Thankyou so much for writing this and sharing it. I had to fight back tears owing to how much I relate to so much of it. You captured so perfectly a lot of the same feelings I had growing up and have felt forced to repress or sublimate into something else. My own feelings were always “that which cannot be acknowledged but cannot be ignored”.

Your perspectives and experiences engaging with / participating in feminism also resonates loudly. I imagine many *many* others feel shut out or excluded by some of the rhetoric.

I don’t know what else to say but thankyou; reading this felt liberating at the same time as melancholic. I was able to confront a huge amount of pain through your words and come to terms with it, in the same way that many others probably feel they are forced to.