What is the feminine equivalent of emasculation and what are common triggers?
What is the feminine equivalent of emasculation and what are common triggers?
The only term I could think of is defeminization.
It seems like most people understand what emasculation is and the things that cause it.
What are some examples of situations that can cause the feeling?
Edit: changed effeminization to defeminization.
Infertility/miscarriage, menopause, loss of breasts or uterus to cancer, perhaps being unable to attract a partner or being 'friend zoned', trouble bonding with child maybe caused by ppd, loss of hair, accidently mistaken as being a man, failure at traditionally seen as women's work such as cooking or keeping a clean house
And I'm not sure effeminization is right. When I hear that, I think of a feminized male, not a defeminized female.
I’ll add: growing “excess”, unfeminine hair.
I’m old enough to just pluck as needed and not care all that much, but there are definitely times when I feel like there’s something wrong with me because I can feel two or three hairs on my chin.
No one ever mentions to you as a young girl going through puberty that there’s another one coming in your late 20s-early 30s that will cause you to subconsciously stroke your neck/chin upwards and make smirky faces in your mirror to catch all these hateful manly hairs.
I do this and I see women at stoplights doing this all the time now. But no one clued me in to it as a preteen that it was coming, and that’s rude.
Yeah that all sounds accurate. Ps. The word I had in mind was defemenization, my bad.
People should pause and realize for many men emasculation is: having someone decide what burger they are getting without consulting them, a spouse that earns more money, and having to look after their own children. We have some work to do.
Emasculation happens when 'feminine behaviour' in men removes pervieved power and agency and makes them feel degraded. Bare in mind, weakness is considered a feminine behaviour.
What removes power and agency from women is not us displaying masculinity, it's having our gender and sex used against us and/or against our will.
So being percieved as overly emotional/unstable, sexually promiscuous, not capable of intelligence or leadership, etc. and being raped and physically manhandled.
That is what is degrading to women.
Thats an interesting take.
I was working under a different understanding where emasculation is humiliation due to lack of 'traditional masculine trait' and the inverse hence being humiliation due to lack of 'traditional feminine trait'. I just found it interesting that that is not smth much talked about.
The fact that there’s not an easily defined name for it should tell you something.
The long and short of it is that emasculation is what happens when people think someone isn’t acting enough like “a man,” or is stopping someone from doing so.
In women, it’s generally acting too much like a man. Getting called “shrill” or “aggressive” is something that frequently brought against women who take an assertive role. I’ve also seen women who were in senior positions asked to take notes during a meeting, as if they were a personal assistant rather than a manager.
Emasculation is treating a man as less than a man. As if he were a woman. The equivalent for a woman is treating her like society has traditionally treated a woman. Our current best word for that is probably “misogyny,” but we can unfortunately also go with “normal.”
Masculation would be the opposite of emasculation. Masculine women are seen as butch, bull dykes, stuck up c*nts, etc., the same way feminine men are seen as weak, gay, sissies, pussies, etc.
A flat-chested female friend of mine was bullied by her female peers as a teen; they called her "A-cup", especially around boys.
I've wondered about this before. Given my experience as a male teenager, I do not know how I would have coped with an aspect of puberty being so prominently visible and literally front and center. Males obviously have the whole penis size thing, but its an organ entirely out of sight in public. Your story sounds awful!
That's a particular brand of cruel.
It is not a very commonly used word, but I think the word you are looking for is "defeminize" - it's the closest 'clinical' English word I've heard - every other word to describe the feminine equivalent of emasculation is either slang or a slur.
Yep, that was a brain fart right there.
Shakespeare used the word "unsex" for this, I think. It's been a while but maybe Lady Macbeth was an example?
Wow I didnt expect this answer!
"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe topful Of direst cruelty!"
Now the removal female qualities is the desire of the character herself as she wants the spirits to remove her feminine qualities and emotions, so I dont know if this would count since the lack of traditional gender traits is a positive or atleast desired aspect.
But great reference, I would never have thought of that.
I’ve looked into this before and there is no word or equivalent phrase for what you’re talking about.
Effeminization is more about men seen as too feminine so it’s not it.
Inadequacy as a woman/girl is I guess the closest. There are idealized forms you’re pushed to be like when you’re growing up and into adulthood. Breasts are probably the closest stand-in for testicles in this context but it’s not a perfect one.
A bit of a different take on this are the sworn virgins of Albania. They give up their femininity, reproductive and sexual identity and are treated as male in every way.
What if your kids bond to a female friend and start calling her Mommy instead of you?
There is no equivalent because women are culturally allowed to enact both gender roles without taking on shame.
The shame a man is assigned when he either adopts or is cast into the feminine role is a asymmetrical aspect of our gender culture.
7yyyyuu