Depression, Anxiety, or other Mental Health Conditions

Red wrote:

Fade wrote:Thanks. I think a lot of men can empathise with being undesirable

As a women it almost seems like a given, if you're an average woman you're desirable

But when people see you as a man it feels like there's so many more hoops to jump through. You have to be fit, charismatic, well paid etc not to mention present in a specific way. And if you're not at least a couple of those things you're basically dirt.

That does all apply to women too. It's kind of mad if you think otherwise. The beauty standards might manifest in different ways but the pressures are all there.

Yes women have pressures too, but they are far more free to be themselves while still being viewed in a positive manner. We had an hour and a half conversation about this in my counselling class (where 75% of the class is women) and most of them agreed.

You wanna be a stay at home mum? Cool, you wanna have a career? Cool, you wanna wear trousers all the time and no make up? Cool.

Oh sorry you're a man who wants to be the stay at home parent and dress in women's clothing sometimes? Please kindly go strawberry float yourself. Not only is that not socially acceptable, we'll also act like it's not even a problem because you're white and look masculine so you must be privileged.

Fade wrote:You wanna be a stay at home mum? Cool, you wanna have a career? Cool, you wanna wear trousers all the time and no make up? Cool.

I think there's a speech in the Barbie movie about how this is very much not the case.

Red wrote:

Fade wrote:You wanna be a stay at home mum? Cool, you wanna have a career? Cool, you wanna wear trousers all the time and no make up? Cool.

I think there's a speech in the Barbie movie about how this is very much not the case.

Good to know the Barbie movie is the moral authority in my life and not the actual women in it then.

Here's what you're basically saying: what you said isn't true because a singular Hollywood writer put a line in a film and their opinion differed from yours.

If we're going to use Hollywood films as a measure of what the real world is like, how about you find me a film where a man presents in a feminine way, is the primary parent and it's not played for laughs

Now go find me a film where a woman does something masculine and it's portrayed as empowering or cool. Can't imagine which one you're going to find more of!

I just think you might benefit from ditching the weird bitter misogyny you always tack onto these posts, which makes what sound like genuine, difficult issues somewhat unsympathetic.

Fade wrote:You wanna be a stay at home mum? Cool

Come on now, even a cursory social media search would tell you precisely what people think of stay-at-home mums. They are demonised from the off, usually.

Loneliness can be crushing. And it's a particularly difficult time to be trans. Given you're transfemme nonbinary, I can certainly understand you thinking, "my life would be easier if I had been born a cis woman," particularly at this moment in time when trans people are being increasingly vilified.

However, you come across as very bitter towards women. I know this thread is to vent, but for a long time there has been a pattern of you coming to this thread and writing about genuinely sympathetic issues which we all relate to and wish you the best about, followed by a line that makes it clear that part of the problem is your own attitude towards women. I'm sure you have received very similar responses to this before as well.

There will be people out there who do perceive you negatively solely because of your gender identity. It's an awful form of bigotry and I'm not trying to minimise that. I have always been a very strong supporter of trans rights and I understand, and am appalled by, the sharply worsening attitudes towards trans people in the UK in particular. Separately to that, I think if you want to make friends with women, then you need to free yourself of this resentment towards them (which even comes across strongly on a text forum, so must be very obvious in real life).

No-one here hates you or wants you to be unhappy. We're trying to give you practical, realistic advice about how to make your life better. I can't say it will fix all of your problems, but I genuinely believe that your circumstances will get at least somewhat better if you don't go around believing and saying weird, ignorant, untrue things like "stay at home mums have it easy" or "all women feel desireable by default" or so on. Try to figure out the reason that you're susceptable to these beliefs, and move past it, so that you can have a healthier attitude moving forward.

Prototype wrote:

Fade wrote:You wanna be a stay at home mum? Cool

Come on now, even a cursory social media search would tell you precisely what people think of stay-at-home mums. They are demonised from the off, usually.

Bro tons of people at my work only do school or part time hours and two people on my course don't work because their partners provide for them and they look after the kids. Wanna know how many men I know who do that? I'll give you a guess, it ends with 0

site23 wrote:Loneliness can be crushing. And it's a particularly difficult time to be trans. Given you're transfemme nonbinary, I can certainly understand you thinking, "my life would be easier if I had been born a cis woman," particularly at this moment in time when trans people are being increasingly vilified.

However, you come across as very bitter towards women. I know this thread is to vent, but for a long time there has been a pattern of you coming to this thread and writing about genuinely sympathetic issues which we all relate to and wish you the best about, followed by a line that makes it clear that part of the problem is your own attitude towards women. I'm sure you have received very similar responses to this before as well.

