Why can't you *feel* like a woman?

I don't feel that having kids has changed me particularly apart from now I have lots of extra responsibility and a lot less money and the poeple who live in my house and that I love are more in number!

I think having kids made me grow up a lot. Before having them I actually had a horrendous temper, and (bad thing to admit on here) would use recreational drugs on a regular basis. I fell pregnant by accident, I was on the pill AND my partner was using condoms. Thats how much we did not feel ready. Well, he had children from a previous relationship, it was me really that was not ready for the responsibility, and mainly because I enjoyed my drug addled lifestyle too much tbh. Obviously when I fell pregnant, the drugs had to stop. I had a miscarriage a few months in, and everyone expected me to go back 'to normal' but I then pined for the child I had lost and really really wanted another, so I never started the drugs again. Luckily, a month later I was pregnant again, and this time I really really wanted it. Long story short, I was worried that my temper would be an issue but it never has been, it seemed to just...go away once I had my child. Its not just with her either, when people wind me up or try to start trouble, I am so unusually calm and do not bite. It felt odd to start with,. but I have got used to it now

So yeah, I do think having kids changed me, and for the better.

I think the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and parenting maybe makes some women feel less "womanly" if they don't feel or meet the things that are "supposed" to happen?

Pregnancy is the only time in my life I ever felt 'like a woman', and the only reason I felt that way, was because only women can get pregnant in the first place. I was in awe of my body and everything it was doing actually.

For a 20 year old to ID as a 70 year old might be a better comparison. As, they have never been 70, or even near, and while they might try to imagine what it feels like, they can't fully know, and anyway, 70yo don't all feel the same.

Yes, thats absolutely true. Age works that way around, and not the other.

xpost with merrymouse who put part of what I said way more succinctly!

This is the thing though isn't it.

I don't feel that having kids has changed me particularly apart from now I have lots of extra responsibility and a lot less money and the poeple who live in my house and that I love are more in number!

I think the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and parenting maybe makes some women feel less "womanly" if they don't feel or meet the things that are "supposed" to happen?

This is a cause of a lot of distress particularly among mothers I think, because the template is narrow and idealistic and plenty of women don't experience all the pieces, or any of the pieces sometimes.

I just think that listing traits and saying whether they conform to ideas of masculinity / femininity and then matching people to them is a fairly pointless exercise? And then you have people like the evoluntionary psychs who take it one step furtehr and decide that the list >> the people >> all that type of people are like that >> because of some made up thing cavemen did.

If I made a list of what I feel forms my identity and what traits I have (risk taking, competition etc) it would be different to everyone elses.

I have issues as well around the way the traits are gendered in the first place. Everything is from the view of default male. When you look at something like risk taking, from a female perspective, we take risks that are not recogised as risks because they do not apply to default male or that teh cosequences are not recogised as severe because the gauge for everythinng is default male.

So I come from the standpoint that even the "givens" are up for questioning.

Example might be.

Young man drives car too fast at night. Commonly recognised as classic high risk behviour.

Young woman goes home after the pub with man she doesn't know. Or even man she does know... There is risk here, and she knows it, and she takes the risk. Is this seen as classic high risk behaivour though? No, it is seen as risky but framed as "she's stupid". It is seen differently.

I look at what I did when I was young and I see a HIGH amount of risk taking, that would not be sort of assessed, considered in the same way as the behaviour that everyone thinks about with young men and as a result says "young men are much more prone to risk taking than young women".

Hope that makes some kind of sense!

I am no more ‘womanly’ post children than I was pre children. I don’t know what ‘womanly’ means. I am a parent, but so is my husband. I certainly don’t feel that being a parent has made me less competitive or more calm.

I am not questioning anybody else’s experience, but if something can’t be objectively described or observed I don’t understand how it can usefully be related to a group.

If gender feelz is a thing, well the next question is how tightly is this linked to biology. I don't believe anyone has an answer, other than something bordering on philosophy. One can believe sex and gender cannot be sundered. One can believe that sex is what you are born with and gender is a choice. Or indeed, believe that sex and gender exist independently, correlating in most people, not correlating in a small minority.

I guess that is why women on this board hold so tightly to the idea gender feelz doesn't exist, because then they don't need to think about where that might lead.

Just catching up.

Age is not a good analogy because for those who "feel younger" they have actually been younger and so experienced themselves what that feels like.

For a 20 year old to ID as a 70 year old might be a better comparison. As, they have never been 70, or even near, and while they might try to imagine what it feels like, they can't fully know, and anyway, 70yo don't all feel the same.

@FlyTipper - totally, same here! I don't, actually, think men and women are psychologically identical, and, yes, the postpartum Smiths is way more "womanly" in the way you describe, than the childless Smiths. But..doesn't that back up the idea that if men and women differ psychologically it's because of biology, and therefore you can't be physically one thing but "feel" the other?

Sorry, I meant to say: thus before children, I felt just more me, just a human being. After kids, I feel more feminine, more womanly. I feel more aware of the fact I am not male or an anonymous person, I am a woman. I feel like a woman. I know I'm the lone voice on this thread, but I'm not trying to be controversial. The more I think about this topic, the more I think there is something to gender feelz. I guess I also think it is tightly linked to biological sex too.

Thinking about this further (navel gazing) I do think my feeling about my gender (rather than sex: i.e. myself as a woman, rather than simply a neutral human being) have been fundamentally affected by carrying children. Before I was competitive, angry. After kids I feel more love in my life, hugely calmer, not at all competitive, sometimes angry but mainly much more chilled and relaxed. I don't believe this is conditioning, I believe this is hormonal. I felt extremely 'loving' whilst breastfeeding - oxytocin could have a lot to answer for. Can oxytocin have long lasting effects on behaviour? I know men experience it too, but surely nowhere near to the same degree?

