School sports

Single sex provision certainly benefits men too. Of course they are entitled to their own spaces for rape support, male cancer and men's health discussion. Although I can't imagine many women insisting they had to gatecrash these because they had put on a man-gender costume.

Then we come to sex. Gender critical women may not like the gendered expectation cage, but they still want sometimes to receive different treatment to men, because they can see that their bodies are not men’s bodies

I just want to quote this bit of nellodee’s post to add I think most men would want this too for their own reasons. Some will be medical, men don’t want to be called for cervical cancer treatments or be asked if there’s a chance they’re pregnant - and sometimes men will want single sex spaces for dignity (eg all male washing/changing/toilet facilities) where they are not physically unsafe but still have legitimate needs to be away from women.

It's all such sexist bollocks. I drive my husband around (although that is because he's a stereotypically lazy man 😉 ) and I'm the mouthy, lairy one. He's a gentle giant while I'm a right vicious cow 😀 I'll smack you, he won't 😀 perhaps we're both trans and trapped in the wrong bodies 🤣🤣🤣

Actually, I took him to see Swan Lake and he fell asleep so maybe he is a real man after all 🙄

surely It’s Feminism 101 - whether you call yourself GC or not (I don’t as being critical of gender stereotyping is so much a part of feminism I don’t know how you can be feminist without having those beliefs, but I wouldn’t stop anyone else using the term for themselves.)

All other branches of feminism may look from different angles but I don’t know how you can say gender stereotypes (which is what Gender Identity is) are compatible with feminism.

(is some of the idea that GC feminism a separate branch down to modern feminism assuming women have won all the battles? Women who have never noticed all the other issues women face? I genuinely don’t know and would be interested in exploring this but not on this thread, of course. I don’t know as much as some of the women here, I may be missing something blindingly obvious).

I’m pondering on the similarity of the starting positions of trans people like Alpha and gender critical feminists. I can see from one aspect that both start from the same position, that some people find gendered expectations a cruel cage. Both agree that the cage exists. Both want, in some way, to escape the cage they are initially placed in.

However, transwomen want to get into a cage that has all the other women in it, call that cage womanhood and close the door behind them. Gender critical women want the cage destroyed, or at the very least, the doors wide open, so anyone is free to come and go as they please.

Then we come to sex. Gender critical women may not like the gendered expectation cage, but they still want sometimes to receive different treatment to men, because they can see that their bodies are not men’s bodies. They are on average weaker, smaller, they menstruate and become pregnant. They don’t want a prison with the name woman on it, just a private space where they can cope with the additional vulnerabilities that their sexed bodies require. They’ve been used to having this space - it’s valuable to them and they have a real need for it.

Why are we being asked to believe that we don’t need this sexed space, because it’s been taken over by a branch of the gender prison that now has transwomen in it? In fact, we’re told, it was never a single sexed space, it was always a gendered space. Get back in your cage, women. You are no different to the transwomen who have climbed in there with you and the door must remain locked at all times.

The only way to ‘live as a woman’ is to be conceived as a female zygote, survive your mum’s pregnancy, be born a girl and then live long enough to reach the age of majority.

This is so extremely contradictory though. I don't think you really can even begin to see it, but you absolutely need to.

You have such a strong desire to live YOUR interpretation of what a woman is.

You are not 'living as a woman'!

You are living a role that you define as 'a woman' from your perspective of being male. That is also defined by your perspective to NOT live as you perceive a man lives.

So, due to queer theory and post modernist theory, some parts of society have now told people that simply saying the words 'I am a woman' means you are what you say you are. I think that deep down you know this and you struggle with it.

What you do need to do is to understand the inherent misogyny, narcissism and contradictions in your beliefs and go and get some actual balanced support. Not from any fucking therapist that will simply tell you what they think you want to hear or who is deeply entrenched in affirming people's identities.

I have a question, @AlphaTransWoman. You mention wanting to "live as a woman" a few times.

What does that mean for you, in concrete terms?

I don't mean in terms of what character traits you attribute to women, but in terms of how you personally want to live your life. What do you think living your life as a woman looks like, and what would having to live your life as a man look like in contrast?

I never understood that theory about autism. As a ND trans woman, how can I have an "extreme male brain" yet have such a strong desire to live as a woman?

"Extreme male brain" doesn't mean extremely liking khaki and football, it is talking about the way autistic brains operate.

