Listing was definitely a symptom of patriarchy.
February 25, 2024 8:38 PM Subscribe
Genevieve Hudson: "I was not feminine enough to have an eating disorder, I told myself."
Content warning for disordered eating and body dysmorphia.
I eat no muffin with my coffee. I drink no milk. I pull a tough hat over short hair. I scribble lines of tough ink over tough skin. I see thin, nonbinary bodies that have sprouted wings.
Content warning for disordered eating and body dysmorphia.
I eat no muffin with my coffee. I drink no milk. I pull a tough hat over short hair. I scribble lines of tough ink over tough skin. I see thin, nonbinary bodies that have sprouted wings.
good find. I'll go back to catapault.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:58 PM on February 25
posted by j_curiouser at 8:58 PM on February 25
There was a lot articulated in here that I've felt and never seen articulated quite this way. Thanks for sharing it.
posted by potrzebie at 9:30 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]
posted by potrzebie at 9:30 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]
This hit me in ways I can't articulate. Thanks for posting.
posted by inexorably_forward at 1:23 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]
posted by inexorably_forward at 1:23 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]
Is this dysphoria or dysmorphia?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 1:58 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 1:58 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]
oh buddy... so much of this sounds like dysphoria
posted by kokaku at 3:37 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]
posted by kokaku at 3:37 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]
My period stayed away for a very long time. I was in my junior year when the red came and when it did, I thought: finally. Then I thought: shit. I didn’t want to be left behind, and I had started to wonder if I would be, if there really was something different about me.
Oof. In my early teens I was desperate to get my period and get some boob growth going on, because I was such a total fucking freak otherwise by the standards of the place and time where I grew up that I couldn't deal with also not being normal in a puberty type of way. The irony that I'm nonbinary/transmasc as an adult isn't lost on me - nor is the fact that my gender journey has been complexified by not having obvious "oh no this isn't right" feelings while going through first puberty. They were there, just a lot more deeply buried than the "please let me not also be different in this way on top of all the other kinds of a freak I already am" feelings. Even my teenage eating disorder was more about fitting in with the type of body I was supposed to have, to look more like other teenage girls (long before I realised I was other from girls, full stop), so that I could appear more normal and less monstrous to the eyes of others. The trans me got buried under so much other life trauma that we were 27 before I started managing to dig them out from the rubble.
I ended up disocciating almost totally from the boobs after they did grow, without even being aware that that was what was going on until much later. I paid a lot of money last year to a surgeon who made them go away forever; one who thankfully didn't care at all what I'd thought or felt about them at the age of 12 and didn't force me to share those thoughts or feelings as a litmus test for whether I was indeed "trans enough", at the age of 34, to have them removed.
This is the kind of complexity that gets collapsed by the neat, polite narratives like "born this way" that we attempt to use to get cis people at best to understand us, at middlest to tolerate if not accept us, and at worst to not harm us.
posted by terretu at 3:55 AM on February 26 [10 favorites]
Oof. In my early teens I was desperate to get my period and get some boob growth going on, because I was such a total fucking freak otherwise by the standards of the place and time where I grew up that I couldn't deal with also not being normal in a puberty type of way. The irony that I'm nonbinary/transmasc as an adult isn't lost on me - nor is the fact that my gender journey has been complexified by not having obvious "oh no this isn't right" feelings while going through first puberty. They were there, just a lot more deeply buried than the "please let me not also be different in this way on top of all the other kinds of a freak I already am" feelings. Even my teenage eating disorder was more about fitting in with the type of body I was supposed to have, to look more like other teenage girls (long before I realised I was other from girls, full stop), so that I could appear more normal and less monstrous to the eyes of others. The trans me got buried under so much other life trauma that we were 27 before I started managing to dig them out from the rubble.
I ended up disocciating almost totally from the boobs after they did grow, without even being aware that that was what was going on until much later. I paid a lot of money last year to a surgeon who made them go away forever; one who thankfully didn't care at all what I'd thought or felt about them at the age of 12 and didn't force me to share those thoughts or feelings as a litmus test for whether I was indeed "trans enough", at the age of 34, to have them removed.