There will be people out there who do perceive you negatively solely because of your gender identity. It's an awful form of bigotry and I'm not trying to minimise that. I have always been a very strong supporter of trans rights and I understand, and am appalled by, the sharply worsening attitudes towards trans people in the UK in particular. Separately to that, I think if you want to make friends with women, then you need to free yourself of this resentment towards them (which even comes across strongly on a text forum, so must be very obvious in real life).

No-one here hates you or wants you to be unhappy. We're trying to give you practical, realistic advice about how to make your life better. I can't say it will fix all of your problems, but I genuinely believe that your circumstances will get at least somewhat better if you don't go around believing and saying weird, ignorant, untrue things like "stay at home mums have it easy" or "all women feel desireable by default" or so on. Try to figure out the reason that you're susceptable to these beliefs, and move past it, so that you can have a healthier attitude moving forward.

Those beliefs come from having deep real conversations with the women on my course as well as listening to the experiences of trans women who have experienced both sides of the coin.

If I come across bitter or resentful it's usually because I comment on the areas in which women have more freedom than me (that I wish I had) and then people usually respond with "but women have issues too" which I'm very well aware of. I'm a trainee therapist of 3 years, if I couldn't empathise with the 75% of the class who is female I would not have got a place this year.

Also bro, all my friends are women. Saw one of them Saturday, seeing another Thursday and another Friday.

I would appreciate it if people clarified things with me rather than jumping to conclusions about me or my life based on some depressed stream of consciousness.

That's great Fade, I'm happy to hear you have lots of friends. I'm sorry for assuming you were more isolated than you actually are. I hope your support network in real life helps you get through these negative emotions you've been experiencing.

site23 wrote:That's great Fade, I'm happy to hear you have lots of friends. I'm sorry for assuming you were more isolated than you actually are. I hope your support network in real life helps you get through these negative emotions you've been experiencing.

Thanks, I do feel like you missed my original post though

All my friends and colleagues are cis-women so they don't really understand the pain I'm going through and as a result don't really take it seriously. My deputy manager is gay and when I bought up being non-binary she was just like "be yourself"

She sounds pretty supportive. You sound pretty dismissive of her despite the fact that she will most likely has experienced rejection and discrimination at various points in her life. She sounds like an ally; I'd embrace that and the community it can offer. She's not going to be able to 'solve' your problems (like, we're adults, that's on us) but solidarity is powerful.

i think there is truth about whatever tier of woman having more dating opportunities than the equivalent tier of man - less attractive neet male would have fewer opportunities than less attractive neet female for instance - but that also goes along with all sorts of other stuff being worse for women, on the whole. you cant let that kind of thing factor into your behaviour, and i feel if you are genuine about your positive politics then you would expect that to pay off in the dating pool you will become exposed to

i dont talk about myself all that much here anymore for reasons, but i can empathise with dating opportunities closing for similarly disheartening reasons - i am comfortably pansexual and openly present myself as such and make no attempts to hide my social or political leanings, and even then it still crops up by surprise - ive had plenty of women tell me they arent interested in gay men, after they like me and talk to me, not the other way around - just before christmas i had been seeing a woman for some time and when i made an offhand remark about a handsome guy, she told me she didnt like men who were attracted to men and didnt want to be involved with me anymore, even though she thought i was very nice otherwise. im not saying for sympathy, but recognising that it isnt easy out there and especially so if your presentation isnt the 'straight white male' you might appear to be at first glance (editors note: being able to even present as straight white male is sort of a cheat code for life in general so its hard to be too mad about that)

when it comes to tackling these problems you have to be careful to not generalise too much about the women you are interested in dating or whatever, because they are also operating within the confines of a system without their control - if you want to get holistic with it, if these people reject you for who you are, then they were never a valid option for you anyway, so theres no love lost

Red wrote:She sounds pretty supportive. You sound pretty dismissive of her despite the fact that she will most likely has experienced rejection and discrimination at various points in her life. She sounds like an ally; I'd embrace that and the community it can offer. She's not going to be able to 'solve' your problems (like, we're adults, that's on us) but solidarity is powerful.

Saying be yourself is something that is said from a place of privilege. People only say it because it has worked for them. I don't doubt she had good intentions, but it again demonstrated a lack of understanding and a lack of nuance.

I talked about how I wasn't sure how or when was appropriate to talk about my identity and felt like I constantly had to be wary of explaining it to parents and she didn't really address that at all.

re your workmate dismissing the meat of your issue - it could be that she wasnt interested in talking further into the issue rather than any malice

"be yourself hehe" is just generic stop talking to me advice i would expect from a party not truly engaged in the topic - which i suppose is better than "strawberry float off i dont understand or care"

False wrote:re your workmate dismissing the meat of your issue - it could be that she wasnt interested in talking further into the issue rather than any malice

"be yourself hehe" is just generic stop talking to me advice i would expect from a party not truly engaged in the topic - which i suppose is better than "strawberry float off i dont understand or care"

Oh I agree, I never assume malice unless it's overt. Most people just overlook things.

