WIBU to ask MNers who think Trans Women are 'Chicks With Dicks' to ...

[KKCupCakes]

Take a look at this article about supporting families of Transgender people by the Gires.org.uk Website to see why that view is so utterly incorrect and harmful?
www.gires.org.uk/assets/supporting-families.pdf

sianihedgehog, I don't know what parallel universe you inhabit.

I want to second all the other posters who have made comments such as 'seriously?' and 'This is one of the most offensive and stupid comments I have ever read' in response to your posts here.

You need to ask people's permission before you go around calling them cis women.

Guys, [Guys??] Cis is just useful when discussing trans issues as shorthand if you want to be clear. No one is forcing you to change what you call yourselves. But if you're specifically talking about how your current gender relates to the genitals you were born with it's a lot faster than "woman who was also born with unambiguous female genitals" same as trans woman is faster than "woman born with male genitals".

How about just using 'women'. We would all understand.

Cis is something foisted upon women because it is expected that our role as women is to always pander to people born with penises. We are supposed to suck that one up so that transwomen can better explain themselves? Seriously?

I think it is very interesting that in this area, self-determination / self-defining is so primary. It is hard to think of lots of other examples where this is the case. The only one I can think of right now is that you can choose your name and how to pronounce it, and if I say my name is spelt Sheila but pronounced Shayla, anyone who calls me Sheela (which they may think more "usual" or "correct") is simply wrong, because I get to choose. (I might have to take legal steps if I change from what my parents decided, but I can do that without anyone stopping me, or having to prove anything to anyone.)

So:

• you can absolutely choose your own gender, apparently, as the final authority (or some people can)
• doing this means that you have de facto made a lot of decisions about others gender - without their consent - but only trans people can do this. Women who are not trans might attempt to do but they are in big trouble if / when they do
• getting someone else's gender wrong "erases" them. This is the odd part. If I am "Shayla" and someone calls me "Sheela" I don't cease to exist. I don't even feel like I cease to exist. I can feel insulted, disregarded, unheard - but I still exist. I don't need people's respect or understanding for mere existence. For happiness, or fulfilment, maybe - but not to simply exist.

You just can't do this about most other things.

"I am talented at music" - no. You can decide to be interested in music or to spend all your time on it or to love it. But you can't decide whether you are going to be any good at it.

"I am married". No. you can choose to be willing to get married but the other person has a say as well! And they can end the marriage too.

"I am single". Not if you are legally married, you can change your mind if you wish you weren't, but you have to go through a legal process to get there.

"I am tall and slim." I wish.

"I am English." You might have all the attitudes and cultural sensibilities of an English person but your passport says what it says and that is your legal nationality.

It might be heartbreaking to wish you were English if you are about to be deported and you feel English; or to wish you were still married if your ex-spouse divorced you against your will; or to wish you were good at music if it is the only thing you care about. But your broken heart doesn't make these things true.

I feel like the way in which gender stopped being one of these sorts of things and became a "call me Shayla" sort of thing is fascinating and I wonder how it happened?

I have no issue with Cis. It is only used when discussing trans issues and helps with confusion. It's used for both men and women.

I know! Let's call anyone not born a woman "not-woman" .

Afterall, born-men (men or transwomen) are 49% of the population.

As a feminist, I have never use the word "chick" because it is sexist, in fact a word I have only heard used by biological men.

For me, "women" means biological women.
So, women are NOT what seems to be the default now: everyone who is not 1000% male, 100% of the time.

I would say "transwomen" for those who are biologically male but identify as women.
Out of politeness, I use the pronoun preferred by the person, whether it be he/she/they, also their preferred name.

Some safe spaces - refuges, prisons wings, single sex changing rooms, need to be exclusively for biological women. So do sports and those prizes specified as being for "women".
This is because of the great differences in biology, physical strength or life experiences that biological women have.

We need to be able to advertise "womens" groups or topics that discuss or deal with female biological issues, e.g. pregnancy, abortion, menopause, periods.
Without receiving threats of rape, stabbings or bombings

I support separate facilities for transwomen and transmen - they need to campaign for their own facilities, rather than piling into ours.

< flings off chocolate cloak to reveal the horns and cloven hooves of a Radical Feminist >

DeoGratias Sun 01-Nov-15 10:01:45
There would be none of these prison issues if people didn't commit crimes. Most of us manage not to. No one expects prison to be a piece of cake. The worse it is the less likely people will commit crimes. How many trans prisoners do we have in the UK? Are there so very many it is worth spending precious resources on when those who dont' break the law are themselves suffering in so many ways? If the prison experience is awful then it might make people think twice before breaking the law.

