How are we the same?

I can see how those who are extremely ignorant of female anatomy and function might think vagina=penetrable hole, clitoris = pea sized nubbin that cannot penetrate.

I’m well aware of our anatomy thank you and the differences, as I made clear.

Plenty of post menopausal women find their lives better and more fulfilling with HRT.

I know! Neither women nor transwomen identify as male.

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but when I consider my vagina, it's relevance to my life is much greater in terms of what comes out of it; people I created, the lining of my uterus, cervical mucus secreted to keep it healthy and functional. Than what goes into it; someone else's penis.
I don't view my body in terms of what other people (men) can do to it.

As for my clitoris, it's 10cm long. It wraps around my vagina internally towards my thighs. It has the shape of a lotus flower. It has more than 8000 nerve endings in the tiny tip alone, the glans. It keeps growing as I age.

I can see how those who are extremely ignorant of female anatomy and function might think vagina=penetrable hole, clitoris = pea sized nubbin that cannot penetrate. It's embarrassingly ignorant but there you go. However, females don't often define themselves in terms of dick functionality and how our bodies relate to that, but rather our own organ's functionality.

As for cosmetic appearance, if you ignore all the actual functions of female organs to contrive to believe that external cosmetic similarity makes for common purpose, you might as well argue that sheep without legs are clouds, and flies without wings are raisins.

And so far as hormonal levels go, a point I've been wanting to make for ages to all the middle aged men arguing for their "HRT" and claiming their oestrogen levels make them women.
What the everloving feck do you imagine the oestrogen levels of post menopausal women are? That's right, dipsticks, we spend decades and decades of our lives with low or undetectable levels of oestrogen and we're as female without it as we are with it! Why on earth would a man imagine he needs oestrogen at 65 at the levels of a 20 year old woman? The level of oestrogen naturally occurring in a 65 year old woman is often less than a man's.

It's quite the shock to discover what men really think female bodies are for, what they look like, and what they do.

I know the answer to this one!

We both say we are women

As PPs have said, there isn't a real answer.

As I said, sorry for being rude.

Not at all. I've been a member of the board for a while, and have (hopefully) contributed positively in that time.

However, I will happily "bow out" of this conversation. I wouldn't want to "intrude"...

Sorry that was unnecessarily rude.

It’s blank for you to colour in. Finding it validating here are you?

I don't have this weird obsession with penetration/not-penetration at all and I can't empathise with it.

Neither do I but the question was what do trans women have in common with women that they don’t have in common with men, not whether or not there’s more to sex than penetration.

Can I? Wonderful. Anything that will show I'm not in favour of women's rights being trampled on by TRAs/MRAs and will happily support women would be awesome!

Tell me it's not pink though - I really hate pink...

Well good for you. You can have your ‘approved by mumsnet feminists’ badge.

Ok, I'll bite - as comments have be made that no *trans person has replied.

As one of those "old school" transsexuals who wants to get on with their life in peace. The answer is simple...

Nothing. The argument surrounding male violence applies equally to women, men, transwomen and transmen so it's a moot point.

As for the long answer, Barracker said it more eloquently than I could have have done, and I absolutely agree with her wholeheartedly.

There is nothing that reliably groups together males-who-identify-as-women and women.

If the word 'woman' could possibly have been coherently redefined to include some men and exclude some women depending upon identity, the transactivists would have done it already.

But they can't. Because males are not females, and can never be.

(This is, of course, somewhat demonstrated by the fact that only those born male could even undergo an operation to invert their penile tissue into something "like a vagina." I would even go so far as to say it's deeply patriarchal to envision a vagina not as an incredible and intricate organ in its own right, but as something that can be medically constructed and described in the language of penetration.)

Transwomen as a group have nothing in common with women as a group that isn't also shared by men. So, human universals, in other words.

The superficial things don't work. I could say that I like wearing skirts and so do lots of transwomen - but plenty of women never wear skirts, and some men do.

Fieldofgreycorn you know that the vast majority of transwomen keep their penises? 'Not having an organ that can penetrate' isn't a quality shared by most transwomen.

I think I have FAR more in common with a man who doesn't think about sex in this narrow, boring, penetration-obsessed way than I do with someone who got drastic genital surgery in order to get penetrated.

Well said.

I asked a TRA this once. They thought long and hard before concluding that both natal women and trans women are victims of the patriarchy...

I've only met fully clothed transwomen.

Not knowing what their bodies look like underneath their clothes has made no difference to my experience.

