The thing about raised by people and a school system that is, generally, aware of and trying not to be misogynistic
Is not that you grow up feeling that men and women are equal
Its not even that you grow up feeling that men are better than women anyway
But you grow up feeling that men are better than women for Some Reason, but this is Bad, and we need to counteract it Even If Its True.
Its negative space yknow. I was told a woman could do anything a man could do.
Why would you say that if you didn't on some level live in a world where that was a countercultural thing to say?
You don't really grow up with examples of women who do well without help from anti-misogynist systems, so your mind never really feels proven on the idea that without them men and women would be equal.
You are simply vaguely helped on the basis of your shared genitals, needing more help than others because you are Equal.
In hindsight I maybe never liked this on account of the transness. I never felt like these resources were something I needed or wanted, and it was miserably obvious that other girls and often adult women really did see me as an aberrant failed woman that wasn't supposed to Be Here.
I obviously don't think helping women is wrong but I dunno. I don't think this really did anything for feminism except reinforce that girls are weak and passive and need to be dragged to get anything done, and that boys were simply naturally Fine and didnt need help.
I hung out my whole life with wierdo boys, a lot of whom really needed help, but they were Born Capable and I Was Born Weak. Theyre inability to thrive was seen as defiance of the system rather than, in hindsight, a massive failing to see like... a lot, a lot of ADHD.
That's the thing. I was at times propped up and got help. Not because anyone saw the real problem, but because they assumed I needed more help on the basis of my assumed gender. Failure and being a girl was deeply entwined in my head. I was *rewarded* for being better at things than boys. Acting like a boy *while being a girl* was success. For many of my peers, academic failure *in spite of being a boy* was compared to girls, 'if they can do it, you have no excuse'.
I don't know how to call this misogyny. It is, but for me that lesson was taught backwards in the negative space of a world that assumed women *could* be equal to men, not that they *were*.
Ultimately I think sexism is at the root of misogyny and peeling it back and trying to fix the problem just made the same problem in a way that still fails every gender deviant by rewarding successful girls for Being Like a Boy and leaves any boys that need help to be seen as Like A Girl and therefore not just shameful but not deserving of resources.
My success was always comparative. My failures were disappointments to the cause. I watched kids just like me be put behind, and I couldnt understand what the difference between us was. I was always scared of failing arbitrarily because my success also seemed arbitrary.
Of course outside of this system the world is a patriarchy and inevitably even if I hadn't left, I'm sure I would have watched all my friends grow up to become people I hated.
But what exactly did this flipped mindset do except breed resentment in the boys and sow the idea that a successful woman is one that acts like a man?
No one was trying to perpetuate the system im sure, good intentions, everyone was very nice to me, but why me? I was always scared they'd figure it out and realise I wasn't special.
I always saw myself more like the boys that got nothing right.
For a tiny window of my life, on a concrete playground, away from a thousand voices each with ideas about how we should act and be, we were equals.
