not to keep posting about this but i don’t think a lot of people realize that forcing women to be in a perpetual state of defensiveness, so much so that it is internalized and wired into our brains from the time we’re born, is actual brain damage and directly mirrors the internal wiring of trauma survivors whose nervous systems are constantly on alert and ready to defend even when they don’t need to be. when you’re living in a state of perpetual defensiveness you become neurotic, hypervigilant, obsessive, anxious, depressed, overreactive, self-conscious, afraid. all of the things that have been historically categorized as feminine traits and behaviors. your true internal needs become masked by this compulsion to always be performing to satisfy externally enforced expectations, and you lose your sense of self and create this situation where what you want/need is directly at odds with what you express (or don’t express) to others. which then is what gives birth to the idea that women never know what they want, women are mysterious and hard to understand, women are always contradicting themselves, women are never clear. it’s like well..yeah because women are repeatedly traumatized both psychologically and physically from the day they’re born and only those who are fortunate enough to encounter sisterhood or wise maternal guidance or individually break free from ideology are able to live authentically. and even then it takes so much work to resist because you still have to operate within a culture that doesn’t have a place for liberated women.
