Caitlyn Jenner is 'too good looking'...

re FAAB ("female assigned at birth")

The problem with that designation is that nobody is assigning anything to anybody in reality. A newborn baby girl is female (not "assigned" female) because she comes out with female genitalia. A newborn baby girl is male (not "assigned" male) because he comes out with male genitalia.

Yes, there are (very few) intersex exceptions to this rule but it applies to the vast majority of the world's human population. It also applies to the vast majority of the world's animal population. No surprise - it is biology, after all.

Male and female are biological terms. They are not about being feminine or not, being attracted to the same sex, opposite sex, both or none. They are not about wanting to dress a certain way.

She did more than one interview? Because I'm pretty sure we didn't watch the same one. The one I watched she came across as vain, entitled and fairly ridiculous.

I just feel it's a wonderful thing that society is clearly becoming a more welcoming and tolerant place. I watched Caitlin Jenner's ABC interview prior to her transformation, and she came across as a very in-touch, sensitive and loving person.

at SWAT.
Re performativity, there's an interesting book out by Bulgarian photographer Pepa Hristova about the "Sworn Virgins" of Albania - women who choose or are forced to live as men within an extremely patriarchal society. They pledge to give up all sexual activity and, in return, they are apparently accorded all the rights that men enjoy. This is of course an extreme case of a person choosing to perform a gender that does not fit with their biological sex. But socially, politically, and economically, they are men, because that is the gender they perform, and they cannot be grouped along with women in Albanian society.

Sorry you had capitalised it in your post (or more likely your phone did ) and googling that produces entirely different results.

I'm not sure why I put Swat in capitals! So that probably caused confusion.

google results plenty to read about

It's awful

Oh god sorry that was dim, I thought you were proposing another acronym!

Swat Valley is an area in Pakistan where religious fundamentalism mean that sharia stuff is being imposed on a (largely reluctant) population, so girls and supposed to be educated and they have burnt down girls schools and stuff.

What would that stand for?

I'm honestly not trying to wind anyone up but -SWAT?

female assigned at birth

do you know what, I don't even care. If I'm not to be called a woman, or female, or whatever, then that's fine, I don't mind, they're not words I am particularly invested in.

what we do need though are words to describe babies and children and teens and adults who when they are born people say "it's a girl" so that we can name the group that certain things happen to which don't happen at all or as much to the group who people say "it's a boy".

The other difficulty is that we in some parts of some societies can change names until the cows come home but most people in most societies won't get all this. So if say an initiative to get more girls educated / educated safely in SWAT for eg is renamed something like "Initiative to get more FAAB youngsters educated in SWAT" or whatever, how many people are even going to know what that means?

FAAB ??

What was that? Female ?? Born?

I'm not sure that anything that references the look / type of genitals is any good, actually.

FAAB meets all the criteria but I seem to remember there was a problem with that as well though I can't for the life of me remember what it was!

We could go for Clefts, Whirlpool?

If there is language that can still be used to refer to the group of people who used to be called girls, and women, then that will help.

Cis is no good as there is no way of knowing what their internal gender identity is, if they even have one.

Bruce jenner had a fullface lift so thats a good start i suppose id imagine there was more facial surgery involved in the transition I just think THAT photo is all smoke and mirrors isnt it ? I dont think caitlyn is a spokesperson for trans community so she can look as glam as she likes she doesnt have to be a role model or whatever

I accept that there are people for whom an internal gender identity is a "thing" Lass, and if you accept that there are people who are flummoxed by the concept then yes that will help.

I suppose a key thing for me is, if I have no internal gender identity, which I don't, (although when I do the "what sex is your brain" test on the BBC (conclusive!) I come out as male), and then gender is all there is, then what am I? I do not understand what I am called in this new order.

Similarly, what do we call children, before they are at an age where they can self-identify (assuming that in their society it is even an option for them to understand this is something they can do)?

And given that, how can we tackle violence and discrimination, which is based on the pronouncement "it's a boy" or "it's a girl" when a baby is born? Changing the language so that we cannot identify groups of people who are being oppressed due to the look of the genitalia they are born with, will cause massive problems for anyone who wants to fight or help.

That's a really helpful summing up galaxy for me personally and as to why the transgender issue generally can be so divisive. I don't agree with all your points but it's a very clear statement.

Not just biological changes but the gendered expectations too of course, from why aren't you wearing make-up today to why are you studying science and maths.

You may not understand Lass but my comments make sense to me as a (relatively) happy person who is a woman or should I start saying female human now?

So this I suspect is where a lot of the difficulty lies.

Clearly there are a quite large group of people who have an internal feeling of gender and a similarly large group of people who don't.

To the first group, trans is going to make a lot of sense. To the second group, it is harder to understand.

I think that on threads before it has come up, and is probably fairly likely, that many feminists do not have much of an internal gender going on. For me, I don't "feel" female at all. However my appearance includes attributes deemed desirable in Western females, and so I have always felt jarred between how I feel on the inside (me) and how I have been treated by others based on my appearance (pretty little girl / attractive teen etc). This is why I have always been a feminist from before I knew the word, because I noticed the difference in gender roles and understood that I was supposed to meet one very specific one.

Like you I have a lot of privilege, and I went to a girls school where we could do anything, I think it was when I moved to mixed at 16, and also started mixing with a wider range of people (going to the pub) that this all really came into sharp focus.

With a lot of the things feminists talk about - for women who are happy in the role society gives them, and men who are too, it all seems like a total load of rubbish. Because men and women are different but equal and there's nothing wrong with women doing X and men doing Y and that is all just fine. And I can understand why they feel that way. The trouble comes when they aren't open to the idea that actually a lot of people don't feel that way at all.

Anyway.

I perform femininity, for sure. I know exactly what it means and what it entails. It's acting / dress up. Fun sometimes, and some people say useful sometimes (not my style really) but it's all window-dressing, for me.

And that's why I'd hate to be a young girl nowadays where if you say you are not so chuffed at having to put up with the adolescent changes then you are told you were perhaps "born in the wrong body"!

I think funnyossity doesn't mean that being a woman is terrible, more that she was bulldozed into it, rather than chose it

I'm not sure that is any better; and the poster was referring to being a woman biologically, not a social construct.

The comment would make sense from an unhappy ftm transperson.

I think funnyossity doesn't mean that being a woman is terrible, more that she was bulldozed into it, rather than chose it.

I think rejecting is a strong word - I think not attracted to is a better description for me.

Throughout life there are loads of things I've been compelled to do rather than chose (sometimes with strong feelings the other way, sometimes with no strong feelings at all) - netball rather than football, school summer dress rather than shorts, guides rather than scouts, sweeping rather than stacking chairs etc. loads, and loads of little things that were pointlessly gendered - as if a 10 year old boy is programmed to be better at stacking chairs than girls!