Diary 6

I hate having a female body most of the time. It’s weaker and subject to pain from periods and childbirth. I hate how everytime society and order breaks down, it’s women’s bodies that are on the line, as if men are animals barely held back from rape by the law. And I hate how this forces me to seek protection from men, how such protection comes with a restriction of my movement, and how I’m expected to be grateful for this, because at least I don’t have to die in labour or warfare.

But the one thing I like about having a female body is the sexual pleasure it gives me. It’s the one thing I believe the female body has over the male one. I don’t think I could feel as good if I had a male body.

Yet even this joy is laced with shame, because I’m mostly heterosexual, and have to seek out this pleasure with men, who I fear and resent. And because sex has been used to maim and terrify me, and it feels wrong to enjoy it, and be the only reason I want to stay female.

A friend blocked me during Christmas and said I’m a misogynist for my trauma thoughts bc I vented about his getting molested and almost raped multiple times and raised in a super conservative family made me think being female was inferior. I do have internalised misogyny but they acted like I had chosen it. If you extend that logic far enough then it may as well be my fault for getting molested as a child. That’s the sort of cruelty humans default to when challenged.

Whenever I have sex with my boyfriend, it feels good. But afterwards I always hate myself and feel like I shouldn’t have done it, because it makes me foolish, or a slut, or worthless somehow. I wake up afterwards feeling like an idiot even if I enjoyed myself in the moment, because I’m supposed to be above such things, and to know better. Tbh a part of me views sex as evil and as something to overcome, and that as a rape victim, I should know that it’s wrong and be better than other people about it.

When I told the principal of my school that I and some female classmates were being sexually harassed and targeted, I got told, verbatim, “Girls mature faster than boys. Your job is to teach them how to act.” Because you know, if I tell the rapist “Stop! That’s illegal! Don’t you know hurting people is wrong and you can go to jail for that?” will toooootally make him stop.

And it was just this sense of… Is that what the rest of my life is gonna be like? Paying for the crimes of other people? Always be a good example, a model student and then a model citizen, a good daughter and then a good wife and mother, you’ll be the role model for everyone else after all.

That’s how I felt for good chunks of my youth. Somehow both extremely visible with everyone looking at me, and even when they’re complimenting me for being smart and skinny and pretty and such an obedient daughter, there’s a weirdly insulting tone of “keep going! or else.” While also being everyone’s mom and having to comfort people even if they’re better off than me. Because it’s my responsibility. Girls are supposed to be kind and nurturing.

It’s not even just me who went through it. It’s my mom. Albeit in a totally different context. She lived in a war zone. My mom and her friend were kidnapped by soldiers and her friend was gang raped and shot in front of her. She was eight or nine. They let my mom go though, so she could look better when she grew up. After that my grandma pulled my mom out of school due to the obvious danger of sending her back.

But looking back I wonder what sort of messages my mom absorbed where instead of the soldiers who literally killed a random little girl in front of her being able to be dragged to a court and punished for it, she just had to learn how to avoid him. It probably influenced her own reaction to me getting SA’d as (shrug) “suck it up”.

I’ve been told I should be grateful women only get raped during war and not sent out to be murdered. When ngl… As someone who’s spent most of their life suicidal, is that supposed to be a good thing? Bc some of my ancestors may or may not have been comfort women. So. Literally every woman in my family above a certain age has SA trauma from soldiers and wartime and with my mom in particular, it really fucked up her view of gender. And sex. She used to beat me for jacking off and tell me no one would ever love me if I had sex before marriage.

I know it’s like internalised misogyny or whatever but I just feel inferior for being weaker and female. I hate having a AFAB body. I hate how much periods and childbirth hurt, I hate the fact I’m smaller and weaker than most men, and I hate the fact I literally stopped growing and am still the same rough height and weight I was when I was first molested. Like damn, that’s really the time my body decided to hit the pause button?

I hate how almost every society oppressed women and the ones that don’t are anomalies and usually extinct. I hate how every time war happens or society and order breaks down, it’s usually women’s bodies that are on the line. Rape, DV, trafficking, and homelessness affecting women usually spike, as if humans are animals that are barely restrained by the law from hurting our weaker half. I hate how I have to carry my keys like a knife, or have my boyfriend walk with me if it’s late, and how I have to rely on a man for my safety, and how historically this would have meant a restriction of my movement, and I’m expected to be grateful for it, because at least women don’t die in war and manual labour. I hate how easily our rights and protections are taken away or up to debate. I hate having to smile and comfort people all the time because I’m a woman, women are supposed to be kind and nurturing.

