So how do I live in the female gender?

[Definitelynamechanged123]

There are 8834 people in the UK who have a Gender Recognition Certificate.
I am one of them.

To get it, I had to show evidence of transition, surgery etc. Lots of hoops

I also had to swear a Statutory Declaration. I had to go to a Magistrates Court and swear a legal declaration in front of a magistrate. It was all very formal.

I had to swear this:

" have lived as a (insert ‘male’ or ‘female’ as appropriate)
throughout the period of years before the date of this statutory
declaration and I intend to live in that gender until death."

This declaration is legally binding. Apparently if I don't follow this, I can be done for perjury.

So...how do I live as a female and live in that gender until death - I have sworn to do this in front of a magistrate.

I was very surprised that so few trans people have Gender Recognition Certificates.

So please use that knowledge to keep out of women’s toilets and spaces.

I’m glad you understand it, but do you use women’s spaces?

This is a brilliant reply 👏🏻

Um, no?

How do I post an image, please?

Totally irrelevant to what being a woman is. A woman is an adult human female.

There are no other criteria to apply, including whether or not one is fearful of being raped or sexually assaulted.

😂😂 Oh no! Do Ocado disapprove of my opinions. I’m absolutely gutted. P’raps I’ll just shop elsewhere.

Although 10/10 to you @BloodandGlitter for giving me a laugh with the most middle class comment on this debate there has ever been 👍😂😂

Sorry- were you being sarcastic when you spoke about skincare? Hard to tell.

I can’t give an opinion because I’m not informed enough.

@anyolddinosaur can you say for a fact that those people who went to court and got the certificate have gone on to have babies or rape? Or is this your suspicion?

I know I’m in the minority but I wish OP well. I saw a program the other day with two TW on it. If I saw them using the ladies loo I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. The thought they can’t use a suitable toilet now seems ridiculous. And no, they shouldn’t use the disabled toilet either, because they are not disabled.

Which is exactly the point. Gender expectations are bollocks. Everyone should live as themselves. It’s not living as a gender because that’s not a thing. Then they should uses facilities/services designed for their sex.

Here's the thing OP. It's about entitlement and one set of demands superseding another.
30 odd years ago I was at a spa in London in a very well to do hotel. I was in the hot tub when a transwoman came and joined me and another lady. We could both see how extremely self conscious she was, so we showed kindness and did our very best to make them feel at ease by chatting to them and generally being nice. We were in an environment where we felt safe as there were two of us and it was public. 15 years ago or so at work I worked with another transwoman. As a small team, having got to know her well, we were happy and felt sufficiently safe to share our toilet with her, which is what we did.

Several years ago I took my young daughter to watch a children's show at the theatre. When we went to use the loo after the show, several large transwomen with beards wearing fetish gear came to use the toilet. I had the door open helping my daughter. We both felt extremely uncomfortable and my daughter left without going to the toilet. That is what I wish to protect my daughter and myself from.
My point is that, as an individual, if you take a bit of time to get to know other women and build those relationships, they will almost certainly show you kindness and consideration. But you cannot demand trust or demand use of public toilets and changing rooms where to do so takes away the control of women and leaves them feeling vulnerable too.

There’s no such thing as ‘the female gender’. We’re the female sex - and you, presumably, aren’t - but other than that we are all gloriously individual.

Some of us wear high heels and make up and grow our hair long. Love babies and kittens and romance and baking cakes. Others of us LOATHE all that stuff. Buzz-cut our hair short, wear the comfiest clothes and shoes possible and love fishing and motorbikes and playing darts. And a gazillion other possibilities and permutations. EVERYTHING in between - and more. We hate regressive stereotypes.

However we are though, we are women.

And you are not. And will never be - any more than a dog will be a cat. You have a Y chromosome in literally every cell in your body - about three trillion of them. Please hear tgif - you can never be a woman.

Imagine trying to appropriate someone else’s race as and asking ‘How do I live as a natal-born Sikh from the Punjab’, if you’re a white Catholic from Littlehampton. You just can’t. It’s stupid - and offensive to think you can.

So stop pretending. Say ‘I’m a bloke who likes dressing up in women’s clothes, me’. People will respect you more for the honesty.

Realistically, I don't think there's anything you could do that would violate the 'living as a woman' rule. Transmen with GRCS have got pregnant, given birth, and breast fed (all activities that only women can do) and they have not violated the 'living as a man' rule. Perhaps the rule to 'live as a woman' would be broken if a person never intended to actually live as a transwoman but acquired a GRC purely for fraudulent purposes, to make a second legal identity?

