Dad, there’s a special place in hell for women who tear other women down. Jeebus Christ, y’all got enough stacked against you without having to fight each other.
Yeah I’m ADHD and my parents didn’t socialize me to be a wall flower and it’s so hard to make and keep female friends. It’s not just that they don’t accept me, I can deal with that. It’s that they seem to feel righteous about hating me because I’m obnoxious to them or whatever. Like they seriously feel like I deserve to be loathed and it fucking sucks. And it’s definitely more universal with women. Like I have femme friends who love me and treat me well but they’re the exception. Whereas men who treat me like that are more rare. Toxic femininity is real and I feel like third wave capitalist feminism has actually brought us backwards.
Makes me think how women can also be huge perpetuators of patriarchal and sexist standards. It’s not only men.
Oof, I’m so sorry about your experiences with those people. I have been in a similar place, as a previously highly anxious and to this day still kinda “off” girl socially speaking (possibly neurodivergent as well). A twist on my side though was that I am relatively conventionally attractive, so the pretty and socially fluent girls would initially be drawn to me and then I’d have to watch them slowly draw away and exclude me over time. Just a repeated experience of having that proffered hand and surge of hope only to be ripped away like clockwork.
Best I can say is that it’s so much easier once you find people more like yourself quirk-wise. I’ve definitely found that meeting other neurodivergent and/or nerdy people has been a godsend and were the groups where I made the most friends. Just a more understanding crowd overall 🙂
I’ve moved past all my exes but I still lose sleep on how my girl friends broke my heart.
I’m not ugly but I’m definitely more neurodivergent and “weird”. I never felt like I fit in for this reason and was usually just quiet, or if I was more talkative I was just weird. I’ve decided to embrace it, but I can clock when a girl doesn’t like me immediately. I’ve never fit in with the “popular” girls. Men seem to be more chill about those weird quirks in my experience. A lot of my female friends tend to be more neurodivergent/weird too.
I’ve had this experience too. Not for my race but for bein “other”. It does stay with you and undermines your capacity to believe things can get better or that you’re deserving of healthy love and connections. I’m sorry you’ve experienced this and hope you find people worthy of knowing you.
I’ve had women do crazy makin to me and then wonder why I’m so cold/harsh to them. Shorty you brought that on yourself
Once a year or so ago, I had someone I thought was a friend joke in my face about how easy it was to make fun of me because I couldn’t tell when people were doing it. And true to form, my only response in the moment was: Yes, that is so true! It is really hard to tell.
But the thing is, I can tell, it just takes me a bit longer than the average person to realize what is happening. So a month later I was thinking about it again and then it just clicked and I realized: oooooooh. she said that because she actually hates my guts. good to know. She had plenty of other red flags, but that moment really encapsulated her insincere and condescending mindset quite well.
So to conclude, I feel ya OP. I slowly began to check out of that friendship and thankfully ended up leaving a few months later. But I am a lot more cautious about befriending people too quickly even if they seem really great because of my experiences with that person. I’m so sorry you were treated terribly for three years.
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I am the weird. I was roofied by my ex best friend.
Whoever pushed you into the street is a real PoS.
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I liked to call them “the hyenas”. They never said anything remotely hostile if it was just me and them, and we’d always have a “good time”, joking, watching the shows that they liked, gossiping about the other friends.
For an example, as soon as there was another party involved, the entire dynamic changed. I would always get so confused, and one of those times I got up and asked them out loud why they kept changing their personalities whenever a new person is involved. They “didn’t understand”, and made it out that I was picking on them.
I sat back down and watched them bantering with each other for a while. I remember the ways that they would socialise with me, and it was completely different. It felt as if I was barging into their friendship, and it would make me furious. I never realised that they were just trying to survive too.
Girls from a young age are brought up to be quiet about their grievances, and that if they don’t say anything negative out loud, they won’t be punished. The whole “seen and not heard” thing, you know. They sneak around the meaning, by not verbally expressing their hostility, but by subtly showing it in social situations, where a lot of their “supporters” can chime in and back them up.
It’s really fascinating how different social expectations can completely alter a person’s perceptions and attitudes.
Girls/women bully in their awful way. Psychological terror. If they (often a leader) wants to, they will find something to be mean about no matter what. Your prettyness, your ugliness, your background, your brains, it doesn’t matter. They’ll take something about you and twist it.
Essentially, there are three main reasons women are nasty to other women:
The cruelty of other human beings can be awful and devastating. I’m so sorry you experienced this.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/working-with-btches/201308/why-are-some-women-nasty-to-other-women
I’m so sorry you experienced this… this is why I don’t have any friends, I just keep to myself mostly and hang out with my animals
I ended up working in the trades, with almost entirely men. They don’t notice I’m weird, other then me being the only woman. As long as I can hang, joke around with then, and do my job they don’t care. They mostly ignore me, wich is perfect
Sometimes people who have anti-social tendencies are attracted to friendships and relationships where they can bully and abuse people. Seems like that’s what’s happened to you. Yo were vulnerable and you ended up with a dreadful person in your life. Congratulate yourself that you stood up to it. Some people get permanently stuck.