We are not the same and I have nothing more in common with them than Gary my next door neighbour.

Arthritica "(Except we both wear clothes with inadequate pockets, but that’s hardly something to build a sorority on)"

This tweet seems made for this comment

Incidentally if you want to think about the unique female experience of sexism, look at which group are forcibly and coercively trying to redefine half the human race in their own image to achieve forced teaming with women for their own personal benefit, rejecting all care or interest in the impact on these other humans, and threatening rape and oppression to those who dare resist..... the differential in power, empathy and entitlement is right there.

Trans women have a neoclitoris, not the same physiology as a clitoris by a long chalk, but it is a small senate organ that provides sexual pleasure and isn’t used to penetrate another person

See this is the kind of thing that I mean! I don't think of "not used to penetrate another person" as being a primary or even relevant attribute of my clitoris! I don't have this weird obsession with penetration/not-penetration at all and I can't empathise with it. However a lot of transwomen do have this obsession, for example those who think lesbians are fucking each other with strap-ons the entire time. I think I have FAR more in common with a man who doesn't think about sex in this narrow, boring, penetration-obsessed way than I do with someone who got drastic genital surgery in order to get penetrated.

What have TW as a group got in common with women?

What have any group of people got in common with another group of people? On an individual basis, probably lots of things.

If you're asking about what creates a specific classification of people that both women and TW fit into but no one else does? It's not possible. The only thing all female people have in common that creates a class of female people is biology. That's it. That's all. Females don't all have some magical inner sense of female, they don't all perform femininity, they don't have a uniform, they don't have restricted hobbies. Humans with female biology. That's it. That this is a distressing reality to some males is sad, but does not change that fact.

I honestly feel like I have less in common with transwomen than I do with most men.

i agree

No, women's experience of sexism is specific to being female, and it isn't true or helpful to females to appropriate this as an intended gesture of kindness to people born male.

Any time female people are talked about or in a context alongside those born male, the sexism towards the female people is stark and staring. The difference in whose voices are heard with head tilts and soft voices and who gets death threats in this debate is very obvious. The difference in who gets talked over and who talks over others is very obvious. The difference in who gets why single sex spaces matter to females and the utter bafflement at females being difficult about it is very obvious. Males do not experience the world as females do, and females cannot identify out of their lower society status - as the total lack of TM anywhere in anyone's debate demonstrates. Males can also not identify out of their male socialisation or that others read and respond to them with the privileged status given only to males. Not to mention the TW who explain on tv and in articles that they regard sexual harassment and that kind of sexism as validating and delightful to receive as part of their chosen identity, and wish female people to stop discouraging it, oblivious to the realities of lived experience of sexism as a female and not being able to identity out of the grim bits.

It is a sex based response. Not a gender based one.

Those I’ve met I’ve had nothing in common with that I wouldn’t have in common with a man.

To get graphic for a moment..

The genital topology on a post op woman is more similar to women than men. Not the same, but more similar than to men. Eg trans women don’t have an organ that can penetrate, but instead have an area that can be penetrated (by a man or a woman). Men do have an organ that can penetrate and only an anus.

Trans women have a neoclitoris, not the same physiology as a clitoris by a long chalk, but it is a small senate organ that provides sexual pleasure and isn’t used to penetrate another person. A normal clitoris is a sensate organ that doesn’t penetrate another person. A penis can. So TW more similar to women than men in that regard.

Trans women have to work out which oestrogen form and dose is right for them, particularly post op. That is more similar to women than men.

Some trans women do pass well enough to experience being trivialised by men, or to have lewed comments made, or smile love it might never happen.

So there are some similarities depending on what you mean by ‘trans woman’.

I honestly feel like I have less in common with transwomen than I do with most men.

I read a lot, including a guilty habit of reading random nonsense online. I feel like I can empathise with most experiences to some extent. I have an alarming tendency to sympathise with unsympathetic narrators. I don't often read something that was written by a man and find it bizarre and unrelatable.

But when I read stuff that transwomen have written about their experiences of being trans or their interpretations of being "women," it is almost always bizarre and unrelatable (and often insulting to boot, if I were to consider the trans interpretation of womanhood as having anything in common with my actual experience of womanhood.)

It seems that being a transwoman is a very particular kind of experience that involves some unusual cognitive processing. So I'm not speaking in pure generalities, one striking example of that is the "denying our existence" rhetoric which appears to make perfect sense to trans people but which leaves me emotionally baffled. There's a lot of stuff like that!