There are certain psychological traits of mine - certain feelings that I have - which I gather are less common in men. I fancy men. I'd rather collaborate than compete, and I just don't give a toss about football. I don't like taking unnecessary risks with my physical safety. I always think people are going to find out I'm crap at everything. I think my son is the most beautiful baby ever born.

But...none of these traits appear to be particularly prevalent among trans women. They aren't peculiar to women, either, or universal among them. I've never thought of lesbians as quasi-men. Not the ones I know, anyway.

Like 100% of the rest of the world's population, I have no way of knowing whether the way I feel at any given moment would be different if I were of the opposite sex - except at times when the way I feel is directly related to my reproductive function. I felt sick when I was eight weeks pregnant. I felt blooming and happy when I was five months pregnant. I felt a bit shit when I was two weeks postpartum and had had no sleep and was dealing with lochia and stitches and postnatal depression. I know, logically, that these feelings are peculiar to women.. but not all women have experienced them, and there are other feelings peculiar to women which I have never experienced (I don't get period pains, for example).

There is no criterion or set of criteria which adequately defines the group "woman" in terms of feelings. If there were, none of us would know what they are, because none of us have ever been both a man and a woman, and so we have no way of comparing the two states.

If a man wants to "live as a woman" that's fine by me -not like I get to decide how other people ought to live. But that doesn't mean he is one.

When I consider at length either how I 'feel' my identity or 'feel' myself to be, then I do feel the following (in no particular order):
mother
woman
middle-aged
European
British
heterosexual
white

Although I don't feel these things like someone pinching me. They are subtle and only become apparent when they are constrasted with my external environment. This list is also a tickbox to identity.

I feel plenty of other things too like: introverted, contented; uncomfortable in crowds - but these are what is more generally perceived to be 'personality'.

What is the difference between personality and core identity?

I feel like a 16 year old sometimes, 360 years old at other times, 6 months old occasionally. What does a woman of my age feel like? How do I know that state - unless I have lived before? What is feeling? What's the definition of a feeling? Is it to do with now or has it come from the past? How do I know how to discern the difference? How does anyone know what feelings really convey without doing years of therapy?

What feeling should take precedence? Am I right to impose my feelings on others? How do I contain my feelings so they don't hurt harm others? Am I right to assume my feelings should take priority and take away the rights of others to exist safely? So many questions. So many glib answers from some quarters.

I still kind of feel like a teenager a lot of the time but would rather not identify as one if doing so would mean having a curfew and homework.

I only feel my age when my joints remind me.
I oppose the idea of changing the law to require that everyone affirm how I feel rather than what my joints clearly state.

"My identity is a little bit tied up with the belief that I have the same potential in my brain as any man. When someone asserts that male and female brains are fundamentally different (intrinsic in the claim you can have the wrong kind for your body) that could undermine my sense of self."

This is an observation that resonates with me.

I don't feel like a woman anymore than I feel like a 30 year old. I just am.

Age is a fairly good analogy for this actually.

Does anyone actually 'feel' their age? I know I don't. I still feel the same as I died as a teenager, though my adult body limits me in many ways. Not 'feeling' 30 does not mean I am actually 15. Same as not 'feeling' like a man does not mean the person is a woman. I could have surgeries and such to look younger I am sure, it might make me happy for a short time (if I could also cure my disability at the same time!) but this does not mean I am actually younger.

if you change the words ‘feel like’ to ‘experience being’
Then it all becomes clear.

Im sure the only person who wakes up in a morning and thinks "man! I feel like a woman!" is Shania Twain. Usually my first thought is am i late for work? Is the kettle on?

I dont "feel" like a woman. I feel like colleysmill and i am who i am and thats fine. I don't relate to what society these days seems to want to define what a "woman" is but it doesnt change the fact that biologically i am.

It’s the TRA child’s turn to call shotgun... that’s all.

Women have never even been considered able to drive.

YY but to me it really is evidence of how despite some progress having been made, this seems to have been almost by accident because it is abundantly clear (though not surprising given patriarchy) that society does not actually have a consensus that biological sex is how men and women are distinguished from each other and nothing else.

It’s clear that probably the driving force behind sex discrimination laws was a consensus that we should ‘try to be fair’ based on an intuition that certain things were not fair but without any kind of real understanding of how and why.

Obviously this is terrible for feminists as, despite how much work has been done in defining and explaining etc, it essentially demonstrates that progressive laws have been a paternal concession rather than actual progress because no-one who matters has ever really actually listened to women on any of this.

YY Offred. But I think it has been very easy for TRAs to achieve this because the pink brain blue brain norms have been allowed to continue unchallenged socially. Psychologists have a lot to answer for here as many have seen gender as on the whole a positive thing. So it is a "good" thing for women to feel at home with their oppression and to reinforce it on behalf of men.

Imchlibob Exactly. We're using the same words but with radically different meanings.

Hard to find common ground there, especially when one side doesn't even want the other side to even be heard.

I think the heart of the TRA/GC conflict is really that TRA seems to be lobbying to reinforce cultural stereotypes rather than biological sex as the distinguishing features between men and women via law because of a desperation to ID into womanhood and a knowledge (no matter how well hidden by denial) that sex change can not be achieved.

To GC this actually does wipe out decades of progress re the law which reinforces biological sex as the only true difference between men and women.

I think the whole thing shows up how vulnerable women really are because it has become abundantly clear that despite laws having been passed for decades re sex discrimination no-one really understands why they are there.

True enough Kyanite. But when people say they "feel like" a woman I think they are describing thoughts, ideas, sense of self in an intuitive though inaccurate way.