I don’t have much to add to the main discussion here apart from a raised hand to say “me too.”
It’s so refreshing to see this subject taken seriously (for the most part) by those who haven’t experienced it themselves. I always come into posts like this braced for the onslaught of “pick me” accusations and deliberate misunderstandings. But this discussion has been different. It’s nice to be seen and validated for once.
My first week of college, my new roommate asked me if I “wanted to switch with her friend” because they “got along so well.” Which was half true but she was really implying that she didn’t want to live with me. She was very girly, very into parties, etc. I played a lot of video games and read books and shit. She barely knew me but made some immediate judgements that she didn’t like. So we switched…. and they stopped being friends after like 3 months… jokes on her I guess, I was a very chill roommate and she could have completely avoided me if she really didn’t like my vibe or whatever.
Separately, a different roommate a few years later asked me to switch with a different friend after the first couple of weeks… “coincidentally” after I had my girlfriend visit. So yeah I didn’t want to live with a homophobic person either, win-win.
Yeah, as an ND person, I don’t trust women anymore (even other ND women).
It’s called “hen pecking”. Chickens will pick at each other if they feel the other is different. Chickens will go so far as to destroy each other for being different. The term has been attributed to women because some women will “henpeck” another woman until they die.
Got to raise some chickens as a kid. Chickens are brutal.
I’m autistic and my worse bullies were girls. The guys made fun of me but the girls got physical with me. I ended up attempting suicide in the 7th grade. I was gone for a month and I wasn’t allowed clothing that could cover my arms and the boys saw that and asked if it was because of everyone bullying me. I said yes and the boys stopped making fun of me but the girls got worse and they got expelled for gang violence when a group of 8 jumped me on school grounds.
ND as well. Boys either avoided me like the plague or didn’t notice me at all so it was always the girls calling me out for my neurodivergent behaviors in the classroom such as stimming or walking on tippy toes. My friends in middle school were so mean I went through high school without making friends and was only able to socialize again when I started college. It took me a couple of years to truly warm up to them but I absolutely adore them to bits and we’re still very good friends to this day. I hope you can find friends who treat you with the respect you deserve. Don’t give up!
I’m so sorry this happened to you. Women can be like that and in turn men treat you like you’ve offended them for interacting with them as a designated “unfuckable” person, or they don’t even think you exist. Humans can be so shitty.
Yeah, I grew up in the 80’s/90’s as a girl nerd and even though teenage boys were among my bullies, the girls could definitely be worse. Even at work, in the past, there were a couple of women who would be so pissy to me. It’s like why? I didn’t do anything to them.
it honestly hurts so bad even though i have so many friends who are gems. being a south asian in a predominantly white area is where i felt this the most honestly. ive only been in that environment twice: a few years in elementary school, and during my masters program. and it felt just as horrible the second time around, which i was not expecting because i guess i just forgot how it felt. being neurodivergent, i hate small talk and i can usually just be myself, but around the wrong people you feel like you’re get punished and excluded for going off script.
another environment that i feel like this at lately because its wedding season, is around straight religious women from my background (i am not practicing). the weird looks i get for not being into the same stuff they are makes me want to just die inside i stg. the older women dont even hide their judging they’ll just ask invasive questions trying to figure out why i am the way i am 🤷🏻♀️ sorry that i dont want an arranged marriage to a man i barely know, have kids early, and that i dont have parents who pressure me into that bs and let me do what i want.
Oh heavens to mergatroyd yes. Other girls made my early life HELL. Fucking mean and malicious petty cunts…and I was at a religious private school for the most part.the years I got sent to public school were nowhere near as bad, and I actually made friends. As an adult, I still have trauma issues. I’m a hermit now, and rarely go outside unless I have to.
Really sorry people have treated you like this. I feel like some of this is women being horrendous to each other (which seems to happen a lot, particularly in some cliques/groups) and some might be attributable to the ‘double empathy’ problem – where Neurodivergent people communicate with each other fine, Neurotypical people communicate with each other fine, but Neurotypical and Neurodiverse people don’t understand each other and have difficulty communicating.
It also feels like there should be a third category for people who are half Aspie (an author mentioned this concept in a book) – for people who code switch between them – like in Neurodiverse/Neurotypical families. I’m pretty sure I’m a code switcher, and my main group of friends in high school were also code switchers.
