What does living as a woman actually mean?

In order to allow male people to be women, womanhood for all women has to be limited to only things that can be achieved by males even though this change, so crucial to trans women's identy as women, makes the concept of womanhood superficial and almost entirely meaningless.

That is very, very well put.

I think that if you consider yourself to be 'living as a female' or you 'identify as a woman' then chances are, you're a man (or a handmaiden).

To be clear I don’t think that how one dresses, tastes, hobbies, career choice or personality traits are what defines womanhood but in the past proponents of gender identity have argued on these lines. There is no attempt currently to write those things into law. For me sex is about biology, DNA, gametes and all that follows from that. I believe we need a legal definition of woman, adult human female, which reflects biology.

“In order to allow male people to be women, womanhood for all women has to be limited to only things that can be achieved by males even though this change, so crucial to trans women's identy as women, makes the concept of womanhood superficial and almost entirely meaningless.”

This by FlirtsWithRhinos gets to the point perfectly. Now in Scotland womanhood is having a female name and title and other people referring to you with female pronouns. This is it because men can easily do these things as well as women, any mention of how one dresses, tastes, hobbies, career choice or personality traits are too obviously sexist so now name, title and pronouns are the only legal difference between men and women or at least not quite yet but that is the proposal. We should all be looking at the petitions board and signing the 3 relevant petitions, if we haven’t already, to get this properly debated in Parliament.

I’m sure they still will because they can easily change their name and title, the other thing which defines womanhood legally with the new proposals, and because no one is checking to see how many people willingly submit and use wrong sex pronouns, however I do not want to be complicit in that personally because it directly goes against my beliefs in the importance of sex and the irrelevance of gender identity. In fact I consider forcing me to comply with wrong sex pronouns written into this badly conceived law as giving men legal recognition as women and vice versa is breaching my human rights to freedom of speech, thought and belief.

It used to be a requirement to be approved for surgery. They called it the 'real life test'.

I don't think it's ever been a requirement for a GRC, although some doctors might have made it a requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which in turn, is a requirement to get a GRC.

from the uk government website

You’ll need copies of evidence to show that you’ve been living in your affirmed gender for the last 2 years.

Each piece of evidence should contain at least one of the following that matches up with your affirmed gender:

a name
a title, like ‘Mr’ or ‘Miss’
a gender marker, like ‘male’ or ‘female’

so lady names are a thing and start lying about your sex as soon as possible!

what a shit show

repeal the GRA

www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate/what-documents-you-need

So if everyone 'misgenders' them, what then? Do they not get the certificate after all?

If it’s just about what pronouns you force other people to use when referring to you, then that also exposes the fact that the whole thing is about controlling what everyone else does.

It is extremely controlling. It’s about individuals dictating the actions, speech and even thought patterns of other people.

Why are we [by which I mean the bits of society promoting and going along with this] acting like that’s a good thing?

If being referred to by female pronouns is all the new definition of womanhood boils down to then not using wrong sex pronouns is even more important. We must use sex based language if we don’t want to legitimise gender identity and queer theory in law and society.

Copied from my post on the language thread

“By being forced to use wrong sex pronouns and other gender identity language patterns we are being made complicit in upholding the idea that gender identity is significant and matters and sex is irrelevant. Now in Scotland it seems that if you are against the concept of gender identity you are going to be forced to participate in legitimising the gender identity of individuals- using third female pronouns about a person is what makes that person legally female, if you don’t want a man to be legally recognised as a woman it is important that you continue to refer to him with third person male pronouns but if you do that you will be arrested for hate crime, lose your job etc. I am not sure how this is anything other than tyranny.

Using wrong sex pronouns is no longer arguable as just being polite, it is the defining act of granting a man legal status as a woman and vice versa. The language is creating the legal reality if not the actual reality. The language we use is vitally important correct sex pronouns, and sexed language such as man, woman, mother, father, breastfeeding, sister, brother, son, daughter and yes let’s be honest and factual a man who is pretending to be a woman, a woman who wishes she were a man, a boy who likes to play with whatever, a girl who like to do whatever etc”

Perhaps because this is indeed the essence of being female. I too felt most female when pregnant, attempting to breast-feed, leaking period blood all over my school skirt repeatedly, going through peri-menopause etc. There are no other times when I can really say I 'identified' as a woman. I wear skirts because they fit me better thann trousers due to being very curvy, and married a male and have 2 kids. But there are many, many, many ways which I don't confirm with any stereotypical expectations. There is no other way I can define being female/ a woman and attempting to belittle me for not pretending my experience of female is something a male can share is basically male entitlement writ large.

I bet he doesn't get stick. His friends probably have a little chuckle behind his back but I reckon he gets loads of positive attention and everyone plays along!

@BlessedKali That is a great story! Wrong answer: I gave birth. Correct answer: I cuddled a kitten and stole some lacey knickers. They'd have been beaming at you if you'd said that!

Exhausteddog exactly. A friend and I were having this conversation yesterday.

Obviously it means not being able to check tyre pressures or refill screen wash because your fingernails get in the way.

Well when this Bill is passed women, as they once were, will be erased. Everything will effectively be mixed sex no matter how it is labelled.

As soon as I hear anyone talking about identifying as X, I identify them as a person who hasn’t thought any of this through. If that person is an academic (or even has a degree in the human sciences), I apply intersectionality and identify them as someone who should know better because they’ve been trained to think things through properly.

👏

I am a woman. I don't live as a woman. I am one! Pretending to be a woman is a good way of explaining 'living as a woman'

^
Maybe. But the thing is he's over six foot and built like a brick shit house. And strong.
We'd imagine he'd get more stick from the males, I think. But they wouldn't aggravate him because he's a big chap.

And then we're back to why they can't just keep using the men's toilets.

I’m totally fed up with the concept of ‘identifying as’ now.

It’s simply not how identification works. Identification is as much, if not almost entirely, about how other people identify you. How society at large perceives you in relation to a set of (often problematic) categories.

It is not something you choose, control or that resides somewhere within you. The phrase ‘I identify as’ is meaningless because it’s actually an out how everyone else sees you. You can’t control that and force them to view you in whatever way you fancy. It’s adults doing a form of pretend play.

I don’t identify as a woman, or a white British person, or a disabled person, or a middle aged person, or whatever. I simply am those things because that’s how the rest of the world identifies me on the basis of a range of things (and that is reflected in the EA where people are protected from discrimination where they are wrongly identified as having a protected characteristic).

As soon as I hear anyone talking about identifying as X, I identify them as a person who hasn’t thought any of this through. If that person is an academic (or even has a degree in the human sciences), I apply intersectionality and identify them as someone who should know better because they’ve been trained to think things through properly.

Bloody ‘identity’. What a shite concept to have made a come back.

Wearing ill advised shades of lipstick?

I would imagine the plumber got some stick for being a transwoman if that's any consolation.

I mean, I have a vagina but I'm really 'laddy' always been a tomboy . 49 now and have a hubby and kids ( im not gay ) but I'm still more man traits than feminine ones so I'm hoping that after three months I can get a certificate like an award to say I've finally made the grade into being male . I've often said to my husband that trans women really put me to shame

Isn't it funny that you will get men being trans women with beards, penis and breasts but trans men seem to be lopping off their healthy breasts in their pursuit of manliness.

Well that's the entire point isn't it. The only definition of being a woman that makes any sense is having a female body.

Once you give that up, and say anyone with any kind of body can be a woman, or a man, there is no point in having the words woman and man any more.