What Does It Mean To NOT Be A Girl? Everything, apparently.
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My mother and my grandmother. Not my dad or grandfather or uncles.
Women are the ones who pass on the sexism. Examples from my mother: "It's a man's world. Get used to it!" That was depressing as hell.
I was told I had to "flatter the male ego". "Don't beat them at games. Don't act too smart."
Well, why would I want to hang out with a guy who likes a stupid woman? I'm not stupid and I'm not going to be anyone's idiot.
They also tried to force me to fix food and put up leftovers, when there were too many women in a small kitchen to begin with. My grandmother, her sister, my mother, my aunt, my sister and my aunt's four girls. 
I would tell them "You don't make the men do anything" and I was told "The men are too OLD to help in the kitchen". The men were watching football in the den. I would run in the den and my mother would SHRIEK at me to "COME HELP!!"
And I was given the attitude that mens' opinions are worth more than womens' opinions. You're supposed to listen to what men say even if they are flat-out wrong, like it's important.
And this was in a family where my mother, my aunt and my grandmother were all college graduates!!! My grandmother had a master's degree and she was born in the 1890s! But she was all about making the girls wait on the men.
The adult women around us were 2nd or 3rd generation removed from initial suffrage, so I guess the pendulum had swung WAY back the other way. I was also told that if you wanted something from a man, you never asked him directly, just used your "feminine wiles". 
And these were Rosie the riveters, who then pretended to be helpless and weak when the menfolk came home from war! My own mother would point out women whom she thought were acting well and encourage me to imitate them! Apparently, my behavior was so unacceptable she even considered sending me to charm school. As it was, Girl Scouts in the 60s was all about teaching us our place. And remember Home Economics in High school?
Now, just about everyone knows my story: I was 6'1" tall by the time I was 14 in 1969. It was absurd for me to pretend weakness, and I've always been loud and opinionated. Nowadays a girl like me would have been thrown into every school sport; back then I wanted to be small and feminine. Echoes of those woman who'd coached me from childhood.
But my mom lived to be 82. By the end of the 70s she was making more money than my dad, and was all about empowerment. I'm still not happy with how women of her generation treated their daughters, but remember it was a different time and women had to go through men to get anything! We're still fighting the sexism, but at least mothers are not advising their girls to submit anymore.
Janet Reno.
And that rednecks didn't know who she was.
All they told me was how smart I was.
I was not praised for being cute or anything else. Just being smart, reading way ahead of my grade level, and playing musical instruments.
I never understood how I was supposed to go to college and be smart and also wait on a man hand and foot like he was helpless.
I wasn't "ungrateful hard to get along with".
Nobody should have to put up with the crap I was subjected to.
My mother and grandmother were busy putting me down and telling me I was a bad person. They tried to shame and guilt me for being different and a picky eater. I refused to be shamed by it. I said no and stood my ground.
They yelled at me for not eating their food which I was allergic to, and told me I was a bad person because I wouldn't eat their awful cooking. I refused to eat food my body would reject.
I was not going to slice my hands and injure myself with a knife. I was clumsy with a knife.
I'm a musician and I protected my hands from lots of things that could injure them.
Have you ever had a serious food allergy? I can smell foods I am allergic to and it makes me choke. Yes, literally choke. I have to stay away from people preparing those foods. Don't want to be around it. They told me I was a bad person for protecting myself from foods that made me ill.
They told me that my tea would taste exactly the same if I used saccharin instead of sugar. It did not taste the same. Abusers tell you that your perceptions are not real and not valid.
They were telling me my taste perceptions were wrong. That really messes with your mind.
The kitchen was big enough for one person to scurry around. With several people mobbing it, nobody could move around to do anything. And the breakfast table, big and round, was in the kitchen, as an extra obstacle. There was no reason for me to be in the kitchen when there were already too many people in there trying to move around and do things. More than one was too many.
The men never lifted a finger to clean a plate or fix food or load the dishwasher. They were not in the kitchen unless they were eating at the breakfast table, which was usually used for dinner and lunch as well.
Three times a day my grandmother bossed everyone around in the kitchen to cook and clean up like it was a prison. Low quality, badly cooked meat, two boiled to death veggies, usually horrible boiled greens, iceberg lettuce for salad and a dinner roll. Or metallic tasting black eyed peas. Bad Southern cooking. Along with a speech about how healthy the stuff is and all the vitamins it has in it. Whereas my dad and I said, "How does it have any vitamins in it since you boiled it to death?" Grandma got mad and stayed mad because she was a professional home economist & could not stand to be questioned. She criticized everything I did while I was there.
I hated seeing the grandparents.
My mother and grandmother, the ones criticizing me, were not paying for my college.
My dad was paying for my college. He never told me anything sexist. My mother and grandmother were the ones trying to oppress me by telling me to be subservient to men.
I was in my twenties when I found out raw spinach and broccoli are good. I had never had those foods before then.
I was twenty one when I had Chinese food for the first time.
I was in my late twenties when I had Japanese food for the first time.
my mother was a terrible cook.
She had no problems using ground beef that had turned brown on the outside.
Grilled cheese...flattened to the thickness of about 1/2".
Scrambled eggs cooked so long they were dry and had a brown crust on the bottom.
Spaghetti with sauce...it was actually cooked spaghetti added to tomato soup.
First time she tried to cook Rice-a-Roni, she burned the stuff.
Then there was the time she made up this concoction of tomato soup mixed with cooked hamburger, poured over mashed potatoes (I think I was about 7 or 8). I told her I couldn't eat it because it would make me sick. She told me I'd better eat it... I tried some and promptly vomited. I was a bad kid for puking. 
Needless to say, I was a very thin child.