One of the things "extreme male brains" do is have obsessions. It might be chess, it might be bus timetables, it might be the idea that your brain is in the wrong body.

Another thing autistic brains tend to do is misunderstanding social things and taking things over literally. So here people see "how to be a real man" stereotypes, and think if you don't do those things you're not a man at all. Or as you are here, expecting having an autistic brain to mean you should be a manly man rather than understanding that the "extreme male brain" simile only refers to particular aspects of how the brain works.

Most people I have come across with ASD tend to be quite non stereotypical of their own sex whether M or F. They aren't as influenced by what everyone else does, they don't see the point. It's a trait I like very much.

You might also find it useful to look up confirmation bias.

Because what you wish to live as is not what a woman actually is.

It's what you imagine a woman to be.

From your posts here, you seem to have an idea of what it means to be a woman that is very much at odds with the experiences of being a woman described by women responding to you.

It seems your view of womanhood comes from very stereotyped definitions that were imposed upon women for centuries as a tool of oppression. Hearing them can cause great distress to women because they've historically (and still in the present) been used to abuse women, by forcing them, legally, politically, socially, physically and psychologically, into roles that are alien and harmful to them.

On the whole, women feel about these characteristics similarly to how you feel about the characteristics you've claimed are "male," such as competitiveness or aggression or enjoying contact sports.

In fact, all people, male or female, are individuals with their own needs, abilities, tastes and characteristics. It's when society starts imposing gender norms that we can feel our true selves don't fit these made-up definitions and it can be very emotionally and psychologically distressing.

An actual book WRITTEN BY AN ACTUAL WOMAN, yet.

Because sexism.

It’s assuming because people with ASD are assumed to be more rational, logical and rigid thinking these then they must be ultra male, because males are rational and logical.

it’s a whole bundle of stereotypes.

Honestly, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I would really recommend "The Gendered Brain" by Gina Rippon

No point. The OP can’t even acknowledge and listen to posts in this thread, let alone get through an actual book that explains their sexism.

it does mess with some people's heads when i turn up to work in an Iron Maiden t-shirt, black jeans and my silver glittery docs 😁

See, the “male brain” and “female brain” bollocks is why for so long girls have been under diagnosed with ADHD or autism, because they were assumed to only affect boys (see ?Baron Cohen? And the autism=extreme male brain).

Now imagine being a girl with ADHD who can’t be quiet and placid. She’s still not a boy.

This is getting a bit off topic but I thought so many things about the Barbie movie were really well done.

For me the mic drop moment was when Ken gets let loose in the real world and he sees everything being controlled by and set up for the benefit of men rather than Barbies and he's like, "Wooooaaaahhhh! This is AWESOME!!!!" after having lived his whole life in a world controlled by and set up for the benefit of the Barbies.

Hopefully that part made a few men reflect on what the real world must feel like for women sometimes.

Exactly that.

The real, messy, complicated world is full of metaphorical pink Birkenstocks (and brown high heels!)

Imagine how boring life would be if everyone was in the pink box or the blue box 24/7 for the whole of their lives - baby girls in pink and baby boys in blue is surely only useful as a stopgap until the child has an imagination and the beginnings of a expressed personality?

Weird Barbie Matrix parody scene, for anyone curious:

https://x.com/solarmilfs/status/1668561908763611136

Stereotypical Barbie initially chooses the high heel because she’s born from from life-limiting sex stereotypes, whereas the Birkenstock leads to a world where women are real, living, complex human beings who don’t always get along with each other.

Weird Barbie’s house is the netherworld between the two, she’s a Barbie who used to be a stereotype until an actual little girl played with her.

Not in the chess club gave to face but playing online chess. He found people played "differently" against him - he was 12, "different" was all the description he could give - he has ASD. Slightly more aggressively perhaps? He certainly got a lot of 'stay in the kitchen' type chat messages from the men people he was playing . And his current online chess account is called something like MrMalenameMan because he didn't like it.

Yes, surely only someone who has never been a teenage girl, or spent much time around teenage girls, could think that.

I liked that bit.

And then in that last scene where Margot Robbie is still looking incredibly pretty and feminine but we see she is wearing pink Birkenstocks, it's like, you don't have to choose one thing or the other. You can be pretty and also practical.

You can be kind, but also a TERF. Because women's boundaries are important.

I'm not commenting on the rest, but the notion that a group of teenage girls would be lovely and inclusive....

Judging by issues at my son's secondary school, definitely not.