But it's still basically saying "I got mine I don't really care" which sucks

i mean i suppose i would try to reframe how im processing it

i could listen to a female friend talk to me on issues on the female experience, but all i could really add is "yeah shucks sounds bad, sorry i guess" - so why should i truly expect anything different from someone who might not have any experience with my issues? i guess its nice they listened enough to let me sound off my opinions

do you have many peers who are also gender non-conforming or anything like that? are you involved with any lgbt groups? it might be a better space to feel 'heard', though you should ancticipate a concurrent increase in your listening requirements in exchange - there is probably a hard cap on how much support straight women can offer to a non-cis non-straight experience

False wrote:i think there is truth about whatever tier of woman having more dating opportunities than the equivalent tier of man - less attractive neet male would have fewer opportunities than less attractive neet female for instance - but that also goes along with all sorts of other stuff being worse for women, on the whole. you cant let that kind of thing factor into your behaviour, and i feel if you are genuine about your positive politics then you would expect that to pay off in the dating pool you will become exposed to

i dont talk about myself all that much here anymore for reasons, but i can empathise with dating opportunities closing for similarly disheartening reasons - i am comfortably pansexual and openly present myself as such and make no attempts to hide my social or political leanings, and even then it still crops up by surprise - ive had plenty of women tell me they arent interested in gay men, after they like me and talk to me, not the other way around - just before christmas i had been seeing a woman for some time and when i made an offhand remark about a handsome guy, she told me she didnt like men who were attracted to men and didnt want to be involved with me anymore, even though she thought i was very nice otherwise. im not saying for sympathy, but recognising that it isnt easy out there and especially so if your presentation isnt the 'straight white male' you might appear to be at first glance (editors note: being able to even present as straight white male is sort of a cheat code for life in general so its hard to be too mad about that)

when it comes to tackling these problems you have to be careful to not generalise too much about the women you are interested in dating or whatever, because they are also operating within the confines of a system without their control - if you want to get holistic with it, if these people reject you for who you are, then they were never a valid option for you anyway, so theres no love lost

how does one present their sexual identity? can't say i've heard this term before so i'm genuinely curious as to what it means

shy guy 64 wrote:

False wrote:i think there is truth about whatever tier of woman having more dating opportunities than the equivalent tier of man - less attractive neet male would have fewer opportunities than less attractive neet female for instance - but that also goes along with all sorts of other stuff being worse for women, on the whole. you cant let that kind of thing factor into your behaviour, and i feel if you are genuine about your positive politics then you would expect that to pay off in the dating pool you will become exposed to

i dont talk about myself all that much here anymore for reasons, but i can empathise with dating opportunities closing for similarly disheartening reasons - i am comfortably pansexual and openly present myself as such and make no attempts to hide my social or political leanings, and even then it still crops up by surprise - ive had plenty of women tell me they arent interested in gay men, after they like me and talk to me, not the other way around - just before christmas i had been seeing a woman for some time and when i made an offhand remark about a handsome guy, she told me she didnt like men who were attracted to men and didnt want to be involved with me anymore, even though she thought i was very nice otherwise. im not saying for sympathy, but recognising that it isnt easy out there and especially so if your presentation isnt the 'straight white male' you might appear to be at first glance (editors note: being able to even present as straight white male is sort of a cheat code for life in general so its hard to be too mad about that)

when it comes to tackling these problems you have to be careful to not generalise too much about the women you are interested in dating or whatever, because they are also operating within the confines of a system without their control - if you want to get holistic with it, if these people reject you for who you are, then they were never a valid option for you anyway, so theres no love lost

how does one present their sexual identity? can't say i've heard this term before so i'm genuinely curious as to what it means

I don't want to put words in False's mouth but I'd say maybe just being open about it in day to day life, mentioning you find a man/woman/non-binary person attractive in the same way a straight person might say they find someone attractive. It's a slightly different situation for me, I live openly as asexual and don't hide that but it also rarely comes up because I'm not really physically attracted to anyone so it doesn't come up in conversation. It would be more of an issue if I was dating, in which case I'd be up front about it. Ideally I'd want to date another ace but if I was interested in a non-ace it would only be fair for me to be upfront about it from day 1. Apologies if I didn't explain it the way you meant it False.

in this context i would present it by being open on a dating profile and selecting pan as my orientation for example

in a wider context i would present it by kissing boys on the mouth

False wrote:in this context i would present it by being open on a dating profile and selecting pan as my orientation for example

in a wider context i would present it by kissing boys on the mouth

What kind of boys?

handsome ones hehehe