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

Personality types are not feelings.

We feel emotions and there is no gender attached to them.

The world has reduced "woman" to a personality type. For a very short period we were being emancipated from stereotypes and then the stereotypes took over completely.

How do you even know you ARE a woman?
I am a woman because I was born with a vagina I suppose. I feel this is a trick question!

Yes but as a girl you were probably told to close your legs, that you had to wear skirts, that you had to behave ladylike - long before you really were aware of your vagina. These things are the start of how you 'feel' like a girl/woman.

Essentially you are a female because of your vagina, and from that moment the essence of your socialisation started.

If you look at all the people saying they feel like a woman, it is about their liking for female toys, clothes, activities - these things are all about socialisation not about the actual 'having a vagina' thing.

I know I am a woman due to my body, but I don't do mainly womanly things - I do a wide cross section of activities, male and female and in this climate would be called 'trans'. But the fact of the matter is that the only thing that really matters is the biological definition.

All the rest is your personality.

I feel quite separate from my body - I feel like some kind of 'soul' that has been given a woman's body and then all my experience input since then has been how people treat a woman and what my body does. I don't see the 'soul' bit as being male or female. I also think that sounds ridiculous and like a religious nut.

And by all my life I mean all my life. I thought I was a boy until I went to school. I was very upset to find out I was a girl. I thought I was a boy because I didn’t identify with stereotypes re girls. I remember I was upset to be a girl because at 4/5 the realisation that I fell into the female category was a realisation that my life was going to be restricted by stereotypes or as I felt at the time ‘I’m never going to be able to do the things I want to do or like the things I like’.

Like others on this thread ‘feeling like a woman’ for me as a female is complicated.

I feel like a person I would say. I am reminded that I am a woman by things related to my female biology, I am reminded I am seen as a woman by relentless everyday sexism which I feel often alienated me from myself or causes splitting.

Being seen as a woman by others has been an overwhelmingly negative presence in my life for all my life. In order to feel positively about myself and to retain a cohesive sense of self it is essential that I feel like a person rather than a woman.

This is inevitable IMO when the cultural meaning of ‘woman’ is so loaded and stereotyped.

@merrymouse I agree. And when people claim "I just feel I am a woman and I can't explain it" I hear "I can't explain it without using stereotypes - you're trying to trip me up" IF gender identity is nothing but a single word then it is nothing.

Great post Imchlibob. I can understand the erasure comments although it is obviously not literal. But for a lot of people their identity is dependent on the way others see them. So when others refuse to see them as the them they want to be seen they feel the person they believe they are inside is disappearing. It is seriously messed up but I can see the same in my own mind. 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.

If we can't see the way others think it is hard to reach a common understanding

However there is an added complication here because many people won’t explain what they think.

@myrelationshipiswierd Yes I know and I agree. I don't believe gender is innate. I am highly critical of gender. I argued further up that the belief it is innate is a kind of mass delusion. My comment got deleted for being against talk guidelines and it turns out someone has written what looks like a very good book stating more or less the same thing. I get a bit frustrated here at FWR that people seem to think everyone knows gender does not come from within. That there are not girl brains and boy brains. If we can't see the way others think it is hard to reach a common understanding

Just catching up with this thread and the thing that struck me was how much of this argument is caused by limited vocabulary and misunderstanding.

Unpacking:
A says: "I feel like a woman, I am a woman"
B says: "You do not feel like a woman. You are a man"

B hears: "My sense of inner self clashes with my understanding of masculinity to the point that I must reject masculinity. This sense of inner self feels more feminine to me and seems to be how women must feel. I must be a woman inside. By extention this must also be how you feel inside. Inner feelings are much more important than physical shape so you must now accept that I am in exactly the same category as you for all practical and legal purposes."