The GRA was a poorly thought out rushed piece of legislation that was done under the pressure of a Strasbourg ruling that the UK had to accommodate transwoman/man marriage. If you read the debates at the time, the legislators were horrified at the idea of introducing gay marriage across the board, so the GRA was seen as a quick fix to satisfy Strasbourg without going the whole hog. The debates are really interesting: there's lots of talk about how it will only impact a tiny number of people, and this isn't really 'gay' marriage because transwomen have 'feminine souls', so in reality it's really a straight marriage.

Now that we have gay marriage across the board, and thanks to the Supreme Court judgment, I don't see the point of the GRA and the GRC.

I saw a video the other day of a transwoman crying because he was getting married to a man and wanted it to be legally the case that he was a woman marrying a man and so was a wife. The sad thing is, even if you have a GRC which says this is a 'straight' marriage, and one male in the partnership is a 'wife', this doesn't change reality - which is that it's two males getting married (and according to the Equality Act this is a homosexual relationship) . The same applies to transmen giving birth - the Supreme Court ruled that even if a transman has a GRC, she is still legally classified as the 'mother' of the child, and not the 'father'. The GRC just doesn't reflect legal reality at all.

I think men should be free to classify their relationship as straight if they want, and women should be free to to call themselves fathers if they want. I just don't think the law needs to reflect that.

OP I get this must be a hard time for you.

I feel that nothing has changed, but that people now realise they should have been better protecting women’s spaces all along. If you transitioned a long time ago then little has changed- it’s only recently that trans overreach got ridiculous.

You still have the comfort you gained from surgery, so that’s good, and now no one is expecting you to do anything in particular. You can live as you wish. There is no ‘living as a woman’ to be done, no stereotypes to live up to. I do feel the stereotype of gender is actual very much according to the male gaze. As women here have said, it’s less about the haircut or self fulfilment and more about self denial.

When you transitioned, what was the typical teenage stress expression of the time? In my day it was anorexia, soon after it was cutting and self harm. These days it appears to be transing. What was it for your era?

The fact that you cannot understand the difference between empathy and virtue signalling says an awful lot about you

OP has fully transitioned. She has no penis and has presumably been on hormone therapy. If she walked into a female toilet you would likely have no idea that she'd ever been a man.

You are being very unreasonable to say that she should not use the women's toilets. She can't go in the men's looking like a bio woman, which is what trans women look like after full transition.

OP, carry on. Use the female toilets and changing rooms. No one will have the foggiest that you were born male.

Trying again:

You can't. You're a man and you've been sold a lie. You can change your body in any way you please, still a man.
As an actual woman I haven't the faintest idea what living as a woman might entail other than inhabiting a female body.

I love the fact you feel better being who you want to be.

In times gone by you probably wouldn't have been given a second glance in the ladies, or maybe you would. But I think most women would have shrugged and carried on with their day.

The activists and men who just want access to women and girls have spoilt that, for you quietly going about your business.

Now what do you do?

I 100% agree with the ruling and I am happy women are classed as biological women. I have campaigned long and hard for this along with other women.

But yea, where does that leave you now?

Why the furore around trans women using women's toilets/changing rooms? Seriously stop that. Do you think they're going to attack you? Have a good perv at you?

Given that transman Freddy McConnell has a GRC and has given birth, which you would think was a pretty womanly thing to do, I don’t think you need to worry too much.

Present however you choose but please stay out of women-only spaces.

I feel really sad that a whole category of trans people were sold a lie that cutting bits off their body and reshaping bits of themselves would somehow change their sex when the reality is you cannot change your chromosomes from xx to xy and vice versa.

I think the biggest mistake ever made was suggesting to people that it was possible.

The real answer to this is live however you want - wear the clothes you want, wear your hair in the style you want, wear make up however you like, grow your hair, shave your hair, have sex with whoever you want provided it's legal and consenting..... None of this needs defining by whether you are male or female?

So why exactly does it matter whether you are seen by others as the opposite sex to what you are born as - as a pp said, what did you want to do that you didn't feel able to before?

Is it wanting women to include you as 'one of them'?

I had a trans lady cut my hair recently. I could tell she had been born male because of her hands and voice. I didn't run out screaming, nobody died.

It’s a bit like wearing makeup. If a trans women doesn’t wear makeup up, how would they evidence they are female?

I don’t suddenly become male if I wear baggy jeans, a shirt and no makeup but by this definition of ‘living as a gender’, I would be male on those days. It doesn’t make any sense. I honestly can’t rationalise any of this in my head.

Have you not paid attention? Are you new to this entire situation? I would suggest you educate yourself.