Disclaimers: I don’t think I’m transgender or nonbinary. I do consider myself transhumanist and would probably upload my consciousness to the cloud and ditch my body in a second if the technology were available. I’m on mind altering drugs right now as I write this so sorry if it’s hard to understand or noncohesive.

TLDR: I feel intense disgust by my body and the deeply ingrained social attitudes that make me feel like a body first and person second just because I happened to be born female.

I grew up Catholic in a socially conservative place. Christian conservatives will tell you that they’re “real feminists” because religion saves women from being sexually objectified, but they’re so hypocritical that they can’t comprehend that sex isn’t the only form of objectification. Catholicism definitely sees women as reproductive objects and spiritually/intellectually inferior. As far back as I can remember people have groomed me to be a mom one day and to believe that motherhood is the highest calling of a woman, as if my biological functions were more important than who I was inside. As far back as I can remember, I’ve also never wanted to be a mom. I can remember being 9 and thinking I would end up getting married and having kids in my 20s because “it’s just what people do.” The thought filled me with dread even back then but I never dared to talk about it openly.

At around 12, I started to notice the bodily horrors that come along with having kids, and having nightmares about being pregnant. I specifically noticed pregnant women being treated like public property, or like they’re in need of monitoring. Random strangers would go up to them and touch them, or police their choices to do things like wear heels or drink a cup of coffee, or buy a bottle of wine that was intended as a gift for someone else. The thought of having something growing inside me that visibly changes my body in a way that I can’t hide, and makes people treat me like less of a person, still fills me with such horror and revulsion that I can’t even put into words.

I’m now in my 30s and have not changed my mind as people told me I would. In fact, as my friends started to have kids and I saw the reality of it, it made me want them even less as I got older. Not only do you lose bodily autonomy, but you end up risking being financially dependent on someone else and losing your identity as a person. I sometimes think I would be open to having kids if I was a man. Men are allowed to have kids and still have interests, ambitions, and aspects of their identity that don’t have to do with fatherhood or their kids.

People have always acted like there’s something morally or mentally wrong with me, and I can’t get past it. It’s ruining my life and my relationships because I can’t trust people enough to get close to them. When I was young and stupid, I fell in love with someone who wanted kids. I just couldn’t bring myself to want to be a mom despite everything else being perfect in the relationship, so I ended it. It was one of the most painful things I’ve done, and yet people still couldn’t stop badgering me. Only 2 months after the breakup when I was still in severe grief and pain, a “friend” urged me not to get sterilized because she insisted I would change my mind when I “met the right man.” She couldn’t comprehend how hurtful that was to me, given what I had just done and was still in pain over. We no longer speak.

My ex told me I was a whore for wanting more out of life than motherhood, and that he hoped I died alone and unloved when he found out I was getting sterilized. Psychedelics have helped me come to terms with myself and realize that I can’t change who I am for others, or force myself to want what other people want me to do with my life. But people in psychedelic communities have been among the worst. A man in an Ayahuasca community told me that I was mentally fucked up for not wanting kids, as that was what my body was designed for. I bet nobody ever told him that his sole value as a human being was in reproducing, as men are seen as people and not just bodies. A man in an LSD group told me I would regret focusing on a career as it doesn’t bring fulfillment as much as raising kids. If staying at home with a toddler while being financially dependent on your partner is so fucking fulfilling, why aren’t more men doing it then? I’m so sick of people who would never in a million fucking years do something still trying to sell me on how it’s the only way I’ll ever be truly happy and fulfilled.

I have male friends who love Jordan Peterson, but I can’t get past the video I saw of him railing against childfree women, labeling us as pathologically narcissistic and selfish. Joe Rogan had also spoken out about childfree women being selfish. I can’t stop worrying that if my friends who listen to their podcasts find out I don’t want kids, they’ll think those things about me. People tell me that I’m vain for being grossed out by pregnancy, as if it’s just because I don’t want to get fat or something. If you ask men if they’re ever jealous of women’s ability to have babies, or of they would want to be pregnant if it were medically possible, most of them would be repulsed by the thought. So why is that okay, but it’s not okay for at least some women to be equally repulsed, without it being considered a pathology or moral deficit?

I’m far from being a Christian anymore, but I’m also not an atheist and desperately long for some sort of spiritual community. I’m really into shamanism and occult magick. Yet, it’s hard to find a religion that doesn’t see women as inferior. Even pagan religions see women as less spiritual than men and divine only through the lens of their biological or reproductive functions. I want people to see me as an intellectual or spiritual being rather than a material one, yet have no control over how other people see me. It’s gotten so bad that I can’t make close friends because I’m terrified of what they’re going to think when they really get to know me.

Not long ago, some piece of shit incel posted something on r/Psychonaut about how he couldn’t stop masturbating and seeing women as cute little monkeys with their protruding butts. It made me so self conscious that now everytime I go out in public and interact with people, I wonder how many of them just see me as some subhuman thing meant for fucking or popping out kids. I hate how when I go to a festival or concert, friends (both men and women) act like I’m stuck up or conservative because I refuse to wear some sexy outfit with all of my body parts hanging out. I don’t judge other people for dressing like that, so why do they get to judge me for not doing it?

On reddit, most of the communities I’m part of (psychedelic, cryptocurrency, kratom, science etc) are heavily male and people often assume I’m a man. I don’t even correct them anymore because I’m afraid that people will take me less seriously or see me as less intelligent if they know otherwise. I don’t think I’ll ever have real friends or stop hating myself. I keep seeing therapists, but they’re all bullshit. They all just keep saying there’s nothing wrong with not wanting kids and nobody really cares, but I can’t stop worrying that there really is something wrong with me. And every once in a while, some asshole either online or in real life says something that reminds me that yes, people really do care and think less of me because of it. The only reason I don’t kill myself is because I’m afraid of being reborn into some third world shithole where women are literally breeding cows and have no life choices.