B thinks: "You can't conclude that what you are feeling is what I am feeling, you only know what you feel. The categories of man and woman are generally limiting and ideally only ought to even exist to describe biological facts, with everything to do with how a person thinks and feels and believes being centred around their freedom as a person first, man and woman being descriptive of only physical shape and chromosome type." (This being expressed briefly as B's reply above)

A hears: "You do not feel how you feel. You are limited to conforming to masculine roles because being trans isn't a thing. Trans doesn't exist. You don't exist."

No wonder this is getting tense on both sides. Neither person is stopping to check what the other person really means, or clearly explaining themselves to check that their words are understood.

I of course don't know what is going on in other people's heads but I am pretty sure that B's perception of what A means is completely wrong - A is not denying that Trans is thing, is not saying that trans people don't exist or that people with penises must get on with being manly men. I acknowledge there may be some people who do think that way but the vast majority of feminists really don't.

We really need to talk about this properly, slowly, carefully and taking time to understand one another deeply. There probably are on both sides some actually unreasonable people, and some people who just don't have the capacity to take the conversation to a deeper level, that's part of the huge diversity of humanity too. However, most of us are probably reasonable people who have the capacity for a more nuanced conversation but are currently being prevented from having it due to all the shouting and name-calling.

This shit really hurts my brain 😩

@thebewilderness: For others, who have been told they were lesser all their lives, feeling like a person and not an object is a goal to strive for.

@polkadotwellies: Feeling like a woman is not feeling like an object. It's a shame you feel they are interchangeable.

There are men out there who think that women are objects. There is a whole genre of media, "porn", devoted to portraying women as objects. There is a whole 'nother genre of media, "women's mags", devoted to telling us how to starve ourselves thin and wrap ourselves up like pretty parcels, objectifying ourselves in the process for male consumption. Feeling like, and being treated like, a full person is an ongoing project for me that is still not complete. Not hating myself for my weight, looks, grey hair, etc is a struggle at times. Do men, who are presumed at all times to be full people, judge their own appearance so harshly?

Most people I speak to think male and female brains are different. I am not projecting. This is what they have told me. I was told repeatedly before my ds was 3 months old that he would be lazier, more aggressive and slower than his sister. “Boys!” - but that is all due to socialisation not an innate difference in their brains. Lazier because women’s place is serving men and boys, aggressive because “boys will be boys” (no, boys will be held accountable for their fucking actions) and slower because again, why should he bother when nobody is pushing him to do more, bless him, he’s a boy, let him sit and play with his cars while the girls tidy up the toys.

Obviously testosterone will have an effect too, but again, that’s not to do with brains, and is one of the reasons some people cite for trans women behaving in strikingly similar ways to men. Even with their lady brains, the imbalance in hormones will have an effect on behaviour , levels of aggression etc.

Nothing I’ve read here or anywhere else, has convinced me that anyone can intrinsically feel like a woman or a man without referring to biology or to societal expectations of gender.

I’ve just finished Delusions of Gender after it was recommended on here.

I found it quite hard going (all the technical stuff about the design of experiments)but enjoyed it.

I'm not sure that makes much sense. Gender critical doesn't mean transgender critical. I am openly gender critical in all sorts of ways as gender norms are negatively affecting me and my family all the time. Maybe that's why I get more dissenting feedback!

Sarah I don't think gender critical opinions are in a minority just that most people haven't found it necessary to express their opinions as it doesn't impact on their lives much yet. As for 'men are from Mars women are from venus' it is hardly a scientific textbook and more a vague interpretation of social conditioning from the self help genre.

@bewilderness thanks for the book recommendation. It sounds right up my street. I'm actually quite shocked that my comment about gender delusion earlier on got deleted so I'm gratified that a proper expert has already coined the term.

No do you know what I moved from my position too readily. If most people don't think gender identity is internal and immutable why on earth are gender critical voices in the minority? Why do we so often get accused of bigotry? Why has "Women are from Venus Men are from Mars" sold over 50 million copies? And yes I will re-assert it. Most people I speak to think male and female brains are different. I am not projecting. This is what they have told me. I was told repeatedly before my ds was 3 months old that he would be lazier, more aggressive and slower than his sister. "Boys!"