This is the kind of complexity that gets collapsed by the neat, polite narratives like "born this way" that we attempt to use to get cis people at best to understand us, at middlest to tolerate if not accept us, and at worst to not harm us.
posted by terretu at 3:55 AM on February 26 [10 favorites]
Oh. Oh. I felt that one. Thank you.
This weirdly kinda reminded me of being an adolescent reading Lolita and wishing I was skinny enough to be considered a nymphet (wtf, I know, I know, wtf wtf wtf), while at the same time feeling very strongly opposed to being seen as girly or feminine.
posted by 168 at 4:54 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]
This weirdly kinda reminded me of being an adolescent reading Lolita and wishing I was skinny enough to be considered a nymphet (wtf, I know, I know, wtf wtf wtf), while at the same time feeling very strongly opposed to being seen as girly or feminine.
posted by 168 at 4:54 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]
Ugh. This sort of writing is precisely why I despise AI generated writing so much. It digs deep into ugly parts of the human soul, there's the pain that can only come from having a body that the speaker does not like and can't feel at home in. And there's this willingness to 1) invite us to think thoughts that are very "~"; 2) just not have a conclusion. Obviously ChatGPT is going to be able to generate (steal) like 1000 variations on this sort of dysphoria writing but it just wouldn't be worth anything.
---
Also. I'm unsure if I'm reading the essay wrong but I feel that this angst is rooted in wishing to disappear completely ... in the sense that some people have desires and bodies that absolutely cannot be reconciled no matter how much whittling takes place, so the only option is to be reduced to dust.
Writer seems to have a good life with tonnes of connection, but every moment of connection is shadowed and outlined and observed in a way that leads to the wish to disappear.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 7:21 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]
---
Also. I'm unsure if I'm reading the essay wrong but I feel that this angst is rooted in wishing to disappear completely ... in the sense that some people have desires and bodies that absolutely cannot be reconciled no matter how much whittling takes place, so the only option is to be reduced to dust.
Writer seems to have a good life with tonnes of connection, but every moment of connection is shadowed and outlined and observed in a way that leads to the wish to disappear.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 7:21 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]
Oof. When is Metafilter going to get an "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" button...
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:29 AM on February 26 [6 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:29 AM on February 26 [6 favorites]
Sometimes when I walk down the street wearing men’s clothing, I wonder if I am threatening the gender binary or if I am helping to reproduce the idea that to look masculine is to be liberated.
Oh, that's good. Reminds me of a discussion we had here a million years ago about Dora the Explorer wearing a dress.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:08 AM on February 26 [5 favorites]
Oh, that's good. Reminds me of a discussion we had here a million years ago about Dora the Explorer wearing a dress.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:08 AM on February 26 [5 favorites]
I know now that so much of the pain I experienced in the first 44 years of my life was intertwined dysmorphia and dysphoria, circling round and round each other until they fused. I had a terrible eating disorder for a long time, which of course didn't fix my body but instead wrecked my health. Didnt_do_enough comments on the wish to disappear, and I felt that constantly. Transition was really the only thing that fixed it--I'm better at taking care of my body now, but I will never be fully rid of the two Ds, and I will never fully excise the wish, at some level, to disappear. I'm going to have to read this a few more times.
posted by Thysania at 3:19 PM on February 26 [3 favorites]
posted by Thysania at 3:19 PM on February 26 [3 favorites]
Man. Feeling this one for sure. I wonder sometimes who I would be if I actually had the ability to be thin. But I don't want to inject myself with semaglutide for the rest of my life, I don't want surgery, and the unhealthy tactics for weight loss described here sotto voce don't work for me with my particular endocrine situation. That means I'm already the version of nonbinary I get to be for the indefinite future.
But my performance was very good. I was a very good and very beautiful girl.
Yes.
posted by limeonaire at 5:07 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]
But my performance was very good. I was a very good and very beautiful girl.
Yes.
posted by limeonaire at 5:07 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]
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Please note that the writer (link to their site) uses they pronouns.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:40 PM on February 25