Have had awful experiences with standard girl bullying, and can’t say it gets much easier when you have kids and have to re-enter the school environment. It’s like you see and experience the bullying all over again from a different perspective – many women like this never grow up, then socialise their children this way and you watch it play out with you and or your child. I’ve had a Mum refuse to make eye contact when the Kindy Teacher was telling us both our 3 year olds liked playing with each other. Awkward. Also watched two mean mums roll their eyes at each other every time another Mum spoke at a Basketball dinner. It just seems to keep going.
The only thing the barbie movie has shown me is how it is okay to bully someone when barbie is “not cool” then jump on the bandwagon and claim to have “always loved barbie”.
I was thinking about this yesterday. I have ADHD. Yesterday, I realised that I’m starting to have more male friends than female friends. As a kid & teen I judged the girls that had more male friends, I thought they thought themselves better or smarter that us other girls, or just craved male attention.
Now I’m in my late twenties. I don’t waste another moment with people who make me feel uncomfortable. So, i backed out of the female friend groups that made plans without me. Or if all they did was talk about their partners (feminist me was so annoyed, like, there’s more to talk about than dicks. I don’t care what sport he plays, I’m here to meet you). The guys I know don’t give a single shit about how you behave. If you fuck up, they’ll call you out. Why are there so many women who fear confrontation but talk about you behind your back? This is what breaks female friendships for me. You do this, I’m out. Talk to me, if you have a problem. Not others.
And yeah, many mentioned that here, but I’m also scared to say this because I don’t want to add to the stereotype.
The “thin slice” studies have helped me make some sense of this phenomenon:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286449/
Without having met us, without having heard us speak, allistic (not-autistic) people receive a pre-cognitive signal. They trust this signal implicitly and make a judgement without even thinking. That judgement often says that we are weird, uninteresting, even untrustworthy.
It’s unknown what the signal is based on exactly, but the studies ruled out that it has anything to do with the content of what we say or the sound of our voice. It seems to have more to do with our expression, body language, and general “vibe” than anything else.
There’s nothing we (and maybe they) can do to avoid this. Their subconscious is driving. Personally I hope that education might make a difference in what some people consciously do after receiving that signal. Maybe some empathetic people might check themselves and go “Wait, but autism exists. Could this be autism? Is this person actually untrustworthy, or are they just different?” Maybe truly empathetic people do this already without needing to know the particulars.
The other part of this (that isn’t mentioned in the studies but I’m sure is related) is that predatory types receive those same signals but their interpretation is that we seem like an easy target.
Since I learned this, I’ve had a harder time trusting anyone who shows an interest in me, for any reason. 99% of the time in my life, people who have approached me turned out to be predators of some kind. I’ve been relatively fortunate that most of them just wanted to take advantage of me financially.
I think that it shows up in women the way it does because women have been forced by a violent, predatory society to be on their guard at all times. So their sensitivity to those signals is heightened, and they put a lot of stock in what they say. This is a good thing, most of the time. The way the majority of women treat us is a really unfortunate, but under the current circumstances, mostly faultless and unavoidable side-effect of their (our) need to be hyper-vigilant.
This doesn’t excuse outright meanness however. I’ll put my thoughts on that in the next comment.
Same here – took years to even somewhat heal. Wish you strength and peace <3
I remember the 90s, when psychologist ‘uncovered’ the ‘shocking’ subtle, unseen, bullying of girls by girls in High Schools 🙄 (this was big on American talk shows etc. at the time.)
Needless to say, ANY and every girl who has ever been to a freakin high school rolled their eyes. Whether it was a co-ed or all girl school, we all saw or felt it! But at least there was finally some attention on the situation. (Like ADD/ADHD, etc., the focus was always on boys … 🤦🏻♀️)
Women are the only ones who can truly lift each other up, but we are also so deeply brain-washed by the patriarchy, and are some of the worst perpetrators of the misogyny against other women.
And it really is the worst amongst teens … (except maybe in a college setting [where people live on campus] as opposed to Uni?)
There’s “you’re weird” and then there is bullying. You’re just being bullied. As a teacher, I’m not going to lie this is becoming strangely more common for younger generations to have poor social skills and social boundaries and just putting up with terrible “friends” because it’s all they got.
It’s easy for me to sit here and say “stop being friends with them” because I’m not going to experience loneliness. My best recommendation is (1) therapy because people with unresolved issues are only going to restart the cycle with new friends (2) find new friends via dating apps (I kid you not), or constant attendance at some function.
I’m neurotypical but my experiences as an ugly woman can make me come across as neurodivergent in terms of being awkward at times and not being naturally mean. I know how it feels to be put down and I don’t want others to feel how I feel. I don’t understand how it’s so natural to most women to make nasty comments about other women. If they are not making comments about my looks then they comment on things that I do, when they wouldn’t do the same with other women.