......................
Are you sure you want to leave this disgusting post standing, DeoGratis?

You are saying that a woman in prison has left herself open to the threat of rape by a man with a penis who may be her cellmate and that this is just, that all deterrents to crime are acceptable?

Fuck me sideways.

I read Deo's post differently - I read it as saying that a transwoman in a men's prison brought it on herself by getting sent to prison - not that the people in the women's prison should have to put up with her.

Either is pretty grim, of course - having to be sent to prison doesn't mean you should be vulnerable to whatever abuse other prisoners decide to mete out. but I feel like it's sort of accepted that abuse happens in prison? And it's sort of ok as long as it's abuse by the "correct" sex (whatever your view is on that in the case of a trans person)

Sorry to be clear, I don't think it's ok that abuse happens in prison. I mean everyone else seems to accept that

That would be because transwomen demand to be accepted as women, no different than any woman.

So is the term "trans woman" redundant?

I think "trans woman" is only redundant if you accept that a trans woman is no different to a woman. I'd happily refer to a trans woman as "she" and treat her with respect, but in my opinion a trans woman is not the same as a woman.

And how exactly do you intend to police the rules about no penises in the changing rooms? I've known people with penises who absolutely passed as female with no question. And I know a lot of women who have been accused of being male. Are you going to demand to look at the genitals of anyone you suspect?? Or are you going to mostly just make the rule and assume that as the vast majority of people are not actually out to cause trouble, they will obey it? And if that's the case, why no just accept that people who say they are women are women?

Because they have functioning penises, Siani.
Are you familiar with the story 'The Emperor's New Clothes'?

'Cretinous' hits the nail on the head CactusAnnie.

Howtorebuild
Yes, we are victims of narcissistic rage.

I also think it is fascinating that now, the time of greatest ever social freedom for matters to do with sex and gender, there is the greatest noise about it and it would seem the greatest ever suffering associated with it.

I mean homosexuality was once illegal, divorce very difficult to get, sex outside marriage would ruin a woman's life, and deviating from conventional manners or dress would have you thrown out of mainstream society. Somehow people managed to find ways to express themselves, or they didn't and survived the lack of expression. Now, no one is going to throw you in gaol for having a lover of the "wrong" sex, or kick you out of the church or the pub for wearing clothes of the "wrong" gender, so why the hell don't people just get on with being who they want to be instead of behaving like not being perfectly understood by everyone on the planet is some huge fucking enormous problem?

Siani, what you are trying to say is that everybody has relative privilege and lack of privilege.

Everybody except trans women. They are in a special category called 'Ultimate Victims Of Everybody. So Shutup'.

It's not just that "cis" is a name.
It is because some - not all - biological males have redefined what it is to be a woman, just so that they can be included.

As a mixed race woman, I've suffered racial insults and discrimination.
I would be outraged if a group of white people redefined mixed or BME to include them. Whatever other disadvantages of income etc they may have suffered, they did NOT experience the same as people of colour.

Transwomen and transwomen suffer their own unique problems, which would be better served by solutions specifically for them.

What puzzles me:
Why do so many trans people have so much venom towards biological women ?
When they suffer violence and murder, this is almost always committed by men. I can't remember them criticising men for their attitudes or violence.

Where are the demands by transmen to join Mens Rights Groups, to be sent to mens' prisons ?

I have no issue with Cis. It is only used when discussing trans issues and helps with confusion. It's used for both men and women.

None of those sentences is a reason to compel any other woman to accept that label, however.

A friend of mine said that something is happening with young people where nearly every friendship group contains a transwoman. I asked him why he thought that is and he said something about "the intolerable state of being a man". or something

I feel like masculinity is so visibly toxic now that so many things have changed for the better. The problem is that it's toxic whether you a man or a woman yourself, so half the men in the western world feel like they're in a male prison and hate it just as much as I would. Male violence isn't something that only affects women.

But the difficulty is that not wanting anything to do with masculinity doesn't make you necessarily any good at actually transcending it.

Men used to be always commenting enviously on how nice women's loos are in clubs (when I used to go to clubs) if they ever got the chance to see them. Clean, sociable, chatty, relaxed, friendly. Well women didn't order men to piss all over their own loos and infuse them with a threatening atmosphere of potential violence. They did that of their own accord.