But the one thing I like about having an AFAB body is sex. Multiple orgasms are cool. It’s the best feeling ever and the only time my brain shuts up and I don’t want to kill or otherwise hurt myself. I don’t think it’d be as good if I were AMAB. It’s the one thing AFABs bodies have over others, greater touch sensitivity. But even my joy in that is laced with shame because I’m mostly heterosexual, and have to seek it out with men, who I fear and resent. And because sex was used to hurt and maim me, it feels wrong to enjoy it, as if it makes getting raped okay, and it also feels extremely fucking stupid to be one of my reasons for still wanting to exist in a AFAB body.

This world makes me feel like an idiot for wanting to be both safe and free. I was always told I could either be safe and controlled, or free and in danger, but not both, and asking for both from men and adults is being a brat, being selfish, unrealistic, and too much.

And I also hate that I can’t talk about it without someone calling me bigoted or misogynistic when I DON’T CHOOSE TO THINK THIS WAY. I DIDN’T CHOOSE TO BE MOLESTED AND ALMOST RAPED MULTIPLE TIMES AS A KID AND GROW UP IN A CONSERVATIVE HOME WHERE EVERY SINGLE FEMALE RELATIVE IS EQUALLY TRAUMATISED. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ANYONE ELSE BUT MYSELF.

People act as if I don’t constantly try to fight and argue with myself. Like I don’t know that it’s wrong and that it’s toxic to me and others. People keep telling me not to judge humans based on their worst, and that even if women are weaker or more vulnerable, that doesn’t mean I’m worth less for being one, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Of course I judge humans by their worst, their worst has been my baseline for most of my life, it’s my default. To treat it as an exception or rarity is to gaslight myself. Of course I always have my guard up, because I know no matter how nice people are on the surface, we are all only a few bad events away from snapping. And of course I feel lesser for being a girl, it was drilled into me. I can’t separate weakness from worth. Believing that I was equal to boys didn’t change the fact I still got my head bashed in and molested by someone physically superior while I was passed out, and that I was completely physically outmatched to fight him off.

I don’t see the point in being female and don’t know what my other selves see in it. Even the one thing I like about it, sexual pleasure, is tinged with complicated feelings. I feel like being male would be a joyless existence, but at least it would be free.

I tried living as transgender for a little bit. It made me want to kill myself even more. Everyday I couldn’t recognise myself and felt my body drifting further and further away. Going back to being female was like a weight off my chest, but also made me feel stupid. Like, why would you ever choose to be female? It’s a lesser form of existence. If I still want to be female after all the rapes and abuse, does that mean it was okay? Why why why am I still a girl?

My therapist and other people also tell me that listening to the hateful voice in my head would mean letting my abusers win, since they get to define the meaning of my life. But imo, they already did? They already benefitted from the rape of my body.

But I also hate myself because I feel like I shouldn’t enjoy being a girl and “why would you enjoy your own abuse and oppression?” and “if you still enjoy being a girl after all that, maybe you wanted to get raped after all.” Hence why I still self harm in fucked up ways including cutting my genitals and sexting actually dangerous predators online who give me challenges.

I feel insects crawling on or inside me when there are none a lot. When I was 17 I had a delusion that I was a robot somebody made and that if I could dig into my skin deep enough, I would find wires to prove it. Sometimes I still have capital P Psychotic moments where I hallucinate that my sexuality is a demon possessing me and that cutting myself is how it is exorcised.

I guess after a life of being beaten, molested, starved, told to kill myself, blamed for being raped, and not even being able to leave the house or control

who my friends were and who I’d marry and who I’d date, I don’t know how to live the way I want. When I close my eyes and imagine my ideal self, I imagine myself as a fairy in a meadow, beautiful and spiritual and among the rest of God’s creation, communing with Nature. And when I open my eyes, I want to take the kitchen knife and cut into my uterus and rip it out and tear up my sex organs, for making me an inferior and impure worthless and weak female.