Work in childcare, I have adhd. I’m so tired of how hard it is to constantly act or be bullied
I wonder if this is region dependent as well. Where I live it’s very “stagnant” in that the population doesn’t change much – not many people move here, not many people leave. I’ve had people who move here comment to the effect that it is very, very hard to show up to your job and just work in my area if you’re a woman. If you’re a man you can do that all day every day, but if u a woman then both men and women you work with and work for expect a lot more social energy from you and give you backlash for not engaging them. Basically, it may also be down to you being a woman and your area having weird socially conservative trends that means you’re not supposed to be a burnt out laborer but a coked up 1950s sitcom caricature of a woman.
As a neurodivergent woman, I never got along with other women. The standards of normality and social engagement are high, and it’s all about powerplays and backstabbing. The decent ones ignore or pity you so… Men are far less demanding, but of course the misogyny of our society has them either acting creepy, dismissive, or condescending at certain intervals or all the time.
With people in general, it’s a real lose-lose situation when you’re neurodivergent. And when you spend time with other neurodivergents they take the opportunity of dumping their issues onto you in abusive ways, because they think you’re lesser as a human – enough to put up with it.
This is why I almost exclusively prefer the company of people that exist in books and movies. At least they don’t treat you like shit.
It’s changing, and will continue to get better with time.
The patriarchy benefited from pitting women against each other, and we’ve begun to see that for what it is.
However, many of us still have internalized misogyny and years of programming to work through.
Even those of us who’ve done the work may have behaved poorly as children/teens out of ignorance. We simply weren’t having these conversations then.
I believe rising generations will have that solidarity. They’ve been raised in a different environment with less to deprogram.
That gives me hope, as do the close, beautiful female friendships I’ve cultivated as an adult, despite having been bullied by other girls as a child 🙂
In my experience, women are the keepers and policers of cultural norms. Even accounting for jealousy, spitefulness, narcissism, and other individual weirdness, the cultural protectiveness seems to be a primordial, lizard-brain reflex. Step (or be born) outside norms, and a woman/women will do everything they can to herd you back into the flock
Yes exactly!! As a nerdy girl, i always get weird looks from other women. Blank stares as if nothing is happening in their brains when i mention media or books. One woman at work would always talk about travel and i would mention that i traveled too and instead she would laugh and switch the topic to make it about herself…..
I don’t think it’s right for me to claim some sort of neurodivergence, as I don’t feel that I’ve ever exhibited any signs of anything besides mild depression, so I’m not sure if it’s considered as such. But I can definitely relate to the sentiment of this post given I have undergone the exact same kind of experience as the OP in the past, so it’s been very comforting (although upsetting as well) to see so many women here openly share their feelings and create safe spaces for women who have been socialized to be an “outsider”
I do think I have somewhat existed as an outsider for most of my life. In my experience I’ve tried very hard in the past to form lasting friendships, but my mistake was that I would want to try with people who weren’t as invested as I was. Or they would just be people who deep down didn’t respect me, but I was too naive or blind to be more discerning. Maybe I just also wasn’t likeable for whatever reason, but I don’t know. I had a couple experiences in my youth that marked me, perhaps more than I should have allowed it to. After that, any attempts I made at connecting with people would fall apart after a short time. People just leave one day and cut you off cold, and what hurts more is that you never get to find out why.
I’m still young, but at 28, sometimes it takes me a bit of effort to remember that the world at my lowest point is not the one I live in today. I still feel as though the things I internalized about myself could be true, which would just mean I haven’t grown in all this time. But I have, and I still yearn for that connection and community with women. But it’s about being more careful, and working on my self esteem has made me realize how much self-esteem just matters in everything you do. I’m grateful for the people I now have in my life who do care about me and check in on me.
I don’t think I’ve found my “group”. I don’t know if I ever will, or if that’s something that’s meant for me. But to know that there are people who just simply understand and appreciate you, and that you don’t have to explain your choices or justify your feelings is something I wish everyone gets to have.
I’m ND, trans and a t4t lesbian so I get all sorts of hate. They’ll be talking about how they think men are hot and I’m thinking ick, they always ask how could I NOT love men? lol. Or thinking I’m “invading” their space, like girl I don’t date cis people period.
welcome to society. where our response to being put down is to make this sandbox a living hell for everyone else so we can feel a little better about ourselves.
it’s not hard to look out for each other. we just need to care.
My god, it’s like I wrote this post. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I was the only asian in my school and holy fuck, the same shit happened to me too. Getting groped, getting tit-punched because “lol it’s all padding anyway”, getting bullied for my body and eyes, fuck.
I’m 27 now, and I think you’re younger than me and I’ll give you some of my love and advice, the distrust will round off the sharp edges over time, but you’ll always be able to spot those types of people. This is not a bad thing.