It's a problem that men have generally made things so shit for each other but it's kind of more a problem to me that they have made things so shit for women.

As a young feminist in a male dominated university I was very confused by men. they hated us - they visibly despised and loathed us - yet they would not leave us alone. I thought perhaps it was that they wanted sex, but reading about it and thinking about it has shown that it's more than that. Masculinity needs femininity against which to define itself. It's a key part of masculine men, how they stand vis a vis women. It can't be completed in a male vacuum. Women are required for the project of masculinity, of successful self definition as a masculine man, and for the recognition of this by society. Women are barely understood as human but are instrumental to this end.

Being required to serve a purpose for someone else's successful attainment of their desired gender identity / performance - and the business of my own self-definition and my own projects being considered utterly unimportant relative to standing suitably in place as an instrument for this gender-project - is not an unfamiliar feeling.

the thing is I feel like feminists instinctively know that the man who "needs" to feel masculine by bathing in subordinate behaviour from smallish, attractive women that he has surrounded himself by at work, for instance, or from a submissive wife, is a bit of a dick, and doesn't need these things at all - he won't blow up or cease to exist without his sycophancy-harem.

Challenging the "need" to use others - recategorise, redefine others - to define one's gender identity in other cases seems to be being met with a lot more sympathy.

why is this?

I don't want to stop anyone doing anything that they want to do, that doesn't harm anyone. But why is it understood that whole ontological categories of people must be at their disposal for this project?

It's acknowledging that they are a woman, but also have a penis.

We're going to get a slight influx of people who were looking for porn here on MN today though. That should be interesting.

I don't know. I don't know where the idea that you are 'erasing' someone if you don't agree with their self-image comes from. That calling someone a man can constitute hate speech...

*BigChocFrenzy

When they suffer violence and murder, this is almost always committed by men. I can't remember them criticising men for their attitudes or violence*

I read something about this recently. The gist of it was this type of violence was homophobia rather than transphobia as it was in relation to issues of masculinity and how men see themselves.

The problem with "cis" is very clear from the page that OP linked to, which seeks to explain what being trans is all about.

From the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) link that OP provided to explain to all of us silly wimmin why we're wrong to think that transactivists pose a threat to the aims of feminism:

"Male and female characteristics depend on two factors: sex and gender.
‘Sex’ describes our physical structure... There are two different aspects to gender: ‘gender identity’ describes the inner sense of knowing that we are boys or girls, and later men or women; ‘gender role’ describes how we behave in society. Even though we now live in a more equal society, boys and girls are still expected to dress differently from each other and, possibly, enjoy different kinds of games. Each is expected to have rather different interests and different groups of friends.

Typically, sex, gender identity and gender role are consistent with each other... As soon as the sex of a baby is apparent, it is assumed that the gender identity matches.

However, people vary greatly and it should not be surprising that, occasionally, a few individuals experience a mismatch... The way they are expected to behave may be quite different from the way they actually want to behave. This causes a feeling of intense discomfort which is described as ‘gender dysphoria’ (dysphoria means unhappiness)."

The fact that organisations like GIRES are pushing the narrative that "occasionally, a few individuals experience a mismatch" between their biological sex and the way they are expected to behave based on their gender role , basically accepts gender roles as legitimate, inevitable, hand immutable.

Do trans activists really think that it's only "a few people" (those who think of themselves as "trans") who occasionally feel extreme dissatisfaction and discomfort from gendered expectations? Do they not realise that the old name for being dissatisfied with gender roles was "feminism"?

If trans support and education websites are saying that trans means "discomfort with the gender role attached to biological sex", then what might a "ciswoman" be? A woman whose biology happily matches her cultural 'gender role' and who experiences no discomfort nor dissatisfaction with having a sexist society impose assumptions and expectations about her behaviour, her interests, her abilities, her friendships? Because that ain't me. And it's not my mother or my sister or (God forbid) my daughter, and it's not any of the women that I know either.

If someone expects me to deny my own biology and/or my own personhood outside of bullshit sexist gender roles, and be complicit in the blatant disrespect that this trans narrative displays for women's centuries-long struggle for equality and freedom against gendered expectations, by referring to myself or anyone else as a 'ciswoman' well, sorry, no. They can fuck. right. off.

• "legitimate, inevitable, AND immutable."

BertieBotts not sure if you're still reading, but thanks for the comment a few pages back :) The book is one of my kids' perpetual faves. I like it too, but by the time we get to the tweedle beetle battle on the noodle eating poodle, I am happy there's only one page to go!