Good morning, twitter. Here are some thoughts about gender, shared in the hope of taking some of the antagonism out of what has become a steadily more fraught conversation and challenging some assumptions about who has skin in the so-called game. Here goes.

From the time I hit puberty, I dreamed of having my breasts and ovaries removed. It was all I wanted. I thought that if I made my body neutral (i.e. less female), it would closer reflect who I understood myself to be and then the people around me would treat me as I saw myself.

If I bought into the idea that everyone has an innate gender, then I would probably have come out as non-binary. But that implies there are a whole class of binary people out there. Which I don’t believe. I see gender is a socially imposed hierarchy that subjugates women.

I was deadly serious about wanting rid of female sex characteristics. Every so often I asked my GP to note this desire for a mastectomy and hysterectomy on my medical file so that, in the future, doctors could not claim it was a spontaneous or passing fantasy to deny me.

So I am not without empathy for Page, or any other person who identifies out of womanhood. Where we differ, though, is that I understand the dysphoric feelings that have plagued me since the age of 12 as a product of internalised misogyny.

What does this society offer women? Especially the ones who don’t conform to femininity? In the UK three of us are killed by men every week. A quarter of us experiences male violence in her lifetime. The media teaches us to hate our bodies and buy endless products to “fix” them.

Growing up, girls are taught that women are sexual objects, sources of domestic labour, the ones who get stuck with the bulk of childcare, devoid of the rich inner-lives and freedoms that belong to men. These messages are so deeply ingrained in our society.

With the mainstreaming of violent pornography, social media promoting less realistic and more restrictive beauty standards than ever before, in short all the backlash to the gains in women’s rights of the last 40 years, no wonder so many girls find femaleness an unbearable state.

In the last decade Britain has seen a 4400% increase in the number of girls referred for transition treatments. IMO we do young women like Keira Bell a great disservice by not questioning why that is, and connecting it to our sociopolitical context: a patriarchy.

Conversations around sex, gender, and sexuality only ever become more fraught. It’s a deeply personal issue for anybody who has been classed as a gendered subject. And while social media does not often encourage nuance or empathy, I will try to hold onto both.

My life would be easier if I complied with popular thought rather than occupying this in-between space. I’d be more readily accepted by peers of my own age if I called myself queer & non-binary rather than lesbian. I resist not to be difficult etc., but bc I believe it’s right.

I am so tired of the cruelty in gender discourse. That cruelty lives on both sides - something which, ironically, many of them can unite to disagree with. Whether it’s the young gay men who hate women (esp. older women), or the straight GC women who hate gender non-conformity.

I shared these thoughts in the hope of bridging the gap between understandings of gender. But a significant number of responses have amounted to no more than name-calling and bad faith arguments. Another day on twitter dot com Time to log out and get some work done.