I can't get my head around the phrase "Transwomen are women".

Well I might accept the term TERF then, and choose to not see it as an insult. I don't think I want to have to come up with a new word which means "person with a vagina" when I already have a word which seems to fit pretty much perfectly. Especially if the person telling me I need a new word doesn't have a vagina (and doesn't want one).

There are a fuck lot more infertile women in this world than there are transwomen. But if I said "women give birth and get pregnant" how many infertility activists would jump up and call me phobic? Who cared about biological women and their feelings prior to transwomen demanding we accept they are real women?

If girlhood is all about dolly's tea parties and frilly party dresses then someone stole mine too. I blame my mother, who saw short hair and dungarees as practical and never bought me dolls

it’s exclusionary to talk about vaginas when some women do not have one.

Eh?

Yes that would make you a TERF Jessica. Like saying abortion and pregnancy are women's issues.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-terf

I got less than halfway through that article and thought my head would explode if I continued. I've never seen such nonsense.

To be clear by nonsense I mean the ridiculous arguments she was eloquently trashing, not her article.

So is it okay to say "women have vaginas", or is that transphobic?

I've been racking my brain as how to define it any other way really. If I'm being told by someone with a penis how I have to define the word "woman" that make me quite annoyed.

Exactly, Sandor and Flora.

I grew up in the 1970's (I'm 48 now) and I had a short haircut (for practicality) and wore my brother's hand me downs (we were poor). Most people thought I was a boy until I told them differently.

I actually think my feminism dates back to an incident in a wooden fort in a park when I must have been about 6. My brother and I were playing 'war' with some other boys and an off-hand remark from my brother indicated to the others that I was a girl. An argument ensued as to whether I really was a girl, and when I confirmed that I was, I was told I couldn't play with them anymore (having spent the last hour or so happily doing so) because the fort was for boys and war was a boys' game. My bloody brother agreed with them and despite me protesting I was made to leave. The sheer injustice of it infuriated me... but I didn't want to be a boy. I knew I was a girl, being a girl wasn't problematic (or hadn't been until that moment). I just wanted to whack other kids with sticks play.

This is what I don't get about this 'stolen girlhood' that I've seen some trans women talk about - they seem to think that they've missed out on something and wax lyrical about dolly's tea parties, frilly party dresses and the like. It makes me think they haven't really changed their mindset at all, by assuming that 'all girls' had this kind of childhood, when really we were as individual and diverse as their 'wrong' childhoods were.

I've just read this and it really brings all the threads of different thought together for me, it's pretty long but pretty marvellous.

thenewbacklash.blogspot.co.uk/?m=0

The toilet issue is about validation, not safety IMO.

Not on the DM but somewhere else. £1500 compensation for being told to use the disabled loo rather than the men's.

Sandor, agree with your post.

Not that I'm admitting to reading the DM... but did anyone see the article today about the transman who successfully sued a club after being denied access to the mens toilets?

19th century biological determination: you are a girl / woman therefore you must do / like X

21th century biological determinaion: you do / like X therefore you must be a girl / woman.

This is a huge step backwards.

My favourite book as a child was about a girl who lives as a boy for years so she can become a knight. She doesn't ever want to be a boy she just wants to be able to do the things that boys are allowed to do. I never wanted to be a boy, I just wanted people to stop telling me that there were things I couldn't do because I wasn't one. I didn't want to be a different gender I just knew gender was nonsense. Luckily I had parents who also knew that and who told me that the idea that girls are like this and boys are like that was sexist and allowed me to be myself. I can't help feeling all this trans stuff is a step backwards, we don't need to redefine gender, we need to dismantle it.

People spend a lot of money on girl's clothing. It is often not incredibly practical, and I have seen in 2015 young girls being told not to do certain things at the play ground as they will "ruin their clothes".

I don't think the parents are worried their daughter will fall out of a tree they are worried they ruin their fucking dress though.

Also - I did indeed climb trees in dresses, but my dd was complaining the other week about how hopeless for it her school shoes are compared to her brothers'. Theirs are basically trainers in black with nice thick soles and lots of grip, and hers are mary janes with completely smooth soles. I pointed out that she chose her shoes herself, and she pointed out that all the girls' shoes were like hers, so I said she could have boys' shoes next time if she wanted, and she looked appalled and said she would be teased.

'someone who chooses to identify by the term woman, in reference to the societal norms placed upon that gender identity''

This whole debate gets me somewhat confused, but I just want to say that I have a massive issue with any reference to 'societal norms placed upon that gender identity' being involved in any definition of "women" or "men". A) because societal norms are fluid and changing; B) because there will always be people who operate well outside of "societal norms" who still identify with their biological sex; and C) what happens if you visit another society that has different "norms"?

I liked lots of traditional girls things, and still got told off by a passer by for playing cowboys and indians. Not something apparently a girl should have been doing. And these comments really affect kids.

I climbed trees, wore the same clothes as my brothers and got dirty and was never stopped from doing it by my parents, who couldn't have cared less, but I most certainly did get comments from other people's parents and from passers by.
I also remember being told by a boy I couldn't be a fireman and at one party I went to, the boys wouldn't let me play with the Scalextric because I was a girl, and when I complained to the boy's mum she took his side.
And I wasn't born pre 1914 - I'm 43, and since then kids' clothes and toys have got more gender-differentiated rather than less, so I'm rather boggled that you don't think it happens, StillLost.

How do you know you're a woman? How does that feel?

I know I'm a woman because I experienced female puberty including menstruation and growing breasts. Eventually this became your average woman's body. Now I'm pregnant which is also an indication that I'm a woman.

How does it feel? Who can really say? How would feeling happy feel if you hadn't experienced other emotional states? Never having been anything other than female, how would I know how it feels?

Yes, I can't help but feel that if the society that little girl grew up in wasn't so heavily stereotyped and segregated, she might not have had so many problems.

When I was small, I wore 'boy clothes' (I never did do pink and glittery) and did 'boy things' (climbing trees, playing in mud), but I was also allowed to play with 'the boys' (my two brothers and male cousins) and no one ever thought it was strange that we would all play 'Beat Up Whoever Has the Ball' together and would all come home equally bruised and dirty.

If i wasn't allowed to do those things and was forced into impractical clothes I hated, I might have been questioning my 'gender identity' too.

but as far as I could see, boys were allowed to do all the things I wanted to do, like climb trees.

This keeps popping up. I am just a little sceptical about the number of tree-climbing banning going on. I'm assuming most posters were not born pre 1914. I honestly have never come across this or for that matter any one child, parent or toy shop assistant telling a girl she can't be a pirate or anything else
And wearing a dress is no bar to climbing trees.

The parents and teachers are so far from what I think of as reasonable in that article that I can't articulate it!

But it makes me uncomfortable due to my own lived experience - it's all painted as so cut and dried!