Rec | GOING TO THE ORCHESTRA ALONE

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I can move my face around and bop in my seat as much as I want without it seeming performative I am protected from the unruliness Of a man , who thinks that I put on a nice dress For Him, or forces. a tear down my cheek to seem gentle For Him, I am not gentle for him, I am not feeling For him I am Feeling because I know no other way to be He simply has the privilege of a glance towards me

@peetrootreeroot

May 21, 2025

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things i appreciate about being seen as a woman when im not

*waving at babies *telling girls they look pretty *playful flirting to get free drinks *people holding doors for me *other girls trusting me with their drinks or bags while they go to the bathroom *getting compliments on my outfit platonically *the ability to shapeshift

@goth-amish

May 17, 2025

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The performance of boyhood

i really also think about how much boys are taught ways to perform masculinity & how it is legitimised through tangible things like building a career etc but with women i find that from a young age our identity, behaviours, & thoughts are always spoken about in relation to other people/things — gender roles within the family, how we’re perceived by men, our friendships with other women, our relationships with material things etc etc — and this shows up in the labels that women are often given too! so and so is someone’s daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother etc etc. i envy the freedom of boyhood so much, the freedom to just be (this is not to discount the toxicity of traditional masculinity, i just think that boys are still afforded more “play” and therefore have more opportunities to develop their sense of self). maybe i am also biased because of how i’ve grown up & whatnot but i never really understood what it meant to quote unquote be a woman or perform femininity. i only saw this modelled within my nurturing friendships with women as i’ve gotten older but when i was younger, in church it was always “ok well don’t do this or that because x y z will happen to men if you do” or within my extended family it was often “are you seeing anyone? when are you having kids”. damn what happened to asking about how i’m doing or what my dreams are!!! long rant sorry !! but that’s my long winded way of saying “i feel you” haha

@addycyl

Jun 28, 2024

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I think i had an unusually adventurous and fairly gender neutral upbringing

and I feel lucky about that; it made me who I am today! But as an adult woman I can definitely relate and I imagine what it would be like to feel that sense of freedom from being perceived as a woman and the societal expectations that come with that. Sylvia Plath said it best in her journals: “Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...” I do think though that it’s fruitless to fixate on these things, imagining the grass to be greener on the other side and essentially wishing you could have grown up and lived as another person, because 1 it’s not possible 2 the life you imagine has so many downsides to it too that you can’t even imagine not having experienced itself and 3 if you were a different person then the You you are now wouldn’t exist, and that would be a shame! I also think men are having a tough time now and many of them are probably just as neurotic, inhibited, and fearful as women. Obviously people are free to reject these notions and live life as whoever they want, and I respect and appreciate those who choose to do this, but I’m not interested in doing that for myself. Instead, I challenge the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in the ways that I can, which feels like the right choice for me!