Peak GC Moment?

How do you know what their experience is of being a woman? Any proof? How do you know what someone born trans experiences? Or a man for that matter? The answer is none of us know anything other than our own individual experience.

OP

If you are still reading - if you want to use bold, you have to do each paragraph separately, so a * at the beginning and end of each paragraph. It's a right pain, especially when you're quoting multiple paragraphs!

Similarly if we were able to legally change our age.
I could either be over 65 and start claiming my pension.
Or I could ID as under 26 and get a railcard.

Your age and your sex are immutable biological facts.

What does “living as a woman” mean?

Well that's the point isn't it? It doesn't mean anything.

The only difference between females and males is the reproductive system they have. Everything else is optional. Gender is a social construct. You can't tell me what a woman looks like, how a woman acts or any other features of "woman" that will be universal to all women.

The only universal characteristic is our reproductive biology.

I don't share anything more with a transwoman, than I do with a man.

We are not in the same subgroup of humans.

I share a reproductive system with female humans. That is what connects us all. Not length of hair, choice of clothes, liking pink, caring about our appearance, or being nice!

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

Nobody has told me why I, a woman who is zero threat to anyone and has worked with children for 15 years, needs a DBS check in order to get a job working with vulnerable people........

And I see, rather sadly, that this thread about doubts and difficulties has become the arena for someone who isn't remotely GC to parade the well worn clichés of 'All women have different experiences, including 'transwomen'', and 'my trans feminine friend is an adult human female because their inverted penis is no different to a vagina' etc.

And yes, I am utterly mystified that 20 years ago everyone understood that a transsexual felt like a woman, but now suddenly 'feeling like a woman' actually transforms you into one. How in hell did that happen?

And yes before Danielle Muscato started wearing dresses and was telling women to 'suck my dick' he wasn't 'pre-transition', he was already claiming that he was all woman.

I think I understand too, OP. I also didn't find the Posie/This Morning interview helpful, although I did agree with a lot of what she said. My two teenagers are fiercely pro-trans (understandably, as they have some trans friends) and I wouldn't have shown them that interview as a way of convincing them, it would have done the opposite. And I get the thing about women being socialised to be 'nice' but actually I think there's a difference between being 'not nice' and being just nasty. The way PP laughed at IW was mocking, sneering and made me really question the motivation of her campaign. And I know that she was outnumbered but I don't think that justifies it. What is the point of the doing interviews like this if they alienate the people on the other side of the argument?

Nope, I've never had a "peak GC" moment. I have, however, had numerous peak-trans moments. People cannot change sex and women do not have penises.

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

For the same reason my husband, who is absolutely zero threat to women or children is stopped from using them. Men are excluded en masse from such spaces - the majority of those men will be decent ones who pose no active threat to women. But they’re excluded nonetheless because we can’t do this on an individual basis.

Im a bit fat at the moment due to having a baby and eating too many biscuits. That’s reality. I don’t expect people to sit yelling ‘you fatty!’ At me, because that wouldn’t be very nice, even if it is true. However if I expected everyone around to pretend I was a slim size 8, you’d think I was very wrong. If I then started to insist that everyone said I was thin, despite reality saying otherwise, you’d think I was controlling. If I threatened anyone pointing out I’m in fact a decent size 16 with hate speech...

It reminds me of a quote I saw on twitter- You only gave me the shirt off your back, I wanted your skin.

Re: identity politics, Mark Fisher's essay on Exiting the Vampire's Castle is interesting for many reasons, amongst which is his opening (published in 2013):

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics...

‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.
...
The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires’ Castle. The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

Funny you mention the Queen actually, because if the Queen mum had happened to have a male come out of her womb and not two females, then the Queen never would have become Queen and her experience would have been different again!

Why did it change to the idea that transwomen are now literally female?

Because no amount of concessions are ever going to be enough. This is pathological.

MrsCupCake91 Living as a woman means living with female biology. Whoever you are.

Why did it change to the idea that transwomen are now literally female? When I was younger the transwomen I came across had dysphoria and took steps to alleviate that but knew they were male, otherwise they wouldn't be 'trans'. Why is there now an insistence from some that TWAW? Not always from transwomen themselves I might add, but vocal so-called allies? You are doing transwomen no favours by demanding that people believe and adhere to complete falsehoods.

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

My impression is that most women used to be fine with this and transsexuals using women's changing rooms wasn't much of a problem. I also get the impression that most transsexuals were conscious that they were different and didn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so for e.g. if they still had a penis they wouldn't be flashing it around in a communal changing room. But with self-id, and other associated trans-ideologies there is an attempt to remove any form of legal and social gatekeeping to women's spaces.

My main concerns with the current push that's is being called trans rights are:

• Self-id and how that impacts on women's spaces
• Medicalisation of children
• Gender stereotyping
• Unfair competition in sports and on schemes/awards to help underrepresentation of women

Are you happy with the ideologies that are being put forward in the name of trans rights? Is your relative?

lunamoth581

Good Post.

Good question. What does “living as a woman” mean? It’s different for all of is. My experience will be very different from the Queen’s, Kim Kardashian, a nun or an East European sex worker. You tell me what the definitive answer is?

Having a female body and the material reality that comes with that. That is the only thing that all women have in common. The Queen, Kim Kardashian, a nun, an Eastern European sex worker: they all have a female body. It's the only experience that all women have in common, and it's an experience that no male person will ever have.

MrsCupCake My relative is an adult human female

Absolutely no. It's not possible to change sex.

Floral

I’ve also seen arbitary lines drawn up on what makes a woman. Women don’t have penises - yet surgery can give trans people vaginas.

And I know the thread has moved on but this I do find deeply offensive. I find this statement extremely sexist.

And it is not a fact, it is not reality based. The vagina is an organ, part of the female reproductive system. Surgeons can not create a vagina, they create a facsimile which does not function as a vagina does. The only similarity is that a penis can be inserted into both. And “a man can stick a penis in it” is not the defining characteristic of a vagina; it is not the only thing that matters about vaginas; and it is not the primary most important function of a vagina.

There’s no “arbitrary line” being drawn here. A woman is an adult human female - of the sexual reproductive class capable of producing ova and gestating young. That is exactly what a woman is. Being a woman has nothing to do with feelings, or abilities, or talents, or preferred hobbies and manner of dress. The only thing that all women have in common is their reproductive role. That’s it.

I and lots of other women do not regard my relative as a man - but you do. Even though she could spend a year in your company and you wouldn’t know. Unless she told you. You would only class her as male when you found out.

So the definition of 'woman' is 'anyone who appears to be a woman' then? What if two people met your relative and one person realised they were male and the other didn't? Would they then be simultaneously both male and female?

QuietContraryMary - really??!!!

I am somewhat inclined to believe CupCake that their relative fully passes as female, even when naked. In that case no-one would realise they were trans and they could use women's facilities.

What if they didn't pass though? Do you think we should have one rule for trans who pass and another for those who don't? I presume so, otherwise you wouldn't have spent time emphasising how we would need an X-ray to realise your relative was male.

Is it okay to segregate non-passing trans people?